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I had been waiting for this film to be released on DVD for quite some time now and as soon as I saw it at Bestbuy, I snatched it up and headed out for a fun filled night of horror film entertainment. This particular movie did not appeal to my wife and after I told her the premise she refused to watch any part of it. Basically the movie is about a young girl who discovers she has vagina dentata, meaning teeth in her yoo-hoo. Ouch!
So the film starts out with an opening scene of Dawn (Jess Weixler) and Brad (John Hensley) as little children playing in an inflatable pool in the back yard. The two children are in their toddler years and they are looking at and showing each-other their private parts when Brad sticks his finger down the front of Dawn and comes back up with a lacerated finger.
The next scene we are in the high school years and Dawn is the head of an abstinence group that preaches the word of god and saving your virginity for marriage. She is a speaker at many of their rallies and completely believes in her cause. Dawn's mother is very sick and is constantly in need of medical attention and relies on Dawn and her husband for support. Dawn is always there to help and loves her mother very much; she is not only her mother, but her best friend.
Brad has become some what of a bad-boy / man-whore and has a girlfriend who he repeatedly has sex with in his bedroom which disturbs Dawn to no end. Brad and Dawn are revealed to be step brother and sister and Brad has been in love with Dawn from the beginning. At the same time Brad hates Dawn and does everything in his power to anger her.
At one of the abstinence rallies, Dawn meets a boy in which she falls for named Tobey and they begin to spend all their time together. One day while swimming in a local lake, Tobey crosses the line and begins to rape Dawn. Suddenly he screams and stands up revealing his penis has been cut off and spit out. He runs away and ends up dead. Dawn, not knowing what had happened decides to go to a gynecologist to see if there is something wrong with her. The doctor sees nothing wrong and decides to be a nasty perv by removing his latex gloves and inserting his hand inside her for his own pleasure. Needless to say, he loses his fingers in the process.
Brad, at home with his girlfriend hears Dawn's mother crying for help yet he ignores her and tells his girlfriend it is no big deal. This sets off a chain of events that takes Dawn from good to evil and innocent to guilty in a matter of moments.
This is truly an original movie with an excellent script, above average acting and a great plot twist. You get some excellent character development and some funny scenes along the way. Although you do see severed penises and a good amount of blood, it doesn't get carried away with the gore. The movie is perfectly shot by director Mitchell Lichtenstein and I cannot say enough good things about the film. I suggest this movie to anyone who wants to see a film that hasn't been done before and has a nice uplifting message. By the way, I was just kidding about the message part.
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Hi, I'm just randomly perusing your articles as I just finished reading the Band one and I was glad to see a review for Teeth because Jess was a friend of mine growing up. I don't know why I feel compelled to write about this, but I only recently found out that she was an aspiring actress. We lost touch when we were about 11 or 12 and I never knew what came of her until I randomly decided to google her name about a week ago. Either that or a Jess clone of the same age and birth place as my pal from years ago. Thanks for posting the review!
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January 17, 2008 - It's hard to know how to describe Teeth, the new film by writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein. On one hand, it's a horror movie about a girl who discovers she has teeth in her hoo-hah. On another, it's a treatise on the fears and mysteries associated with female sexuality. Sometimes, it's actually both at once -- funny and scary and smart all at the same time. But therein lies the problem with the film: Does it want to be a campy, creepy fright flick? Or social commentary dressed up in b-movie conventions? Lichtenstein may have found a star-borne in his lead actress, Jess Weixler, and an intriguing idea in his premise, but the execution leaves Teeth stuck in limbo as an undefined and thereby uneven exercise in intelligent entertainment.
Weixler (Little Manhattan) plays Dawn, a high school student who wears her virginity as a badge of honor. She regularly gives speeches to younger classmates on the virtues of, well, virtue. But when she succumbs to the charms of a new student named Tobey (Hale Appleman) who supposedly values purity and innocence, their clinch has violently bad repercussions. Soon, Dawn discovers that she suffers from vagina dentata, which only further confuses her burgeoning sexual identity. And after a handful of uncomfortable run-ins with other classmates, a sleazy gynecologist and her estranged older brother Brad (John Hensley), she starts to recognize that her sexuality can be as empowering as it is terrifying.
Again, Weixler is the star of the show and she gives her all playing to Dawn's terror, revulsion and eventual maturation. A role like this requires more than a little bit of self-awareness -- not to play moments for humor, mind you, but to realize that things are just messed up to be both funny and frightening -- and she nails every beat with the right reaction. It generally takes a lot of effort for audiences to not immediately detest a character like her at the beginning of the film, self-righteous in her proclaimed virtue, but Weixler creates such strong and immediate identification (albeit mostly with her irresistible longings) that we're hapless but to sympathize with her once the adult world encroaches on her.
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