Review by Diana Thoren

I met Corbin Bernsen when I worked at a music store in the mall in the early 90s. I was trying to explain to a customer that there was no such thing as German World Music. We had a section for German music and a section for World music, but no German World Music, especially on cassette. I repeated this information over and over but the customer just wasn’t getting it. I finally managed to extricate myself, turned around, and looked right into the face of Corbin Bernsen. He rolled his eyes and smiled to commiserate over what a dumbass that other customer was. I shrugged and said, “We get all kinds.” He asked me where he could find Ravi Shankar on cassette. It was then that I decided Corbin Bernsen is super rad, and now I tell everyone how tight we are.

In “Dentist,” my good friend Corbin Bernsen stars as Dr. Feinstone, a well-to-do dentist with his own successful practice, a big house, and a hot blonde wife. Dr. Feinstone is quite fastidious, and has a thing about germs and decay. The house is spotless, and his attire is spotless. He likes everything a certain way, and gets a little nutty when things aren’t perfect.

This particular morning, Dr. Feinstone discovers a stain on one of his shirts, then gets a phone call from the IRS, then finds his wife giving the pool boy a blowjob. He follows the pool boy to a neighbor’s house where he is attacked by her dog and shoots it in order to escape. He eventually arrives at work, and continues to get progressively angrier throughout the day as the IRS agent pops in to visit, patients reschedule, and his staff gives him a hard time. Dr. Feinstone begins to see his cheating wife’s face in the faces of his patients and office staff, and starts to exact revenge on them.

I expected lots of campy, gory, retarded fun, but this is really more like a dental version of “Falling Down.” It’s more serious than I expected, but it does have some good one-liners such as, “You can’t hide from your Dentist,” and “Decay never sleeps, so neither do we!”

Brian Yuzna directs. I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen anything else he’s directed, unless he did a stint on Miami Vice; this movie is so bright and pastel and soft that I expected Crockett and Tubbs to arrive at any moment. In addition, Mr. Yuzna uses cockeyed “Batman” camera angles to denote everything from “scary” to “funny” to “dude walking down the stairs,” which started off amusing but gradually grew very annoying. I think he might be allergic to tripods.

The special effects were okay, though I think they are weak for 1996. Again, I think the blown-out soft lighting sort of killed the tension and made the props look silly. If “Dentist” had been directed by, say, Rob Zombie, with the dark moody lighting, grainy film and abrupt cutaways, we may have had something here. But the setting is just too happy and distracting. And my good friend Corbin Bernsen needs to stop looking directly at the camera by accident. I counted at least four times.

One very bright spot for me was Big Ken Foree (“Dawn of the Dead,” “Devil’s Rejects,” and I don’t know what the hell “Black Santa’s Revenge” is, but I’m going to go put it in Netflix right now) playing the head cop in charge of finding out who shot that dog in the beginning of the movie. He could have had a little more screen time, but he put the time he was given to good use.

Ken Foree

“Dentist” is an okay way to kill 93 minutes. However, it’s also kind of like actually spending 93 minutes in a dentist’s office. I think it’s probably safe to say that if you don’t like going to the dentist, you should probably avoid watching “Dentist.” As for me, I’ve got “Dentist 2: Brace Yourself” coming up next in the queue, starring my good friend Corbin Bernsen. IMDB rates it 3 out of 10 stars. Hoo boy.