Tales from the Crypt (TV series)/Recap/S1/E03 Dig That Cat He's Real Gone

Inspiration: The Haunt of Fear #21

At a sideshow carnival, a barker presents Ulrich the Undying, a performer who will be Buried Alive for several hours and then dug up. He will be dead, but will come back to life. After he is buried, Ulrich speaks to the viewer, saying he will be dead, but he won't stay that way.

The scene switches to a flashback where Ulrich is living in an alleyway, broke and alone. A Mad Scientist offers him a large sum of money if he will agree to a little experiment. Desperate, he agrees. The scientist explains that he has found the gland in a cat's brain that gives it nine lives. He now intends to graft that gland onto his brain. Ulrich wakes from the operation to find it was successful, at the expense of a kitten's life. To test the theory, the scientist shoots him, and he revives almost immediately.

The scientist needs more money to continue his experiments, and since there seems to be no university banging down its doors to get such an advance in medical science, he convinces Ulrich to become a sideshow freak to raise the funds. First he's put in a Drowning Pit and kept in there for a full hour. When the pit he's drained, he remains motionless for a few minutes, but comes back as advertised. This gets the attention of a showgirl named Carly that begins to date him. He then spends his next life getting hanged in front of a crowd.

The act brings in money, more than enough for Ulrich and the scientist, but Ulrich isn't satisfied splitting the profits, and thus uses his next life to cause a car crash, killing both of them. Of course, Ulrich comes right back to life and is unsuspected. For his next act, he is electrocuted to death, but fails to return immediately, only jumping back to life seconds before he was to be dissected by a morgue worker.

For his next act, Ulrich acts as a target for wealthy people to pay to shoot at him. He gets an arrow through his heart and dies once again, and once again fails to return right away. Wisely, he made arrangements with Carly to bribe officials to let her keep his body until he revives.

Ulrich now has quite a nest egg saved, but soon after Carly stabs him to death and takes everything, leaving him with nothing. Desperate to make money off his last life, he blackmails the carnival worker into giving him all one hundred percent of the profits for his final act, being buried alive.

As he lays in his grave, he reminisces back on all the events of the episode, thinking he's going to be set for life, and it's all thanks to the cat that gave him the gland. He feels kind of bad that it had to die to give him everything.

And then, a horrible wave of Fridge Logic washes over him: the cat had to die once in order to give him the gland. He's on his ninth life, not his eighth...

He desperately bangs against the coffin, begging to be released. But by then, the workers have finished and don't hear him, leaving him to suffocate.