Masters of Horror: "Pick Me Up"

The concept rocks: Two urban legends collide on a desolate roadside when Wheeler (Michael Moriarty), a truck-driving serial killer who slays hitchhikers, offers a ride to Walker (Warren Kole), a snake-obsessed hitchhiker who slays any individual unlucky enough to offer him a ride.

Unfortunately, the interplay between these two characters makes up for very little of the story. Mostly, it’s about their respective victims: hot chicks running, screaming, crying, and pleading for their lives. Sometimes that classic misogynistic works for me, sometimes it’s just a bore. Don’t get me wrong — Stacia (Fairuza Balk) is no shrinking violet, but the events that lead up to her becoming the prize that both killers seek is pretty ho-hum.

The events being: Stacia is a passenger on a bus going across an isolated area of the country, when it breaks down. She ventures out on her own, preferring to take her chances on the open road rather than be a sitting duck. Pick Me Up is short on logic; we know that Wheeler wouldn’t mind skewering Stacia because, obviously, she fits his criteria as a hitchhiker. But Stacia does not have a car and therefore would not fit Walker’s M.O. So why does he want her? Just so Wheeler can’t have her? It’s clear as mud.

That is not to say that Pick Me Up is all bad. In fact, now that I have seen nearly all the Masters of Horror episodes and have a lot more perspective than I did in the beginning, I’d even venture to say perhaps it is not the weakest episode (look for my recap list, in order, after the season airs). Unlike the other helmers’ showcases, Pick Me Up is just not very stylized (then again, maybe that is Larry Cohen’s “style”, and the joke is on me).

The actors are all good (particularly Law & Order’s Moriarty, who has the best lines and most menacing delivery, and it’s fun to see I, The Jury’s Laurene Landon again) and the story moves along. The scenery and minimal sets are well-thought out, and the music is appropriate.

Pick Me Up is nothing special but it’s worth a look for screenwriter David J Schow’s fans, and is a cut about anything else you’ll see this week on TV when it comes to original horror programming.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson