Tales From The Crypt “Abra Cadaver”

I thought, for a minute, the episode was going to be in black-and-white, but no, just the first scene.

Brothers Carl (Tony Goldwyn) and Martin (Beau Bridges) are both surgeons, or at least Martin is.  Carl is still in medical school.  One night, Carl is trying to get Martin’s help studying the cadavers in the medical school.  One of the corpses is an attractive young woman whose boobs seems to react when Carl goes to touch her, and when Martin does the same, the woman jumps up screaming she doesn’t want to be touched while another corpse also jumps up.

Oh, Carl set up a practical joke for Martin’s birthday.  The dead woman was his girlfriend.  The other corpse was a guy in a mask.  Tony Goldwyn is still wearing an awful wig.  Oh, and one more thing.  Sadly, Martin has a real heart attack.

Say, this is the second episode of the third season to feature female nudity.  Up until this point, Tales from the Crypt, despite being an HBO show, hasn’t had that much.

Anyway, cut to color, where Carl is running a hospital and Martin, his one hand partially paralyzed, is doing weird experiments in the basement.  It looks like voodoo.  And when Carl decides to finally cut Martin loose…well, Martin dosed him with a poison and killed him.  Carl is trapped inside his own brain, and kudos to Goldwyn for spending most of the episode sitting perfectly still with his face set in a position that might be “dead.”  That’ll learn him to demand results from Martin’s research!

Oh, the indignity.  He’s taken to the morgue where some dude with a Caribbean accent and a lot of dreads is there.  Carl is going to the medical school for dissection, but as Martin explained, his brain ain’t dead.  He can still see and hear.  He might be able to feel.  Oh God, they’re going to take his brain out and…it was another prank.  Martin was using an experimental drug on Carl that can simulate death for a few hours while saving lives.  That’s not too bad, actually.

Until Carl has a real heart attack and actually dies.  And he can feel everything that happens during the autopsy.

Well…not sure anyone deserved that.

What about the Cryptkeeper?  He’s a coroner!  Special props to the post-story scene where he’s looking down at the camera like the home viewer is about to be given the autopsy.

Notable Names:  Besides Goldwyn and Bridges, director Stephen Hopkins helmed a lot of movies, mostly horror sequels from the looks of things.