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Released by: Vestron Video/Lionsgate
Released on: January 24th, 2023.
Director: Brian Yuzna
Cast: Corbin Bernsen, Linda Hoffman, Ken Foree, Jillian McWhirter, Jeff Doucette, Clint Howard
Year: 1996/1998
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The Dentist Collection – Movie Review:
Lionsgate brings the two The Dentist films, starring Corbin Bernsen, to Blu-ray in North America for the first time in a pretty stacked special edition two-disc set.
The Dentist:
The first film, directed by Brian Yuzna and released in 1996, was written by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and Charles Finch and it starts Bernsen as Dr. Alan Feinstone. On the surface, Alan would seem to have it all. He’s a successful dentist in Los Angeles with a very lucrative practice. He lives in a massive, beautiful house with his equally beautiful wife, Brooke (Linda Hoffman). When Alan kisses his wife goodbye before work and notices some grease on the back of her arm and the taste of cigarettes on her lips, however, he comes to the conclusion that she’s been messing around with Matt (Michael Stadvec), the hunky new pool boy hired to work on their swimming pool.
As Alan gets his work day started and decides not to take his medicine for the day, he beings to have trouble separating fantasy from reality. After he puts a lovely model client named April Reign (Christa Sauls) under to do some work, he's caught by his assistant Karen (Patty Toy) and then accosted by April’s manager, Steve Landers (Mark Ruffalo). Soon enough he’s ranting about filth and dental hygiene, drilling into teeth without anesthetic and not only killing off patients but his hygienist assistants as well!
Meanwhile, a teenager named Sarah (Virginya Keehne), who wants nothing more than to have her braces off, keeps getting her appointment bumped, giving Detective Gibbs (Ken Foree) and Detective Sunshine (Tony Noakes) time to maybe, if they’re lucky, save her life.
“Three times a day. No candy. SAY IT!”
Darkly comedic and fairly twisted, The Dentist is pretty effective in how it plays off of the very common fear a lot of people have of getting dental work done. There’s a level of trust that is hard to implement when someone you probably don’t know all that well is digging around inside your mouth and doing things to you that you can’t see, let alone putting you under to do it. This movie plays off of that very well and at times, the picture gets pretty tense. The filmmakers are also savvy enough to use things like the noise of a drill or the suction of a spit cup to get under our skin a bit.
Yuzna’s direction is solid. He paces the movie nicely and isn’t afraid to throw in some decent gore effects when the story calls for it. Bernsen proves to be the perfect choice for the lead. He comes really close to chewing the scenery here and there, but never quite crosses the line into camp. He’s plays ‘crazy’ really well. Supporting work from Foree as the cop, Hoffman as the unfaithful wife and Keehne as the innocent girl who gets caught up in all of this is also pretty good. It’s never an especially realistic film, a lot of it is very over the top, but it works really well.
The Dentist 2:
The sequel, made two years after the first movie, isn’t as strong as the original but it is still worth seeing. The movie sees Bernsen reprise his role as Dr. Feinstone. After the events in the first movie, he's been locked in a mental institution but, of course, manages to escape and even to kill his doctor on the way out.
Feinstone makes his way to the small town of Paradise where he takes up the alias of Mr. Caine and rents a home from a lovely local lady named Jamie Devers (Jillian McWhirter). As he gets used to his new digs, he decides he needs a checkup, but his appointment doesn't go well and he snaps, killing the dentist and essentially taking over his business and his clients.
When Feinstone sees Jamie, who he is crushing on, out with another man, his already damaged psyche shatters even harder, and he starts losing it and is once again having trouble separating fantasy from reality and killing people in some pretty grisly ways.
If you liked the first movie, you’ll like this second entry as it really is more of the same. Yuzna keeps the pacing solid and the movie throws in some genuinely unexpected bits to keep you intrigued (the bit with the cockroach is a prime example). It’s also amusing seeing Clint Howard pop up in the movie as ‘Mr. Toothache,’ and Linda Hoffman shows up in this one again, reprising her role from the first movie.
