Welcome to Arrow in the Head's The Best Horror Movie You Never Saw, which will be dedicated to highlighting horror films that, for one reason or another, don't get as much love as we think they should. We know plenty of you horror hounds out there will have seen many of the movies we pick, but there will be plenty of you who have not. This column is for all of you!
This week we take a look at Manny Coto's DR. GIGGLES (WATCH IT HERE – OWN IT HERE) starring Larry Drake, Holly Marie Combs, Richard Bradford and Cliff De Young.
THE STORY: After years of being locked up in a mental asylum, psychotic "doctor" Evan Rendell escapes and returns to the town where he grew up. Once there, he starts killing off everyone in sight, save for a young woman with a heart condition named Jennifer, whom Evan plans on performing a special surgery on.
WHY IT'S GREAT: True story: Halloween night 1992, my mother, myself and two friends of ours are walking around my neighborhood in Queens, NY trick r treating and just generally hanging out. (I was 12.) We passed by the local movie theater, an awesome (and, sadly, long gone) old-fashioned movie palace, the kind they don't make anymore. The films playing there were Candyman and Dr. Giggles, both of which I had heard of but didn't know a ton about. This is before the internet, folks, so you knew about movies via commercials and ads in the newspaper. We decided to go see a scary movie on this Halloween night, and we decided Dr. Giggles was the one. Maybe we thought Candyman would have been too intense or looked too bleak – I can't really recall much about the deliberation – but off we went to see a movie called Dr. Giggles. Looking back now, I can't believe they released a film with that title in theaters. They don't make flicks like this anymore, and they certainly don't release them nationwide.
Imagine my 12-year-old self in the theater, being consistently blown away by the gleeful nastiness of this movie; the ridiculous carnage wrought by Larry Drake as Evan Rendell, a maniacal wannabe doctor with a predilection for creative methods of murder and bad puns. (Freddy Krueger would slap his forehead at some of the groaners delivered by Evan.) As a burgeoning movie fan still figuring out the twists and turns of the horror genre, this movie opened my eyes in a big way. You might think I'm kidding but I'm not. Here's a movie that you would probably not claim is "good," not by traditional standards. But is it bad? It's totally self-aware, from the moment the title hits the screen. It knows it's cheesy and it's proud of it. I dare say even people who don't like horror movies will find amusement in Dr. Giggles, for it's so happily in its own world and giving no fucks about what you may think of it. Is this outsider art? Is it transgressive cinema? Probably not, but holy hell does it achieve a certain level of craziness.
And it's not just funny. In its own strange way, Dr. Giggles is actually kind of a creepy movie. While Evan is more or less a goofy figure, Larry Drake plays him sincerely – and Larry Drake was a scary dude. (RIP.) His looming presence is unsettling, and it genuinely makes you care about the welfare of Holly Marie Combs' Jennifer, who is a successfully fragile and likable protagonist. The sincerity of Jennifer's scenes, and the troubling nature of her heart condition, provide a welcome contrast to Drake's demented murder sequences. And I really enjoy the almost scary fairy tale nature of the legend of Evan Rendell; he even has his own nursery rhyme! You might think I'm making too much of Dr. Giggles – lord knows I realize the movie is called "Dr. Giggles" – but I think it's easy to overlook the fact that it's a pretty effective movie on multiple levels. Some of it's legit disturbing; do I have to remind you of the flashback sequence where young Evan crawls out of his mother's corpse after his father sewed him up in there? Yuck. Still gross.
Revisiting this movie recently was an absolute blast. It made me feel young again. Movies like this helped shape my love for the genre. Of course I revere the classics: The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Those are brilliant films, it goes without saying, and they legitimize a genre that still has trouble being taken seriously by people who don't know better. But the Dr. Giggles of the world are wholly part of why I love this stuff. It's weird, it's crude, it's brazen in its efforts to gross you out and make you laugh. Why shouldn't we respect a movie like this, one that sets its goals, achieves them, and leaves you smiling?
BEST SCENE: You can point to any one scene where Evan merrily kills an unsympathetic jerk in a creative way (where the hell does he get those instruments anyway?) but I still think the freaky scene where the cop sees him escape his mother's body is a thing of bloody beauty.
WHERE TO WATCH: Dr. Giggles is available to stream on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Vudu, iTunes, Hulu – you name it. Stop what you're doing and give it a re-watch.
PARTING SHOT: I realize Dr. Giggles isn't high art. It doesn't have to be. When a movie is so completely dedicated to making you say "what the fuck am I watching?" over and over again, it deserves to have a spotlight put on it. Give this doctor a call ASAP.