Top 10 Films About Dentists

With Laure Calamy currently in cinemas playing a Parisian orthodondist in the romcom, It's Raining Men, Cinema Paradiso takes a look at how dentists have been depicted on screen.

Almost 120 years after the first women graduated from an American dental college and 75 years after dentists were first portrayed on the big screen, Hollywood finally got round to including a female dentist in a movie. Dr Cynthia Sheldrake was played in Hugh Wilson's Burglar (1987) by Lesley Ann Warren and she was even given a male assistant to prepare Bernice Rhodenbarr (Whoopi Goldberg) for a filling. Like so many others before and after, however, the surgery scene provides context rather than core content, as Sheldrake is more interested in hiring Bernie to steal some jewellery from her ex-husband's safe than she is in the condition of her teeth.

Indeed, Caroline Vignal similarly sets several scenes in the swish Parisian office of Iris Beaulieu (Laure Calamy) in It's Raining Men (2023). Yet, while she shows her tending to patients with her long-suffering nurse-cum-receptionist, Nuria (Suzanne De Baecque), Vignal often has Iris leave them in various states of discomfort while she checks messages from the dating site she has joined because her love life with workaholic husband, Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz), has fallen dormant.

According to a number of dental associations, films have given dentists a bad name and have made viewers afraid of having their teeth checked. So, Cinema Paradiso examines what all the fuss is about.

Laughing Gas

As one might expect, Georges Méliès was among the first to base a film around a dentist. Sadly, Chicot, dentiste américain (1896) is long lost, as is Allen Curtis's The Tramp Dentists (1913). But we know a bit more about this American slapstick outing, which shows Dusty (Max Asher) and Weary (Lee Morris) making a quick buck from their unorthodox procedures with pliers and ice tongs.

Cinema Paradiso users need to check out disc two of Chaplin At Keystone (2010) in order to see Charlie Chaplin causing chaos in Laughing Gas (1914). As an assistant to Dr Pain (Fritz Schade), Charlie discovers the effects of nitrous oxide and the surprising uses to which a mallet can be put in a dentist's office. Snub Pollard stumbles across the same methods in

Alfred J. Goulding's The Dippy Dentist (1920), in which a tooth-puller upsets a troublesome patient while trying to lure patrons away from Marie Mosquini's beauty parlour.

This silent two-reeler can be found online, as can the Walt Disney duo of Tommy Tucker's Tooth (1922) and Clara Cleans Her Teeth (1927). The former is a live-action Laugh-O-Grams short that was made in Kansas City, while the latter is an animation in which Clara Cow is spooked into visiting the dentist by a dream about some persistent toothbrushes.

Stan Laurel keeps Oliver Hardy awake with his toothache in Clyde Bruckman's Leave 'Em Laughing (1928). So, when some DIY dentistry fails to solve the problem, they seek professional advice, only for Ollie to wind up in the chair and for the pair to stagger out the worse for laughing gas. Otto Fries reprised the role of the dentist in James Parrott's Pardon Us (1930), which sees Laurel and Hardy in prison and the former needing attention for a loose tooth that keeps blowing raspberries.

Perhaps the pick of the slapstick shorts about teeth pulling is Leslie Pearce's The Dentist (1932), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso as part of W.C. Fields: Six Classic Shorts (2003). In a bad mood after a golf game and furious with daughter Mary (Marjorie Kane) for flirting with the ice man, Fields takes out his ire on his patients, including a fellow with a bushy beard (Billy Bletcher) and Miss Mason (Elise Cavanna), who puts up a fight in the chair during an extraction. It's clear from these 22 minutes of mayhem why so many people were put off visiting the dentist and why rumours of quackery spread.

Things calm down a little in Stephen Roberts's One Sunday Afternoon (1933), even though dentist Biff Grimes (Gary Cooper) has never forgiven best pal Hugo (Neil Hamilton) for stealing the girl of his dreams, Virginia Brush (Fay Wray). Director Raoul Walsh clearly liked the scenario, as he remade it twice. Having teamed James Cagney, Rita Hayworth, and Jack Carson in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), he returned to the material in One Sunday Afternoon (1948), which starred Dennis Morgan, Janis Paige, and Don DeFore.

