Linda Hoffman in The Dentist (1996)

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This is not one you want to show people who are already afraid of the dentist. The Dentist a nasty little horror movie that delivers exactly what the title suggests: A psychotic dentist who does just awful things to people and their teeth. I can't believe some of the things that go on in this movie...and I’ve seen virtually all of the Troma flicks!

Picture a close-up of a dentist's drill. It's whining and screeching and spinning and it starts to get real close to an open mouth full of teeth. Then imagine the drill just completely mangling and destroying said teeth. There's dust and enamel and some really upsetting sound effects. Sound like fun?

If you said yes, then The Dentist is for you. If you said no, congratulations; you're sane. Corbin Bernsen takes another giant leap away from anything resembling respectability by starring as a crazy dentist who goes more than a little loony when he finds out his wife is shtupping the pool guy. He mangles her face up pretty bad, and also dispatches the horny pool guy in rather graphic fashion. Then things turn real ugly.

The poor schlub, it turns out, is also being hassled by the IRS. Add that to the fact that his patients never floss AND there will probably never be a Major League 4, and what you get is one unhappy Corbin. His performance here is pretty damn funny, only that I don't think it was entirely meant to be.

The Dentist (and its sequel, the cleverly-titled The Dentist 2) are produced by our old buddies Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon, who have previously entertained with fun goopy stuff like Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond, and Fortress. Unfortunately, this one is just too much. There's a fundamental difference between watching a person get eaten by a horny monster from another dimension and watching a dentist's drill gnaw out someone's teeth. It’s called distance; we all go to the dentist sometime!

Look away when you hear the drill, and you may find something to enjoy in this occasionally entertaining horror movie. Chock full of terrible dialogue, wooden performances, unknown actors, and a lot of those pathetic "murder one-liners" that seem to be so prevalent in slasher movies these days. I'd like to meet a dentist, who liked this movie, so I could run away from him.

Nudity Report: Linda Hoffman offers a few early tit shots as she’s fondling the pool boy, and a few other bits in which she’s clad in a clingy bathing suit. Enjoy it while you can, though, cuz she gets all her teeth yanked out before it’s all over…and that’s never sexy.

IMDB Summary: 494 IMDb users rate this one at 4.6/10.

Box Office: If this one ever hit the multiplexes, I must have sneezed and missed it.

DVD Info: Theatrical trailer, Widescreen presentation


Written by: Scott Weinberg