Carl the Critic: Talks about "Dr. Giggle"

Experience/Expectations: My father was a doctor, so growing up in my house was like living in a medical school. Being a doctor is serious business, and some of them took their job really seriously, I say some because I don't know every doctor and I pretty sure their are some apathetic doctors. My Dad as you can imagine took his job seriously, cared for people with or without medical or health insurance, and he made sure people were satisfied. Rarely were they unsatisfied, and those who were found other doctors to treat them.

As you can see being a doctor is a serious thing, but when you watch a movie like "Dr. Giggles," you find this hard to believe. "Dr. Giggles" was a scary movie (sort of), that was also a funny movie (sort of), that most people missed when it came out in 1992. The first time I saw it was in my hometown of Elmira, New York on "Chiller TV" a channel devoted to scaring the living crap out of people. But this movie wasn't really scary but it was disturbing. If you want to know how disturbing please keep reading!

Story: "This town has a doctor 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 cuts their out their hearts... purely for fun. So if you're from Moorehigh and you get sick, Fall on your knees and pray you die real quick. " (Such a beautiful song.)

This is the jingle that is important for you to understand the movie. Why does he cut people's hearts out? Well a long time ago Evan was a little boy and his father was a heart surgeon, but his could not preform the treatment to save his wife so he went insane and killed people and then took the hearts out of their body. Evan helped his father as a little child and he too caught the insanity virus (which was apparently easy to catch.) But then Rendell's father is caught and stoned to death, while little Evan is not seen again for another 35 years.

Some how between that 35 year gap, Evan ends up in an insane asylum, (which is where the movie starts) and he escapes it with ease. We keep flashing back to his childhood which is how we learn this history, and now Rendell is going to finish his father's legacy and save a victim from the same heart problems as his mother.

It's time to introduce Jennifer Campbell, a 19 year old girl who has a heart problem. The problem is genetic, which she recieved from her mother, who died due to complications in the surgery, and so Jennifer is as excited of having the surgery as much as she loves the heart problems. She has a distrust for Doctors now, and then her paths cross Rendell's path and now she is terrified of them.

Critique: When I watch this film, I get the same feeling I get when I watch "Zombieland," because with both films if you get rid of the gore, and disturbing images, and just keep the dialogue, and story, you have a good story and witty dialogue. The gore in both films is to remind people that this is a horror film as well as a comedy. But the difference is that the sense of humor that "Zombieland" had was more natural, while the humor in "Dr. Giggles," is more intentional. The movie was funny because was very really corny, but the corniness was intentional. It's not like "Sucker Punch," where the movie was trying to be serious, but "Dr. Giggles," was corny, because it used one corny line after another, and each corny line was spread out strategically so it would balance its horror with the comedy. But if the movie was being serious and was corny by accident, the pace of each corny line would have been a mess, like the 1993 film "Undefeatable."

But I am not that squeamish when it comes to gore, certain people are, and I am warning you, this movie has it. There might not be a lot (at least not a lot by the average horror freak's standards) but this movie goes to the limits of gore by having a child crawl out of the corpse of his dead mother (If you were eating while you were reading this I apologize.)

Overall: Well I gave this movie a 7.8 out of 10 because this wasn't a horrible movie but is was a horror movie.