British practitioners finally got a look in C.M. Pennington-Richards's Dentist on the Job (1961), although they would have hoped for better representation than David Cookson (Bob Monkhouse) and Brian Dexter (Ronnie Stevens), recent graduates from the King Alfred's Dental College, who were described as rotten molars by their tutor. They hope to make their name by endorsing Dreem toothpaste, only to discover they're at risk of being struck off before they've even started practicing. Professional rivalry is also to the fore in Elem Klimov's Adventures of a Dentist (1965), a Soviet comedy that sees Vera Vasilyeva try to discredit new graduate Andrei Myagkov after he patents a painless process.

Manhattan dentist Julian Winston (Walter Matthau) has a different kind of woman trouble in Gene Saks's Cactus Flower (1968), as he has told ditzy girlfriend Toni Simmonds (Goldie Hawn) that he has a wife and children in order to stop her from hinting about marriage. When she becomes suspicious, however, he has to persuade loyal nurse Stephanie Dickinson (Ingrid Bergman) to pose as his spouse. Hawn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this I.A.L. Diamond adaptation of an Abe Burrows play that had reworked Pierre Barillet and Jean-Pierre Gredy's French farce, Fleur de cactus, which was filmed for television in 2017 by François Roussillon, with Michel Fau, Mathilde Bisson, and the ever-wonderful Catherine Frot in the roles.

Things are also not quite as they seem in Arthur Hiller's The In-Laws (1979), as Manhattan dentist Sheldon Kornpett (Alan Arkin) becomes more jittery than usual after discovering that the father of his daughter's intended is maverick CIA agent, Vincent Ricardo (Peter Falk), who needs his help on an unconventional mission. Albert Brooks and Michael Douglas took the roles when Andrew Fleming directed The In-Laws in 2003.

A clutch of British sitcoms that aired around this period had dental connections. Dentist Ben Parkinson (Geoffrey Palmer) has no idea that wife, Ria (Wendy Craig), has secret assignations with a man named Leonard (Bruce Montague) in Carla Lane's Butterflies (1978-83). But dentist Ben Harper (Robert Lindsay) merely has to deal with the control freakery of wife Susan (Zoe Wanamaker) in My Family (2000-11). A dental dinner dance provided one of the episodes for David Nobbs's A Bit of a Do (1989), as Ted (David Jason) and Rita Simcock (Gwen Taylor) find themselves over-dressed at a function. By contrast, Laura Dalton (Judi Dench) is so terrified of the dentist in an episode of A Fine Romance (1981-84) that she loses all her inhibitions when given some sedatives. Dodgy dentists also had a habit of winding up behind bars in Porridge (1974-77).

Back on the big screen, the wide open spaces of Patagonia provide the setting for Carlos Sorin's Eversmile, New Jersey (1989), which follows the adventures of itinerant Irish American dentist Fergus O'Connell (Daniel Day Lewis) and Estella (Mirjana Jokoviæ), the mechanic's daughter who hitches a ride in his sidecar. While this quirky charmer is highly recommended, we can't bring you Chris Kennedy's flashbacking This Won't Hurt a Bit (1993), even though Greig Pickhaver amuses as an Australian dentist who flees to Hong Kong after having gone rogue in Britain.

A doppelgänging dentist enlivens the action in Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis (1996), which sees the director play both the tracksuit-wearing Dr Jeffrey Korchek and Fletcher Munson, the speechwriter for Eventualist guru Theodore Azimuth Schwitters (Mike Malone), who is unaware that Korchek is sleeping with his wife (Betsy Brantley). The comedy is more on the quaint side in Melanie Mayron's Toothless (1997), as Dr Katherine Lewis (Kirstie Alley) follows in the footsteps of her father and grandfather by becoming a dentist. When she's accidentally killed by a bike messenger, however, she finds herself being assigned to the office of the Tooth Fairy.

Death also robs Suzanne (Jenny Seagrove) of a much-loved husband and she has to choose between philandering dentist Frank (Charles Dance) and timid sports coach Tony (Anthony Edwards) to give her son a new father in Willi Patterson's Don't Go Breaking My Heart (1999). While this is currently off-limits, we can bring you Jonathan Lynn's The Whole Nine Yards (2000), which sees dentist Nicholas Oseransky (Matthew Perry) get a nasty dose of driller's shake after hitman Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski (Bruce Willis) moves into his Montréal neighbourhood. They learn to get along, however, which is why in Howard Deutch's The Whole Ten Yards (2004), Oz heads to Mexico (where The Tulip is living with some fake dental records) when his wife (Natasha Henstridge) is kidnapped by manic mobster Lazio (Kevin Pollak).

