As we roll closer to Halloween I’ve decided to up my game and do three double bill reviews. I’ve picked movies that won’t require me to be too verbose in my analysis, but should still be fun. First up is a 1992 Doctor Double Bill. That is I am review the comedy horror Doctor Giggles and the fantasy horror Doctor Mordrid both from 1992. The coincidences don’t stop there though as they both star an actor named Combs. They aren’t related but if you watched TV in the 1990’s you probably recognise them both.

Dr. Giggles (1992)

First up is the horror comedy slasher film “Dr. Giggles” from 1992. Directed by Manny Coto and written by Coto and Graeme Whifler. While Coto may not be the most recognizable name as a director, he has become a regular writer for horror television over the years. His credits include Dexter, American Horror Story and the Exorcist TV series. One instantly recognizable name from the 1990’s in Holly Marie Combs (One of the stars of the TV series “Charmed”) and Dr. Giggles was her first staring role in a feature film. Slashers though are more about the killer than the final girl and here we have Larry Drake playing the titular villain. Larry previously played the villainous “Durant” from the movie “Darkman” (1990).

Thirty Five years after a killing spree by Dr. Evan Rendell resulted in him being shot dead by police, his unhinged son (Drake) has escaped from an asylum and returned to the town of Moorehigh to continue his fathers work. He becomes increasingly obsessed with Jennifer Campbell (Combs), a young woman with problematic heart. The original cause of Dr. Rendell’s killing spree was that his wife’s heart was failing and he became obsessed with giving her a transplant (By killing people and cutting out their hearts). Now his son wants to replace Campbell’s heart and will kill anyone else that gets in his way.

Open Up And Say Arrrrrgh

Slasher movies swarmed the 1980’s, so by the time 1992 rolled around we’d seen pretty much everything. It wasn’t until 1996 when “Scream” added a layer of polish and a big touch of meta-references that the genre started to feel relevant again. With that in mind you can see why this film had mostly negative reviews when it came out. However, we’re a long way from the 80’s now and slashers that don’t try and drop twists, subvert expectations or be self referential suddenly feel sort of fresh.

It helps that Dr. Giggles brings a lot of personality to the table courtesy of Larry Drake’s performance. The methods of killing and the medical puns make him a memorable antagonist. It also helps to have Hollie Marie Combs as the final girl. As well as being a generally good actress, few people feel quite as wholesome as Hollie. That works well for a final girl as it makes you automatically sympathetic. The rest of the cast are somewhat below average and don’t offer anything memorable. They aren’t so bad as to take you out of the movie and most of them are just there for the kill count so this is fine.

The Last Laugh

This is a formulaic yet fun slasher movie. The villain is memorable and has a distinct personality. The final girl is actually a good and recognizable actress (Who achieved fame later) and plays the part well. The kills all fit the theme and there’s even a few good visuals along the way. Against that is a paper thin plot with more than a few holes. That doesn’t get too in the way with a comedy horror slasher so this narrowly earns a 6/10. High than I expected to give this! If you like slashers and/or comedy horror I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Doctor Mordrid (1992)

In the early 1990’s Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment became quite ambitious. In 1990 they released the movie “Robot Jox”, not a great movie but ahead of it’s time for what it tried to achieve on a modest budget. Marvel meanwhile was not in a great place with it’s movies. It wouldn’t be until 1998’s “Blade” that they started the journey to the modern era of superhero movies. Instead their most recent movies were Dolph Lundgren’s “Punisher” (1989) and 1986’s Howard The Duck. Not movies that set the world on fire. So no shock they were willing to give Band the rights to make a “Doctor Strange” movie. Sadly (Or luckily) those rights expired while this film was in pre-production and Band decided to simply change the names and move forward with it.

Anton Mordrid (Jerffrey Combs) is a wizard tasked by a being called “The Monitor” to protect the Earth from an evil Wizard called Kabal (Brian Thompson). Kabal needs to acquire the philosophers stone and a number of alchemical elements to unleash his minions from the fourth dimension. Mordrid befriends and is assisted by Samantha Hunt (Yvette Nipar), a research consultant to the police. As Kabal gets closer to his goal, Mordrid is suspected by the police of committing the crimes and he must escape custody and meet his nemesis for a final showdown at the Cosmopolitan Museum.

Master Of The Dark Arts

This is one of those horror adjacent movies, simply because it involves dark magic. In truth it’s no more a horror than Charmed or Buffy the Vampire slayer. Brian Thompson, who plays the evil antagonist “Kabal” was a regular on both of those shows and honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the Shannen Doherty or Sarah Michelle Gellar turn up. Brian has one of those combinations of faces and voices that make him perfect villain material. His acting ability was never quite enough to raise him to a higher level and so he became type cast. For a cheap horror though, he’s perfectly adequate. Jeffrey Combs however is actually a much better actor than his long run of low budget horrors and TV shows would suggest. Any time he turns up in a movie like this, the quality raises.

Despite the budget this is a well put together movie with a mostly higher quality level of acting than you may expect. But in typical Charles Band style that is only true of the main characters. Once you reach the bit parts the acting quality drops right down. Again though, not really any worse than an episode of Charmed. Most aspects of this movie are reasonable. They just about get away with the effects at the end of the movie, which were obviously minimized for the sake of the budget. The big problem is the script. It is 50% generic and 50% plain bad. The climax felt sort of random and unearned as did the relationship between the main characters.

