------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overall Rating : 4/10
Directed By : Larry Cohen
Fairuza Balk (The Craft)
Michael Moriarty (The Stuff)
Warren Kole (Into The West (TV) )
Laurene Landon (It's Alive III: Island of the Alive)
Supplied By : Anchor Bay Entertainment
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : Oct. 17, 2006
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| PLOT When a crazed hitchhiker gets accidentally offered a ride by an equally insane truck driver, a young woman (Fairuza Balk) has the bad luck to become the victim of each. In order to make it out alive, she will have to outsmart both men by beating each at his own game. |
||||
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||||
| THE REVIEW For Director Larry Cohen's installment for the MASTERS OF HORROR series we are presented with PICK ME UP. PICK ME UP shows us what it would be like if two very different serial killers collided. When a bus brakes down on a highway in the middle of nowhere, several passengers have different agendas. A few number of the reluctant passengers hitch a ride with a seemingly calm Trucker named Jim Wheeler, while the others stay behind and and wait for help. What none of the passengers no is that either way they are all doomed... on the road, a drifter by the name of Walker is out looking for his next kill - often using charm to lure the victim. and as it turns out, that nice truck driver....well he isn't so nice either as he also shares the drifter's pleasures of killing. As you would guess the two killers soon cross treacherous paths and then the lone passenger that chose to go on her own and hitch-hike...Stacia still ends up no better than the rest, as she is caught in a war between the two killers. Here's a story that when I read the plot for that I thought, "Hey this is a cool idea for a film!". Well for about the first 10 minutes it was in fact interesting, but soon after the characters are introduced it turns into a slow film that seems to go nowhere with itself. A majority of this film is spent on developing the killers, but I feel the other characters to be neglected and improperly used - more importantly Fairuza Balk's character of Stacia. Believe it or not, Balk is really the true star of this story, but I believe the killers were intended to be in the first place. Through out the film, you are actually wishing that Fairuza had more screen time than allowed. The truth is that the killers are just not that interesting, besides a few clever lines from Michael Moriarty(who is usually great) - the acting and dialogue from the two is just stiff and wooden - a big fight scene between two supposed hardened serial killers that was supposed to be the big payoff we had been watching the episode, in hopes of seeing, really fails to be something special or even eventful.... Before seeing PICK ME UP, had not seen any of Cohen's previous works, because honestly they never really appealed to me, and I really thought I would I would like this one. It starts out great as I said but it isn't long before you find the rest of the story to be really under developed. |
||||
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||||
| GORE
METER 4/10 None of the kills are really seen on screen, and I wouldn't call this one necessarily gory anyway. I did like when a guy gets his head crushed by the bus' storage compartment door, however! |
||||
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||||
| MUSICAL
SCORE 3/10 This film had some sort of western vibe vibe going on coupled with the more traditional backing music.... I wasn't a big fan. |
||||
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||||
| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM I ended up not liking this one as much as I really wanted. I wasn't a big fan of the acting on display and the action nor the twist ending is enough to save this one. In my opinion Fairuza Balk would be my only reason to recommend this episode, however she is not used nearly enough. |
||||
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ||||
| STILLS | ||||
|
