Movies
Writer Reveals That His Original ‘Dr. Giggles’ Script Ended Up Becoming This 2005 Horror Movie
Before The Dentist and The Ice Cream Man there was Dr. Giggles, starring the late Larry Drake as a sadistic mental hospital escapee who plays the role of a doctor and goes on a bloody rampage. The 1992 film spawned a comic book series but never a sequel, and writer Bryce Gibson recently made it his mission to find out why a franchise never came of the film.
The simple answer there is that Dr. Giggles didn’t make a whole lot of money, but Bryce’s interview with co-writer Graeme Whifler for Nightmare on Film Street revealed some pretty interesting things about the project. For starters, Whifler’s original screenplay was almost entirely reworked, the ’92 movie bearing little resemblance to his script, titled Mr. Giggles.
“Mr. Giggles bares only the vaguest similarity to the movie, Dr. Giggles. The character names and the notion of surgery are all that survived,” Whifler revealed to the site.
Now here’s where things get really interesting. Over 10 years later, Whifler turned his original Mr. Giggles script into a horror movie he directed, titled Neighborhood Watch (aka Deadly End) and released in 2005! In that film, written and directed by Whifler…
“Bob (Jack Huston) and Wendi (Pell James) have just moved to a quiet street in a new town and look forward to starting their new life. An intense — and hulking — next-door neighbor, Adrien (Nick Searcy), seems friendly but hides a dark secret. Inside his home, Adrien lives in pure madness practicing self-mutilation and harboring a love for poisons. Bob and Wendi will soon learn what true fear really is.”
You can check out the trailer for Neighborhood Watch below. If you’re curious to know what the original iteration of Dr. Giggles was supposed to be like, track down that movie!
Be sure to read the full article on Nightmare on Film Street, which is very fascinating.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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