This week’s voyage into all things sketchy takes us to a place that makes most of us shudder anyway, even without the context of a sketchy film.  I hope you’ve been brushing, kids, because for today’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema, I bring you Brian Nuzna’s 1996 sketch sleeper, The Dentist.

Corbin Bernsen is Dr. Alan Feinstein, a rather well-to-do and successful dentist with a picture perfect life: a thriving practice, a beautiful home, and a gorgeous blonde wife.  We meet Dr. Feinstein in a bright white room, as he goes about his dentistry with imaginary tools and begins to weave his macabre tale of betrayal and undoing.

Intensified by strikingly dramatic cinematography, we are taken into the psyche of the good dentist as he happens upon the horrifying scene of his wife having a rather graphic romp with the hired help (who is remarkably covered in mud, which is surprising, for a pool boy) on none other than the day of their wedding anniversary.

Wrought with rage and an appetite for vengeance, Dr. Feinstein takes us through imaginary scenarios in which he exacts his revenge on both wife and boy toy, and we begin to witness the depraved potential our highly-regarded dentist actually possesses.  But he waits – he waits for his moment, leaving the two lovebirds unaware, for the time being.

It must not be easy to go about your day as a medical professional after seeing your wife fornicate with a less-than-physically-appealing pool boy, but Feinstein puts his all into it.  That is, until, his patients all start to morph into twisted, decaying versions of his harlot wife in his eyes.

One by one, his unsuspecting patients are subjected to his ruthless torture as he hallucinates and desperately removes teeth, gasses up the masses, and even tries to make sexual advances on drugged-up patients.

But none of the strange goings-on seem to phase the folks in the packed waiting room, including young Jody, who just wants to finally get her braces removed, as no one wishes to go home, or, even more surprisingly, seek alternative dentistry.

Personally, going to the dentist is sketchy enough for me.  Unable to keep my mind from replaying some of the vividly graphic and almost comical torture scenes (a warning for child and animal lovers, as no one is above tooth decay, apparently), it will be a miracle if I can force myself to make my next appointment for a cleaning.  I’m gonna go brush my teeth, now…you know, just to be safe…

But in the meantime, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

Dr. Alan Feinstone: [To Sarah] So sad… how it can only be ruined… the rest of your life can only spoil what we’ve made… the idea that every second they’re just… rotting away. Can you live with that? I don’t think you can
[pulls out a gun.]

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