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Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Josh Pais, Hale Appleman, Ashley Springer ... see more see more... , Vivienne Benesch , Lenny von Dohlen , Nicole Swahn , Julia Garro , Adam Wagner

High school student Dawn works hard at suppressing her budding sexuality by being the local chastity group's most active participant. Her task is made even more difficult by her bad boy stepbrother Br... read more read more...ad's increasingly provocative behavior at home. A stranger to her own body, innocent Dawn discovers she has a toothed vagina when she becomes the object of violence. As she struggles to comprehend her anatomical uniqueness, Dawn experiences both the pitfalls and the power of being a living example of the vagina dentata myth.

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31,779 ratings

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79% liked it

66 critics

R, 26 min.

Directed by: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Release Date: January 19, 2007

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DVD Release Date: May 6, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (6,217)

  • theoneandonlybg
    September 16, 2011
    theoneandonlybg
    Before I start the review, I would like to point out this is a quite sexual film. If you are not happy to hear about this, don't read on. If you are happy to, please enjoy the review.

    My good friend, Chloee, recently told me about this film. I had heard of it before, but never... read more fully knew what it was about. When I asked her, she gave me a response that shocked me, and no one I spoke to believed: she said the film was about a woman with teeth in her vagina! Yes, this is a very worrying and slightly disturbing plot, but it comes off as a form of light entertainment in the form of penis-removal, incest and penis consumption.

    What is good about this film is the way that the entire film can be seen as comical from start to finish due to the idea behind it. Woman wants to be a virgin until she is married, meets man, raped by man and begins accidentally removing their penises with her vaginal teeth. I still don't quite understand the psychological state of the person who created the film, but I can forgive his randomness because the film was average.

    The focus of the film would be finding out what is wrong with the woman, how to stop it and how people are killed by a killer-vagina. Other than that, the plot is rather lacking, with very little in it, the music is rather cheap and the acting isn't spectacular. It's just one of those things you might rent to pass an hour or so of time if you have nothing to do.

    If you are expecting a masterpiece, or want an all out gorefest, don't watch this film. But for a small piece of light entertainment with male nudity, some female and lots of sex references, it's worth a shot...
  • fb1216165431
    September 10, 2011
    fb1216165431
    Teeth is a genius hybrid of dark humor and clever horror that presents the evolution of innocence to something far more incomprehensibly sinister. A witty satire that strongly delivers metaphors against teenage promiscuity delivered in good taste for the curious audiences.
  • TheDudeLebowski65
    August 23, 2011
    TheDudeLebowski65
    Teeth is rather an interesting premise for a horror comedy that almost works. The idea behind the story is very interesting, but it's also uneven. The film does have a good, original idea for its plot; but somehow the film is borderline. I think it has to do to the fact that the ... read morefilm is too silly and has borderline decent acting. The story though lacks some spark. It's not enough to have an original idea; you have got to be able to create something memorable. The film starts to lose steam after the first thirty minutes I think it's because there's only so much you can do with such a concept. After a while, the film becomes tiresome, and repetitive. The film is entertaining, but like I said, it doesn't anything really that great with its original idea. They could've done something really amusing, but instead it fails to amuse the audience from start to finish. I found the film to be entertaining, but it lacked the spark to truly deliver something worth watching. The end result is a semi decent horror comedy that has the potential to be something memorable, but just doesn't quite get there. Teeth is still a fun little film, but don't expect anything great from it.
  • blkbomb
    May 16, 2011
    blkbomb
    This is a what the f*** movie. We have Dawn who insists on abstinence till marriage. That changes when a boy tries to rape her, and we learn of her toothed vagina. Then we have her step brother who loves having sex, but only anal; that is until he has the chance at getting with h... read moreis step sister. I really wanted to like this movie and I did like it's originality, but other than that, there's just not much here. The performances were all pretty lousy and the movies direction was nothing like what you'd expect. Ultimately it left me disappointed. The last scene was pretty funny though.
  • FrizzDrop
    April 16, 2011
    FrizzDrop
    The premise borders on the absurd, yet the actual concept and follow through are impressive. The plot is simple enough: boy meets girl, boy takes advantage of girl, girl finds out she has teeth in her vagina. You know, a classic love story. This revenge film takes a closer look a... read moret the myths around vagina dentata, and the role men truly play in a women's sexual experience. There was a lot that bothered me about this film, primarily the heroine's relationship with her stepfather and stepbrother (played by the always psychotically inclined John Hensley) and the illness of her mother. Though this is supposed to be the origin of the story, and consquently the reason behind her defense mechanism, it holds no water. Enjoyable parts stemmed from the vulnerability of Joss Weixler, who is abstinent one minute, manhandled the next, and finally emerges as the powerful center to the film, dentata shown in a new light. Instead of dentata being something to conquer, feared by the male sex, it becomes a weapon against them. More importantly, some of these scenes are so unbelievably cheesy and horrifically put together, that you can't help but get a good laugh out of the entire experience.
  • LoughnerWasLucid
    March 10, 2011
    LoughnerWasLucid
    Raphael the gynecologist ninja turtle gets his fingers bitten off by a dick-eating vagina that likes to play hard-to-rape!
  • 76Majikat
    February 25, 2011
    76Majikat
    I know! Why bother?

