The Autopsy story

gdtcoc2022e03 · 2022-10-26

Dr. Carl Winters, an elderly forensic pathologist suffering from terminal stomach cancer, travels to a small town to perform autopsies on a group of 10 men killed by an explosion in a local coal mine. Winters' friend, local sheriff Nate Craven, recounts for him the events leading up to the explosion: After a string of missing-persons cases, Craven and his deputies settle on a suspect named Elliott Sykes, a man who had himself gone missing from a neighboring town, only to turn up working for the local coal mine under the assumed name Joe Allen. Craven searches Sykes' hotel room, finding a strange orb-like object, which he confiscates. Later, at the coal mine, Sykes steals back the object and flees into the mine, triggering an explosion that kills Sykes and 9 other miners. Setting up a makeshift morgue in an abandoned slaughterhouse, Winters begins performing the autopsies, documenting his findings on a tape recorder. As the autopsies continue, Winters begins noticing that the bodies are all completely drained of their blood. Soon, the corpse of Sykes reanimates and reveals to Winters that he is the host for a parasitic alien. The alien, who feeds on human blood, but is near-starvation due to Sykes' death, seeks to transfer into Winters' body to continue living. Winters resists, but the alien incapacitates him and restrains him on the operating table. Winters regains consciousness as Sykes begins to perform an autopsy on himself, in order to maintain the appearance that Winters had completed his job, and to give the alien easy exit from the corpse. As the alien leaves Sykes' body and rigor mortis sets in, Winters is able to obtain the scalpel, which he uses to sabotage his senses of sight and hearing, as well as slitting his major arteries. With the blood, Winters writes a message on his chest. As the alien takes control of his body, Winters informs it that the body is near-death, effectively trapping the alien with no food source. He also reveals that his tape recorder was left on, and has recorded much of his interactions with the alien. Winters collapses on the floor as his heartbeat slows to a stop. Craven arrives to find Winters' body, with the words: "PLAY THE TAPE. BURN ME." written on his chest in blood. Cast: F. Murray Abraham, Glynn Turman, Luke Roberts Directed by: David Prior. Story by: David S. Goyer, Michael Shea.