She’s a Maneater

Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a sexually repressed high school
student who, unbeknownst to her, has vagina dentata—i.e., her red
snapper has really, really sharp teeth. Calling Teeth an
emotionally charged fable would be the understatement of the year.
Combining black humor, monster-movie horror, and the best of ’70s
sexploitation flicks, writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s
fascinating film manages to avoid the Fatal Attraction cautionary tale pitfalls and successfully aims for a message of female
sexual empowerment.

As the naïve president of her school’s abstinence club, blonde
and beautiful Dawn is perversely unaware of her body and her
incisor-filled lady place, a product of living in the shadow of the
town’s nuclear power plant. When equally repressed Tobey (Hale
Appleman) moves to town, Dawn can’t quite manage to keep her thoughts
pure.

An innocent frolic at the local swimming hole turns hot, heavy, and
eventually rape-y: The two teens wrestle in a make-out cave by the
lake, and it’s only then that Dawn realizes her cavity might have
cavities. In other words, Ms. Razor Clam bites off Mr. One-Eyed Snake.
In a testament to Teeth‘s overarching seriousness—despite
the horror movie overtones—this moment is definitely not played
for laughs.

It’s then that Teeth finds its groove in a shameless and
Grimm’s Fairy Tales-esque fashion. Throughout the remaining half
of the story nearly every man in town tries to rape, molest, or abuse
Dawn, including her skeezy gynecologist and her stepbrother, Brad (John
Hensley), whose previous long-forgotten childhood attempt at sexual
abuse resulted in a severed fingertip and a fondness for anal rather
than vaginal sex. The world is a rough place for a girl with two mouths
to feed.

Teeth is an unsettling coming-of-age film: It’s funny,
disturbingly gross, and as melancholy as any superhero’s origin story.
Surprisingly, it’s not as exploitive as the plot synopsis would make it
seem—in fact, the film’s skewering of the abstinence movement is
spot on and hilarious, and Lichtenstein unflinchingly tackles the dicey
world of sexual politics.