Dr. Giggles (dir. Manny Coto, 1992)
Dr. Giggles is the sort of movie that you have to admire a little because it waited 76 minutes before our titular unlicensed medical practitioner so much as picks up a pair of defibrillator paddles to kill someone with. Before then, we get see a whole host of medical instruments repurposed for murder. Shiv-like thermometers, a pointed nasal endoscope, an oversized reflex hammer, a blood pressure cuff used for the same sort of asphyxiation effect that Total Recall had, and so many surgical blades that look like Dr. Giggles was enrolled at the Beverly and Elliot Mantel Correspondence School of Medicine and made straight C’s.
Tulsa’s favorite large son Larry Drake stars as mass murderer and asylum escapee, Dr. Giggles, so called because of his delusions of medical expertise, penchant for laughing, and having no proper ID. His backstory is revealed over the course of the film: the son of a similarly unhinged doctor whose string of killings earned him a nursery rhyme and caused his mansion to be one of those abandoned properties that horror movies love. You know, it’s been standing condemned and in ruins for decades, no one can sell it, and apparently you can’t raze it either. Anyway, Dr. Giggles slashes, stabs, and quips his way for ninety minutes, and it’s generally an okay time. Drake is fun here, but lacks the palpable menace of his performance as mobster Robert Durant in two Darkman movies. The quality’s more on par with his turn as the obsessive Global Express driver Hal Ipswich in Overnight Delivery.
I’m the only person to have seen Overnight Delivery, aren’t I? Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon, same plot as Road Trip? No one? Okay, you’re the ones missing out, not me…
There is one scene, though, that is truly disgusting, and I know disgusting. I ate one-and-a-half breakfast burritos from Jack in the Box the other day. I’m pretty sure that at least a couple of people on the staff of NBC’s Hannibal are very familiar with the sequence and decided they should put a much more toned-down version of it on their prime time network show, but with a horse instead. You can absolutely understand why the character that witnesses what happens has been haunted for decades.
oliveresque 