The Second World War provides the setting for John Henderson's Two Men Went to War, which joins Sergeant Peter King (Kenneth Cranham) and Private Leslie Cuthbertson (Leo Bill) of the Royal Army Dental Corps on a bijou invasion of occupied France. Miami dentist Ted Brooks (Cuba Gooding) finds himself on an equally unlikely mission in Brian Levant's Snow Dogs (both 2002), when he leaves behind cousin Rupert (Sisqó) and the Hot Smile Dental Group in order to travel to Tolketna, Alaska to claim his inheritance and take charge of a team of sled dogs who don't take kindly to strangers. He's also greeted by a couple of patients seeking long-overdue treatment.

While their complaints aren't for the squeamish, there's nothing to shudder about in Mike Mills's Thumbsucker (2005), which charts the efforts of 17 year-old Justin Cobb (Lou Taylor Pucci) to break the habit of a lifetime by following the spirit animal treatment proposed by orthodontist Dr Perry Lyman (Keanu Reeves). The cure Chuck Logan (Dane Cook) offers has nothing to do with his dental skills in Mark Helfrich's Good Luck Chuck (2007). Having been cursed by a goth girl at a party, he is doomed to inspire every woman he sleeps with to find Mr Right on her next date. But Chuck is determined to beat the jinx when he falls for the penguin-loving Camill Wexler (Jessica Alba).

An odd occurrence during a minor operation leaves misanthropic Manhattan dentist Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) with the power to see dead people in David Koepp's Ghost Town (2008). Naturally, he's not best pleased to be haunted day and night. But the unscrupulous Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear) cons him into keeping an eye on his Egyptologist widow, Gwen (Téa Leoni).

During a bachelor party in Las Vegas with Wolf Pack buddies Phil Wenneck (Bradley Cooper) and Alan Garner (Zach Galifianakis), dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms) wakes to discover he's missing a front tooth in Todd Phillips's The Hangover (2009), which proved such a runaway success that the stars reunited for The Hangover Part II (2011) and The Hangover Part III (2013). Complications also arise in Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas (2010), when Bucharest banker Paul (Mimi Brãnescu) takes daughter Mara (Sasa Paul-Szel) to see dentist Raluca (Maria Popistau) and becomes so smitten that he cheats on his wife, Adriana (Mirela Oprior).

Switching locations to Riverside, California, dental assistant Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) lands in an awkward position in Seth Gordon's Horrible Bosses (2011), when Dr Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston) threatens to tell his fiancée, Stacy (Lindsay Sloane), that he had sex with her unless he actually sleeps with her. Among the other reprobate bosses is Dave Harken, who is played by Kevin Spacey, who essayed Dr Robert Middling finding a pirate in his waiting room in Alan Shelley's comic short, Spirit of a Denture (2012). This kind of film rarely finds its way on to disc, as is the case with Bill Melendez's Charlie Brown cartoon, Tooth Brushing (1978). But their elusiveness gives them something in common with A. Sarkunam's Naiyaandi (2013), a Tamil comedy in which small-town dentist Dhanush falls for lamp shop owner, Nazriya Nazim, and Greg Kinnear's Phil (2019), which stars the director as a dentist who poses as a handyman in a bid to discover why a patient who seemingly had it all would want to kill himself.

Orthodontal Drama

Had it not been butchered by studio executive Irving G. Thalberg, a Death Valley saga about a dentist might well have been the most monumental achievement of the entire silent era. Adapted from Frank Norris's novel McTeague, Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924) is still worth a watch, even though only 140 minutes remain of the director's original nine-hour, 42-reel cut. At its heart is John McTeague (Gibson Gowland), who is so impressed by what he sees at the Big Dipper Gold Mine that he starts operating as an unlicenced dentist. Once his best friend, Marcus Schoular (Jean Hersholt) sets out to expose McTeague. But he's also envious of the fact that ex-fiancée Trina (Zasu Pitts) chose his rival shortly before she won $5000 on the lottery.

