The Burke & Hare (and their boss) of a new generation.
Crypt Keeper: (dressed as a barber and having turned his Crypt into a barbershop; sharpening a razor while talking to a customer with a hot towel over his face) Yeah, kids these days, with their long hair. You can't even tell the boils from the ghouls. And when they do want a cut, they go to one of those fancy salons like Jose Slay-ber or Vi-dead Sassoon. It's enough to make you terror your hair out. (he removes the towel to find that the man's face has melted to the bone) Hmmm. I guess that towel was a little too hot. Still, I think it's a good look for you. Once it's groan out, I'm sure you'll love it. (giggles) Which brings to mind the young men in tonight's terror tale. They're about to try a new scare style as well, in a delightful little die-job I call: Doctor of Horror.
Richard and Charlie are a pair of none-too-bright partners who have bounced from job to job in the name of easy cash. Their latest stint has them being employed as night watchmen at Callahan Mortuary. Richard expresses hatred of their patronizing boss Andrews, but Charlie reminds him that they can't quit because they desperately need the money. The duo's first night on the job has them catching a squirrely little man trying to steal a body. The body snatcher introduces himself as Dr. Orloff, a mad scientist, and claims that he needs dead people as part of his research on the human soul. Orloff believes that the soul is a physical part of the human body, and is the very last part of the body to die. It is apparently located in a microscopic gland, and it can potentially be harnessed if one dissects a human corpse in a specific method at just the right time. Understanding their frustrations with their desperately needed finances, Orloff hires Richard and Charlie as his lab assistants, paying them large sums of money (starting with $500 each) to steal corpses for him to dissect, as well as dumping the ones that he has no more use for down an abandoned well. Richard is pleased with the cash he's raking in, but Charlie begins feeling horrifically guilty about what he and Charlie are doing, thinking the dead can't rest without their souls. Charlie's conscience starts eating at him even more when Richard murders Andrews to cover up their partnership with Orloff, as well as plain old revenge for being a horrible boss. When Charlie ultimately tells Richard that he doesn't want to work with Orloff anymore, Richard murders him for his own soul, expecting a hefty reward from Orloff for such a prize. Unfortunately for Richard, he forgets what happens to a corpse when the soul (the source of all that is good in a person) is removed from it.
Tropes:
- A God Am I: Orloff explicitly tells Richard and Charlie that he intends to "play God" when he finally gets his hands on a human soul.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Richard begs Charlie not to hurt him, claiming that he's good. Charlie retorts that he was good, before his soul was stolen.
- Big "NO!": Orloff lets one out when Richard points out what he thinks is a soul, not wanting to risk the soul vanishing before extraction.
- Chromosome Casting: Every character with a major role is male. The only female mentioned is Mrs. Meyers, who is long dead by the time the episode begins.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Orloff tells Richard that the soul would be seen as an incandescent pinpoint of light, something that even the most talented surgeon would miss unless he believed it was there.
- Creepy Basement: Dr. Orloff's basement/wine cellar doubles as his lab, so it's filled with surgical equipment and sliced up corpses.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: While Orloff seemingly got off easy with simply being decapitated, Richard ends the episode being crudely cut apart by the reanimated Charlie. Fully conscious.
- Death by Irony: Richard's death, as mentioned above, is performed in the same way the doctor he and Charlie partnered up with removed souls.
- Disposing of a Body: Orloff pays Richard and Charlie $500 each to steal corpses from the morgue they just started working for, as well as dumping the bodies the doctor has already used up down a well.
- The Dog Bites Back: Charlie, after becoming a zombie and taking a severe attitude adjustment with his soul gone, gets bloody revenge on Richard and Orloff for killing him and hiring him to steal and dispose of corpses, respectively. Charlie even does Richard in with the electric carving knife he used on him.
- Due to the Dead: Charlie's conscience eats away at him as he and Richard steal and dump corpses for Orloff, thinking that the corpses' souls have feelings, and they won't be able to get to the afterlife.
- Eat the Camera: At one point, the camera zooms into Andrews' corpse's forced-open mouth, transitioning to Richard and Charlie dumping him into the well.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Orloff has stolen dozens of corpses from morgues and hospitals for the intent of slicing them open for their souls, but he assures Richard and Charlie that he isn't a necrophiliac when they first ask what he does with them.
- "Everyone Dies" Ending: By the end of the episode, Andrews, Charlie, and Orloff are dead. The ending has the zombified Charlie cutting into Richard with a knife while he's conscious, ensuring that he'll be gone soon enough.
