Dr. Giggles

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Dr. Giggles
Promotional Poster
Directed by	Manny Coto
Produced by	Stuart M. Besser
Written by	Manny Coto
Starring	Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Glenn Quinn
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date(s)	1992
Running time	96 Minutes

Dr. Giggles is a 1992 slasher film directed by Manny Coto. It is a very obscure film and is considered by many hardcore horror movie buffs to be cheaply made and poorly thought out. However, it did develop a small cult following and even a short comic book series.

[edit] Plot Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

35 years prior to the film's making, in the quiet neighborhood of Moorehigh, there lived a simple family physician named Dr. Rendell. Dr. Rendell seemed like a nice enough man, but there was one problem: his patients kept disappearing. After some investigation, the citizens of Moorehigh found out why: he and his son, Rendell Jr. (nicknamed Dr. Giggles for his hideous laugh), were ripping out their hearts in a gory attempt to bring back his dead wife. The townspeople immediately stoned Dr. Rendell, but they never could find Dr. Giggles, and they assumed that he had skipped town. For 35 years Moorehigh was able to regain its peace and try its best to forget the havoc wreaked by Rendell and his son. However, they forgot one little detail: Dr. Giggles wanted revenge.

On the 35th anniversary of his father's death, Dr. Giggles attaches one of the doctors that work at his asylum, named Dr. Phillips, to a stretcher and stabs him in the heart with a scalpel. A grinning audience of escaped inmates watch intently as he later saws off the doctor's hands. Dr. Giggles then proceeds to sneak up on a secretary and put Dr. Phillips' hands on her shoulders. Assuming that Phillips is still alive, she doesn't turn around until she feels a drop of blood on her hands. She then realizes that it is none other than Giggles himself, and he proceeds to torture and kill her while with the intercom still on. He then escapes the asylum and steals a doctor's sports car, slicing his jugular in the process.

Meanwhile, back in Moorehigh, things are off to a great start. Jennifer Campbell, (Holly Marie Combs), her boyfriend Max, (Glenn Quinn), and their colleagues are all revved up for summer break. However, there's only one thing bothering her: Jen has to wear a heart monitor all week, and, if the test comes back positive, she'll have to undergo surgery. While she's worrying about that, though, Dr. Giggles is back at work. He has broken into his old home/doctor's office and starting going through his father's old files, taking names. This induces a flashback that reveals that Dr. Giggles, evidently, used to rip all of the organs out of his stuffed animals. Ironically, Giggles' patients would meet that same fate 3 and a half decades later.

Disregarding the legend that Dr. Giggles might still be lurking in his old house, Stu, Trotter, Diane, and Leigh, all friends of Jen's, go on an expedition to the old Rendell house to find the missing bodies reportedly hidden in the walls. As a prank, Stu and Diane lock Trotter and Leigh in an old room and run from the house laughing. Little do they know that Dr. Giggles is actually in the house. While Trotter is trying to knock down the door, Giggles injects a poisonous needle into his skin through the keyhole, making him go into a convulsion and die. Dr. Giggles then busts through the door with an axe left behind by Stu and uses it to hack Leigh to pieces.

Minutes afterwards, a woman named Elaine Henderson walks past the Rendell residence and looks through the keyhole, only to see Dr. Giggles' eye peering back at her. She calls the police and runs home. A few hours later, she is getting ready to take her nightly pill when her poodle starts begging to be let in. As she opens the door, Dr. Giggles reaches in through the open window and switched her red pill with a blue one. A few seconds after Elaine takes her pill, she collapses to the floor and starts weakly trying to call for a doctor. She finds Dr. Giggles and, believing him to be a real doctor, allows him to inspect her. instead of actually helping her, however, he proceeds to stab a long tongue compressor up her left nostril and stabs her brain.

Meanwhile, Stu and Diane have snuck into Stu's house for a little "horizontal activity." While Stu is gone to the bathroom, Diane walks down the hall to change the thermostat. When she turns around, she finds Dr. Giggles clamping a hand over her mouth and warning her that she will catch her death dressed in lingerie. He then tells her to open wide and jams a long thermometer down her throat and through her neck. When Stu sneaks back into the bedroom, he begins climbing through the sheets, only to discover Dr. Giggles there instead of Diane. Dr. Giggles stabs him in the groin with a scalpel and leaves him to bleed to death on the bed.

