There are few horrors greater than the adolescent body. No surprise, then, that since their invention in the ’60s teenagers have been a staple of the genre – and they rarely come more confused than Dawn (Jess Weixler).
Dawn may have pledged to retain her ‘purity’ until marriage, but her male friends have only got one thing on their mind. To make matters worse, her family doctor (Josh Pais) has wandering fingers, and her stepbrother, Brad (John Hensley), is an oversexed psychopath. But as Dawn begins her awkward evolution into womanhood, an unexpected mutation comes to her rescue. When she realises that she can bite any unwanted invader where it really hurts, the battle of the sexes experiences a brand new Dawn.
Teeth might so easily have played out as the tawdriest of horrors, but writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein (son of Pop artist Roy) has instead crafted a witty satire that explores the state of the (female) body politic, spread-eagled between the puritanical and the priapic in a culturally confused America. Dawn may take only so much from men before she is ready to spit it right back at them, but far from being some slick avenger, she remains a gawky teen more akin to her namesake in Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse. Her first fumbling attempts at consensual sex are just as cringe inducing as the emasculating punishments she metes out upon her aggressors.
And so, like the Vagina Monologues rewritten for slasher fans, Teeth gets its bite from a combination of embarrassing observation and eye-watering (at least for the men) abjection. It’s both more entertaining than expected, and also more subtle, while redressing the anatomical anomalies of Deep Throat in a way that is likely to bring female viewers far greater satisfaction.
