Teeth

2007 horror comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A chaste high school student uses her vagina dentata to defend herself against penises.

Part of me wants to give this an extra point because Chuck Prophet teaches us, in the song that plays over the closing credits, exactly who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp. Apparently, I did, although I suppose Chuck Prophet might not be singing to me. There's another song called "Love Is Worth Waiting For" by Denee Hanna and Dave Lichtenstein that was like a poetic hammer to the groin. A lot of this movie feels like a trauma to the groin (thanks to Heywood Banks for putting those four words in my head) as the horror part of this movie mostly involves severed bloody penises lying on floors. Most men, I suppose, just don't want to watch that sort of thing, especially this redundantly. If the movie was just that, it wouldn't be worth anybody's time. Well, maybe yours. You might have enjoyed it. And I kind of thought going in that this was going to be a Cronenbergian pseudo-artsy gross-out thing, but it wasn't because the audience doesn't even get a glimpse of the titular chompers. Plus, there's some goofy dark comedy that keeps this pretty light. Of course, it's possible that Cronenberg is funnier than I give him credit for being, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I did sort of chuckle at parts of this. A character named Toby's got some of the greatest screams I've ever heard a male scream in a movie, there's a terrific line--"I haven't even jerked off since Easter!"--in there, and a hilarious punchline from a surgeon ("It hardly seems worth it.") followed by laughter from the other doctors and nurses. Oh, and I loved a gynecologist's reaction after discovering our protagonist's gift. "It's true! Vagina dentata! Vagina dentata!" See, you have to love a movie that teaches you a little something, and I've found a way to work "vagina dentata" into conversations four times since see this. And I was only slapped after two of those. I'm blaming feminism, but that's not something you can ever be sure about. Either they were feminists or they put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp. Speaking of bomp bah bompers, is there a strong feminist theme in this movie? I'm not sure. If there is, I'm not sure it's effective in delivering its message. Either way, it's not something I want to think about anyway. I'm too busy thinking about how cute Jess Weixler was and appreciating the reference to the B-movie The Black Scorpion. I also liked some of the visual humor here. The phallic and yonic symbols might have gotten a little tedious in the early going though. And the nuclear coolant things? Is that a reference to diphallic terrata? I'm going to have to assume that it is. Oh, one more thing--if you watch this movie, listen to the sound effects because they're great. Oh, wait, one more thing--at the very end of this movie, there's an old guy doing this lip-smacking tongue thing. The actor's name is Doyle Carter, and if there's a better performance in a movie about vagina dentata, I'd be shocked.

I'd like to apologize for this blog post.