Don't be scared. He's only a dentist.
No
one likes going to the dentist. In fact, I know people who avoid it like their
very lives depend on it. After seeing the bombastic grotesquery on display in
Brian Yuzna’s The Dentist, one would be hard-pressed to call their fears
“silly” or “irrational”—though the movie surely is both of those things—but he
has so much fun using our fear of the drill against us, it’s no wonder that
this film’s creators also brought us Re-Animator. Yuzna and his effects
team handle the gallons of gore and disgustingness with the same glee of a
little kid finding a new toy that shoots projectiles.
The
script by Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli exploits every awful daydream you’ve
ever had in the waiting room of your dentist office. Anyone who has never had a
root canal would probably imagine one of Yuzna’s monstrously inhumane close up
shots of teeth being shredded into dust by a drill, while a tongue flails about
like an ineffective wimp trying to save his friend from a bully. Think about
the dread in the pit of your stomach when you called into the dental clinic
with a throbbing pain in your jaw, wondering, “What if he has to pull it? Will
it hurt? Do they just use pliers?” I assure you the process is nothing like
what we see the eponymous antagonist perform on his philandering wife, but it
may have you think the string tied to a doorknob trick is a better option.
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| "Come here. Let me gum you to death." |
Yuzna
and his writers are so tapped into the vein that carries the blood to our
molars that their premise alone might have been enough for a successful horror
film. But if that wasn’t enough, they managed to find the perfect actor for
this role. Known best at the time for playing the impish Arnie Becker on L.A.
Law—and of course starring in Major League as the douchebag short
stop, Roger Dorn—Corbin Bernsen was not the ideal choice for a horror film.
This is one instance where the gamble on casting against type certainly paid
off. Bernsen is nothing short of a revelation here. He is absurd, funny, over
the top, downright terrifying, and even a little sympathetic, but most
important of all, we can tell that he gets it, that he understands the script
in his bones, feeling out exactly what this completely off-kilter killer needs.
It takes a special performance to get just the right awkward laugh from an
audience after shooting a dog in the face.
As
far as the story goes, it’s pretty much irrelevant—it’s all at the service of
setting up situations for Bernsen to go Jason Voorhees with his instruments. He
plays Dr. Alan Feinstone, DDS, a successful man in all the ways that sent Kevin
Spacey into the arms of an underage cheerleader, and his wife is just as
unfaithful. When he witnesses her adultery firsthand—on their wedding anniversary,
no less—Feinstone suffers a psychotic break. Suddenly every woman who sits in
his chair is his cheating wife, and every guy is the strutting pool boy. His
clientele doesn’t much appreciate his new bedside manner, and on one occasion
the good doctor gets a falcon punch from none other than a young Mark Ruffalo.
But then again, he’s always angry.
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| "Thanks to modern medicine, I can't feel a thing." |
Accompanied
by an excellent synthesized score from frequent John Carpenter collaborator
Alan Howarth, The Dentist feels like a playful and rambunctious 80s
slasher classic, and yet it’s also a full-blooded 90s gem, bursting with the
middle class angst that would come to define the decade with later titles like Fight
Club and American Beauty. I suppose that’s what makes Bernsen’s
performance as the titular character so effective: In the beginning, he comes
off like many a person we’ve all met, so despite the bloody tongue planted
firmly in cheek, it’s unsettling when he goes off. We find ourselves waiting
with baited breath for these poor bastards in his chair to say just the wrong
thing to trigger that look on his face. When Bernsen bares his bottom row of
teeth, throws a glance at his tray of surgically sharp goodies, we know it’s
game on. I hope you remembered to floss.
-Blake O. Kleiner