Cryptoid Autopsy! #5 – Google Docs
Cryptoid Autopsy! #5
This VHS tape comes in an oversized case, with a cover that could best be described as ‘garish’ and ‘busy:’ ‘Cryptoid Autopsy!’ is, for example, in all-caps, and in a particular color of green usually only seen at EPA Superfund sites. The packaging gives a copyright date of 1987, from a company that quietly went out of business in 1994. Extremely diligent research will find a 1989 company catalogue that lists this tape — it’s actually one of eight — but there’s pretty much nothing else available about this series otherwise.
Which is a oddity, because the tape itself is extremely interesting. Cryptoid Autopsy! #5 does, indeed, show autopsies of what appear to be cryptozoological entities: specifically, autopsies of a chupacabra, a ‘batsquash’ (a blend of monkey and bat, supposedly found near Mt. Saint Helens), and what appears to be a wendigo. And it does so in a distinctly non-garish manner. Production values are good, the voiceovers and commentary have the air of somebody who actually knows what forensic examinations look like, and the ‘bodies…’ well, it’s expected that special effects done in the 1980s are typically going to look clumsy and amateurish to modern eyes.
These special effects do not. They, in fact, look just like corpses of obviously-unnatural creatures being given a post-mortem examination by trained medical examiners. It’s remarkably alarming, particularly when the wendigo ‘wakes up’ halfway through and only gets subdued when three men in 1980s-style hazmat suits pound what appear to be silver stakes through the creature’s limbs. And Cryptoid Autopsy! #5 is not just gross-out alarming, either. There’s real apprehension and fear being generated.
That’s all kind of the problem. Obviously, Cryptoid Autopsy! #5 can’t be real. But even if it’s fake it’s some of the best horror cinema of the past forty years. The director, writers, special effects people, camera crew; these are all people who should be famous, or infamous, in the industry by now. And if the fifth tape is this good, what about the other seven? If the originals could be remastered, there might be decent money in re-releasing the series.
But nobody can find anything. All of the original company’s paperwork was originally done in paper form; and somehow those records were never digitally reproduced. The actual physical paperwork is likewise no longer to be found. The owner of the original company died of old age in 2005, and his heirs don’t remember anything about this series. Nobody involved in any of the other video series listed in the 1989 company catalogue remember anything about Cryptoid Autopsy!, and they don’t seem to have the talent needed to do a show like that, anyway.
There’s only one clue, in fact. Every so often, what purports to be another tape in the Cryptoid Autopsy! Series pops up on E-Bay. Always a different seller, never offers anything else. And whoever wins the auction abruptly disappears from E-Bay — and everywhere else — a few weeks after purchase. Which is how this came to your team’s attention in the first place. Mysteries are fine. Bizarre mysteries involving mysterious creators are also fine. Sudden disappearances after buying a VHS tape are not…
So … the client is the eBay Customer Service department?
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Mew