Main cast: Hank Azaria (Richard), Travis Tritt (Charlie), Ben Stein (Andrews), Austin Pendleton (Dr Orloff), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Larry Wilson
Richard and Charlie are two not-too-bright sods whose latest job are being night watchmen at Callahan’s Mortuary. They hate their boss, Andrews who speaks in a perpetual patronizing monotone, but they really need the money. Well, their first night is sure happening when they catch a body snatcher trying to steal a body. Well, Dr Orloff, the body snatcher, claims that he needs dead bodies as part of his research on human souls. You see, he believes that you can remove the human soul from a body if you know how to dissect a fresh corpse right. The soul is apparently located in a gland – one just has to know how and when to extract it. And he’d pay the two men $500 each if they’d help him.
The two men agree, but Charlie eventually feels very guilty about what they are doing, and his conscience eats at him even more when Richard murders Andrews to cover up their part in helping Orloff steal the corpse. You can guess what will happen eventually, I’m sure, and the subsequent comeuppance awaiting the naughty men. Hint: it involves what happens to a corpse when you stupidly remove the human soul – the source of all that is good, according to Orloff – from it.
You may think an episode with Hank Azaria and Austin Pendleton will be amusing, and I have to give everyone in the cast credit: they do their best, and there is plenty of over the top acting to be had all around. The trouble with Doctor of Horror, though, is that Larry Wilson’s script is neither scary nor comedic to an extent that is memorable, and the whole thing is actually very predictable. In fact, when what I expect to happen eventually does, I find myself scratching my head. Charlie’s corpse can barely hold on to its head – how then did it manage to crawl out of a well while at the same time holding on to that head? And how does that thing, which can barely walk upright, manage to overpower two men, behead one, and tie up the other on the surgical table?
The best things about this episode are once again the Crypt Keeper’s bookend segments. This time, it’s cute to see how many ways one can make macabre puns out of famous hairdressers’ names.
Anyway, another episode down in a most underwhelming season. How many more do we have before this crap show of mediocrity is done with? Please let the remaining few be standouts, but I’m not holding my breath, just in case.
