Incident On and Off a Mountain Road: People With Giant Tattoos Of Crosses Are Not To Be Trusted

Incident On and Off a Mountain is the first episode in a swell little TV series called Masters of Horror.Each episode is directed by a certain "master of horror". This episode in particular was directed by the man who is responsible for the Phantasm movies. And true to form he casted his own favorite tall man Angus Scrim as a delightful and kooky old man.

So we first meet Ellen driving and listening to some tunes on a mountain road. When the radio fuzzes out she gets distracted and suddenly hits a parked car on the highway. After some flashbacks of her and Ethan Embry enjoying a nice first date? and sex.. she comes too and goes to see how the person in the other car is doing. She finds a ghastly trail of blood leading to the edge of the road and over the guardrail. She then spots a man in a hat struggling up and mountain. When she flashes her flashlight into the man she sees that he is dragging a woman and that he looks like this.

Yikes.

So obviously she freaks and runs away into the woods. Here we flashback again to where Ethan Embry is talking nonsense about learning how to survive on your own and what not. Basically little by little we find that he was a little nutty. They eventually had gotten married and he forces her to fight him and prove that she's not weak- weirdo stuff like that. Personally all this could have been avoided had she paid attention to his enormous tattoo of a cross on his body. Religious freaks are always a little nutty. Anyways flashing back to the woods, Ellen cooks up some traps in the woods with like scissors and stuff- why she has a mini pair of scissors in her bag we'll never know- but little can stop Moonface.

She eventually reaches his rustic cabin overlooking a lovely waterfall and finds dozens of bodies tied to pieces of wood with their eyes cut out, the moon shining through the empty holes. These bodies are grotesque to say the least, all wrinkly and skinny like a Jesus raisin. She passes out from the reappearance of Moonface and wakes up chained to a pole in the basement. A kooky old man talks to her who is also chained and asks if she brought any candy if she likes to sing- you know kooky old man stuff. Eventually Ellen's survivor instincts kick in and she battles Moonface in hopes to save herself.

Overall the movie was really interesting. The blood smears in the beginning, the people tied to the wood, the old man and the general appearance of Moonface were all very horrific. The last 10 minutes or so of the movie got a little dodgy. There is an extreme change of Ellen's character for one and her decision to shoot Buddy at the end is very alarming and quite sad. Sure he's kooky and gave you away when you had escaped- but he was a funny old man!

Another thing that confused me was the siren contraption attached the corkscrew eye thing- what was that all about? Was he warning anyone from not getting too close to the dangerous machinery? Probably not. It was a little weird. But then again I still will never understand the whole tuning fork/entrance to another dimension thing going on in Phantasm so whatevs.

All in all a good little chunk of entertainment. And I will definitely be watching more of these episodes for some quick thrills.