Jennifer then decides she's had enough of the party scene and starts walking home. She dumps her heart monitor in her fish tank and begins to leaf through her photo album. As she does this, Dr. Giggles manages to sneak into her house through the back door. Jennifer decides to go back to the fair, leaving her step-mother, Tamara, and her father alone in the house with Dr. Giggles. When Jennifer's father, Tom Campbell (Cliff De Young), finds the heart monitor in her fish tank, he automatically assumes the worst and goes out to search for her. Dr. Giggles then finds Tamara eating ice cream and ties her up up to a chair, gags her, and scolds her for eating fattening foods, then begins to suck up all the food in her stomach with a liposuction pump. He then begins to pump out all the blood in her stomach and esophagus, causing her to bleed to death.

As her step-mother is dying, Jennifer discovers Max and Coreen kissing at the fair and runs in the house of mirrors crying. As Max and Coreen follow, Dr. Giggles notices and goes in after them. While Max is pleading with Jennifer for her to listen to him, Coreen runs into a mirror and gets a bloody nose. She turns around to find Dr. Giggles, and he recommends a Band-aid for her nose. He then takes out a gigantic Band-Aid three feet in width and suffocates her with it, taping her to a revolving door for Jennifer to find. He then sneaks up on Jennifer, but she sees Dr. Giggles first, and she busts through one of the mirrors and escapes.

Jennifer proceeds to run through the forest and hits a police car. She tells the police that Dr. Giggles is chasing her, and Max supports her, but they only convince two cops: Officers Joe Reitz and Hank Magruder. At first, Magruder is reluctant to believe Jennifer, but Reitz begins to grill him on the matter. Magruder tells him that the night after Rendell was stoned, he ran across the body of Rendell's wife. He saw a seven-year-old Dr. Giggles cut his way out of his dead mother's womb with a small scalpel. That, he said, must have been how Dr. Giggles escaped from Moorehigh.

Wiped out after searching for his daughter, Tom Campbell comes home and checks his answering machine. Dr. Giggles, however, interjects by sneaking up on him with a small surgical saw and slicing him fatally with it.

When Magruder goes to investigate and look for Tom Campbell, he finds him lying dead on the floor. Dr. Giggles proceeds to stab him in the back of the neck with a scalpel. Magruder doesn't go down, however, until he's shot Dr. Giggles in the side, making him scream in pain.

Meanwhile, Max and Officer Reitz find out for sure that the killer really is Dr. Giggles, and Reitz heads out. Unbeknownst to Reitz, Max follows him.

During this time, Jennifer is sent in for an EKG. Her fear of hospitals escalates when she has a dream about Dr. Giggles. Everything seems fine, however, until Giggles does show up and stabs the cardiologist in the back with a pair of scissors. The doctor, however, isn't finished yet. He keeps Giggles from Jennifer by stabbing him in the thigh with the same pair of scissors. The cardiologist grabs a long razor, while Dr. Giggles draws out a long rubber mallet, and they engage in a fight. Giggles ends up winning, smashing the cardiologist in the kneecaps and face with his mallet. He then strangles him with a blood pressure cuff and stabs Jennifer with a needle that makes her fall asleep.

She wakes up strapped to Dr. Giggles' stretcher, where he reveals to her his hideous plot to take out her "broken" heart and replace it with one of her friends'. Just before he starts surgery, however, Officer Reitz busts in and saves the day. Max runs in and helps them. While Reitz and Dr. Giggles fight to the death, Max and Jennifer escape. In the basement, however, Giggles and Reitz accidentally set fire to a gas canister. The Rendell residence explodes just in time for Jennifer and Max to get out alive.

When Jennifer wakes up, she is strapped to another stretcher, this one belonging to the city hospital. She has undergone her surgery, and everything seems fine until none other than Dr. Giggles himself shows up. He chases her to a janitor's closet after murdering many of the hospital staff relentlessly. She spills a bottle of fluid on the floor and hits him with defibrillator paddles, instantly electrocuting him. When he seems revived, she stabs him in the chest with two of his own instruments, which finally do him in for good.

A final shot shows Jennifer with Max, laying in a hospital bed. As they kiss, Jennifer's heart rate increases, and is shown on a monitor a few feet from the bed.