3 out of 5

Director: Larry Cohen

Its hard to say where Cohen was going with this one. This is a solid entry in the MOH series (one of the better ones), but its sort of a confusing entry in the Cohen-catalogue. Pick Me Up is a pretty cool creeper about a bus breaking down and the weirdo characters who end up picking off the hitchhiking riders. I was very prepared to qualify this as one of Larry Cohens better works… he builds an odd mythology throughout the episode with very little words/action, playing two serial killers with different motives off each other to interesting effect. But perhaps the episodic format was a limitation here, as there are moments that you want to see more of and then moments that seem stuck in just for horror value, maybe. While many of Cohens movies devolve into questionable climaxes, he is great at structuring a small world in the 90 or so minutes leading up to wherever hes going. He gets the pieces right here, but the compressed format leaves too much dangling and too much desired to be perfect. All the same, some good creeps, good chuckles, and an awesome performance from Moriarty.