Dr. Giggles
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| Dr. Giggles | |
|---|---|
 Region 1 DVD cover for Dr. Giggles. |
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| Directed by | Manny Coto |
| Produced by | Stuart M. Besser |
| Written by | Manny Coto and Graeme Whifler |
| Starring | Larry Drake Holly Marie Combs Cliff De Young Glenn Quinn Keith Diamond Richard Bradford |
| Music by | Brian May |
| Cinematography | Robert Draper |
| Editing by | Debra Neil-Fisher |
| Distributed by | Universal Studios |
| Release date(s) | October 23, 1992 (USA) |
| Running time | 96 Minutes |
| Budget | Unknown |
| Gross revenue | $8,403,433 (USA) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Dr. Giggles is a 1992 slasher film directed by Manny Coto. It stars Larry Drake as the titular antagonist, Holly Marie Combs as the protagonist, Cliff De Young and Glenn Quinn. It was released in October 23, 1992.
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[edit] Plot Summary
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The plot summary in this article or section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
In the quiet neighborhood of the fictional town of Moorehigh, a simple family physician named 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 that 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 wrought by Rendell and his son. However, they forgot one little detail: Dr. Giggles wanted revenge.
35 years after his father's death, Dr. Giggles attaches one of the doctors that works 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 with the intercom still on. He then escapes the asylum and steals a doctor's Lincoln Town Car, slicing the doctor's jugular in the process.
Meanwhile, back in Moorehigh, things are off to a great start. The young, short, and female, child-like 19-year-old protagonist Jennifer Campbell (Holly Marie Combs), her boyfriend Max Anderson (Glenn Quinn), and their colleagues are all revved up for a summer break. However, there's only one thing bothering her: Jennifer has to wear a heart monitor all week, and, if the test comes back positive, she'll have to undergo surgery. She goes all the way back to home, where Jennifer's father, Tom Campbell (Cliff De Young) welcomes her back from school. While she's worrying about that, though, Dr. Giggles is back at work. He has broken into his old home/doctor's office and started 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 three and a half decades later.
Disregarding the legend that Dr. Giggles might still be lurking in his old house, all of Jennifer's friends, consisting of Stu, Trotter (Doug E. Doug), Dianne, and Leigh go on an expedition to the old Rendell house to find the missing bodies reportedly hidden in the walls. As Trotter and Leigh investigate further, Stu and Dianne 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 convulsions and die. Dr. Giggles then busts through the door with an axe and Leigh is terrified until she meets her end.
Minutes later, 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 switches 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.
Jennifer then decides she has had enough of the party and starts walking back home. She dumps her heart monitor in her fish tank and stays in her room. Outside, Stu and Dianne have arrived into Stu's house for a little "horizontal activity." While Stu is gone to the bathroom, Dianne walks down the hall to adjust 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 Dianne. Dr. Giggles stabs him in the groin with a scalpel and leaves him to bleed to death on the bed.
Jennifer walks down to the living room 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 stepmother, Tamara, and her father, alone in the house with Dr. Giggles. When Tom finds the heart monitor in her fish tank, he automatically assumes the worst and goes out to search for his daughter. 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 stepmother 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, but she only convince two cops: Officers Joe Reitz and Hank Magruder.
In the Moorehigh police station, Max supports Jennifer's statement that Dr. Giggles is indeed chasing her, possibly to murder her. 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 comes home and checks his answering machine. Dr. Giggles, however, interjects by sneaking up on him with a small surgical saw and slicing him with it. When Magruder goes to investigate and look for Tom, he finds him presumably dead. Dr. Giggles proceeds to stab him in the back of the neck with a scalpel. Magruder doesn't go down, however, until he, who has somehow pulled out a gun, shoots Dr. Giggles in the side, making him scream in pain.
Meanwhile, Max and Officer Reitz find out for sure that the killer is really Dr. Giggles, and Reitz heads out. Unbeknownst to Reitz, Max follows him.
During this time, Jennifer is sent in for an electrocardiogram. Her fear of hospitals escalates when she has a dream about Dr. Giggles exposing her beating heart. Everything seems fine, however, until Giggles shows up by stabbing the cardiologist in the back with a pair of scissors. The doctor, however, isn't finished yet. He keeps Giggles away 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 struggle each other. Giggles ends up winning, smashing the cardiologist in the kneecaps and face with his mallet. He then strangles him with a blood pressure cuff. Giggles catches up with Jennifer and stabs her with a needle that makes her fall asleep.
Officer Reitz enter Jennifer's home to find Tom is still alive. He is told where his daughter is, and Reitz answers she is taken away for a surgery.
She wakes up strapped to Dr. Giggles' stretcher, where he reveals to her his hideous plot to replace her "broken" heart with one of her friends'. Just before he begins his surgery, however, Officer Reitz busts in and rescues her. Max runs in and helps them. But when Giggles hit Max and Reitz with his golf stick, he and Reitz fight to the death. Jennifer grabs the pistol, trying to reload the bullets, and fires a missed shot at Giggles. As she prepares to fire another shot, Giggles grabs her gun and tries to shoot Reitz. She raises Giggle's arm holding a gun up in the air, while Reitz makes an escape. After Giggles is gone searching for him, Max and Jennifer escape. In the basement, however, Giggles and Reitz accidentally set fire to a gas canister before Giggles finishes him by using a surgical saw to slice him to death.
Max and Jennifer goes up the stairs, but falls down as the stairs collapse. He gets up first, and helps Jennifer. But Giggles appears and grabs her legs, and she kicks him backward. She manages to get up, but Giggles is unable to reach. The Rendell residence explodes just in time for Jennifer and Max to get out alive, presumably taking Giggles with it.
When Jennifer wakes up, she is strapped to another stretcher, this one belongs to the city hospital. She has undergone her surgery, and everything looks all right as before until the blood flows through the closed door, and many of the hospital staff are being murdered relentlessly. Dr. Giggles is back, having survived the explosion, though now horribly scarred, he follows her to a janitor's closet. As he enters the room, 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 finishes him for good.
A final scene shows Jennifer, after her father, wounded on his chest, visits her, with Max, lying in a hospital bed. As they kiss, Jennifer's heart rate increases, and is shown on a monitor a few feet from the bed.
[edit] Cast
| Actor/Actress | Role |
|---|---|
| Larry Drake | Doctor Evan Rendell Jr. (Dr. Giggles) |
| Holly Marie Combs | Jennifer Campbell |
| Cliff De Young | Tom Campbell |
| Glenn Quinn | Max Anderson |
| Keith Diamond | Officer Joe Reitz |
| Richard Bradford | Officer Hank Magruder |
| Michelle Johnson | Tamara |
| John Vickery | Dr. Chaimberlain |
| Nancy Fish | Elaine Henderson |
| Sara Melson | Coreen |
| Zoe Trilling | Normi |
| Darin Heames | Stu |
| Deborah Tucker | Dianne |
| Doug E. Doug | Trotter |
| Denise Barnes | Leigh |
| Nick Joseph Mastrandrea | Young Evan Rendell Jr. |
[edit] Merchandise
There was a four issue limited comic book adaptation published by Dark Horse Comics that was released in time for the movie.
Also, there were two soundtrack albums released. One was of the songs from the film, and the other was of Brian May's score.
The movie was released on video in 1993 along with a widescreen laserdisc from MCA-Universal Home Video, followed by a (now out of print) DVD on May 1, 2001. The DVD and copies of the tape fetch prices of up to $90+ on internet auction sites. Warner Bros. released a new DVD of the film on September 25, 2007 as part of their Twisted Terrors Collection box set.
