As a child, tuning into Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) was a terrifying ritual—one I anticipated every week. From the walking (and punning) corpse that is the Crypt Keeper, to all the blood and violence, this was a show I often watched through my fingers. It was only once I got older and more comfortable with the horror genre that this series lost its scariness. That is not to say the show isn’t still worthwhile—it is, and always will be, one of the greatest horror anthologies. But these days? I rarely feel afraid as I revisit Tales from the Crypt.
Because I did say “rarely”, there is one specific episode that, perhaps for others as well, leaves me a little panicked. It fueled a phobia I didn’t even know I had until I saw it play out on screen. Now, that dread remains intact as I rewatch Season Three’s “Abra Cadaver”. Dying is one thing, but to witness your own autopsy? Maybe feel all the sensations that come with said event? Yeah, I will probably never have to go through the same ordeal that Tony Goldwyn’s character endured, yet Crypt made sure that I would always fear the slim possibility.
Season Three was off to a strong start; the opening two episodes, “Loved to Death” (Tom Mankiewicz, Joe Minion) and “Carrion Death” (Steven E. de Souza), each left a lasting mark. Even today, it’s hard to forget either Mariel Hemingway’s lovesick performance or the stalking vulture that finally got to feast on Kyle MacLachlan. While the Michael J. Fox-directed episode, the tongue-in-cheek “The Trap” (written by Scott Alexander), wasn’t at all frightening, it was at least amusing.
Then came “Abra Cadaver”, that memorable collaboration between Stephen Hopkins and Jim Birge. It was unlike any of the previous three episodes, seeing as how this one employed a heavy gimmick. That, of course, being the first-person perspective used throughout most of the story. Shooting from a corpse’s POV not only made “Abra Cadaver” stand out, it also put the audience in the protagonist’s shoes. That way, it’s almost as if you’re going through the same nightmare as Doctor Carl Fairbanks.
It wasn’t unheard of for Tales from the Crypt to use first-time or inexperienced writers, although in Jim Birge’s case, this looks to be his only known writing credit. Meanwhile, director Stephen Hopkins had come off directing two sequels, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) and Predator 2 (1990), after debuting with an underseen (but worth seeing) Australian slasher called Dangerous Game (1988). In the years after his Crypt debut—Hopkins would return for episodes “Beauty Rest” and “Staired in Horror”—he directed Judgment Night (1993), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) and Lost in Space (1998).
This episode’s EC Comics basis can be found in the Tales from the Crypt story called “Dead Right!”. Keep in mind, there was another comic of the same name found in EC’s Shock SuspenStories; Demi Moore, who was in Ghost (1990) with Goldwyn, starred in its TV adaptation. But naturally, they couldn’t have two episodes called “Dead Right”, so Crypt gave this a new (and punnier) title. Either way, the two plots remain about the same.
In EC’s version, long-time friends and bachelors Joseph Fairbanks and Carl Winston are having their weekly dinner together when Joseph suddenly poisons his pal’s drink. This was after Joseph was going on again about his seemingly preposterous theory: can the senses remain active even in the event of death? From there, it appears as if the recently bankrupt Joseph is causing Carl’s untimely death so that he can then inherit his fortune. Being a physician too, Joseph could put “died of natural causes” on Carl’s death certificate without raising any suspicions.
“Dead Right!” enters more familiar territory as Joseph, along with accomplice Ben Norton, goes through the motions of autopsying Carl’s body while Carl is still conscious but paralyzed. The two then bring the victim to his own funeral before taking him to his final resting place. Once at the graveyard, Joseph reveals it was all a gag to prove his outlandish theory. Unlike in “Abra Cadaver”, though, Carl never wakes up long enough to know Joseph was pranking him; he died of a heart attack sometime ago. You’re left wondering if Joseph confessed to his crime, or if, because Carl was already pronounced dead and halfway buried, he simply kept quiet.
Tales from the Crypt obviously reworked the comic quite a bit. In “Abra Cadaver”, the two main characters, Carl and Martin Fairbanks, are biological brothers, not lifetime friends who seem like brothers. They’re also younger than their older EC parallels. In the black-and-white flashback set some years in the past, you see where Carl (Goldwyn) and Martin (Beau Bridges) first began their sibling issues. What started out as a brotherly rivalry between two surgeons-in-training eventually turned into a rather sad, lifelong scenario where Carl awaits whatever revenge Martin has supposedly cooked up for him.
That prank from the prologue, which was essentially Carl scaring Martin into a heart attack, has since haunted Goldwyn’s character. No amount of apologies, be it verbal, monetary, or whatever else Carl throws at him, can make the now partly disabled Martin forgive his brother. Instead, Martin is more concerned with death and voodoo. Oh, and exacting his vengeance after all this time. What vengeance it is!—Martin’s payback makes Carl’s zombies-in-the-morgue joke look like total child’s play.
What felt like days to Goldwyn’s tortured character was roughly ten minutes for the audience. You’re there with him every step of that awful journey, imagining all the pricks, prods, and cuts inflicted upon his defenseless body. For an episode that is relatively light on the red stuff, it feels violent. Kind of like how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) is remembered as gory, when in truth, it’s pretty tame in that regard. It just goes to show that the suggestion of harm can be as great, if not more effective, than seeing the knife actually pierce the skin.
Circling back to my irrational fear, a kind of variation of taphophobia, I realized “Abra Cadaver” isn’t the first media to prey on this arcane anxiety of mine. After seeing it unfold in Crypt, I found similar depictions in Buried Alive (1990), Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King (“Autopsy Room Four”), and Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction (the Robert E. Lee-inspired segment “The Burial”). Surely the list goes on, as does my unease towards the idea of a fate I deem worse than death.
“Abra Cadaver” is high-concept Tales from the Crypt at its best. Darkly funny, thoroughly suspenseful, and damn merciless, this episode was the show dipping into almost purely psychological horror.
It wouldn’t be the last time, either.
Season Three of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on May 15.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
