Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

The idea behind the television series “Masters of Horror” was to get some of the most well known and renowned horror movie directors and have them each direct their own hour long feature. Mick Garris, who thought the whole thing up, rounded up famous horror movie directors like John Carpenter and Dario Argento and the show became a huge success. Having wanting to see “Masters of Horror”, I decided to rent one of the episodes. I chose “Incident on and off a Mountain Road”, which was directed by Don Coscarelli and was supposed to be one of the better episodes. Coscarelli has previously directed Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep. Overall, I enjoyed it very much and I will probably be renting another one of the “Master of Horror” films in the future.

“Incident on and off a Mountain Road” follows the story of Bree, who is driving down a remote highway at nighttime. She isn’t really paying attention and ends up crashing into a car that has been abandoned in the middle of the road. She’s not injured, but her car won’t start. She gets out and notices the empty car she crashed into has blood on it. Bree looks off of the road and sees a figure. Assuming the figure is the owner of the car, she calls out to it. It begins to head towards her and Bree realizes it is holding a body. Soon, as the figure emerges out of the darkness, Bree realizes that the figure is actually a deformed serial-killer-type guy, nicknamed Moonface. The rest of the movie follows Bree’s attempts to escape Moonface. Inter-cut with the story are flashbacks from when she was getting married that tie into the story.

“Incident on and off a Mountain Road” is definitely Coscarelli’s scariest film to date. The premise isn’t very original. Moonface is a stereotypical murderer who lives in the middle of nowhere and gouges out his victim’s eyes, similar to the recent horror movie “See No Evil”. However, “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” manages to be pretty scary. It isn’t big on gore or violence, but managed to creep me out quite a bit. Moonface isn’t up to par with some other horror movie villains, but he is still pretty creepy looking. He’s a huge, hulking figure that is easily more terrifying than Jason. As well, the movie has plenty of scary moments. The initial sequence where Bree first meets up with Moonface is shocking and extremely suspenseful. As well, there are some pretty terrifying chase sequences through the forest. Coscarelli manages to make them a but creepier than usual by incorporating plenty of twists and turns that caught me by surprise. But it’s not until Bree enters Moonface’s lair when the movie really starts to get freaky. The scenes inside his lair easily matched the sequences in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” isn’t horrifying, but it’s the first time in awhile that I’ve had trouble going to sleep after a horror movie. When you’re lying in bed, genuinely creeped out, you know a horror movie has done a good job.

The reason “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” is so scary is because it uses the same formula is the old classic horror movies from the 70’s and 80’s. Instead of using cheap jump scares like the PG horror movies these days, or extreme gore like the R movies these days, it just builds up suspense and puts the main character in nail-biting situations that we have no clue how she’ll escape from. That is why “Incident” works so well.

Everything else is pretty well done too. Coscarelli's direction is pretty good, save for a few scenes that felt a bit fake and glossy. The acting was all very believable. The score was decent; it was good, but not memorable. Special effects were nice too. Most aspects were thought out well.

I do have a few small gripes though. The flashbacks are very disrupting and ruin the flow of the movie at times. They are necessary to the story, but they happen smack in the middle of suspenseful sequences. I got use to it after about 20 minutes, but it was still pretty annoying. “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” is based on a book and the flashbacks probably worked better in book format. As well, I didn’t find the movie very believable, especially the character of Bree’s husband. This guy is the most unbelievable character in any horror film. He’s made out to be extremely paranoid, but it’s a little too over-the-top. Am I really supposed to believe that someone gets so paranoid over nothing that they move out into some isolated forest, train their wife to be an expert knife handler and practice shooting guns constantly. It was just silly. There was no explanation for his unreasonable behavior. As well, Moonface’s motives were unclear to me. He didn’t seem to have much of a personality or reason behind his actions. The characters in this movie were a little unbelievable for me. In the book, they probably weren’t, since the writer could explain why they did certain things, but in the movie, not much was made clear to the audience.

But my biggest gripe with “Incident on and off a Mountain Road” is the running length. This movie clocks in at 51 minutes long. Since each film was part of a television show, each episode could only be about an hour, but to rent out and sell each episode singly is a bit unreasonable. You’re paying the same price to buy or rent this movie as you would for a feature length film, which is about half the length. I felt that “Incident” could have at least been about 20 minutes longer. Some parts felt rushed and in the end, the movie went by far too fast. Of course, I enjoyed the 51 minutes more than most feature length horror movies, but I kind of felt ripped off in the end. And it makes me very skeptical about renting other “Masters of Horror” episodes, because if they turn out to be bad, unlike “Incident”, than I’ve basically wasted money on a “half” of a bad movie.

In the end, I recommend “Incident on and off a Mountain Road”. It is one of the better horror movies I’ve seen recently and goes back to the formula of the old horror movie classics. Unfortunately, it is only 51 minutes, which is why I’m giving this movie 4 stars instead of 5. It just felt too short, especially since I paid the price of a feature length film to rent this. Either way, I recommend renting “Incident” and it has convinced me to check out some of the other “Masters of Horror”.

OTHER MASTERS OF HORROR:

Dreams in the Witch House


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12