The lists I consulted to get my (48-movie) shortlist kept acquainting me with a movie I'd squirmed at and loved when I saw it almost exactly 15 years ago in September of 2008, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Teeth. You know, the one about the girl with vagina dentata.
Although I have plenty of movies to choose from (not all of which are as available to me as I'd hoped), I couldn't resist the urge to get in a second Teeth viewing, especially since it's available on more than one of my streaming services. I'd actually planned to make it sort of a midnight movie second half of a double feature after The People Under the Stairs on Friday night, but due to my usual episodes of falling asleep during that movie, I didn't finish Wes Craven's film until after 1.
At this point, though, I'd come along too far in my desire to revisit Teeth to exclude it from my schedule. So I made it a first movie on Saturday, knowing that might mean it was the only movie -- though I did manage a second one on Saturday night, this time finishing at almost 2.
Teeth held up. It's got some great gruesome severed penises and fingers, each one of which punches out a guffaw of laughter. This is, in a way, the perfect mode for horror comedy. It's gross enough that you can't help but laugh, while also being in the realm of absolutely horrifying.
It's smart that Lichtenstein never shows us a close-up of Jess Weixler's vagina, and not only because that would push the R rating. (Interestingly, it's not to preserve her modesty -- although one romantic scene is shot to avoid seeing her topless, the subsequent scene shows her checking herself in the mirror where you see everything.) We never find out where the teeth are, whether they are on the outer edge like some kind of Saarlac pit in Star Wars, or only at a certain point back protecting the hymen.
We do know, I think, that they are retractable. I'd forgotten that Weixler's character actually has one complete sexual experience with one of the characters in the movie, where the teeth never make an appearance, because she is under the impression it's consensual (because she has been mildly drugged by the guy, though at least it was a pill that he offered her rather than one he slipped in her drink). That gives us optimism that she can live a normal sexual life going forward, assuming she remains at ease with her partner. Even consensual sex, though, can become rougher than expected at a certain point, and it remains to be seen whether she can control her dentata in that scenario.
The second movie was another one that came up multiple times on the lists I consulted, and was also available on multiple streaming services. That's Marjane Satrapi's The Voices from 2014, starring Ryan Reynolds, in which he plays a mentally ill man who believes his pets are encouraging him to go on a killing spree. (The cat, specifically -- the dog is the angel on his shoulder. Both are voiced by Reynolds.)
I loved this movie. It is funny -- some of what the pets say is gold. The cat has a Scottish accent (or was it Irish? I get them confused when there's no other context) and is a right bastard, and the dog is sort of a dimwitted farm boy type, but lovingly so. They have a great rapport with each other as well as with Reynolds' Jerry.
But this movie is also dark, which probably shouldn't be a surprise from the director who gave us Persepolis. Jerry semi-accidentally murders a number of the characters we get to know -- the situations he gets himself into start out without that intention, but then end up there through choices he makes. This allows him to retain some of our sympathies. He chops up their bodies and stores them in tupperware containers, and the heads in his refrigerator. Ew.
But the real darkness comes from his emotional damage from his childhood, when he was surrounded by a terrible father and a suicidal mother -- who also heard voices. All the humor dissipates during the scenes in which we get to see this damage, and the resulting effects on his personality as an adult.
Having it both ways is what makes The Voices such an astonishing achievement. It's rare to be able to bounce between tones, and the film ends with an incredible closing credits sequence that steps outside of either of the film's primary modes. I will be watching this film again soon.
Okay, back to normal programming for the weeknights.
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