Dr. Giggles is a 1992 slasher film directed by Manny Coto, and starring Larry Drake as the titular antagonist and Holly Marie Combs as the protagonist. The film co-stars Cliff De Young and Glenn Quinn. It was released in October 23, 1992.
Plot Summary
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, Evan, Jr. (nicknamed "Dr. Giggles" for his hideous laugh), were ripping out patients' hearts in a gory attempt to bring back the doctor's dead wife. The townspeople immediately stoned Dr. Rendell to death, but Evan, Jr. disappeared.
35 years later, the now-adult Evan, Jr. (Larry Drake) escapes from an insane asylum by brutally murdering two doctors, and heads back to Moorehigh for revenge.
In the meantime the reputation of the Rendell family has been immortalised in a poem used by local children to keep rhythm when skipping;
This town has a doctor and his name is Rendell
Stay away from his house cause he's the doctor from Hell.
He killed all his patients, every last one,
And cut out their hearts...purely for fun.
In Moorehigh, 19 year old Jennifer Campbell (Holly Marie Combs), her boyfriend Max Anderson (Glenn Quinn), and their classmates are all planning their spring break. Jennifer, having lost her mother recently and put out that her father is dating again so soon after her death, is further angered because she has been diagnosed with a heart condition, and is being forced to wear a heart monitor all week long to determine if she needs surgery. Meanwhile, Dr. Giggles breaks into his father's abandoned home/office and starts going through the doctor's old files, gathering a list of names.
Jennifer's friends decide to start off with a semi-serious expedition into the Rendell house, to search for the bodies that urban legend says are hidden in the walls. As a prank, two of them are locked in one of the abandoned rooms, and are left behind, becoming Giggles' first victims.
Giggles proceeds to stalk and kill several of the town's residents, through a variety of bizarre methods loosely based on medical treatment (e.g., stabbing a woman through the brain by inserting a tongue depressor into her nostril).
Jennifer comes home from a party and, deciding she's had enough of her heart monitor, dumps it in a fish tank. While she is lying down, two of her friends sneak into another room to have sex, only to be ambushed and killed by Giggles. After Jennifer decides to go back to the party, her father sees the heart monitor and runs out of the house after Jennifer, leaving his girlfriend behind to also be killed by Giggles.
Jennifer returns to a carnival and finds Max kissing another girl. Distraught, she runs into a house of mirrors. Giggles follows and kills the girl, but Jennifer manages to see him coming and escapes. She finds the police and tells them what has happened, but only two officers believe her story - Reitz and Magruder. Magruder, the elder, tells of how, the night after Dr. Rendell was killed, he came across the body of Rendell's wife and saw the seven year old Evan, Jr. cut his way out of the body with a scalpel, revealing how he escaped the mob all those years ago.
Magruder goes to investigate Jennifer's house, and finds her father there, lying in a pool of blood. Giggles attacks and kills Magruder, but not before Magruder seriously wounds him in the side with a bullet. Reitz arrives soon after, finding his partner dead and Jennifer's father wounded but alive. Meanwhile, Giggles returns to his hideout, performing surgery on himself to remove the bullet.
The traumatic experience has made it necessary for Jennifer to be checked into the hospital for an ECG. While she is being examined, Giggles appears, killing the doctor and knocking Jennifer unconscious with a syringe full of sedative. Jennifer awakens later to find herself in the operating room beneath the Rendell house, as Giggles tells her that he plans to replace her "broken" heart with one of the ones he took from the bodies of her friends. However, just as she falls unconscious, Reitz and Max burst in. In the struggle, Reitz is killed, but a fire started during the fight ignites a set of oxygen tanks, causing an explosion that destroys the Rendell house (and presumably Giggles with it). Max and Jennifer barely manage to escape.
Jennifer is taken to the hospital, where she is told that the traumatic events of the evening have damaged one of her heart valves, and she is going to need surgery to replace it. While she is being prepped, Giggles reappears, having survived the explosion, and cutting a bloody path through the hospital staff to get to Jennifer. He chases her to a janitor's closet, where she spills a bottle of cleaning fluid onto the floor and hits him with a pair of defibrillator paddles, electrocuting him. She finally kills him by stabbing him through the chest with two of his own instruments. Giggles then breaks the fourth wall, staring at the camera and asking, "Is there a doctor in the house?" before dying.
Recovering in the hospital, Jennifer is visited by her also-recovering father, and by Max.
Cast
Merchandise
There was a two issue limited comic book adaptation published by Dark Horse Comics that was released in time for the movie.
There were two soundtrack albums released. The first contained songs from the film, while the other featured 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, however it is not in its Original Aspect Ratio (OAR) of 2.35:1 but 1.85:1 instead. Only the now out-of-print Laserdisc presents this film in its OAR.
Release
The original release was on October 23, 1992 and will re-released on 12 December 2009 atNew Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles.[1][2]
References
External links
