Rant #2,152: Once Bitten, Twice Shy

How was your holiday weekend?

Mine was OK ... a couple of barbecues, and a three-day weekend to recharge my batteries.

I really can't complain, although the weather could have been better.

And, of course, we could have used today, because while I am sitting in a hot office wondering about my future, the temperature outside will hit 90 degrees, or so the weather forecasters say.

My family has been fairly busy lately, so just sitting down and doing nothing but watching baseball on TV this weekend felt pretty good.

Of course, baseball was not on 24 hours a day, so I went to Netflix and chose to watch a movie that I figured would literally keep me occupied for 90 or so minutes and then just fade away into my memory as nothing more than a time killer.

So I picked something called "Teeth," and, well, no, this is not a movie that leaves your consciousness that soon.

The 2007 movie, which stars Jess Weixler as the girl with "teeth," and was written by Michael Lichtenstein, who also directed, is a perfect tonic for the current times we live in, where if you look at a woman in what she believes is the wrong way, you are automatically guilty of sexual harrassment.

That the film was made several years before this furor only shows how clever--maybe too clever--the film actually is.

This is the ultimate anti-male, feminist fantasy--written by a man, yet--where the girl in question gets her revenge, and then some.

Weixler--who looks about 13 years old but was in her mid to late 20s when this movie was made--plays Dawn, a sexually uptight high schooler from a blended, dysfunctional family. She heads a school group that preaches abstinence until marriage, a credo which she firmly believes in until she meets the guy of her dreams.

One thing leads to another, and she is having a more difficult time following her abstinence beliefs. One day, she and her beau go swimming, and well, the two get frisky, and although she protests, the guy cannot control himself and attempts to sexually attack her.

Crunch, crunch.

That is all I am going to say about it, but it ain't pretty.

For the remainder of the film, the young lady is filled with remorse about her, well, her chewing talent, and meets up with males who don't know about this talent that she has--actually called "vagina dentata"--and who sexually attack her in one way or the other.

Every male in this movie is after one thing, and one thing only, and Dawn is, well, not the right lady to pick on.

First, we have a gynecologist, who Dawn goes to to see to find out if what she believes is true about her anatomy is correct. The gynecologist sees this young, pretty girl with her legs spread wide open, and decides that he is going to take advantage of her with his hand--and then promptly gets the surprise of his life when he loses the fingers on one hand due to her "talent."

Chomp!

Then we have a guy who kind of likes Dawn, who ends up first successfully having sex with her--when she relaxes, so does the talent she has--and then, when doing it again, reveals he had a bet with some other guy that he could bed her.

Chomp!

And finally, she has sex with her evil half brother, who abused her years earlier when they were kids with his finger--which has a permanent bite mark on it from the experience--and who she hates for a variety of reasons, including letting her mother die while he was making out with some floozy.

Chomp!

Yes, Dawn is guilt stricken, to a certain extent, about her talent, but with her life in shambles, she runs away from home. She gets picked up by some slimy oldster ... and well, with the gleam in her eyes, you just know what is going to happen to this guy.

Chomp!

This is not a porn film. Very little is shown of a sexual nature, although the aftermath of the use of her talent is shown pretty graphically, leaving the impression that each guy she has been with has probably bled to death, making Dawn something of a serial killer.

Yes, this film is as twisted as all heck, but it won several awards when it first came out, including from the revered Sundance Film Festival, where Weixler was also feted as best actor, winning the grand jury prize.

The film did not do well when it was released, and has pretty much existed as a Netfilx entry, where I am sure it is a popular selection, so I guess you can call it a cult film at this point in time.

I kind of liked it, and yes, it kind of repulsed me too. Sure, it is probably the ultimate fantasy of women who hate men, but the film has a comedic edge to it that really makes it better than it really should be.

In my memory, there was a similar movie made in the 1970s called "Chatterbox," starring Z-movie fave Candice Rialson as a woman with a similar talent down there, but I have not seen this movie so I really can't comment on it.

But when I looked, I found it on YouTube, so I might be checking it out soon, if for nothing else than curiosity's sake.

But back to "Teeth" ... I would recommend it if you are looking for a movie that can really make you laugh and repulse you at the same time.

There aren't too many films like this that have ever been made, but "Teeth" certainly fills the bill.

Chomp!