Masters of Horror: Episode 11 Pick Me Up

Why is Fairuza Balk in this episode? Could someone please explain that to me? It’s not that I have anything against Fairuza Balk, but her character seems entirely redundant to this episode’s storyline. I’m thankful that director Larry Cohen minimized her time, having her disappear for most of the first half of the episode. Still, we’re left with a perfectly good episode, with one obvious glaring flaw. She seems to have been written in because a story about two dueling serial killers wouldn’t have a hero otherwise.

The episode opens with a classic horror set-up: A bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, stranding all the passengers. Serial killing truck driver Jim Wheeler (Michael Moriarty) offers them a ride. Two passengers agree to go with him, two others and the bus driver stay behind to get picked off by hitchhiking serial killer Walker (Warren Kole).

Names aside, the two eventually find out about each other, and each believes the other to be a trespasser in his territory. They’re relationship is complex. They don’t seem to be offended by the idea that their competitor wants to kill them, in fact it seems to be expected. And they share a mutual admiration for each others' skills. Their conflict is primarily in philosophy: Wheeler, while willing to kill the inconvenient, believes in seeking out dangerous prey. Walker, on the other hand, freely slaughters anyone who happens to be available, and sees Wheeler as pretentious.

While the episode does seem to suggest that this is their first encounter, the two have great chemistry. I imagine that you could cast these actors in almost anything and they’d fit together perfectly. I don’t even really care who wins, I just want them to keep talking for as long as possible.

And then we get to Stacia (Fairuza Balk). She was on the bus at the beginning of the episode, but decided to walk to a hotel. About twenty-five minutes in she appears again at the hotel. After a long day of killing people, Walker and Wheeler end up in the same hotel, with rooms on either side of her. After this point the episode becomes absolutely desperate to keep her alive.

Walker wastes time making scary noises, causing her to flee the hotel. She then accepts a ride from Wheeler, who she believes to be a cop hunting Walker. Wheeler decides he needs her as “bait” to lure Walker. Let me repeat that: Wheeler thinks he needs her as bait to lure in Walker, who is already actively planning to kill Wheeler! This is how desperate the episode is to give Stacia an active role.

Now, does this kill the episode? Absolutely not. However, her presence affects absolutely nothing, and her overacting can bring down an exciting moment like a joke that’s just been explained. All of her scenes could have been replaced with more interaction between Moriarty and Kole, or just more kills. I talk about her presence as a distraction mainly because it’s such a gaping and obvious flaw. We don’t need a sympathetic perspective. We’re horror fans. We can deal with Villain Protagonists.

This is definitely an ending worth talking about: After Stacia causes a crash (that could have happened without her), she’s injured, and the two Duke it out. All three of them end up picked up by two serial killers who drive an ambulance and look for injured people to murder. Meanwhile, I have a big stupid grin on my face at what is probably one of the best endings in this entire series.

This episode is just awesome! It’s pure bloody, campy fun from beginning to end. If you can watch it and not enjoy it you need to seriously rethink your entire outlook on life. No, it isn't scary, but who. cares.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #43 It's Alive

It’s Alive is a movie that takes an absurd premise and infuses it with a strong sense of psychological reality. In doing so, it creates something which genuinely scares us as we fear for people who we feel could very well be real, and also weep for the tragedy of the concept. While the movie is dialogue heavy, all of the actors are good enough to sell it.

It opens with one of the few childbirths in film that consists of more than just screaming. Lenore (Sharon Farrell), pregnant with her second child, wakes up and tells her husband Frank (John Ryan) that it’s time for the baby to come. Their preparations are quick but calculated. It’s made clear that they’ve been through this with their first child, Chris (Daniel Holzman). Even though the birth is difficult, Lenore is able to talk to the doctors quite coherently through most of it. The screaming doesn’t start until after the baby is out, and you can’t really blame her for that.

The movie was inspired by director Larry Cohen visiting a hospital and seeing a newborn crying. Seeing the fury of that child made him imagine that if it was given any real degree of power everyone in the room would likely be killed in blind rage. The child of Frank and Lenore is that newborn, with fangs and claws. It kills everyone in the room, except for its mother, and escapes from the hospital.

From this point forward in the film, Frank serves as our primary protagonist. He asserts no connection to the child, claiming that his only concern is his wife’s well-being and the safety of his family. I think the choice to make Frank the protagonist likely comes from an unspoken doubt. Frank was down the hall when the slaughter occurred. Lenore, being in the middle of the room, was clearly spared by the child. So I imagine Frank is wondering throughout this film that if, by coincidence, he had been standing in the room, would the child have recognized him as its father? And if it had, then would it have cared?

This isn’t a movie that gives you easy answers. It’s not the child’s fault that it has so much power. The scenes of violence are punctuated by its cries, reminding us that its mind is no different from every other child ever born on the planet. We realize that under these circumstances we, or our own children, would have behaved in exactly the same manner.

The movie actually spends fairly little time on the child, though. We periodically see cuts to it out in the world, killing someone to remind us of the threat. The movie is more focused on the suffering of the parents as a media circus surrounds the birth. The single most disturbing scene in the film doesn’t even have the child in it. And that is when Lenore discovers that a nurse offering her “comfort” was concealing a tape recorder, hoping to be able to sell some new aspect of the story to the press.

In general, this isn’t the most positive portrayal of humanity. There’s ample discussion of what to do with the child’s body after it’s inevitably killed. The options are either study it, or destroy it so it can’t be used as evidence in a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company. Frank agrees to sign the body over, but we see his conflict. He does it because he’s afraid of being branded as the child’s father, and hopes that giving it up will prevent that.

In the final act, Frank becomes increasingly aggressive. The child finds it ways home, and both Lenore and Chris attempt to protect it. Frank on the other hand is determined to kill it personally, either to stop the rampage, or to permanently remove a stain from his reputation. Notably, the child never attacks a member of its own family, even when Frank is shooting at it.

At the end, Frank is the one to locate the now-wounded child, but finds he can’t kill it in such a state. He attempts to flee with it, but is cornered, and asks them to take it for study but to let it live. The police refuse, insisting that he step out of the way so they can kill it immediately. Then, it leaps from his arms, attacks another man and is shot dead, showing that Frank overestimated the severity of its injuries.

Even the ending doesn’t make the situation simple. Clearly, wounded or not, the child was still dangerous. At best, it didn’t attack Frank because he approached it gently, or more likely just didn’t attack him because it recognized its father. Sure, that sounds appealing, but it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that this child, malicious or not, simply could not be controlled or contained.

This is a movie I’d recommend to anyone. The opening is much stronger than the rest of the film, but it still stays solid throughout. It’s a movie that leaves a lot unsaid, because it doesn’t need to be. It’s a movie that makes you afraid of the monster, but also makes you cry for it. I know Cohen eventually directed two sequels, dealing with the birth of more mutated children, and I’m actually interested to see them. This is a concept good enough to be the basis of more than one movie.