Harefooted Halloween: The Dentist

What I Liked: Corbin Bernsen (Major League) plays the deranged dentist Dr. Alan Feinstone and he delivers one of the most over the top mega acting performances I’ve ever seen.  From minute one he’s totally pissed about a stain the dry cleaners didn’t get out of his pink dress shirt and then yells at his wife for not noticing.  But he’ll turn on a dime and be friendly and seemingly in a good mood like when he’s chatting with one of his patients.  This guy is such an asshole where he constantly berates his poor staff, never thinks he’s in the wrong and it’s suggested he's doing something shady with his taxes as evidenced by an IRS agent (Earl Boen (Terminators)) snooping around.  But then on top of that he has hallucinations about everything around him being filthy (decaying teeth, greasy hands, etc.) and he sees himself as the only person standing between a clean pure world and a dirty rotting one.  A hard break from reality ensues after he catches his wife (Linda Hoffman (Face/Off)) blowing the pool guy.  Shit escalates rapidly in his mind to the point where he’s gotta kill everyone in his path.  I don’t know if Bernsen’s acting job is good necessarily because it’s very aggressive and kind of all over the map but it sure is entertaining.  For a low budget B horror picture like this where there isn’t a lot of nuance and mostly extremes of emotions it works.  I do like that he’s tortured by his own thoughts and detestable feelings at first about his wife cheating on him and then simply runs with the zaniness because he can’t control himself any longer.  But he’s not a sympathetic character at all.  He’s a monster who not only tortures his victims using anything he can find in his practice but he also sexually assaults a woman and holds his dental students at gun point ordering them to extract all the teeth in their volunteer patients’ mouths.  Over the course of two days he ruins a lot of people’s lives.

The effects are fairly decent for what they had to work with.  There are a few busted up mouths that Feinstone creates through pulling teeth, drilling, etc. and those are sorta cartoonishly grotesque but that’s the kinda movie we’re dealing with.  The real centerpiece is a model of the inside of a mouth effects master Kevin Yagher (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2-4) designed as a favor (he was out of their price range).  So they get to show nice closeups of teeth getting destroyed, a hypodermic needle piercing the gums and shit like that.

As silly as this film can get they do deliver on a dentist using the tools of his trade to maim and murder folks.  And the filmmakers were smart enough to throw in some other methods of destruction to keep you on your toes.

What I Didn’t Like: Pacing is an issue.  While we do eventually get to witness the dentist related carnage we all came for it takes a long while for it to happen.  It’s more than halfway through the runtime before Feinstone rips out a perfectly healthy tooth.  We get plenty of wacky shit before that though like Feinstone fantasizing about confronting the pool guy and his wife about their affair in the grossest way possible.  Bernsen’s performance is what makes you wanna stick with the story to see what else this fucking lunatic is gonna do.

Most of the characters are dicks.  Feinstone’s wife, the pool guy, his neighbor, Mark Ruffalo shows up as a slimy fashion model agent, they’re all jerks but the biggest piece of shit (besides Feinstone) is the IRS agent.  He’s not only lewd and obnoxious but he strikes a deal with Feinstone to make the tax investigation go away if he provides some free dental work.  That’s so fucking stupid.  So of course he gets his mouth fucked with pretty badly.

The score is a cheap toss off with bad synth strings and stabs.

Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) plays the cop investigating Feinstone’s trail of devastation and he feels wasted here.  It’s not a very big role and there isn’t anything special for him to do.  Oh well.

Overall Impressions: It may take a little while to kill people via dentistry but they definitely get there.  Feinstone’s psychosis triggered by his wife fooling around with another man wasn’t something I expected and I guess it’s a fine excuse for why he’s suddenly a maniac armed with nitrous oxide and a mouth clamp.

Fear of the dentist is extremely common and a natural to exploit for a horror movie.  Even if you don’t have that fear (I personally don’t) tooth pain is something we’ve all experienced so in theory the film should appeal to a wide audience.  However, between Bernsen’s exaggerated acting, the lower budget and not ideal pacing this is gonna be a hard sell for most folks.

Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon are a dynamic duo that brought us such revered classics as Re-Animator and From Beyond so if you’re into those this is probably worth checking out.  It’s nowhere near as imaginative or memorable as those though.  It might be good to watch before your next dentist appointment though.  Could make the visit more exciting.