Autopsy

Scalpels. Clamps. Those machines that constantly go beep. Hospitals are unnerving at the best of times.

Unfortunately, this gore-slathered surgical horror isn't going to do anything to assuage your fear of infirmaries, although it may teach you a thing or two about human anatomy.

Having had a lovely time at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, four inebriated youngsters get into a nasty accident that leaves a stranger squashed under the wheels of their car. Fortunately, an ambulance quickly arrives on the scene and the dodgy looking paramedics whip them off to the nearby Mercy Hospital for treatment.

While they wait to be seen in the run-down facility, the group becomes increasingly concerned by the disappearance of one of their party, Bobby (Kohn). As his girlfriend Jessica (Lowndes) tries to find out what has happened, she realises that the staff, including nasty Nurse Marian (Goldstein), are up to something very sinister indeed.

Presided over by the deranged Doctor Benway (Patrick), Mercy Hospital is, in fact, the site of a series of macabre medical experiments involving live human subjects. Discovering more and more of the doctor's horribly mutilated 'patients', Jessica races to find Bobby and escape this sick and twisted surgery.  

Director Gierasch, who wrote the equally grisly Toolbox Murders, is content to let it all, quite literally, hang out, in this gleefully grotesque body shocker. Much like other involuntary surgery flicks such as Paradise Lost (aka Turistas), not much is left to the imagination, with Lowndes even getting covered with the entire contents of one unfortunate victim's abdomen .

In amongst all the slippery organs and gooey gore there's actually a pretty decent storyline and the villainous element of the cast have a great time hamming it up as the malevolent medics.

Having briefly worked together in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Patrick and  Goldstein (best known as hardnut space marine Vasquez in Aliens) make a memorably diabolical double act, and when Lowndes stops running and starts fighting back, you'll long to see the gruesome twosome get their just deserts.

Not for the weak stomached, or for anybody who objects to seeing what a weak stomach looks like, Autopsy is tense, bloody and blackly comical in places with enough wobbly entrails to satisfy even the most  gore-hungry horror fans.

Chris Prince