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.