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TEETH
Written & Directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein
Produced by Joyce Pierpoline & Lichtenstein
Director of Photography, Wolfgang Held
Edited by Joe Landauer
Music by Robert Miller
Released by Roadside Attractions
USA. 88 min. Rated R
With Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Josh Pais, Hale Appleman, Ashley Springer, Vivienne Benesch, Lenny Von Dohlen, Nicole Swahn, Julia Garro & Adam Wagner

There are those unsavory films (take Vincent Gallo’s Brown Bunny) that redeem themselves by the discussions they provoke. What was the director trying to say? Was it necessary to make the audience so uncomfortable? Why show a 10-minute blow job? But the only question left lingering after viewing writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s preposterous Teeth is why in the wide world of crazy cult cinema was this movie even made?

Apparently, the ancient legend of vagina dentata – your basic gynophobic story of fanged female genitalia that must be conquered by some hero’s worthy member – called out to Lichtenstein for a modern adaptation. Dawn (Jess Weixler), a lily white teenager with a pretty face, preaches at an after-school chastity camp. When a boyfriend crosses the line, she discovers that her vagina is even more brutally committed to purity than she is. Soon, a succession of chomped-off peckers (and some unfortunate digits) flop to the ground, and the film quickly spirals into the absurd.

In the femme fatale spirit of Monster (a biopic on serial-killer Aileen Wournos), Teeth is a bloodthirsty hyper-feminist manifesto, where the revenge fantasy couldn’t be any more literal if Dawn went on a shooting rampage with her breasts. While the message is blunt and unoriginal, the scenario does lend itself to a few laughs, which Lichtenstein harvests with his offbeat humor and a menacing score. But when he tries to marry the comedy with unabashed sexual obscenities, cruelty, and gore, the already unlikely film becomes a dreadful mishmash of genres and ideas.

Quite simply, the display of three severed penises in their full-frontal glory is bound to be a turn-off for all those spunky feministas and indie flick aficionados who otherwise could have been attracted to this schizophrenic film. And no matter how funny a biting vagina may sound in theory, the director’s gratuitous focus on its victims kind of kills the joke. Yana Litovsky
January 18, 2008