MASTERS OF HORROR: INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD (OCTOBER 28, 2005)

Masters of Horror was a telvision anthology series that ran on Showtime for two season for a total of 26 hour-long episodes.  Creator Mick Garris utilized the talents of some of the most well-known directors of horror films to produce the series, thus the title Masters of Horror.  Among the "Masters" directing the series were Don Coscarelli, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, John Landis, John Carpenter, Lucky McKee, Larry Cohen, Brad Anderson, and Garris himself.  Many of the episodes were adapte fro stories by well-known writers in the genre, including Joe R. Lansdale, H. P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson, David J. Schow, Clive Barker, Ambrose Bierce,  F. Paul Wilson, James Tiptree, Jr., John Farris, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bentley Little.  Many of the teleplays were adapted by the directors themselves or by sich writers as Richard Christian Matheson and Richard Chizmar.  In some areas internationally, the episodes were released a theatrical films.

When Showtrime did not renew the series for a third series, Garris took the planned third season to NBC, which aired it as Fear Itself, beginning in the Summer of 2008.  Fear Itself was based on the same premise as Masters of Horror, although the episodes appear not to have nee based on previously published stories.  NBC pulled the plug on Fear Itself after eight episodes, leaving the last five episodes unaired.

(Some of the producers of Masters of Horror floated a similar series, Masters of Science Ficrion, to ABC, which began airing the series on October 24, 2017.  Four of the six filmed episodes aired; the remaining two were cut for undisclosed reasons.   The aired episodes were based on stories by John  Kessel, Howard Fast, Robert A. Heinlein, and Harlan Ellison; the unaired episodes on stories by Walter Mosley and Robert Sheckley.) 

The initial episode of Masters of Horror was directed by Don Coscarelli, who had directed the first four Phantasm films, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-Tep, and (later) John Dies at the End.  Coscarelli and Stephen Romano wrote the script based on a story by Joe R. Lansdale (his ownself). 

Ellen (Bree Turner, who played Rosalie Calvert for six seasons of Grimm) is drivng on a lonely road ("No Gas or Services Next 75 Miles") is distracted as she tunes the car radio and crashes into another car.  The car is empty but there is a trail of blood leading off the road.  She encounters a deformed serial killer Moonface (John DeSantis, "Lurch" on The New Addams Family) whjo was dragging the barely-alive body of the driver of the other car.  A chase ensues and, through flashabcks, we lern that Ellen was married to a survivalist (Ethan Embry, Brotherhood, Once Upon aTime, Sneaky Pete, Grace and Frankie) who had taught her all sorts of tricks.  Ellen is fanilly captured and wake up in front of the delusional and supposedly incapacitated Buddy (Angus Scrimm, "The Tall Man" in Cascarilli's Phantasm films) who tells her of the horrible tortures Moonface uses with his victims.

Grue, gore, gratuitous violence...in spades.  Can Ellen survive using what she has learned from her survivalist husband?

This is not one for those with a weak stomach.

"Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" first appeared in the anthology Night Visions 8 (Paul J. Mikol, uncredited editor, 1991) and has been reprinted in the following Lansdale collections:  Writer of the Purple Rage (1994), High Cotton:  Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale (2000), The God of the Razor (2007), The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (2010), Blood in the Gears (2019), and Things Get Ugly:  The Best Crime Fiction of Joe R. Lansdale (2023). 

Enjoy this episode.  You may want to have your security blanket and/or stuffed pookie bear handy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zynxCA2sPc&t=2003s