A feminist postulation gone ferociously primal, Teeth is the stuff that gives any red-blooded straight male nightmares. Its main premise doesn’t just involve castration; it’s castration by a vagina. You may cross your legs whenever you’re ready.
The myth of the vagina dentata (Latin for “toothed vagina”) has been around far longer than this movie, typically used as a cautionary horror tale to discourage promiscuity and rape. Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s snappy debut (ho ho) treads similar waters as those olden lore, but instead of treating the story as a warning sign for male hopefuls, Teeth spins the subject into a female coming-of-age drama of the utmost brutal kind.
One summer day, little Dawn (Jess Wexler) sits in a pool with her stepbrother Brad (John Hensley), playing a game of “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” Future bad boy Brad takes it further and slips a finger in. A mysterious snap, and he finds his index finger bleeding. This ominous opening fades to a scene years later, where the teenage Dawn is the prominent member of the school’s chastity group. In her, Lichtenstein uses the vagina dentata angle to comment on the emergence of sexuality in a girl’s age of puberty. It’s no secret that teenage boys have less difficulty embracing the idea of sex—or at least, theirs don’t involve any physical changes—while the transformations in a woman’s body can be quite scary. Teeth amplifies that fear in a sinister way, not unlike Ginger Snaps’ likening of menstruation to werewolf-ism.
When Dawn develops a crush on a boy in her chastity group, her struggle to keep the monstrosity in her pants a secret is mirrored with her battle to keep her sexual urges at bay. Lichtenstein plays with the clout of her toothed vagina so deftly, even a scene of Dawn attempting to masturbate is filled with edge-of-your-seat tension. Teeth challenges its audience by mixing erotica with suspense. While Jess Wexler is sexy in her love scenes, becoming aroused by them is impossible when the possibility of the situation turning real ugly dangles throughout. Since we don’t actually get to see the teeth (this isn’t porn, after all), all the sex scenes are a blind waiting game of will-it-or-won’t-it. Try not to let the imagination go wild the next time you take the plunge with your partner. Wexler’s combination of innocent-cute and menacing-vixen makes Dawn work, as an inexperienced character balancing on high-wire between girlhood and womanhood.
But let’s not forget the obvious here, because Lichtenstein certainly didn’t. This is a concept ripe for comedy. Sure, horror is the obvious route, but the potential for nervous laughter will always linger, so Teeth slowly but surely grows more comical as it progresses. The tonal change follows Dawn’s confidence: having a toothed vagina is scary at first, so the movie mimics her feelings; but as she grows more used to her abnormality, the film also eases up. In due time, her vagina chomping off another penis is simply met by a sigh and a rolling of the eyes. And it’s a crack-up.
Teeth is an unmistakably pro-feminist film. Not only because the numerous graphic (repeat: GRAPHIC) depictions of castration suggests the power of the vagina over the penis, but also because it encourages its female hero to take control of her sexuality and dominate the male—in this case, her rebellious stepbrother Brad. If Dawn is the ultimate form of female empowerment, then Brad is the great big phallic symbol (one scene even shows him firing the classic phallus—a BB gun—at Dawn’s direction). The confrontation between them is the definition of battle of the sexes. In the most obvious fashion, she turns the sought treasure of male conquest into a weapon against them. Though in this case, it’s a bit more literal. After all, why monologue when your vagina can bite?
This movie knows when to wave a knife in front of your face and when to tickle you with a feather. Its crude gory bits may be startling, but it is shocking only to those unprepared to be castrated (figuratively, mind you) by the film. It’s a memorable little flick, one that might stop a few one night stands. If you believe the myth is real, that is…
"Teeth" opens January 18, 2008 and is rated R. Horror. Written and directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein. Starring John Hensley, Jess Weixler, Hale Appleman, Frank Curcio, Julia Garro.