The movie works on the same level as the first one, again seeing Bernsen dial things all the way up and with some decent gore and nasty dental-related damage being done to the variety of cannon fodder characters that are unfortunate enough to find themselves under the care of Bernsen’s character.
The Dentist Collection – Blu-ray Review:
The two films in Dentist Collection arrive on Blu-ray on two 25GB discs in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer with the first movie framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. Picture quality on the first movie leaves a lot to be desired. Framing is a little bit tight and the image is smeary looking. Detail is soft and texture is lacking. This was clearly taken from an existing, older master and it doesn’t rise to the levels that a good Blu-ray should rise to, even if it does look better than a DVD in that regard. The second movie, which is framed at 1.85.1, looks a fair bit better but it’s still less than perfect as the image is still definitely on the soft side. Colors and skin tones look a little better but, just like the first movie, this sequel would have absolutely benefitted from a better transfer.
Each film gets a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo track in the films’ native English language tracks with optional English SDH, standard English subtitles and Spanish subtitles offered. No problems to note with the audio. Dialogue is always clean and properly balanced. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion or any audible sibilance. The score has some decent range to it and the sound effects, especially the tooth drilling noises, are pretty effective.
Extras on the disc are pretty decent in this set. The first movie’s supplements start off with an audio commentary with director Brian Yuzna and special makeup effects supervisor Anthony C. Ferrante that covers pretty much all the bases you’d want it to cover – the script, who did what behind the scenes, creating some of the effects set pieces, working with the cast and crew, locations and more. The disc also includes an isolated score that has an audio interview with composer Alan Howarth and director of photography Levie Isaacks worked in when the music isn’t playing. Discussion here includes scoring the film and the specifics of putting certain shots together.
There are also some good interviews here, starting with The Doctor Is Insane, which is an interview with Corbin Bernsen running sixteen minutes. He speaks here about getting the part, thoughts on his character, how he feels about the movie and getting along with the cast and crew. Medical Malpractice is an interview with co-writer Dennis Paoli running fourteen minutes and going over putting the story together, working with Gordon and Finch and where some of the ideas for the movie came from. Mouths Of Madness interviews with special makeup effects supervisor Anthony C. Ferrante and makeup effects artist J.M. Logan for seventeen minutes. As you’d expect, this piece goes over creating the different effects set pieces as well as specific memories of the shoot and working with the different cast and crew members involved in the production.
Closing out disc one is a trailer for the feature, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection options.
Extras on disc two include another audio commentary with Brian Yuzna and Anthony C. Ferrante that is once again worth listening to as it proves to be quite informative. They go over the details of creating the sequel, bringing Bernsen back, effects work and more. Again, we also get an alternate audio track containing isolated score selections and audio interviews with Alan Howarth and editor Christopher Roth that goes into some detail about scoring the film and cutting the picture.
Jamie’s New Neighbor is an interview with actress Jillian McWhirter running fourteen minutes and covering how she came to get the part, what it was like on set, getting along with the cast and thoughts on the film. A Tale of Two Dentists is an interview with producer Pierre David running ten minutes that details how he came to produce the movie, why he wanted to get involved with the sequel and working with the rest of the crew. Mouths of Madness: The Dentist 2 interviews Anthony C. Ferrante and J.M. Logan again, this time for ten minutes, in a featurette that goes into detail on the specific effects work that they created for this second film.
Closing out disc two is a trailer for the feature, a still gallery, menus and chapter selection options.
The first pressing of this release comes packaged with a slipcover.
The Dentist Collection - The Final Word:
The Vestron Video Blu-ray release of The Dentist Collection won’t blow you away with super crisp, high definition presentations but it does present the two Yuzna-directed films looking better than they have before and with some genuinely good supplemental content. The movies themselves are pretty solid, thanks to strong direction and some great acting from Corbin Bernsen.