Tales from the Crypt S7 E12: Ear Today…Gone Tomorrow ( 1996)

One episode away from the end.

Directed by Christopher Hart (Eat and Run) and written by Steven Dodd and Ed Tapia, this is the story of Glynn Fennel (Robert Lindsay), a safecracker whose hearing is going, which leads to him screwing up his jobs. Mob boss Malcolm Lawson (Richard Johnson) spares his life, on the advice of his wife Kate (Gretchen Palmer). When Malcolm leaves on business, Kate reveals that she has been given the eyes of a cat and can get Glynn the ears of an owl, as long as he breaks into her husband’s safe. She’ll split the money and he can pay his debts.

“Look, lady, I’m sorry if the product made your skin fall off. But we never do ax-changes on sale merchandise! Next! Some people. Maybe at Doom-ingdales the ghost-omer’s always fright. But not here. Attention all Slay Mart choppers! Interested in tonight’s boo light special? (no longer in the microphone) It concerns a couple of crooks who are about to learn the benefits of dying wholesale. I call this bit of gash-and-carry: “Ear Today… Gone Tomorrow.”

The new ears work so well that Glynn shoots Kate and takes the money for himself. Except that now, she has nine lives. Good Lord, shudder, choke…she and her husband are using criminals like him to harvest these animal organs.

In the original EC Comics story, which was in Haunt of Fear #11, two men own a fertilizer factory next to a cemetery and decide to start digging under the graveyard and use that dirt, including some of the bones of dead people. When they go on vacation together, a field of corn comes to life and kills them. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.