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Teeth

Comments (4) By Jim Ridley Tuesday, Jan 8 2008

Credit writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein with making a first feature that every man in America will watch with his legs crossed: a grisly gyno-horror riff on Carrie about an abstinent teen (Jess Weixler) whose chastity belt conceals a dentally augmented vagina. Weixler's sweetly confused Dawn isn't so much saving herself for the right man as saving the right man from her. But once her town's horndog males—an impatient boyfriend (Hale Appleman), a skeevy doc (Josh Pais), a creepy half-brother (skin-crawling Nip/Tuck regular John Hensley)—force the issue, the imperiled virgin quickly learns to clamp down and twist, parting franks from beans and leaving plenty of dismembered members and spurting stumps. (In an interesting twist on the usual double standard of male-female nudity, you see several severed dicks but no toothy vertical smiles.) Weixler's appealing, sympathetic presence removes any misogyny from the premise: Indeed, the movie's best joke is its cock-chomping vengeance upon predatory male sexuality, an inversion of the slasher-movie same-old, same-old. (If you bet $20 there's a closing-credits shout-out to Camille Paglia, you'll be rewarded.) But veteran actor Lichtenstein, the son of Pop artist Roy, rarely finds a workable tone, muffling the splattery mayhem with sluggish pacing and a tendency toward camp. Still, even if the movie's little more than a curio, I love the thought of Lichtenstein at the pitch meeting: "It's Jaws meets The Vagina Monologues!"

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Comments (4)

Xtrnl 06/28/2008 4:40:06 PM

I know I've made a lot of points against this film, but I need to make this last one, which is actually the most important. Has anyone here heard of Christopher Newsom? You can read what happened to him and his girlfriend Channon here: http://www.davidduke.com/general/1998_1998.html If you watch this film, you will watch a show which glorifies the sick fate which was dealt to Newsom, an innocent man who never hurt anybody. What do you think the Newsom family thinks of this film? Do you really want to support it?
two.one.five magazine 06/28/2008 4:39:07 PM

Q&A with "Teeth" film writer/director Mitchell Lichenstein and producer Joyce Pierpoline in two.one.five Magazine. Lichenstein reveals how the idea for a carnivorous vagina came about and the creative process to produce this campy film. URL:http://www.twoonefivemagazine.com/features_detail.cfm/feature/107/
xtrnl 06/28/2008 4:38:46 PM

I agree with bmmg39. I think it's a red flag that our society has become ridiculously misandric when an entire film is dedicated to destroying the body part that defines men as men. I've also never heard of a horror in which all the victims are one gender. I smell a hate crime. I bet all the victims are white too. Of course if all the victims weren't white males, it would be viewed as a hate crime. I hate being a white man, because few sympathize with us for the racist sexist hatred and psychological rape we have to endure. A friend of mine told me that one of the victims in the movie isn't even a rapist, he just tells about his consentual encounter with her, then she punishes him the worst way for that. Anyone who finds this film amusing (especially women) are doing Satan's work. He's the only one who could rejoice at sexual mutilation. And to those of you that support this tripe, you'll have only yourselves to blame when it starts to show women being treated in the same way in movies. After all, people are going to get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. Speaking of which, isn't this film a little redundant? A person has to be retarded to support a film like this.
bmmg39 06/28/2008 4:38:43 PM

TEETH appears to be the most offensive, misandrist film in history. I'm certain that those of us who express outrage at a male-genital-mutilation fantasy will be accused of not having a sense of humor. To those who say that I shall ask what their opinion would be of a film whose protagonist went around destroying women's vaginas. If they would find that as disgusting and sexist as I do then they should think the exact same thing about this film. It's fine if someone wants to make a movie with an anti-rape message, but gleeful, "fun" treatment of the destruction of men's bodies is a direct attack on ALL men and boys.

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