Doctor Giggles

THE STORY: No one should be too suprised by the premise of this movie...after all, the psycho-killer field has to start specializing if its to continue! The market is flooded with Jason-type crazy guys and horrible scarred killers....there are plenty of demonic/I'm from Hell-type killers. We have killer dolls! So a killer Doctor is no big whoop....without even seeing another movie like this I'm pretty sure Doctor Giggles isn't the first. (There's even a killer dentist....geez...I'm scared when I go to see a normal dentist!)

Way back in the 50's the esteemed Dr. Rendell was the town doctor of Moorehigh. Apparently he was a good doctor and he had a lovely wife and son. But his wife came down with a heart condition. As she wasted away, dying slowly there was nothing that Dr. Rendell could do. This made him go crazy. He began murdering his patients and removing their hearts hoping to find one for his wife. Its said in this movie that if Rendell hadn't lost it he may have performed the first heart transplant. His wife dies and Rendell is caught. The boy is never found though...its discovered later that Rendell concealed him before the cops got to him by sewing him up in his wife's body so he was carried out of the house by the medics.

In the 90's we find out what happened to the kid. He must have been found by someone and declared an orphan. Since the boy was nuts he was put in an asylum where he must have grown up. The workers at the asylum call him Dr. Giggles because he thinks he's a doctor and giggles all of the time. Dr.Giggles escapes the asylum, rather easily. I have to wonder....since Dr. Giggles is in his forties and since it didn't seem too hard for him to escape (Hell, he kills 3 people on his way out) why in the name of heaven did he wait so long?

Dr.Giggles heads straight for his former hometown of Moorehigh, where *SUPRISE* its the last day of school. High School students Jen and Max are boyfriend and girlfriend. They have several friends but they aren't that important. They're just there to be killed or to be scenery. The only ones of note are Stu, who seems like a typical b-movie asshole teen, and Coreen, and I can't tell which one she is. Coreen hangs out with another chick and they both seem rather slutty...at least we know they didn't get paid enough to get naked in this movie....'cuz they don't.

Jen has a problem...she has a faulty valve in her heart and the town's new doctor, Chamberlain tells her she may need a minor operation to correct the problem. He gives her some dinky little heart monitor thingie to wear for a few days. Dr. Giggles doesn't waste time. After arriving in Moorehigh he goes back to his family's old home, now a crumbling mess of a house and into his father's old office (which was located in the basement of the house) There he begins to retrieve the medical instruments stored there. Some of the local teens go to the house, for no really good reason and look around. For a joke, Stu, the movies official Big Dumb Jerk, locks the only two minority teenagers in a room and he and his girlfriend leave. Apparently Stu thinks his friends will think being locked in a creepy room in a haunted looking house is a big funny ha-ha. None of them seem to bright, so maybe they would...would if Dr. Giggles didn't find them and kill them.

A lady living next to the old place calls the cops because she hears noises there. Officers McGrue and Reitz investigate but find nothing. Meanwhile Dr. Giggles goes around killing people and making wisecracks as he does so.

Well, to make along story thankfully short, Dr. Giggles kills people. He kills Jen's stepmother and while in the house finds out that Jen has a heart condition. (Jen wasn't home) He decides to "cure" her, probably because a heart condition is what killed his mother. He almost catches Jen at a carnival but she escapes. The police don't really take her seriously about a crazy doctor chasing her. Max tries to convince them (as he also saw Dr. Giggles)  but fails. McGrue tells Reitz that in the fifties when he was a new, young policeman he was guarding the bodies of Rendell's victims. That's when he saw Rendell's son climb out of the body of Mrs. Rendell....(that's how we learn that Rendell stuffed the kid in the body) The shock made him piss his pants and pass out like a little sissy. All this excitement has made Jen's condition worse so she is taken to a local hospital where Dr. Chamberlain examines her. McGrue goes to Jen's house to inform her father, but Dr. Giggles arrives there and kills Chamberlain. He spirits Jen away to his old house. During this time Max convinces Officer Reitz that Dr. Giggles is in town! (Reitz already suspected that but McGrue kept telling him it was nonsense.) Reitz goes to the house to investigate more and finds Jen about to receive a fatal heart transplant by the mad Dr. Giggles. He frees her, but Dr. Giggles escapes into some other rooms. Reitz looks for him and Max arrives. Max snuck out of the police station. Well, Dr. Giggles succeeds in killing Reitz but Jen and Max escape. During the escape and fight with Reitz the house catches fire and some flammable stuff makes it explode just as Max and Jen get out.

Jen is taken back to the hospital where she is about to receive her operation. But Dr. Giggles didn't die in the fire and explosion. He comes into the operating room, just before Jen goes under and kills the doctor there. Jen manages to make a run for it. She hides in a storage room where Giggles finds her. As Giggles closes in on her she spills some liquid at his feet and grabs one of those defib electro-heart starting machines. Placing the paddles in the puddle, she electrocutes Dr. Giggles. Of course being a psycho killer movie, Dr. Giggles gets one more chance to kill Jen. As he rises she stabs him with some of his own sharp instruments, finally ending his threat.

