Are you afraid of going to the doctor? Well, now you have even more reasons to be afraid after seeing the 1992 horror slasher Dr. Giggles. Manny Coto directed and co-wrote the film, which follows Dr. Evan Rendell, a psychological patient who believes himself a surgeon and returns to his hometown Moorehigh to avenge his father’s death by going on a murder spree with a surgical motif.
He became enamored with Jennifer, a teenage girl with the same cardiac condition as his mother, and planned to give her a heart transplant. Dr. Giggles was played by Larry Drake, Jennifer was played by Holly Marie Combs, and Max was played by Glenn Quinn. Before we get into the plot, let us have a look at the backstory.
Dr Giggles: Released in 1992 Explained
In the year 1957, Dr. Evan Rendell residing in a quiet town Moorehigh lived happily with his wife and son. He was pretty thrilled to see his son Evan Jr. impersonate him by operating on his soft toys. But their happiness came to a halt when Rendell’s wife died due to a severe heart ailment.
Eventually, Dr. Rendell’s patients started disappearing. After investigating the matter, the citizens of Moorehigh discovered that Dr. Rendell and his son were ripping out his patients’ hearts to bring back the doctor’s dead wife with a heart transplant. Consequently, the citizens stoned Dr. Rendell, but there was no trace of Evan Jr. The citizens of Moorehigh remembered the Rendells through a legendary poem explaining the horrifying incidents that had occurred in the past.
The film commenced after 35 years with adult Evan Jr. killing the doctors of the mental asylum, mimicking an open heart surgery while the remaining mental patients watched the murder as an amusement.
He also slaughtered another doctor and a nurse before escaping from the asylum and headed towards his hometown of Moorehigh to avenge his father’s death. Evan Jr. was nicknamed Dr. Giggles due to his tendency of giggling now and then.
In Moorehigh, Jennifer Campbell, her boyfriend Max Anderson, and her classmates planned for an upcoming spring break. Jennifer had recently lost her mother and was upset about her father being in a relationship with another woman.
Moreover, she had been diagnosed with a heart ailment and had to wear a heart monitor throughout the week to determine whether she needed surgery. Meanwhile, Dr. Giggles reached his abandoned house in Moorehigh and dressed up entirely like his deceased father while grabbing his father’s medical bag, which contained many surgical instruments.
The next day Jennifer’s friends arrived at the abandoned Rendell house to explore the place and search for bodies hidden in the wall, according to the legendary stories about Rendells that float across the town. Two of the friends were locked in a room by the others as a prank and eventually became victims of brutal murders by Dr. Giggles. Soon Dr. Giggles killed another neighbor by inserting a tongue depressor through her nostrils, followed by two other friends of Jennifer. In the meantime, Jennifer, tired of carrying the heart monitor causing hindrance in her enjoyment, decided to dump it in the fish tank and headed for the carnival to meet Max. When Jennifer’s father found her heart monitor in the fish tank, he became anxious about his daughter. He rushed after Jennifer, leaving his girlfriend behind, who was also brutally slaughtered by Dr. Giggles.
Consequently, Dr. Giggles found Jennifer’s heart monitor on the floor and immediately became obsessed with her, realizing that she had the same ailment as his mother.
Jennifer returned to the carnival only to find Max kissing another girl. Distressed, she ran into a house of mirrors followed by Max and the other girl he was kissing, where she encountered Dr. Giggles with a syringe and ran in despair, stumbling down several times. Finally, she bumped into the police car, but at the police station, nobody believed her apart from the two rescuing officers, Reitz and Magruder. Magruder was an elder policeman who was aware of the history of the Rendell’s. He narrated his terrible experience on the night after Dr. Evan Rendell was killed. That night he saw the seven-year-old Evan Jr. cut open his mother’s dead body and came out giggling. His father had actually hidden him inside his mother’s dead body to save his life from the angry mob.
Jennifer’s father was the killer’s next target, but the murder was interrupted by officer Magruder who had come for investigation. Magruder found Jennifer’s father lying in a pool of blood, but Dr. Giggles inflicted a fatal wound on him before he could become alert. Officer Magruder managed to shoot Dr, Giggles, wounding him seriously, before succumbing to his injury.
While Dr. Giggles performed surgery on himself to remove the bullet, Max and officer Reitz investigated and dug up all the information about Evan Jr. from the hospital records. As her doctor was examining Jennifer, suddenly Giggles appeared, killed the doctor, and rendered Jennifer unconscious with a high dose of sedative.
When she gained consciousness, she found herself in an operating room beneath Rendell’s house, as Giggles planned to replace her ailing heart with her friend’s heart which he had ripped out. Just as Jennifer fainted, Max and Reitz burst in, and in the struggle, Reitz was killed when a fire started out, which led to the explosion of oxygen tanks destroying the Rendell house, while Max and Jennifer just managed to escape.
Eventually, Jennifer was admitted to the hospital, where it was revealed that the recurring trauma had damaged one of her heart valves, and she needed surgery to replace it. While she was being prepared for the surgery, Giggles reappeared. He had survived the explosion and started killing everybody in the hospital till he reached Jennifer. Jennifer ran for her life and hid in a janitor’s closet when she spilled a cleaning fluid on the floor and electrocuted the killer doctor with defibrillator paddles.