It’s A Kind Of Magic

This is film that could have been a lot better even with the special effects limitations of the day. Effectively being a Doctor Strange movie, we have a raw concept we know can work. We have an excellent protagonist, a good leading lady and a villain that slips into the role like a comfy pair of shoes. But then we have a plot that doesn’t seem to have any plans for how to tell a story with these very fine ingredients. The movie is on the short side at a mere 74 minutes, so it’s no surprise it feels like it was just about to get into its stride when BAM it’s over. As a result, the best I can give this is a 5/10. This is basically a TV movie. If you want to see Jeffrey Combs at his best, check out “Re-Animator” (1985) instead. If you are curious about the Doctor Strange movie that never happened it may be worth watching, otherwise give it a pass.

October Challenge – Day 9

Tonight’s movie is the absolutely ridiculous “Freaked” from 1992. Ever wondered what Alex Winter did after Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey? Well, the answer is this bizarre piece of horror comedy. The movie has an all star cast including Keanue Reeves, William Sadler, Randy Quad, Megan Ward, Brooke Shields, Bobcat Goldthwait and Mr. T. This is also Alex Winter’s directorial debut, teaming up with fellow “Idiot Box” alumni Tom Stern.

This film has a freaky history. It sort of originated from “The Idiot Box”, a shorted lived sketch show on MTV staring Winter and was originally supposed to be a low budget horror staring the members of the band “The Butthole Surfers”. Somehow the film ended up being produced as a feature movie by 20th Century Fox, without the Butthole Surfers and with Winter and co-writer Stern directing (Despite neither of them having any directing experience) Fox. The studio invested $12m (Equivalent of $25m today), had a novelisation ordered, a comic book and even made action figures. Unfortunately for them though the test screenings were so bad Fox pulled it from theatres, killing it’s box office and essentially relegating it to a direct to video release.

Freak Land

Our story starts out with a framing device of the lead character, “Ricky Coogin” (Winter) being interviewed, where he tells his story. Ricky is an actor and an “American Sweetheart”, but a bit of a douche in real life. He takes an endorsement deal from a shady corporation to promote a toxic fertilizer in South America. It’s pretty clear this is a bad thing, but he doesn’t want to say no to the $5m he is offered to do it. He and his friend “Ernie” (Michael Stoyanov) fly to South America where they meet environmental activist “Julie “(Megan Ward) who they offer to give a ride to (So she can get to a protest). On the way they opt to go to see a Freak Show and this is where the story really starts.

The show is run by “Elijah C. Skuggs” who has been using this toxic fertilizer to transform people into various freaks. He captures the group and transforms them with Julie and Ernie merged together into one two headed freak and Ricky turned into an especially grotesque half freak (with the other half apparently to come when Skuggs’ get’s more of the chemical). They are then taken to where the other freaks are held captive and like the other captives forced to perform at shows. Eventually Ricky learns to like and respect the other freaks and teams up with them to escape and defeat Skuggs and the evil corporation that hired him in the first place, who were in on Skuggs’ evil deeds all along.

Freak Out

I skipped over a lot there, but none of it is really that important. The plot is fairly generic, with what makes the film unique being it’s general weirdness and of course that is never more present than in the specifics of each freak. You have a human worm, you have a wolf man (Keanue Reeves), you have a cow man (also dressed as a cowboy), you have a French diver… I mean literally just seems to be a French man in a diving suit, a man that farts fire, a human toad, eyeballs with machine guns (used as guards), Mr. T as a bearded lady (Yes, you read that right) and my personal favourite a human sock puppet, who it turns out (minor spoiler) is actually a man whose head was turned into hand, which he then wears a sock on. He is played by Bobcat Goldthwait and honestly, no one else could play him. This is the movies strength, just the absolute absurdity of it.

The film is absolute B-Movie material, but with frankly unnecessary polish. It is absolutely ludicrous and just gets sillier as it goes on. The problem is it’s only really funny on occasion and usually the humour comes from the absurdity, meaning it wears thing quickly, while the rest of the story brings little to the table and the characters have little to them outside their freak gimmick. As for the effects, well, it would be generous to describe them as cartoon like. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve effectively seen the film or at least the bits worth seeing.

Freak In

I can’t help but feel this movie actually suffered from being raised to a feature with a higher production budget. On screen the only way it really benefited was in improving the cast, but these are not roles that needed top actors and given Keanu’s relationship with Alex he would have probably done his small role anyway (Remember this is way before The Matrix moved him up to A-List status) and the other names could have been swapped out for no name actors with little problem.

Ironically a couple of years after this came out MTV started making it’s own movies and with Winter and Stern having ties with MTV I have no doubt they could have made it with them closer to their original vision (Which would have had a darker tone with more graphic violence). But alas, that didn’t happen and instead it pretty much killed off Winter’s career. Probably lucky for Keanu that his role was uncredited, indeed if not for the IMDB I wouldn’t have known it was him.

Freak Off

This is a tricky one to rate. It’s not good, but as someone that occasionally enjoys bad movies I can’t say I hated it either. It is wonderfully bizarre, it just didn’t quite work for me. Your mileage may vary with this and I can absolutely see some people getting a real kick of the movie and others saying it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen. Anyway for me it is a 4.5/10 and falls into the category of “curiosity viewing”.

Tag: 1992

1992 Horror Double Bill