This was tedious. While some of Dr. Giggle's wisecracks were amusing, none of the other characters were the least bit interesting. Not even Jen. When I first saw her I thought she was Neve Campbell. She looks like Neve Campbell if you turn your head and squint. Well, a really bony Neve Campbell. The problem is this movie is a 'been there done that' affair. Dr. Giggles didn't do enough to set itself apart from the rest. the deranged doctor angle is a little interesting, but not enough to make this more than another entry into the B-movie slasher genre that's nothing too special. Dr. Giggles was played by Larry "I got killed by Darkman TWICE" Drake. The rest of the cast is forgettable.

Best Lines: "Jesus, this is a major league f***ed up town!"-Officer Reitz after he learns the story of Dr. Giggles.

"Terminal."-Dr. Giggles as he watches Stu's little brother mindlessly playing video games, so engrossed in them that he doesn't notice Giggles is in the house.

"I know, it sucks...."-Dr. Giggles as he uses a stomach pump on one of his victims.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?:

1.) This movie just jumps right into the standard slasher movie cliches with no preamble. When it starts Dr. Giggles is already escaping from an insane asylum. Now, exact geographical locations are overlooked, but he heads right back to the town where his father, a murderous doctor, was killed. (Moorehigh) The town of course is the typical slasher movie town. You know, a quiet little place like Riverdale from the Archie comics. Of course its the last day of school there so we can meet the standard cardboard cut-out slasher movie teens. Teens that definitely look to old to be teenagers.

2.) Dr. Giggles creepy old dilapidated home is located in what looks like the middle of a well-to-do residential neighborhood. Right. How long has this crumbling monstrosity been standing? Its gotta be bad for property values! Like all standard slasher movie creepy houses the police didn't remove any of Dr. Rendell senior's medical gear...they just left it there for any Tom Dick or Harry to freakin' find. In the real world that house would have been bulldozed over.

3.) Okay, Dr. Giggles almost catches Jennifer inside the house of mirrors at a carnival. She gets out via the back door and where does she run? Back into the crowded carnival where help is readily available? Nooooo....onto a dark wooded path! Why do people do that?

4.) OH BULL[unwrite]! Just how big is Doctor Giggle's house?! He's got a giant ass hospital complex in the basement! And it looks brand [unwrite]ing new! Now even if I buy the fact that maybe Dr. Rendell (Giggle's pop) had a nice sized doctor's office in the basement I once again question how the police didn't remove any of the equipment in there. Also how the freaking hell did Giggles clean all that crap up? This guy must be the Flash! In one night he kills a bunch of people, gets their bodies back to his house UNSEEN and cleans up a house that's been crumbling down for about forty years! He's not a doctor he's a wizard!

NUDITY AND SEX: Only the dead body of Dr. Giggle's mom. Disappointing, too. Then again, Jennifer is bony as hell.

HUH?: When McGrue tells his partner the story of how Dr. Rendell got his son out of the house he says that the Doc had sewn the boy up in the body of his mother. Well, he must have been a damn good doctor because there's no stitches! Who was this guy, Dr. Leonard McCoy? How'd the kid breathe in the first place? Also, McGrue says he passed out and when he woke up everything in the morgue was cleaned up. Get the flippin' f*** outta here! This seven year old kid cleaned up all the blood and sewed the body up again too? How long was McGrue out? I'd like to add that McGrue most have been a real pantywaist. Now, yeah, its gotta be unsettling to see this kid all covered in blood emerge from a dead carcass in the morgue, but during this flashback we see McGrue cower as the young Dr. Giggles stands there giggling. Um, McGrue....he's a seven year old kid! He weighs maybe eighty pounds soaking wet! You have a gun! Why are you that scared?

Its Jennifer's own fault that Dr. Giggles caught her! Dr. Chamberlain fights with Giggles to protect her for at least a full minute and she's cowering in a corner screaming! Now, lets not even go into the fact that she could have come up behind Giggles and brained him with any blunt object....she could have f***ing ran for it! By the time Dr. Giggles was through killing Chamberlain she could have been halfway across town!

The minorities must die rule is in full effect in this movie! The only two black teenagers in Moorehigh die first.

The real doctor in the hospital is a real dope. Now I find it a little strange that there's no one in the operating room but one doctor while he prepares to operate on Jennifer....but when Dr. Giggles comes in the only thing he says is "Who the hell are you?". Dr. Giggles is all burnt up looking and in tattered clothing and this guy just stands around watching as Giggles pulls out all of these wicked looking sharp devices. He even conveniently stands there when Giggles slowly aims and kills him with one of them! The fact that no one seems to be around when Giggles chases Jen out of the operating room is stupid too! Its a [unwrite]ing hospital! There have to be more doctors and nurses around! Especially when someone is about to have a heart operation!

THE TALLY: This flick is about twenty years behind its time! Thank heaven for small favors I guess....if it was made in the 80's we'd be seeing "Dr. Giggles VIII: Dead on Arrival" by now! Which is a shame in a sick way. If the wise cracking psychopath murderer wasn't so tired by now I might think this was a decent, but predictable movie. (Admittedly some of Giggle's one-liners were a bit funny...a tiny bit.) As it stands its the same old dog with the same old tricks. Only people who really like slasher movies should apply.