If you take Michael Myer’s genesis in John Carpenter’s Halloween, the witticisms of Freddy Kruger in Craven’s A Nightmare in Elm Street, and wrap it around an insane heart surgeon for an antagonist, you have Manny Coto’s Dr. Giggles. However, Coto is by no means lethargically imitative of his genre forerunners. Instead, he simultaneously satirizes and modernizes the genre as he critically annotates the forthcoming decade via sometimes scathing social commentary. Though subtler in its approach than it first appears to be in that, at first glance, Dr. Giggles passes itself off as another rote, throwaway piece of escapist horror, Coto’s film is unfortunately unbalanced in that for every disappointing sequence, the director follows with a fairly entertaining interlude shortly thereafter. What results is a moderately satisfying, lukewarm horror effort.
Orphaned at the age of seven after his mother (uncredited) dies of heart complications before his father, Evan Rendell Sr. (William Dennis Hunt), can attempt experimental surgery on her, utilizing the seven hearts he carved out of local townsfolk, young Evan Jr. (Nicholas Mastandrea) is sewn into his mother’s corpse by his father in order to evade detection before the people of Moorehigh can enact revenge upon the doctor. After thirty-three years in a mental institution, adult Even Jr. (Larry Drake), who goes by the pseudonym Dr. Giggles, returns to his hometown in order to continue his father’s research while seeking retribution for his parental losses.
First we begin with what seems to be a complacent, cookie-cutter revision of Michael Myer’s origins as we watch as a young child is transformed into a raging killer after doing time in a mental asylum in the wake of his father’s homicidal killing spree. However, this allusion is not without purpose in that Carpenter’s puritanical cautionary tale is quickly modernized as Coto comments upon the upcoming decade, the 1990s, as we watch one of Dr. Giggles’s victims, attempting to engage in safe sex, nonetheless futilely dies as a consequence of his earnest efforts.
Yet for every death, the audience is barely able to identify who was recently introduced prior to his or her demise, much less sympathize with the various characters. However, this seeming cinematic faux pas is not without purpose in that, ironically, we are thereby forced to sympathize with the antagonist. Atop his victimized childhood, the inconsistency of Dr. Giggles’s on-again, off-again one liners (the latter creating a situation akin to sympathizing for a mentally challenged person who thinks a stinker of a joke is truly funny), though Freddy-esque, are delivered deadpan (unlike his famed predecessor), thereby obligating the audience to issue the figure benefit of the doubt in that we are unable to determine if directed, focused malevolence is the driving force behind his mania or if imitative deference after having witnessed his father engaging in such acts three decades prior is the motivation for the murderer’s actions.
To add even more weight to this all-too-readily dismissed film, we have a satire, not upon the medical industry, but upon the horror genre itself for the antagonist seems omnipotent in that he returns several times–unlike his victims, who readily, conclusively die after Giggles’s first attempts upon their lives, all of which involve highly creative usages of various medical equipment and tools, which are just as varied as the numerous clichéd puns which the mad doctor utters prior to each character’s death.
Sadly, for all of the thought put into the creation of the film, it is inconsistent in its pacing, making for an unbalanced composition which, though it couldn’t have been pared down with suffering as a consequence, its script could have nonetheless underwent a handful of revisions and nonetheless been the better for it.
Manny Coto’s Dr. Giggles must be credited for at least trying to do something more, something not only relevant but doing so without deferring to formulaic convention. Instead of achieving substance via the easy route of a medical parody, Coto uses his premise to mock the clichéd nature of the genre while concurrently commenting upon the era. Regrettably, perhaps Coto overextended himself in that he failed to sufficiently polish his work as Dr. Giggles’s exceeds his control at times. But, once again, how many horror directors work this hard for their audiences?
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
