109) Teeth (2007)

109) Teeth (2007) Dir: Mitchell Lichtenstein Date Released: January 2008 Date Seen: April 21^st, 2009 Rating: 2.75/5

Teeth (2007) might have been the rightful descendant of Paul Morrissey’s deadpan-camp monster sex comedy hybrids if it weren’t trying so damn hard to win its audience over. Like Morrissey’s films, writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein’s parody of Heartland, America is apropos of nothing. It exists only to announce its filmmakers boredom with bourgeois attitudes towards female sexuality. Lichtenstein’s smalltown American might as well be the Transylvania of Morrissey’s Blood for Dracula (1974) as both are non-descript enough to provoke jeering laughs when they are inexplicably invaded by the ultimate outsiders: characters with New York accents (n Teeth, the coroner and the detective and the inimitable serf in Blood for Dracula).

Both Teeth and Blood for Dracula similarly hold in contempt the malignance and the self-important pathos that their simple misogynists’ cover up with hysteria—Jess Weixler and John Hensley pout and look beruddled very nicely. However, only Lichenstein’s film tries to entertain the audience, delving into Raimian camp while Morrissey further appeals to God knows who save himself. That kind of apathy is essential to making a truly subversive parody, leaving Lichenstein’s viewers only the modest pleasures of watching an extended sarcastic joke.