Philanthropy rather than avarice drove William Thomas Green Morton (Joel McCrea) in Preston Sturges's The Great Moment (1944). One of cinema's few dental heroes, Morton pioneered the use of sulphur ether as an anaesthetic in dentistry in the 1840s. He's actually only seen treating teeth twice in this medical biopic, which was something of a departure for the master of sleek screwball comedy. Paramount were far from impressed, however, and Sturges never quite recovered his mojo, as The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946) and Unfaithfully Yours (1948) testify, fun though they are.

Two decades later, Japanese director Tetsuji Takechi was entrusted with the largest budget then seen for a pinku-eiga film and Daydream (1964) acquired a cult reputation for its depiction of the fantasies that a female art student enjoys while sedated in a dentist's chair. Takechi would remake the film in 1981 and 1987 and it's surprising it has not been added to the pink erotica titles that have been released on disc in the UK by the likes of Third Window and Salvation.

The raunchiness continues in John Hilbard's Bedside Dentist (1971), as Danish dental student Ole Søltoft is presented with a sexual challenge by rich aunt Annie Birgit Garde in order to inherit a fortune. Gabriele Ferzetti plays a dentist who has drifted apart from reclusive wife Valentina Cortese and becomes tempted by daughter Ornella Muti's classmate, Eleonora Giorgi, in Gianluigi Calderone's sensual classic, Appassionata (1974).

Staying in Italy, we return to more wholesome subjects in Charles Sturridge's Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991), an adaptation of the E.M. Forster novel that sees Caroline Abbott (Helena Bonham Carter) travel to the Tuscan town of Monteriano to rescue the infant son born to her deceased friend, Lilia Herriton (Helen Mirren), after she falls for Gino Carella (Giovanni Guidelli), the son of the local dentist. Another dangerous liaison develops in Angela Pope's Captives (1994), as dentist Rachel Clifford (Julia Ormond) takes on work at a nearby prison and becomes attracted to one of her patients, Philip (Tim Roth), who is serving time for the murder of his wife.

Based on Jane Smiley's The Age of Grief, Alan Rudolph's The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002) reveals how married dentists David and Dana Hurst (Campbell Scott and Hope Davis) seem to have the perfect life with their three daughters in Westchester County, New York. Then, however, David sees Dana in the arms of another man and turns for advice to one of his less reputable patients (Denis Leary). Family ties also run the risk of fraying in Miguel Albaladejo's Bear Cub (2004), as gay Madrid dentist José Luis García Pérez offers to host young nephew David Castillo over the summer while his mother has a break with her new boyfriend.

Student Brittany Murphy falls for older dentist Stanley Tucci in one of the interweaving plot strands in Edward Burns's Sidewalks of New York (2001). However, having already been divorced, Tucci is determined not to split up with wife Heather Graham, an estate agent who feels the marriage isn't working, but is too committed to flirt with dishy client, Edward Burns. Across the city, Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler) is struggling to cope after losing his family on 9/11 in Mike Binder's Reign Over Me (2007). However, a chance meeting with dentist and old college roommate, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle), leads to him finding a way to start living again.

Fiftysomething Georges Palet (André Dussollier) also stumbles into a new relationship in 87 year-old Alain Resnais's Wild Grass (2009), when he finds a wallet belonging to dentist Marguerite Muir (Sabine Azéma). She flies planes as a sideline, but doesn't dive headlong into a tryst with Georges, who is happily married and rather conventional. As always with Resnais, however, the film-making is anything but.

