Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

71st Kill

I know horror in the 90's gets a bad rap, and I'm not going to claim it's my favourite decade for the genre, but I do feel there's a certain aesthetic to films of this era which feels natural for us all to have reacted against in the aughts, but which feels natural to start to appreciate now, if you know what I mean? Some things need time to ferment in the social subconsciousness - a distancing from that specific zeitgeist helps to be able to detach from it and then appreciate it for what it is. Even if part of its appeal is how gauche it is.

90's horror films from before 1996, when Scream appeared and kickstarted a new wave of imitative slasher films, are kind of interesting in how they show the genre somewhat flailing and trying to find something fresh to say. Not to say that Dr Giggles is particularly fresh or novel, but it was one attempt to establish a new identity for slashers. At this point, slashers were a joke, so Dr Giggles is in on it - but rather than take Scream's meta approach, it just exaggerates all the sub-genre's silliest tropes, and riffs on a specific high concept: what if a slasher villain acted like a doctor? That's about it, really.

Doesn't sound very promising, but against all odds, I thought this movie was a total blast. The premise really is incredibly simplistic, but at least it doesn't fart-ass about trying to validate its own existence. It takes about 30 seconds for Giggles to show up and start killing people and it never lets up for the entire film - he kills, he makes a bad medical pun, repeat. But these horror beats are so much fun - the film goes full throttle on the mean-spiritedness, and the gags (by which I mean the kill scenes) are imaginative and well executed with great practical effects.

Larry Drake is pretty fantastic - he manages to make this ludicrous character supremely watchable. I was genuinely gagging for another dumb kill scene as soon as one was done and the film never left me hanging. This really is the extent of the film art experience here, but who cares when it's this much fun? I loved his giggle and the way he delivered those goofy lines - this is goofy horror comedy but it's fine grade goofy horror comedy - I got the feeling this is the movie Charles Band has been trying to make for forty years and has never really pulled off to anywhere near this level of success.

The gruesome places this film happily ventures into was a bit of a surprise - whether you find that a pleasant surprise or not is down to how fucked up you are, I suppose. Meanwhile, it's such a great time capsule of what people thought was cool in the 90's , it has anthropological value too. These teens are like cast-offs from Hackers - it really feels like the film is deliberately taking the piss but given how early in the decade it was made, that seems unlikely.

If you want a dumb, fun horror movie, this is highly recommended.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

Don't you miss horror films that had such a lack of a sense of embarrassment that they'd do stuff like this? Dr Giggles sneaks into a woman's house and shoves a nasal probe into her nose and right up into her brain (nice practical effect with a fully prosthetic head), and then looks into the viewfinder and says "Ah, I see what the problem is" LMAO. But I think the Killie has to go to the woman eating ice cream, when the good doctor says something like "Dear oh dear, too much fat and sugar in your diet" and then shoves a stomach pump down her throat to pump out all the food and then... keep going. It's so fucking disgusting, you gotta admire it.