Masters of Horror - Incident On and Off a Mountain Road review by The Grim Ringler

"Masters of Horror"
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road

The sad thing so far that has stuck with the Masters of Horror series of anthology horror films is the fact that it cut one of the films from its roster. Worse is that, from the first two entries, it makes you wonder either how big of wimps the producers are not to put Takeshi Miike’s film on, or how nasty it is. Does this little controversy matter? That they took a film off of a roster after touting how almost anything went? Well, yes and no, but mainly no. It’s a sad bit though when you consider people should be touting how amazing and ingenious this series and its films are. We horror nerds are a nasty lot though. We’re die-hard fans but are also big fat sissies and crybabies when it comes to some things and we almost take more joy in hating things than loving them. Eh, so be it. Me, I will say this, whether all the episodes of this series are good or bad matters little to me, what matters is that the show exists. Anything that can stimulate horror fans and directors, and can give these directors an open canvas to work on, hell, I am all about it.

The first of the films is Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, is an adaptation of a Joe Landsdale story directed by Don Coscarelli. It appears to be, at first, yet another slasher film with the crazy man-monster in pursuit of a seemingly helpless woman. As the tale unwinds though we see that things are not as they appear. This woman is one who fell in love with and married a survivalist who instilled in her his understanding of how to use the environment as a weapon but more importantly, his will to survive. There is something about this particular woman too, something in her will to do anything to survive that we don’t yet know, but that makes her just as deadly a foe as her pursuer may be.

Not as breathtaking as I would hope for this series but a solid entry. It’s gory as hell and the two leads – not Moonface the killer, who stomps around and broods, like every other damned serial-monster EVER – are very good. The direction is solid as well. The problem here is that it just feels too easy. Landsdale has done some really nasty stuff that should have been looked at before this one, but so be it. It’s a fun entry and, while not really living up to the hype, it’s pretty doggone entertaining. Bring on the rest!

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