DR. GIGGLES (1992)
Directed by Mann Coto
Starring Larry Drake and Holly Marie Combs
Highly entertaining, gory, big-budget psycho film from Universal Pictures, featuring Drake (of "L.A. Law" fame) as the homicidal Dr. Giggles who, as a boy, helped his father kill patients in search for a heart for his ailing wife. Now, as an adult, he's carrying on in the spirit of his Dad and killing for the hell of it.
In a very cool scene, the film opens with the inside of a human blood stream, then shows a heart being cut into, to reveal Dr. Giggles performing the operation. It turns out he's killing a staff member of the mental institution where he's been locked up most his adult life. Of course he's pitted against a handful of high school kids, killing off the ones that aren't virginal like the protagonist.
Dr. Giggles' wisecracks are often funny and the film has a fast pace. This is high quality horror. Characters are well developed and the killing scenes—all of which involve medical devices—well orchestrated. One great shot has the camera viewing Dr. Giggles from inside a victim's wide open mouth. One particularly gruesome scene has Dr. Giggles as a boy cutting his way out of his mother's corpse. His father—to hide him after police realized what they were doing to patients—had sewn the boy up in his mother's corpse!
Universal probably hoped to spring this off into a franchise, but it wasn't successful enough. Still, it gets an A for effort.