Billy DeLuca (Bill Paxton) has just finished two years in jail. He goes right back to crime, getting his brother Virgil (Brad Dourif) to help him get revenge on the ice cream company that caught him stealing from the company funds. If he gets to kill the guy who caught him, Earl Byrd (Michael Lerner), and manager Ms. Grafungar (Lainie Kazan) even better.

“Chop ’em to the left! Chop ’em to the right! Chop ’em every chance you get! Fright, fright, fright! All right, creeps. It’s fourth and ghoul. They’re probably expecting us to run a ghost pattern, so let’s run a scream pass instead. Of course, I could pull out a few other surprises from my playbook, like tonight’s tale. It’s about a couple of brothers who are planning a little high scaring of their own, in a nasty bit of offense I call: “People Who Live in Brass Hearses.””

Billy loves his brother, but he has such a limited intelligence that he can’t stop yelling at him. Imagine how tense things get when — spoilers! — it turns out that Earl also has a brother, a much evil and conniving person than anyone else, and he’s fused to the ice cream man for life and has been stealing even more than Billy.

Directed by Russell Mulcahy (Highlander) and written by Crypt vet Scott Nimerfro, this has a great cast and a gruesome bad guy. Well, nearly everyone is the bad guy. You know what I’m trying to write.

It’s based on “People Who Live in Brass Hearses” from Vault of Horror #27. Written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis, this tale is about Mr. Byrd, a strange old undertaker who has a twin brother. That’s the only thing the story has in common with the TV show.