    I knew it was going to be bad, but when I saw it on tv I had to know how the story worked, my curiosity got the better of me and of course it was exactly as I'd expected; a ridiculously plotted, so bad it's laughable kind of teen movie.
  • Deano78
    May 4, 2010
    Deano78
    A sort of B-movie horror with very dark humour. It's actually a bit slow and just seems to fill out the spaces between the 4 main scenes in the film. Some will find it to gross and gory and be crossing their legs. Something different, taboo subject matter in a way but overall doe... read moresn't make it a great horror. More one to to experience than anything else.
  • ceWEBrity
    April 26, 2010
    ceWEBrity
    Lousy, heavy-handed satire, but a great little campy "slasher" with a hell of a performance by Jess Weixler. I hope a really daring casting director sees this and starts handing her some big roles, because she absolutely knocked this one out of the field. She lends totally uniron... read moreic gravity to a bizarre premise, inviting us to laugh at her at first, and certainly to disagree with her, but then to pity her, and finally to cheer for her. This is the most full, generous depiction of a woman with teeth in her vagina that can possibly be committed to the screen, I think. Teeth does let her down in that the rest of the characters are generally broad and two-dimensional, and there's a disconcerting misandry streak. For every one positive male character, there are four who are unequivocal creeps, but I guess horror's been kicking the ladies around for forty years so it's only fair that it should happen to the men every once in a while. Also, surely this is a direct cause of this movie's generally negative audience reception, because ewwww severed penises. Hey, men - stop being such fucking wimps!
  • mumby1988
    April 20, 2010
    mumby1988
    Many of the industry's most successful filmmakers cut their teeth on obscure, low-budget horror films. Robert Wise began by directing Boris Karloff in The Body Snatcher, and ended up winning Oscars for West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Francis Ford Coppola first came to the... read more attention of big studios after the success of Dementia 13, and the rest is filmmaking history. Even James Cameron, who doesn't know the meaning of 'low budget', started out with Roger Corman on Piranha II.

    It's hard to know if Mitchell Lichtenstein's career will follow the same kind of path. Although Teeth is an impressive and memorable debut, it is not quite as accomplished or satirically on-the-money as many have claimed. It has several prominent flaws which are fortunately balanced by its high level of squirm-inducing scares and genuinely creepy moments, which add up to an interesting calling card for its director.

    Although Teeth is nominally a horror comedy, its close counterpart is neither the gross-out splatter of The Evil Dead or the homage-ridden antics of John Landis. There is a touch of homage in the film's references to 1950s B-movies. A couple of old black-and-white horror films are seen briefly on the mother's TV, and the location of Dawn's house near two giant nuclear cooling towers is a nod to all those old films about radiation causing mutation. But neither of these are substantially developed; certainly the latter is never used directly as an explanation for Dawn's... 'adaptation'.

    The closest companion to Teeth is Hard Candy, since both are twisted feminist tales about teenage women with dark secrets. Both are also divisive along gender lines; in the case of Teeth, men will struggle to laugh as opposed to shudder in fear during scenes which are near the bone(r). Some of the more brutal and gory scenes feature realistic prosthetics and old-fashioned theatrical blood, making the acts of mutilation feel far more physical and frightening than any kind of CGI torture porn.

    The film is a satire of the American celibacy movement, embodied here by a group called 'The Promise' for which our lead character is a vocal spokesperson. It starts very strongly with Dawn giving one of her talks to an assembly of young students, all of whom give shouted responses which sound very tightly choreographed. You feel like you're witness to some kind of brainwashing exercise, with Dawn as its poster child. Jess Weixler gives a fine performance which captures that familiar look of blinkered determination, that preachy but ultimately shallow conviction that she is right.

    But the manipulation of truth, by the state or by religious organisations like The Promise, doesn't end with the assembly hall. In a biology class later on in the film, diagrams of the female genitalia have been covered by stickers by state law; and later on there is a brief debate about the evolution of the rattlesnake (no innuendo intended).
    But while the film is clear about precisely who and what it is attacking -- and for all the right reasons -- there is a sense that it could have been more savage still. Although it sets up the level to which kids are indoctrinated with anti-sex propaganda, there is little focus on how this indoctrination affects Dawn after her initial 'accident' with Tobey. Her torment is taken for granted, when what we want is for the film to go deeper.

    The film's examination of dentata (the 'teeth' of the title) allows for a multi-layered examination into feminism and sexual liberation. The female genitalia has traditionally been portrayed in Western societies as something innately passive and unthreatening. To give this organ teeth and make its owner an attractive teenager, wrestling with budding sexual urges, is a powerful combination because it almost completely reverses this stereotype and exposes the inherent weaknesses of the male. The film has a brilliantly creepy tone; even before the first castration you sense that something really bad is going to happen, so that when it does, it's all the more chilling and alarming.