- Every Man Has His Price: When Richard and Charlie apprehend Orloff, the doctor asks them how much they make. He then offers to pay them $500 each for helping him steal Mrs. Meyers, the corpse he was trying to escape with, which prompts them to immediately get to work.
- Evil Is Hammy: Orloff, with his maniacal ranting of how he wants to play God with human souls.
- Exact Words: Charlie bemoans to Richard that he isn't going to be able to live with the guilt of participating in grave-robbing. Richard agrees with him, especially after he tricked Charlie into drinking ether.
- Flipping the Bird: Richard does this to Andrews after he insults them and slams the door in their faces on their first night as guards for the morgue.
- Foreshadowing: Orloff posits hypothetical questions in regards to his intentions for a human soul, including "Why is one man a saint and another a monster?" and "Can I change a monster into a saint?". His questions are given somewhat of an answer at the climax of the episode, where the greedy Richard kills his kindly partner Charlie, who returns as an undead monster hellbent on killing him in revenge.
- For Science!: Orloff's entire reason for finding a human soul is to play God and unlock the mysteries of the human condition, no matter how many corpses he has to steal, cut up, and ditch to do so.
- Gleeful and Grumpy Pairing: Charlie is idealistic, sentimental, and happy-go-lucky, while Richard is more surly and willing to sink pretty low for easy cash.
- Grave Robbing: Richard and Charlie are paid by Orloff to rob bodies from the morgue where they find work, then dump them when they fail to produce a soul.
- Greed: Richard never knows when to quit in areas that concern money, willing to go lower and lower on the moral high road to get himself rich.
- Homage: The episode can be seen as one of Frankenstein, since it features a mad scientist who outright says that he wants to play God for his own means, as well as a reanimated monster who wishes to exact vengance against those who wronged him.
- I Love the Dead: Averted. After Richard and Charlie help him take Mrs. Meyers to his lab, Orloff assures them he has "nothing perverted" in mind for her.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Charlie gulps down a bottle of Jack Daniels to get over the shock of dumping corpses down the well.
- Ironic Echo: Charlie repeats Orloff's comment about how he's going to be playing God to a restrained Richard, before he starts cutting into him.
- Irony: Andrews, Richard and Charlie's Mean Boss, happens to have a soul that Orloff is able to extract.
- Jump Scare: Charlie is victim to one where he hallucinates Mrs. Meyers lunging out of the pile of bodies and trying to strangle him.
- Kindhearted Simpleton: Charlie, the nicer of the two protagonists, is explicitly called "seriously stupid" by Richard for being so sentimental all the time.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Orloff is obssessed with obtaining at least one human soul to study, and has been stealing corpses to dissect them in a way so the soul can be harvested.
- Match Cut: After Charlie is paralyzed by drinking ether, Richard pushes him over, which then cuts to his body falling onto the table in Orloff's lab.
- Mean Boss: Andrews, the head of Callahan Mortuary, is a patronizing jerk to Richard and Charlie, berating and insulting them during their first night on the job and firing them when Mrs. Meyers goes missing. In an incredible case of irony, he actually does have a soul for Orloff to harvest.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Richard and Orloff discuss Charlie's good-heartedness and simple-mindedness posing a threat to their operation, so they decide to take him out of the picture for this reason, as well as the fact that he must have quite a valuable soul himself.
- Nice Guy: Charlie is kind-hearted and humbling to everyone he comes across, and he feels horrible about watching Richard attack their boss and being forced to help dump corpses down a well. He takes a turn for the worse once Richard kills him and Orloff extracts his soul.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Richard gets pretty into Orloff's quest for a soul, calling the entire concept "trippy". He also cracks a smile when Orloff says that after getting Charlie's soul, Richard can cut into his former partner with his heart's content. The way Charlie appears after he reanimated suggests that Richard got pretty... creative.
- No Honor Among Thieves: It's slightly subverted in Charlie's case, since he never wanted to be in Orloff's racket, but when Richard kills him after he wants to quit and Orloff takes his soul, the zombified Charlie gladly returns the favor.
- Before Charlie returns to the lab, Richard is seen struggling to cut into Orloff with his electric knife after being refused a raise for all the work he's done for him.
- Not Quite Dead: Charlie's slimy, undead hands are seen crawling out of the well where Richard dumped him.
- Off with His Head!: The reanimated Charlie kills Orloff in this manner offscreen, just before he gets to work on his traitorous partner. Charlie's own head was cut off after he died, and he has to keep it in place with one hand as he moves.