Flossing on the Frontier

No dentist has had a more chequered screen career than John Henry Holliday, who has featured in dozens of films and television programmes since Harvey Clark took the role of Doc Holliday in the Buck Jones oater, Law For Tombstone (1937). A professional gambler and gunfighter when not tending to patients, Holliday will forever be associated with lawman Wyatt Earp and the pair were played by Cesar Romero and Randolph Scott in Allan Dwan's Frontier Marshal (1939), which presented the first screen recreation of the fabled Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Following Kent Taylor's efforts in Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942), Doc Holliday was memorably portrayed by Walter Huston in Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1943) and by Victor Mature in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). Henry Fonda essayed Earp in the latter, with the part passing to Burt Lancaster opposite Kirk Douglas's Doc in John Sturges's Gunfight At the O.K. Corral (1957). The same director called the shots for James Garner and Jason Robards in Hour of the Gun (1967), a year after Anthony Jacobs had played Doc Holliday in ' The Gunfighters ', a 1966 episode of the BBC sci-fi series, Doctor Who (1963-)

Among the others to have buckled on the six-shooter are James Griffith (Masterson of Kansas, 1954), Willie Nelson (Stagecoach, 1986), Randy Quaid (Purgatory, 1999), Ryan Kennedy (Hannah's Law, 2012), William McNamara (Doc Holliday's Revenge, 2014), Edgar Fox ( The American West, 2016), and Eric Schumacher (Tombstone Rashomon, 2017). Stacy Keach headlined Frank Perry's Doc (1971), with Harris Yulin as Earp and Faye Dunaway as Katie Elder, while Jeffrey DeMunn cropped up in Michael O'Herlihy's I Married Wyatt Earp (1983), which starred Marie Osmond as Josephine Marcus.

Val Kilmer made history by switching from playing Doc opposite Kurt Russell in George P. Cosmatos's Tombstone (1993) to taking on the title role in Michael Feifer's Wyatt Earp's Revenge (2012), which cast Wilson Bethel as the gun-toting dentist. In 1994, Dennis Quaid took over in Lawrence Kasdan's Wyatt Earp, while Jeremy Renner is rumoured to be lined up for a biopic based on a book about Doc by Mary Doria Russell.

The celebrated Painless Parker provided the inspiration for Peter Potter, the dentist played by Bob Hope in Norman Z. McLeod's The Paleface (1948). He's very much of the botch'n'flee variety of tooth-pullers. Moreover, he's chicken ('Brave men run in my family') and is fortunate to have Calamity Jane (Jane Russell) riding beside him during his trek to Buffalo Flats. Fortunately, he handles a tune better than a gun and 'Buttons and Bows' went on to win the Oscar for Best Song.

This fun film was remade by Alan Rifkin as The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968), with Don Knotts as the bungling Jesse W. Heywood, who followed in the hoofprints of The Three Stooges after they had ventured into outlaw country after graduating from dental school in the Edward Bernds short, The Tooth Will Out (1951). Back on the serious side, fugitive bank robber Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson) swaps clothes with a travelling dentist named Dr Finger (who promptly gets shot in his stead) in Frank D. Gilroy's From Noon Till Three (1975), while Christoph Waltz picked up a Best Supporting Oscar for his knowing turn as German dentist-turned-bounty-hunter Dr King Schultz in Quentin Tarantino's brutal revisionist Western, Django Unchained (2012).

Thrills and Drills

The most excruciating dental scene in film history helped make John Schlesinger's Marathon Man (1976) a box-office hit. Yet, reports circulated of viewers passing out and throwing up while watching Dr Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) gouging into the mouth of Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) and repeating the words, 'Is it safe?', as the Nazi war criminal tries to ascertain whether he will be able to collect some diamonds from the deposit box owned by his tormented victim's brother. Indeed, Schlesinger felt compelled to trim the torture sequences to spare audiences further discomfort. But he kept the least reassuring words ever uttered by a screen dentist: 'Oh, please don't worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying. A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive.'

Overcoming health problems to leave Richard Widmark on the sidelines, Olivier earned an Oscar nomination for his seething performance, while William Goldman received a Golden Globe nomination for adapting his own bestselling novel. Susan Isaacs performed a similar task on Frank Perry's Compromising Positions (1985), which follows the efforts of New Yorker Susan Sarandon to discover who bumped off her womanising dentist (Joe Mantegna). The patient-dentist bond is more fractious in David Adkins's Novocaine (2001), as Dr Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) allows himself to be duped by Susan Ivey (Helena Bonham Carter) after she requests pain relief following root canal work. In spite of a finale that will draw winces from every dentist watching, this quirky thriller bombed on its release. But Cinema Paradiso has a thing about flops and this one is well worth another look.