    Depending upon which school of feminism one is partial to, this transformation is either a sign of women triumphing over men, or a cautionary tale about the need to treat women equally. The film begins with the latter and gradually tiptoes into the former. At first Dawn is simply horrified by what has happened; in both the cave and at the gynaecologist's office, the attacks happen out of panic and she has no control over her new set of jaws. By the time she has managed intercourse without mishap, she seems to have undergone a moral shift and become more vengeful towards men.

    This transformation is one of the central problems with Teeth: it cannot decide whether it is pro-women or simply anti-men, and Lichtenstein often confuses the two via comedy. The first time Dawn's teeth come into play, it really freaks you out, even with the old-fashioned, over-the-top screaming. But by the third time, the film is playing it deliberately for gross-out laughs, which seems less honest or compelling. The moment where the dog eats Dawn's brother's member will both makes you squirm and try your patience. The film eventually ends up as a bizarre hybrid of Fatal Attraction and Baise-Moi, more concerned with painting Dawn as some kind of avenging angel than making a more interesting point about controlling sexual desire.

    The performances in Teeth are largely unremarkable aside from Weixler, who really nails her character early on and plays her with both a childlike naivety and knowledge beyond her years. Lichtenstein's direction is interesting and fairly accomplished, and he generally resists the temptation to exploit his young lead for the sake of bringing in the American Pie crowd. There are a number of gratuitous sexual scenes, like the male nudity in the locker room or Dawn's brother shagging while his adoptive mother lies unconscious on the floor. But these are compensated overall by a sensitivity towards Weixler; aside from one topless scene, she is suitably clothed for most of the film, and her fantasy sequence is cut short at an appropriate stage, both for the film's subject and its internal credibility.

    Overall Teeth is an interesting and creepy calling card for its young director and star. It isn't a completely seamless project, and in the final third it does become hazy about its true symbolic intentions. But if nothing else it should be praised for its sense of humour and its desire to tackle interesting and difficult subject matter. At a time when mainstream horror is looking back to the old slasher conventions, with its scantily clad and dim-witted female characters, Teeth offers a refreshing antidote in the shape of a female lead with conviction who uses her beauty for more powerful if disagreeable ends. It's not a masterpiece, and isn't as well-made as Hard Candy, but it's an enjoyable chiller which hints at future promise.

View All Teeth Reviews

Critic Reviews

Wesley Morris
November 24, 2011
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

As amateurishly made as it is, Teeth runs on a kind of angry distrust toward boys. Full Review

Jim Emerson
March 28, 2008
Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times

Whether you view it as a primordial image from the collective unconscious or a practical warning against promiscuity, vagina dentata makes an indubitably memorable impression -- and an ideal premise f... Full Review

Tasha Robinson
March 27, 2008
Tasha Robinson, Chicago Tribune

Given how thoroughly all the subtext spells out the message, then, it seems unnecessary to make the actual text so raw, grotesque and graphic. Full Review

Jessica Reaves
March 27, 2008
Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune

Given how thoroughly all the subtext spells out the message, then, it seems unnecessary to make the actual text so raw, grotesque and graphic. Granted, a horror movie about vagina dentata was probably... Full Review

Colin Covert
March 6, 2008
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

It's definitely not for Aunt Minnie, but cult movie mavens will appreciate director Mitchell Lichtenstein's willingness to push the boundaries of bad taste. Full Review

Peter Hartlaub
January 25, 2008
Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle

Extremely funny, very clever and still packs some cover-your-face bloody thrills that top any Saw or Hostel movie. Full Review

Lou Lumenick
January 23, 2008
Lou Lumenick, New York Post

Debuting director Mitchell (son of Roy) Litchtenstein creates a lot of dread but not a consistent tone. Full Review

Joe Morgenstern
January 23, 2008
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

There's no scarier myth for males, and [director] Lichtenstein turns various images of emasculation into a black comedy that flirts, fairly tediously, with pornography. Full Review

Stephanie Zacharek
January 18, 2008
Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

The picture is unfocused and indistinct; there's a noncommittal quality to the filmmaking. Teeth hinges on one strong idea but doesn't know quite where to take it, wobbling awkwardly between going for... Full Review

Jack Mathews
January 18, 2008
Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

Actor turned writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein has bitten into one of the oldest myths in human folklore with Teeth, an imaginatively demented horror-comedy. Full Review

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    • Tobey Cobb: I haven't jerked off since Easter!
    • Dawn: That's what the ring is all about. The way it wraps around your finger - that's to remind you to keep your gift wrapped. Wrapped... until the day... you trade it in for that other ring. That gold ring. Get it?
    • Dawn: That's what the ring is all about. The way it wraps around your finger - that's to remind you to keep your gift wrapped. Wrapped... until the day... you trade it in for that other ring. That gold ring. Get it?
    • Dr. Godfrey: It's true! Vagina Dentata!
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