The Dentist | Movie Review

the_dentist_1996Dr. Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen), returning home unexpectedly, catches his mature (but still pleasing) wife Brooke (Linda Hoffman) in sexual, hardly equivocal, attitudes with the gardener...
The doctor, a rigorous dentist and hygienist with a strong sense of morality and prone to habitual attitudes, becomes so shocked by the betrayal that he ends up losing track of reality: with decidedly unhealthy outcomes for his clients, who see him operating in a "deviant" manner on their dental "prostheses" on a particular day of busy appointments at the dental office...
But before he unleashes himself on the hard and tiring workday, Feinstone throws a delirious party dedicated to his wedding anniversary. It is in this context that the doctor reserves the best dental care for his consort, torturing her first by extracting (without any anesthetic administration) her teeth one by one, then proceeding to amputate her tongue....
A series of small clues (stemming from the revenge consummated on the gardener and unearthed by a neighbor and his dog) lead Detective Gibbs (Ken Foree) to the doctor's mansion, where his wife Brooke is sequestered under torture, while the dentist is devoting his attentions to a young patient....

A simple story, based on the common feeling of dread derived from the experience of dental care and anxiety experienced in the waiting room of a dental office, but well brought to the screen with a number of good stylistic gimmicks, rather fierce grand-guignol effects, and very well-inspired performers (above all Corbin Bernsen, as the sadistic Dr. Feinstone).
Yuzna, long involved in the horror field first as a producer (often of films directed by Stuart Gordon), then as a director (he made his debut behind the M.d.P. with Society), confirms with this film a director who, even in times of limited (visually, but also narratively) happy-ending horror products, is able to go against the trend, keeping his coordinates in the genre clear and defined and, more unique than rare in this field, never disappointing the viewer.
Yuzna's filmography bears witness to this, starting with the interesting sequel The Return of the Living Dead 3 (clearly superior to the ironic previous installment and more splatter than the original), and continuing with the interesting Necronomicon, an episodic film of which he seals one of the best transpositions from a Lovecraft tale. Even from the world of comic books he manages to make the best of it and confencts, for the screen, his vision of Faust (yet another version of a Mephistophelean pact) that has some points of contact with The Raven.
But if The Dentist (and its sequel) can be categorized solely under the angle of a film "an end in itself" and limited to generating thrills and disgust (an intent that is moreover largely successful, and more difficult to achieve than one might think), much of Yuzna's work boasts added values that transcend the apparent meaning of the film, in order to point to relevant content, often denouncing a society (Society is its manifesto) that is now such in name only, but in fact lacking any minimum sense of "altruism and welfarism."....
Thus the MPAA (an acronym for Motion Picture Associaton of America, the U.S. censorship board) in relation to the "type" of the film: rated Rated R (equivalent of the Italian v.m 18 years old, n.d.a.) for graphic violence including scenes of dental torture, sex and obscene language.
Launch phrase for the U.S. market: "It's has been six months. Time for your check-up!"

Review by undying1

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Barbara Torretti
Barbara Torretti
Editor and moderator of the DarkVeins community. Passionate about horror cinema, I also do reviews and interviews pertaining to the film, music and art circuit.

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