The Dentist (1996)

An extremely successful dentist goes off the deep end after he catches his wife cheating on him.

Director:

Brian Yuzna

Writers:

Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon

Stars:

Corbin Bernsen, Linda Hoffman, Michael Stadvec

3 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Corbin Bernsen	...	Dr. Alan Feinstone
Linda Hoffman	...	Brooke Feinstone
Michael Stadvec	...	Matt
Ken Foree	...	Detective Gibbs
Tony Noakes	...	Detective Sunshine
Molly Hagan	...	Jessica
Patty Toy	...	Karen
Jan Hoag	...	Candy
Virginya Keehne	...	Sarah
Earl Boen	...	Marvin Goldblum
Christa Sauls	...	April Reign
Mark Ruffalo	...	Steve Landers
Lise Simms	...	Paula Roberts
Joanne Baron	...	Mrs. Saunders
Brian McLaughlin	...	Jody

Storyline

Dr. Feinstone has everything, a beautiful wife and a successful career in dentistry, but, when he discovers his wife in an affair, he realizes that behind every clean, white surface lies the stench of decay. Having gone insane, he enacts cruel dental torture on his patients.

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Plot Keywords:

married man | blond hair | sadistic psychopath | dentist | graphic violence | 

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Taglines:

From the Creators of Re-Animator...

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Genres:

Horror

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for graphic violence including scenes of dental torture, sexuality and some language

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

18 October 1996 (USA)

Also Known As:

El dentista

Filming Locations:

115 North 1St Street, Burbank, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$2,500,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Image Organization, Trimark Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

For the "Brooke effect", which is the horrifying aftermath of Finestone's wife after he has pulled all of her teeth out, the production needed to hire somebody who specializes in character make-up. Steve Johnson's X/FX was high on the list, but because of his workload he wasn't able to work it into his schedule. Luckily, Christopher Allen Nelson (a Johnson alum), who had done a stunning zombie creation for Brian Yuzna's Return of the Living Dead III (1993), was available, and came aboard. Chris had just come off of a horribly abusive situation working on the new "Tales from the Crypt" movie and wanted a chance to prove himself again. The catch with Chris, was that he was in the process of moving back to Los Angeles from Canada. He would be able to create the effect in Canada and then fly out to apply it. This would require a lot of long-distance phone calls and a fickle shipping system that had many of the supplies trapped in customs in transit to him.

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Goofs

(at around 11 mins) The clipboard on the side, by Jessica, vanishes and reappears.

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Quotes

Candy: Sarah, you're up next!

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Crazy Credits

In memory of David Diaz.

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Connections

References Schramm: Into the Mind of a Serial Killer (1993)

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Soundtracks

Tristan und Isolde
(uncredited)
Music by Richard Wagner

User Reviews

Definitely a B-movie, but one of the more enjoyable ones...

When I first heard of this movie, I naturally just wrote it off as one of those 'formula' scary movies... you know, find one thing that a lot of people are afraid of(spiders, heights, closed rooms... and, in this case, dentists). But it was actually better than I expected. I does have some genuine scares, and the mood of the film is thoroughly creepy and unpleasant. Even though I've never been afraid to go to the dentist, I found the torture scenes to be quite painful and sometimes even hard to sit through. In fact, I might have problems the next time I go to a check-up. The plot is surprisingly original and interesting. The pacing was good... I wasn't really bored during any part of the movie. The acting is where the movie fails to surpass the low expectations towards the movie... it is exactly as bad as you'd imagine, and sometimes worse. The characters are also kind of stereotypical... there is just about every single kind of nervous girl with dental problems that you can imagine. The script also has quite a few problems... suddenly, more and more people show up to see the dentist. And even though the first couple of patients come out crying and in various states of unpleasantness, the rest of them are still (somewhat) eager to get in the chair. I did like the slow descent into madness of the dentist, Dr. Feinstone. That was surprisingly good. Normally movies like this have little to no explanation of the killers motivation, but this one had a somewhat good one. The cinematography was kind of experimental, like the camera crew and/or the director of photography wasn't sure what angles they wanted, and just threw in anything they could think of. As a result, some of it looks good, and some of it looks very first-year-of-film-school. The gore effects range from good to mediocre. I could tell how many of the effects were done, but some of them had a good... uh... effect. There was relatively little gore, which came as a surprise... most of the scares are achieved through suggestion and the eerie mood of the film. I found it to be a nice diversity when the kills were done without dental equipment... this only happens a few times through the movie, but when it does, it's a good change of pace. The film has a few good qualities, and about as many poor qualities. However, the latter group can be ignored by being a little forthcoming and looking at the good, entertaining stuff in the film. There's a good amount of attractive girls in the film, and the scares are reasonably good. I recommend this to fans of B-movies, horror flicks and possibly of the director or one or more of the actors. I urge anyone who's scared of dentists to think twice about the film, though... it might turn them entirely off to dentists. Everyone else, consider watching this movie. It's surprisingly entertaining and not as bad as many claim it is. 6/10