After we’re introduced, under the main titles, to a group of fun-lovin’ young people at Mardi Gras via their camcorder footage (a gambit mercifully dropped once the credits end), we next see them recovering from a car wreck on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. No sooner has the hospital-gowned late-night pedestrian who caused the accident, and wound up under their vehicle, proved to be not quite dead after all than an ambulance shows up out of nowhere to whisk everyone off to Mercy (heh, heh) Hospital. Beyond the guy they hit, the five kids seem to be the only patients; a couple of them are quickly whisked off for treatment, and it all happens so fast that they don’t have time to initially become suspicious—or to develop much in the way of characters. All we really know about them is that three seem to be involved in some kind of past/present relationship triangle, one is Russian, for no apparent reason (other than perhaps the backers saw HOSTEL and figured this group of imperiled youths should have a Euro representative too), and Emily (Jessica Lowndes) expresses a pronounced distaste for hospitals, which anyone familiar with the genre will recognize means she’s destined to be the much-put-upon Final Girl.

More personality is provided by Mercy’s head staff, i.e. Dr. David Benway and Nurse Marian, played by TERMINATOR 2 co-stars Robert Patrick and Jenette Goldstein. The latter is especially amusing with her clipped, starchy manner and obsessive cleanliness (love the way she wipes the receiver every time she answers the phone). Their support consists of a couple of hired thugs played by familiar screen baddies Michael Bowen and Robert LaSardo, the latter of whom, upon learning that Jude (Ross McCall) is a druggie, is happy to show him the hospital’s special stash of pharmaceuticals. Jude has apparently built up quite a tolerance, though, since he’s subsequently in a stoned stupor for part of the film but suddenly recovers during the final act.

Clearly, the rules of reality aren’t intended to apply here, and heightened exaggeration is the name of the game—as in an early surgery scene where an organ the approximate size and shape of a muffler is removed from someone’s torso. Gierasch orchestrates moments like this with macabre glee and colorful visuals; if you didn’t know he and Anderson had collaborated with Dario Argento (on MOTHER OF TEARS), the maestro’s influence is still evident in the saturated hues of Anthony B. (CANDYMAN) Richmond’s cinematography. The music by THE GRAVEDANCERS’ Joseph Bishara is also an asset, and there are effective jolts and gross-outs scattered about, climaxing with a grisly tableau by FX creator Gary J. Tunnicliffe that’s (figuratively, not literally) eye-popping—even if it doesn’t make much sense given Dr. Benway’s purposes (not to give too much away, but if you wanted to harvest healthy body parts, wouldn’t they be less prone to contamination inside the body?).

What’s missing is a stronger plot to tie the grotesqueries together—AUTOPSY plays more as a string of setpieces than a compelling narrative—and a little more intelligence on the part of the protagonists. Not that the kids in a movie like this are expected to be Rhodes scholars, but for a girl who hates hospitals so much, Emily takes forever to figure out that there’s something wrong with this one. (Confronted by a zombielike female patient in a spooky hallway as lightning flashes and thunder crashes outside, she politely asks, “Do you know where the patient recovery room is?”) Like one of its titular operations, AUTOPSY has the guts but doesn’t always reward the patients.



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