Teeth

Get ready to cross your legs and suck your thumb: newcomer Mitchel Lichenstein has made a film that’s about the one subject film has so far been too petrified to tackle… Vagina Dentata, or the Toothed Vagina. It’s not tasteful, it’s not taut, and it’s not terribly clever either, but it does at least get the blood pumping in a way few have managed since Cronenburg was delving deep into those fleshy wounds of his body horror era.

The premise – that Dawn (played with zeal by Jess Weixler) should be the real-life manifestation of a gender-repressing myth – is clearly destined for cult stardom, and Lichenstein duly recognizes his station. This is a shlock and shock film: it willfully mixes rom-com platitudes with hammer horror guffaws, and ensures proceedings never rise above the puerile. As such, Teeth is crammed with delightfully despicable puns and strikingly straightforward visual motifs (watching it is like playing Where’s Wally through the eyes of a horny teenager – it’s all snakes and holes, members and membranes).

Dawn’s affliction is conveyed early on when, sitting in a pool with her half brother Brad (John Hensely) at a young age, a game of I’ll Show you Mine if You Show me Yours ends with the distraught boy brandishing a slightly severed index finger. Skip forward ten years and Brad finds himself once bitten twice shy, content to either shoot blanks in his bedroom (literally), or seek refuge in the ‘other’ hole of his girlfriend. Dawn, meanwhile, has plunged herself into a life of Sacred Ring purity and awkward male interactions. They get much more awkward, of course, once she overcomes her chastity and starts lopping off her men-friends’ penises.

In truth, Teeth doesn’t really get going until Dawn chomps down on the bit for the first time and then it’s basically disinterested until she does it again. The tacky puns and allusions in between just about keep you watching, but there’s only ever one thing Teeth will be memorable for, and Lichenstein seems quite happy for his film to remain a one trick pony. Cue, then, a succession of money shots – of bloated bludgeoners lying forlorn on the ground having met their unfortunate end at the hands of Dawn’s vengeful flower.

It’s in these moments – with the body turned into the site of mutilation, and the audience turned into a squirming mound of undulating jelly – that the influence of Cronenburg can be felt everywhere. Yet it’s an unfair comparison, for while films like The Fly and Dead Ringers had genuinely considered fears to articulate, Teeth is only really interested in showing us gory shots of dismembered cocks. This is supposed to be a film about sexual revenge, yet for all its supposed posturing as to our societal fear of the female genitalia, its preponderance upon the male member and refusal to show us the beast that bites basically undoes any argument it may purport.

Teeth is wammer horror, pure and simple. And that, unfortunately, is about the thrust and the cut of it.

Article originally published in the (now sadly defunct) Death Ray Magazine.