‘Time to do what doctors do best…’
Aside from Candyman, the early 1990s were a fallow era for the noble slasher movie. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th were both limping on with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday respectively (neither of which would end up being the final entry in either franchise, of course), while the Halloween franchise had stopped dead in its tracks entirely. It wasn’t until Scream reinvigorated the slasher movie in ’96 that the tide began to turn. Aside from a number of sequels, there were a few attempts to create a new slasher franchise in the early ’90s, most of which were insane, Dr. Giggles is no exception…
When the son of a murderous doctor returns to his hometown to wreak havoc, it falls to the local teenagers to save the day. Dr. Giggles (Larry Drake), so called for his distinctive high pitched laugh, is armed only with a medical bag and a series of eye rolling quips, while Jennifer Campbell (Holly Marie Combs), local final girl, has only her wits and a number of male suitors to help her.
While this may feel like a fairly original premise, the execution reads more like ‘what if Michael Myers, but he is a doctor?’. At its best, Dr. Giggles is a hybrid of Halloween and some of the more out there Elm Street sequels, and for forty minutes or so, Manny Coto’s film manages to be pretty entertaining. The third act suffers from repetitive plot beats and familiar slasher tropes, however, and the last 20 minutes are a bit of a slog.
That being said, Dr. Giggles is superior to many of the sequels from more familiar franchises that were kicking around during the early ’90s, and I’m surprised that this film inspired neither cult status or a sequel. Instead, it is destined to be consigned to the same early ’90s slasher graveyard as The People Under the Stairs, Popcorn and Pledge Night. One for completists only.