Dr. Giggles (1992)

• Directed by Manny Coto
• Written by Manny Coto, Graeme Whifler
• Stars Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Cliff De Young
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esdz_gBnUc4

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

Larry Drake is perfect for the role and really makes this one, and they really push the dark comedy in the script with almost all of his lines being a joke, pun, or quip. Everyone else is decent enough to get the job done. It’s a pretty formulaic slasher film, but a good one.

Spoilery Synopsis

We begin in the middle of an open-heart surgery as Dr. Evan Rendell explains what he’s doing to the audience in the surgical theater. He then giggles as he cuts into the patient, and we quickly see something is not right at all. It turns out he’s really a mental patient who’s just sliced up his own doctor. He then kills the nurse, giggling all the while. Not only that, but he’s released the other patients – that’s who his audience was. Dr. Rendell, known as “Dr. Giggles,” then steals a car and leaves the secure facility. 

School’s out for the summer in Moorehead, and Max tells Jen that he’s gotten a job. Dr. Chamberlain examines Jen and checks out her mitral valve prolapse. He may have to operate someday, but for now, she just needs to relax. 

Dr. Giggles is inside his old home, long abandoned, as Jen walks past. Jen goes home and shows her new portable heart monitor to her father, Tom. Tom’s new wife, Tamara, isn’t Jen’s favorite. 

Giggles finds a photo and has a flashback to his own father, who was the town physician. We see that young Evan had a habit of slicing up his stuffed animals and sewing them back together. Meanwhile, a quartet of teens come to the Rendell house to fool around, and there’s even a rhyme about the crazy former tenant. Old Dr. Rendell was dragged out of the house and stoned by the locals; they never did find his son, who is said to still inhabit the house. 

Trotter and Leigh get locked in a closet by Stu as a joke, and they hear creepy giggling coming from outside. “The Doctor is in,” Giggles says as he pulls out a foot-long hypodermic and kills them both. 

That night, at the amusement park, Jen and Max are there to make out. He wants to get drunk, but her doctor specifically told her to avoid alcohol. Elsewhere, Mr. Henderson, the crazy dog-lady, calls the police about seeing someone inside the old Rendell place. Dr. Giggles is there, and he talks through her murder, one medical quip after the next. 

Officers Magruder and Joe arrive at Rendell’s house, and the sheriff explains that the old doctor killed seven people cutting out their hearts. His wife was sick, and he was trying to get her a transplant. The conversation turns to the doctor’s young son, who disappeared right after the doctor was murdered. 

Jen tells Max about the heart problem; her mother died in surgery, so she’s terrified. She drops her heart monitor in the fish tank when she goes home, where we see Dr. Giggles standing on the sidewalk. 

Giggles sees Stu and his girlfriend go into the house across the street, and he follows them. He takes the girlfriends’ temperature, and she gets really cold after that. Stu simply gets the scalpel. 

Tom finds the heart monitor in the aquarium and gets concerned, but Tamara is not supportive. He goes out looking for his daughter, and Tamara stays home to have ice cream, where the doctor lectures her about eating fat and sugar. He’s got a stomach pump all ready for her. He sucks out all the ice cream– and then turns it to eleven. 

Dr. Giggles sees Jen’s heart monitor on the table and has another flashback to his parents’ situation. He takes her photo from the wall and goes looking for her at the amusement park. Meanwhile, Max makes out with some other girls from school– until Jen shows up and catches him in the act. For various reasons, everyone ends up going into the fun house. 

Giggles chases Jen through the mirrors and kills one of the other girls. Max sees the doctor but can’t get to them. She leaves the fun house and runs through the woods, where the doctor soon catches her. She runs away and tells the police everything. 

Officer Joe connects Jen’s heart condition with the one that killed Giggles’s mother, but the other cops tell him it’s just a coincidence. Officer Magruder is clearly hiding something, and Joe is persistent. He tells that thirty-five years ago, all the cops were looking for young Rendell Junior, and he was left behind to watch over the bodies. He heard giggling and found out how Rendell got his son out of the house– by sewing him up inside the corpse of his mother. The kid sliced his way out and Magruder passed out. When he came to, the kid was gone.

Tom returns home and gets a message from the sheriff. The doctor has also left a message– “I’m standing right behind you.” Tom doesn’t last long. Magruder comes in for Tom and finds him dead on the floor. Giggles stabs him in the back of the head, but Magruder manages to shoot the maniac before he dies. Giggles goes home and operates on himself to remove the bullet and sew himself back up. “Physician heal thyself!” 

Across town, Dr. Chamberlain gives Jennifer an EKG. Max and Joe start looking up information about Dr. Rendell.  They find out that Rendell escaped from the asylum two weeks ago. Jen dreams about an insane doctor who cuts her open. Giggles comes in and offers a second opinion. The two doctors fight, and there’s little doubt who’s going to win. 

Giggles sedates Jen and then carries her home to his own basement operating room. He looks at his collection of hearts and looks for one that’s the right size. “Too small. Too big. Just right.” 

Joe comes into the Rendell house and sees just how messed up the occupant really is. Meanwhile, Giggles pulls out a transplant machine and gets to work on “fixing” Jennifer. Joe bursts in, and Giggles runs off. Joe gives Jen CPR. “Time to do what doctors do best,” as Giggles grabs a golf club. Max shows up and helps Joe carry out Jen, who has awakened. 

Giggles comes in swinging, and gets a hole in one with Joe’s head. “Shoulda used an eight-iron,” he laments as he looks at the mangled club. Everyone plays cat and mouse for a bit. The doctor giggles in his lab as the fire he started ignites some oxygen tanks, blowing the whole place up. Jen and Max barely make it out. 

Later, Jen goes to the real hospital. The strain was too much and they need to replace the valve right now. The nurses wheel her into the operating room and she finds several murdered doctors in the hallway. Dr. Giggles is burned, but not dead as he comes in to help the surgeon, and he’s brought many toys. He chases her into a storage room, where Jennifer electrocutes him; he sounds like Daffy Duck as he fries. He still manages to get in one more medical quip before dying. 

Later, we see Jen’s had her surgery, and she’s fine now. Her father and Max have survived too. 

Commentary

It’s not really a comedy, but every word out of Dr. Giggles’s mouth is a bad pun or medical joke. Every. Single. Word. He’s awesome. 

Other than the outstanding performance by Drake, it’s a pretty straightforward slasher film, only with a doctor character instead of a generic maniac.