Autopsy

I have no idea why this movie is called "Autopsy". One of the 8 Films To Die For from After Dark, Autopsy is misleading in that at no point does anyone perform an actual autopsy.

After spending the night partying in New Orleans, five friends crash their car into a tree on a lonely country road. They're surprised to find a body under the car, and even more bewildered when an ambulance appears on the scene. The friends catch a ride to the hospital where they discover that Bobby has a huge shard of glass stuck in him. Bobby is taken away for treatment, and everyone patiently awaits their turn to see the doctor. After a strange encounter with Dr. Benway, Emily takes to exploring the hospital looking for Bobby. Her friends, however, never get to meet with the doctor and instead suffer various abuses inflicted by the hospital staff.

This is the first After Dark movie I've seen. It might be the last.

That was a little harsh. Autopsy isn't terrible. But the whole film is predicated on the five friends lacking any common sense; it is so painfully obvious that bad things are afoot in Mercy Hospital and yet Emily and her crew continue to wait there. This particular instance of poor writing aside, the rest of the film holds together. In fact, it's even kind of funny at times.

And gory! Though Autopsy is by no means bloodsoaked, the film is at times violent and bloody. I'm not terribly squeemish, but I squeemed, just a little bit. Dr. Benway is involved in a prolonged science experiment to cure his wife of cancer and the treatment necessarily involves harvesting organs and fluids and whatnot from unwilling donors. The abuses suffered by the friends vary from an impromptu spinal tap, to an invasive surgical procedure sans anesthetic, and one girl is showered in intestines. In spite of the brutality of the violence and the creativity of the aforementioned science project, Dr. Benway's Reanimator-inspired cancer treatment reads more sci-fi than horror and feels oddly out of place.

On the plus side, Robert Patrick is Dr. Benway. So there's that. However, I still have to ask why this film is titled "Autopsy". "Surgery", "Medicine", or even "Gurney" would have been better. At least all those things are present in the movie.