The thrills have a comic tinge in Lee Mayfield's The Man (2005), as a case of mistaken identity leads Derrick Vann (Samuel L. Jackson), an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, into believing that dental supplies salesman Andy Fiddler (Eugene Levy) has vital information about a cache of stolen weapons. While this is pure fiction, an infamous murder case informs the action in Meghna Gulzar's Talvar (2015), a Bollywood thriller that follows Ashwin Kumar (Irrfan Khan) from the Central Department of Investigation, as he tries to determine whether dentists Nutan (Konkona Sen Sharma) and Ramesh Tandon (Neeraj Kabi) are responsible for the death of their 14 year-old daughter.

Everyone remembers Jack Nicholson's turn as masochistic patient Wilbur Force in Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors (1960). But dentist Phoebus Farb (John Herman Shaner) has a key role to play in the travails of florist's assistant Seymour Krelboined (Jonathan Haze), as it's his dissatisfaction with an order that prompts Seymour to nurture a killer plant that he names after co-worker Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph). When Frank Oz remade Little Shop of Horrors (1986) as a musical, Steve Martin took on the role of dentist Orin Scrivello, who is the callous boyfriend of Audrey (Ellen Greene) and the tormentor of Arthur Denton (Bill Murray), a patient who likes nothing better than 'a long, slow root canal'.

Trendy dentist Chuck Shamata and model girlfriend Brenda Vaccaro run into some murderous punks when they huddle up at a remote retreat in William Fruet's Death Weekend (aka The House By the Lake, 1976). This nasty film is currently unavailable, but there's no problem gaining access to Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), which amusingly parodies Marathon Man when Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) is knocked out and comes round in a chair with a drill-wielding Daffy standing over him in full dental attire.

The crimes of Dr Glennon Engleman, who ran amuck for over two decades from the 1950s, provide the inspiration for the gruesome bloodletting in Brian Yuzna's The Dentist (1996). Beverly Hills surgeon Dr Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen) may be a bit of a pain, as he's a stickler for perfection. But, when he discovers that his wife is cheating on him with the poolman, he decides to inflict hideous oral pain on anyone he can lay his hands upon. We would recommend steering well clear of anyone who proclaims, 'I am an instrument of perfection and hygiene - the enemy of decay and corruption.'

We do regret, however, not being able to offer the sequel, The Dentist 2: Brace Yourself (1998), which sees Dr Feinstone escaping from prison and setting himself up under the name Lawrence Caine in Paradise, Missouri in order to inflict further misery on his now tongueless spouse. Mercifully, Dr Lees (Fred Henderson) proves far more benevolent when Tim Carpenter (James Kirk) gets toothache in David R. Ellis's Final Destination 2 (2003). But, as anyone leaving a dental surgery must know, you should always keep an eye out for falling pieces of plate glass.

Quick Bites

So far, we have looked at films in which dentists are key characters. Many more, however, contain passing references to dentistry and they come from across the generic range. Take Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), for example, which includes a gripping scene in which Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks) seeks information about his kidnapped daughter by posing as a sailor with brother-in-law Clive (Hugh Wakefield) at a surgery run by a dentist (Henry Oscar) who is in cahoots with a gang of assassins. A scream from a neighbouring room rings out during the scene and much the same happens when Bud Abbott takes Lou Costello to have a troublesome tooth seen to in Charles Barton's The Noose Hangs High (1948).

Silence was the watchword in the Amsterdam attic where two Jewish families hid from the Nazis. The widow of Fritz Pfeffer - the dentist named as Albert Dussel in George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank (1957) - disliked the way the Berlin dentist was played by the Oscar-nominated Ed Wynn. But his son, Werner, admitted in Jon Blair's documentary, Anne Frank Remembered (1995), that his father's relationship with the lively adolescent was sometimes difficult. By contrast, Erika Schmidt (Cornelia Froboess), the teenage daughter of the local dentist gets on famously with the eponymous soldier (Jean-Pierre Cassel) when he visits her father's surgery for treatment in Jean Renoir's The Elusive Corporal (1962).

Norman Pitkin (Norman Wisdom) is mistaken for a dental student at the local hospital in Robert Asher's A Stitch in Time (1963) and finds himself treating a man with an excessively bushy beard in a scene of wince-inducing slapstick. The good people of Climax have less to complain about with Dr Sheldrake (Mel Blanc) in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), as he peppers consultations with jokes and generous whooshes of laughing gas.