- Only in It for the Money: Richard cares only about getting easy money, and has no trouble sinking to lower and lower depths to get said money.
- Our Souls Are Different: According to Dr. Orloff, the soul is a physical part of the human body, housed in a microscopic gland hidden along the spine. It is apparently the source of all that is good in a person, and is the last part of the human body to die, "releasing their life force" days after the initial death. If a human corpse is dissected within a proper timeframe, and in a very specific way, the soul can be extracted and housed in a recepticle to study, where it takes the form of an orb of orange light.
- Persona Non Grata: Based on his unscrupulous theories and ethics, Orloff makes a remark to the guards that he's "not allowed in hospitals anymore."
- Playing Drunk: Richard and Charlie hide their part in the theft of Mrs. Meyers' cadaver from Andrews by pretending to have gotten drunk and passed out, claiming that it will be just what the boss expects from them.
- P.O.V. Cam: The episode opens from the POV of Mrs. Meyers, the corpse Orloff tries to steal, with the viewers getting a good, long look at her dead feet.
- Prone to Vomiting: Charlie displays this in Orloff's lab, furiously backing away and heaving the second Orloff cuts into Mrs. Meyers' spine
- Soul Jar: Orloff places Charlie's soul into a jar so it can be preserved, once it's extracted from his body.
- The Stoic: Andrews, Richard and Charlie's boss, is played by the ever-emotionless Ben Stein. He manages to raise his voice and show actual anger when he berates the inept guards after Mrs. Meyers goes missing.
- The Soulless: Charlie becomes a reanimated husk when Richard kills him and Orloff takes his soul, the latter of which causes him to turn nasty and bloodthirsty.
- Spot the Thread: After firing Richard and Charlie, Andrews notes that they respectively have mud on their boots and a tear in their jeans, correctly deducing that they took her. Richard bashes his former boss' head in with his flashlight before he can call the police.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Richard is subjected to this by the undead Charlie, who performs some surgery while the former is still awake.
- Stuffed into the Fridge: Orloff has been keeping his used corpses in a freezer in his basement, which has been acting up because it's very old. He pays Richard and Charlie additional money to get the corpses out of there before they start decomposing.
- Suddenly Shouting: Orloff slips into this as he rants at Charlie about how hard it is to find a soul in a corpse.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Richard paralyzes Charlie by spiking his booze with ether.
- Those Two Guys: Richard and Charlie, the protagonists, are never seen apart. That is, until Richard kills his partner when he wants to quit grave-robbing.
- Thrown Down a Well: Richard and Charlie are told of an old well not far from Orloff's lab where they can dump his corpses, the doctor claiming it to be a good place for "disposing of... things."
- Too Dumb to Live: As Richard explains to Charlie, he's sentimental because he's an idiot. Case in point, when he suggests taking Andrews to Dr. Orloff's lab so he can save him, the doctor obviously extracts his soul and has the two dump him down the well.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: When he returns from the dead, Charlie develops a severe attitude problem. He lampshades to Charlie that he became like this after his soul was taken, robbing him of everything that's good.
- We Used to Be Friends: Charlie turns on Richard after he's killed and has his soul stolen, cutting him open with a knife while Richard is still conscious.
- Wham Shot: Orloff finally discovering a soul in Andrews' body, proving that he's not a deranged quack after all.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: According to the Crypt Keeper, after the episode's ending, Richard got into "intensive scare" medicine, and Charlie founded a "dismembers only" chain of clubs, even sending our horror host a postcard from one of said clubs.
- World of Ham: Richard, Charlie, and Orloff are very much over the top in their dialogues and mannerisms. Mean Boss Andrews, played by the monotone Ben Stein, even breaks Stein's trademark monotone as he rebukes and fires the night watchmen.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Orloff intends to slice open corpses to get their souls, as he wants to explore the mysteries of the human condition and change them as he sees fit.
Crypt Keeper: (wielding a pair of scissors) That Charlie. And you thought he was mixed up before! (snickers) As a matter of fact, I just got a card from Charlie. He went on to open a chain of private clubs for dismembers only. Oh, and Richard went into medicine, specializing in intensive scare. (to a man reading a newspaper sitting next to him) So, I've got a free chair. How about a little trim? I promise I won't take off too much. (uses his scissors to cut off the man's ear, causing him to scream in pain; holding the ear and his scissors to the camera) Shave and a haircut... Two bits! (cackles)
