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65%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #5,468
...out of 20,906 movies
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While driving at night on a mountain road, Ellen gets distracted and hits an abandoned car. When she tries to get help, she is attacked by a backwoods killer named Moonface, and must fight to stay alive using advice she got from her husband.
--TMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: May 15, 2006
Season one, episode one - here's the episode that kicked off the Masters of Horror franchise, and it's also the episode that has restored my faith in the series. For those of you who don't recall my review of Cigarette Burns, I haven't been watching these as they air on Showtime, but watching them as they hit DVD instead. While I wasn't a fan of the first episode that I saw (the aforementioned Burns), this one has convinced me to give a couple of the other episodes a shot.
This particular episode centers around a young lady named Ellen (Bree Turner) who happens to be driving down a deserted mountain road in the middle of the night. Where she's going and why she's out here in the middle of nowhere isn't disclosed to us at home, but it doesn't take long before that is the least of our concerns. As she takes a sharp turn around a corner, she hits another car that was parked in the middle of the road and proceeds to black out. During this time, we're treated to a flashback of her relationship with the survivalist-nut Bruce (Ethan Embry), and we see how he has taught her to fend for and protect herself. We see a number of these flashbacks as the movie progresses, but that's all we need to know for now. She eventually regains consciousness and goes to investigate why there was a parked car in the middle of the road; what she discovers is that there is a pool of blood in the drivers seat of said car, and that it trails off to the side of the road. She follows this trail of blood, assuming that this person was injured in the accident and ended up over there, but what she finds is much, much worse than dealing with the insurance people: there is a disfigured man (John DeSantis) down there, dragging a bloodied woman into the woods... and when he sees our unfortunate heroine, he decides that she'll be the next to be captured.
What I enjoyed most about this entry is the simplicity of it: there's a heroine that we know little about, there's a villain that we know nothing about, they're in the middle of nowhere, and one wants to kill the other. While I'd normally complain about that lack of character development, here it works out nicely since it really isn't important. We're thrown into the action almost as soon as the film begins, and it never lets up as the movie progresses; therefore, knowing who these people are and what their motivations are isn't really a requirement. What surprised me in this regard is that more is explained as the movie progresses, much more so than I expected from an hour-long film that is almost solely based on run-and-hide horror. It all leads up to the final twist, which I'm obviously not going to spoil, but it was a great ending to an already-great film.
There's not much more than can be said about this film without spoiling it, so I'll just say this: definitely give this one a watch if you're like me and keeping up with the series through the miracles of DVD. It's a nice little horror story with just the right amount of blood and gore, the tension is handled perfectly, and we even get a cameo appearance from Angus Scrimm (better known as The Tall Man from Phantasm). There's a few flaws to be found as the movie moves along, but all in all, this one is guaranteed to please the horror fans out there. 8/10.
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#1:
bluemeanie
- added May 17, 2006 at 2:27am
This was one of my favorite in the series. I love
Don Coscarelli. Angus Scrimm rocks ass. 7/10.
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#2:
Cryptorchild
- added December 12, 2006 at 10:29pm
While I do like Don Coscarelli, I was a little let
down with this one. The film is simple though:
woman vs maniac. Who will survive? If you like
the survival type movie, it's great. If you like
them with a little more story...well....that's
lacking. It's an alright film, I just wanted a
little more out of it, I guess. And yes, Angus
Scrimm is awesome. I loved his part in the film.
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#3:
Dametria
- added April 24, 2007 at 12:20pm
My favorite MoH film as well
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#4:
Tristan
- added November 8, 2007 at 8:56pm
Surprisingly good episode. There were a few flaws,
like her having infinite time to set up these
traps when Moonface is right behind her. And the
fact that he pretty much walks into all of them.
Aside from that though, I loved it. And to agree
with everybody else here, Angus Scrimm did own
ass. 8/10
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