Finally, she stabbed him with two of his own surgical instruments. In the pre-concluding scene, Dr. Giggles broke the fourth wall while he stared at the camera and asked, “Is there a doctor in the house?” before he died.
A recovering Jennifer was seen in the hospital, visited by Max and her father, who had also recovered from his injuries.
The movie was not successful mainly because of its timing. It was a movie that was made in 80s style but was released in the 90s, which cared about serious slashers, intelligent dialogues, and polished picturization. Larry Drake had been brilliant in his performance, taking primary responsibility on his shoulders, while the remaining cast can be considered fair but not brilliant.
The critics have not been entirely positive about it, but the director won Special Jury Award at Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in 1993. The horror fans loved the dark humor of the film in addition to its originality and fast-moving plot.
Psychology of Dr. Giggles Behind The Murder Explored
Dr. Giggles, the film’s titular antagonist, was a psychopath killer who was obsessed with being a doctor just like his father. Let us now observe his life more closely.
Their family seemed quite happy and contended at the beginning, with loving and caring parents and Evan Jr. dissecting his soft toys imitating surgeries in an attempt to impersonate his father.
When Dr. Rendell’s wife died of heart disease, he became wildly insane as he tried ripping out hearts from his patients for a heart transplant that would make his wife alive again. We get a hint of their insanity as the father and son giggled as they sat around Mrs. Rendell’s dead body. The controversial act of his father to kill his patients might have been the trigger that converted his already troubled mind to the deranged monster he would become in the future.
Evan Jr. was nicknamed Dr. Giggles due to his tendency to giggle on every occasion, whether he is murdering or whether he is injured, and so on. He was even laughing when he cut open his mother’s dead body and came out, as his father had hidden him there to save him from the angry townsmen.
From the hospital records, we find him to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, that too chronic undifferentiated type, while the history also revealed that he was considered extremely dangerous. The way he carried out his murders using different surgical instruments was terrifying and spine-chilling. In the beginning, his motive was avenging his father’s death, but soon, his attention turned to Jennifer, who had a similar heart problem to his mother. As soon as he related
Jennifer’s condition to his mother, he decided to complete his father’s undone task of heart implant surgery. He started his murder spree just like his father to search for a proper heart that would cure Jennifer entirely. It is unknown where Dr giggles got his medical skills as he seemed to carry out surgery on himself perfectly while trying to take out the bullet that hit him.
His character could have been analyzed better if other incidents about his past life were brought into the light, but with his death, all facts remained unknown. Serious serial killers make us horrified, but humorous serial killers leave us stunned and petrified.
Dr. Giggles Vs The Dentist: Who Is More Dangerous
Maybe one psychopath serial killer doctor was not enough for the 1990s, so another medical model was introduced in a 1996 film titled “The dentist” written by Stewart Gordon and directed by Brian Yuzna. Hollywood veteran Corbin Bernsen starred as the dentist, Dr. Alan Feinstone. Which of the two doctors do you think will be more dangerous?
Many people, in fact, avoid dentists or surgeons dreading possible painful procedures, but both Dr. Rendell and Dr. Feinstone are examples of the worst fears of the patients who are only interested in assisting their patients in leaving the world entirely.
The backstories of these two doctors are entirely different. Dr. Giggles, as we know, inherited his insanity from his father, who was killed by the angry townsmen of Moorehigh when they found out about his killing of patients ruthlessly in an attempt to resurrect his dead wife.
Dr. Rendell hid his seven-year-old son inside the dead body of his wife to save him. He was eventually put up in a mental asylum, and after 35 years, he escaped from the asylum to avenge his father’s death. Meanwhile, the dentist, Dr. Feinstone, was a pretty average person until he discovered his wife Brook cheating on him on his wedding anniversary. From that time, he started losing his sanity till he attained complete insanity.
Though the audience, in the beginning, might bear some sympathy with Dr. Flintstone, the compassion was lost once he tried to assault a patient under anesthesia sexually. If we compare the acts of both doctors, Dr. giggles can be considered more dangerous than Dr. Fienstone with little margin. Both doctors slaughter whoever they encounter, but Dr. Feinstone still showed the slightest hint of sanity.
It might seem that there is a remote probability of Dr. Fienstone sparing someone, but Dr. Giggles is unlikely to spare anyone unless they have the same heart condition that killed his mother. Another fearful fact about Dr. Giggles is his relentless giggles and humorous dialogues that dominated his characteristics. The insanity of Dr. Fienstone can still be related to the betrayal of his wife. But imagine the height of menace in Dr. Giggles as he giggles and kills his patients brutally, followed by humorous dialogues like, “if you think that’s bad, wait until you get my bill. “
Well, last but not least, “The Dentist” comes with a sequel, but “Dr. Giggles” has no franchise except for a comic adaptation of its cult horror.
Will There Be Dr. Giggles 2
It has been 29 years since “Dr. Giggles” was released, yet no one has heard of any film’s sequel. According to the script co-writer Graeme Whistler, his original screenplay was vastly altered before it was filmed. Graeme also mentioned that the horror fans could get an idea of his initial story by watching the 2008 film “Deadly End,” directed by him.
He also stated that no one thought of making any movie sequel as it suffered greatly at the box office. Another fact is that the slasher movie craze had nearly ended when this film was released, while four years later, the movie “Scream” revitalized the concept of the new generation horror film—no wonder this film with a small group of fans is buried under the clutter of forgotten movies.