Tales From The Crypt “The Switch”

The man who was, at the time this came out, arguably the biggest star in the world was involved in this episode.  But not the way you might think…

It was his directorial debut.

Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger directed this episode.  Did he direct anything else ever?  Not to my knowledge.  He doesn’t appear in the episode…sort of. I’ll explain below.  However, his presence is felt here in a particularly strong way, but the episode does have a flash of bodybuilders working out, and there’s a very brief fight scene for some reason.

Instead, we get the story of one Carlton Webster (character actor William Hickey), a rich old man who pines for the love of young Linda (a  young Kelly Preston).  He tells his butler Fulton (character actor Ian Abercrombie) that he will marry Linda, but Linda, well, when she looks at Carlton, she sees her grandpa.  She needs a man who won’t look like he’s going to drop dead at any moment.

That means…plastic surgery!  But that won’t do enough.  That means…a mad scientist in a creepy old mansion!  He’ll do one better than plastic surgery: he’ll do full on head exchanges, giving Carlton the face and head of Hans, an East German man who will get a chunk of the money the scientist charges.  This surgery is expensive.

But then he still has his old man body.  And after paying for that transplant, he still has the old man legs.  One last transplant that will cost Carlton the last of his money, and now he’s young and fit.

But then it comes out Linda married Hans because he has money, even though he now looks exactly like Carlton used to.  Heck, Hans even hired Fulton to be his butler.  Sucks to be Carlton, I guess.

This episode is supremely silly, even for this show.

What about the Cryptkeeper?  For perhaps the only time, the Cryptkeeper has a visitor in the form of Schwarzenegger, encouraging the dead thing to keep exercising and introducing the episode himself, but he’s gone for the closing bit where it looks like the Cryptkeeper is preparing a body for burial.

Notable names:  Schwarzenegger, Hickey, Preston, and Abercrombie all count for me, but the cast is pretty much entirely familiar TV actor faces.