Dr. Giggles

Dr. Giggles is one horror comedy that actually is laugh-out-loud funny, a fast and frequently hilarious collision of gore and gags, and a tour de force of smart, sophisticated exploitation filmmaking. It’s an exciting feature directorial debut for Manny Coto. Read full review

Dr. Giggles may not be first in its class, but you'll get your money's worth. [26 Oct 1992]

Yes, it's junk. But it's funny junk, and it seems even to suggest a filmmaking intelligence (when was the last time you saw a shot from inside a human mouth as a giant tongue depressor closes in?) [26 Oct 1992, p.C6]

More care in scripting and fewer cheap yocks could have resulted in a viable new paranoid horror myth well-timed to America’s ongoing crisis in health care. Read full review

Make no mistake, I'm not saying Dr. Giggles is a cinematic watershed or anything like that, but it does manage to mix humor and horror in a way that very few films ever manage successfully. Read full review

The screenplay is stitched together from variations on cliches used by or about the medical community. Read full review

This Dr. Giggles has a lot of hearts and no brain. Read full review

The hypodermic needle, which has been keeping a pretty low profile in the movies, deserves a better comeback than it gets in Dr. Giggles. So does the medical profession: Even those who still believe in it will find little to recoil from in this un-hellacious tale of a mad doctor's mad son returning to his small hometown to make murderous house calls. [26 Oct 1992, p.27]

The only thing original in Dr. Giggles - about a psychotic doctor (Larry Drake) who escapes a mental institution to resume his belovedly departed father's explicitly unhealthy rampage of serial killings - is the freakish instruments that the pun-filled physician totes around in his bag of dirty tricks. Read full review

A cliched throwback to the early 1980s slasher genre, DR. GIGGLES transplants the heart of a NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel--wisecracking killer--into the body of HALLOWEEN--psycho killer returns to his hometown to slash anew--but lacks the wit of the former or the tension of the latter. Read full review

Dr. Giggles strains for the kind of charnel house humor that once was the glory of 1950s horror comics like Tales from the Crypt. But Coto's imagination, like Dr. Giggle's rusty scalpels, isn't all that sharp, and the picture soon peters out into a flat, predictable series of stomach-churning unpleasantries. [26 Oct 1992, p.5C]

The film simply plods through an endless list of horror movie cliches and accumulating contrivances. For long-suffering viewers, Dr. Giggles evolves into Audience Yawns. [27 Oct 1992, p.D05]

If the film has any value at all it's as an example to illustrate the point that even a mediocre horror movie requires a certain amount of inspiration. At least a sense of fun, a little life and enthusiasm. Dr. Giggles is put together strictly by the numbers. It aims low -- at the floor -- and misses. [24 Oct 1992, p.C3]

At this late date, the rules of the adolescent slice-‘n’-dice genre have codified into ritual (teens + sex = death), suggesting that those who rent this may have bigger problems than just bad taste. Read full review