Dr. Giggles (1992)

Directed by Manny Coto. Starring Holly Marie Combs, Larry Drake, Glenn Quinn, Richard Bradford, Keith Diamond, Sara Melson, Cliff De Young, John Vickery, Michelle Johnson, Darin Heames, Deborah Tucker, Nancy Fish, Doug E. Doug. [R]

Drake is the whole show here, playing an escaped mental patient known as “Dr. Giggles” (though he never earned a medical license; apparently one can simply “inherit” the title from one’s slightly less loony father), and before you can say, “The doctor is in(sane),” he embarks on a murderous rampage through a small town, picking off lots of young, horny teens and dim-bulb adults. Freddie Krueger-style wisecracks aplenty from the murderous M.D.—its corny sense of humor is about the only thing to set it apart from a hundred slasher flicks before it—but only a couple of the kills are all that creative, and at least one (the giant Band-aid) is ridiculous even by these low standards. Pedestrian direction and an uninspired, by-the-numbers screenplay underpin the negative prognosis for this second-rate slice-’n’-dice effort.

30/100