According to a number of surveys on the depiction of dentists on screen, the consensus is that the best advocate for the profession is Hermey, the elf at Santa's North Pole workshop who would rather be tending teeth than making toys in Larry Roemer's animated classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). We're not sure the Abominable Snow Monster would vouch for his methods, but audiences loved Hermey sufficiently for him to return in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys (2001) with his very own Toothmobile.

A Harley Street surgery provides a convenient place for the imprisoned Mr Bridger (Noël Coward) to meet Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) and discuss plans for an audacious gold bullion raid in Peter Collinson's The Italian Job (1968). Things don't go quite so smoothly for dentist Walter Waldowski (John Schuck) in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970), as the Painless Pole is driven to attempt suicide after a sexual humiliation at the eponymous Korean War field hospital.

Resistance is futile when it comes to the wonderfully silly dental scene in Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976). Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) has gone to the dark side and Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers) poses as a dentist in order to entrap him. However, an excess of nitrous oxide proves deleterious for both men, as well as Clouseau's prosthetic nose. Edwards included another close encounter of the dental kind in 10 (1979), as besotted composer George Webber (Dudley Moore) undergoes an agonising deep cleaning from Dr Miles (James Noble) so that he can discover where his daughter, Jenny (Bo Derek), is going to be spending her honeymoon.

Only the broad minded need approach the dentist scene in Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979), as things get more than a little kinky when Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr) and Lavonia (Kitten Natividad) avail themselves of the services of dentist-cum-marriage-counsellor Asa Lavender (Robert Pearson) and Nurse Flovilla Thatch (Sharon Hill). At least this wayward romp is available on disc, unlike Claude Pinoteau's La Boum (1980) and Alan Alda's The Four Seasons (1981), in which Claude Brasseur and Jack Weston respectively play dentists François Beretton and Danny Zimmer.

Teeth are used to hide microscopic objects in a couple of 80s comedies, as Bud Spencer and Terence Hill have tracking devices inserted in their molars after being recruited as spies in Enzo Barboni's Go For It (1983) and Dabney Coleman dispatches CIA dentist Gerrit Graham to check Tom Hanks's teeth for hidden microfilm in Stan Dragoti's The Man With One Red Shoe (1985). Graham is given orders to whip all Hanks's gnashers out, which contrasts with the gentle treatment that Derek De Lint receives from an old student friend in Fons Rademakers's The Assault (1986), which is irksomely unavailable despite winning the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Private eye Jack Singer (Nicolas Cage) has to be bailed out of jail by bookie dentist Sally Molars (John Capodice) so that he can prevent girlfriend Betsy Nolan (Sarah Jessica Parker) from marrying professional gambler Tommy Korman (James Caan) in Andrew Bergman's Honeymoon in Vegas (1992). But dentist Eugene Sutphin (Sam Waterston) has no idea what wife Beverly (Kathleen Turner) is getting up to on a daily basis in Towson, Maryland in John Waters's Serial Mom (1994), even when dreadful accidents befall patients Ralph (Doug Roberts) and Betty Sterner (Kathy Fannon).

Feeling pain after biting into an apple, Junior (Justin Chapman) learns from arch-enemy Igor Peabody (Gilbert Gottfried) that he needs braces in Greg Beeman's Problem Child 3: Junior in Love (1995). Needing to lay low because he's in debt to some mobsters, Kevin Franklin (Sinbad) poses as dentist Derek Bond in order to stay with Gary (Phil Hartman) and Emily Young (Kim Griest) in Randall Miller's Houseguest (1995).

Dr Samuel Cheng (Raymond Ma) is quietly treating Benny Chan (Kim Chan) in his Los Angeles surgery when private eye Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) insists on an emergency appointment so that his oppos can nail their man in Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon 4 (1998). Unfortunately, laughing gas means they bungle the task, while Leo gets a thorough dental going-over of his own. The same year, medieval time traveller, Jacquouille la Fripouille (Christian Clavier), fails to see why people should queue up to see dentist Jean-Pierre Goulard (Christian Bujeau) and chases them away in Jean-Marie Poiré's Les Visiteurs 2: The Corridors of Time.

In Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001), a Japanese American dentist (Toshi Toda) is distracted from work in his Hawaiian office by a strange phone call about shipping and weather conditions during the last week of November 1941. The scene shifts to the Sidney surgery of dentist Philip Sherman (Bill Hunter) in Andrew Stanton's Finding Nemo (2003), as the eponymous clown fish (Alexander Gould) gets to meet 'the Tank Gang', led by Gill (Willem Defoe), a scarred Moorish idol. The residents of the aquarium know their stuff, with Peach (Allison Janney) declaring about one patient, 'Root canal, and by the looks of those X-rays, it's not gonna be pretty.'

Nemo finds an unusual escape route in this Disney gem, but dentist Eric (Dave Foley) finds his own neat way of getting out of trouble in Mitch Rouse's Employee of the Month (2004), as he falsifies dental records to help fellow bank robber David Walsh (Matt Dillon) get away scot free. However, he soon discovers that there's no honour among thieves with Jack (Steve Zahn) and Sara (Christina Applegate) around.

Dentists pop up in a couple of Woody Allen pictures from this period. In Melinda and Melinda (2004), friends try to set up Melinda Robicheaux (Radha Mitchell) with a widowed dentist. In the first of the parallel storylines, Greg Earlinger (Josh Brolin) is a nice man who is fixated on his young daughter, while in the second, he's a flashy big game hunter who is dismissed by an envious rival with the line, 'gorgeous dentist is an oxymoron'. Dr Flicker (Michael Stuhlbarg) lives down to this barb in Blue Jasmine (2013), as he hires Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) as an assistant and proceeds to pester her with unwanted advances.

The complicated motivations of a master confectioner are laid bare in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), as it's revealed that Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) was forbidden sweets as boy by his dentist father, Wilbur (Christopher Lee), who considers lollipops to be 'cavities on a stick'. And father-son issues also explain why dentist Doug (Tim Allen) is going through a midlife crisis in Walt Becker's Wild Hogs (2007). So, he persuades pals Woody (John Travolta), Bobby (Martin Lawrence), and Dudley (William H. Macy) to take a road trip in order to get their engines running once again.

Socially awkward dentist, Dr Allan Pearl (Eugene Levy), hopes to tap into his hidden resources when he joins the cast of the musical being staged by small-town Missouri theatre director Corky St Clair (Christopher Guest) in Guest's ensemble satire, Waiting For Guffman (1996). Suffice to say, the humour is subtler than the 'Lamborghini tooth pull' attempted in Jeff Tremaine's Jackass 3D (2010). Painful extractions are also undertaken by Jeff Goldblum in David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986), Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis's Cast Away (2000), and Choi Min-sik in Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003), although Dennis Mitchell (Mason Gamble) upsets Mr Wilson (Walter Matthau) by fitting chewing gum into his dentures in Nick Castle's Dennis the Menace (1993).

Ice hockey star Derek Thompson (Dwayne Johnson) is forced to atone in a rather unusual manner for knocking out a child's tooth in Michael Lembeck's Tooth Fairy (2010). But, while dentist Josh Pais acquires the ability to prevent pain in Lynn Shelton's Touchy Feely (2013), massage therapist sister, Rosemarie DeWitt), develops an aversion to bodily contact.

Dr Rudy Blatnoyd (Martin Short) proves susceptible to bite marks in Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (2014), as the partying dentist is found with fang punctures in his neck in 1970s Los Angeles. By contrast, the dentist from Trier (Michael Brandner) in George Clooney's The Monuments Men (2014) has loose lips. While treating Sergeant Richard Campbell (Bill Murray) in the back room of a butcher's shop after he damages a tooth on some homemade jerky, the dentist reveals that his son-in-law has a stash of stolen art in a shack in the woods.

Finally, when a dentist named Geoffrey (Jerry Winsett) complains about Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) for her protests at the police handling of her daughter's murder case in Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), she pays a visit to his surgery. He insists on removing a tooth, but she grabs his drill hand and forces the bit through his own thumbnail before spitting her rinse water at him. When Police Chief Bill Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) comes to admonish Mildred, he reveals his lack of concern at Geoffrey's injury, with the immortal words: 'Do you think I care about the dentist? I don't care about dentists. Nobody cares about dentists.' What better place to stop?