Dr. Giggles

Gore fans — and no one else — may get something out of "Dr. Giggles," which is every bit as sophomoric as the TV ads make it appear, and a lot more gore-filled than the audience can possibly anticipate.

The lowlight comes in a morgue scene, where the title character, shown in a flashback as a young boy, makes a unique, bloody, disgusting entrance. Suffice it to say that someone probably came up with this wretched scene and then commissioned a script to be written around it — by people who've seen too many movies.

That would explain the striking plot similarities to "Halloween" — a hulking psychotic killer escapes from an asylum and makes his way back to his hometown to get revenge.

And, late in the film, a variation on, of all things, the house of mirrors climax from Orson Welles' "The Lady From Shanghai"?

Not to mention any number of "creative killing" moments that seem lifted from the many cheap imitations of "Halloween" that dominated the early '80s?

Larry Drake, best-known for his role as the lovable, retarded Bennie on "L.A. Law," here stars in the title role as the killer. When "Dr. Giggles" was a boy, his father, a small town physician, apparently hacked up a number of locals looking for the right heart to use for an experimental transplant on his dying wife. But the neighbors didn't like their loved ones being donated to the cause, so they stoned him to death. The young son, however, disappeared. Now, as they say, he's baaack.

Co-writer/director Manny Coto, in his big-screen debut, expends most of his imagination on how many medical tools — ranging from thermometers to tongue depressers to huge hypodermics — can be used in gruesome ways as murder weapons. And we mustn't forget the juvenile puns and one-liners spoken by the title character as he dispatches his victims, a la Freddy Krueger.

As usual, those victims are random and even the film's most heroic character gets it in the end. In fact, few of the victims here seem to deserve their fate and we have the usual double/triple ending just to build gore on gore and maintain the sense that this stupid movie will never get over.

In the end, the film is not left open for a sequel — that's something. But if it makes money, you can be sure they'll figure out a way to come back with "Dr. Giggles II."

"Dr. Giggles" is rated R for considerable violence and gore, sex, nudity, profanity and vulgarity.