TEETH & BLOOD (2015)

Teeth & Blood – a drunken movie review by Dana, Jon, Lygia and Stacey (a.k.a. The Bodycounters – www.bodycounters.com).

 

We took a combined 10 ½ pages of handwritten notes as we watched this movie. At the top of Jon’s page he wrote “How do I feel about this movie?” and that’s exactly how I feel writing this review. Where do I even start? It surprised me how many of the crazy things written in these pages are quotes from the actual movie and not our own commentary, which seems mild in comparison.

I guess there is no better place to start than the beginning. Jon’s bewildered questions continued throughout the opening credits. “What is Kedar king of?” and “Why is Stephanie spelled wrong?” The rest of us were focused on all the rhinestones (which turned out to be foreshadowing for the overwhelming sparkliness of this movie). The opening credits were so sparkly and in an amazing font. That font was probably the best part of the whole movie. It was all downhill from there. When the title flashed on the screen, they’d dropped the ampersand and now it’s called “Teeth and Blood”. Stacey wrote: continuity = -1.

 

 

 

In a way it really breaks my heart that this movie turned out so bad because it had so much going for it. There are certain things that make up a good bodycount movie, the first of course being that someone has to die (the bodycount for this movie was a disappointing 1 human and 3 vampires). But it should also have a romance I can’t handle, a renegade cop who plays by his/her own rules, a crazy and/or drunk old guy who tries to warn everyone about what’s going to happen but no one believes him, and a gratuitous shower scene. This movie had all of these things, in fact it had not one, but TWO renegade cops who played by their own rules and THEY WERE the romance I can’t handle, and yet we all agreed this isn’t one of those bad movies that’s so bad it’s good. This one was just bad. Even the music was bad. “Chef Sean should have done the catering and not the music.” (Lygia)

It started with an opening monologue that annoyed Lygia, “this is not a believable [censored] narrator”, but it reminded Dana of the beginning of Oddworld. Stacey didn’t hear Abe  though. No, Stacey thought it was Ice Cube making too many metaphors. Jon’s note says “metaphorical communication”, so make of that what you will. It turns out the narrator was none other than our first renegade cop who played by his own rules, Detective Mike Hung a.k.a. Detective Double Neck Tattoo. None of us could deal with the neck tattoos or the rosary. We learned that this city is having a blood crisis and then we see a sloppy chick vampire drinking an IV and wasting the blood that is spilling down her face. There was also something about a backpack full of Marcellus Wallace’s soul. We meet the old Chinese guy who was not drunk, but still told you what was going on. This scene was full of terrible acting and terrible camera work. No one needed the shot from behind Detective Double Neck Tattoo’s left ear once, let alone twice. We see a “sacrificial virgin”, to which Dana yelled “Bring in the virgins!” We hoped she was going to be our first body, but were quickly disappointed when it turned out to be a movie set and the “virgin” was a yelly, non-believeable, trying too hard, diva star actress. Stacey wrote: “The virgin should die first” and she did! Stacey demanded and we received. A news report about the diva’s death comes on and we are subjected to Crystal Forester. She had the most annoying voice and gave us another display of terrible acting. At this point Stacey is insisting that she should be the next to die with heavily underlined notes, “Reporter needs to die next”. Unfortunately, Stacey’s demand went unanswered this time and the reported lived. Next, we meet Sasha Colfax a.k.a. Detective Hooker Puffy Sleeves. According to our notes, this detective has a “nice office” and a “nice martial arts trophy” which was a “dead giveaway to her being the renegade cop who plays by her own rules”. Jon thought they did a good job on Sasha Colfax overall, even though she is “a bit mean”. She is the worst undercover detective ever! She gave her up her cover right away and used her real name as an “actress”. “She used her own name? Is she an idiot?” (Jon).

The FBI agents in The Following are better detectives than this chick and that’s saying something because even the cops on Grimm are better at their jobs than Kevin Bacon and Bobby “Iceman” Drake. But even letting your hot partner get buried alive is better detective work than leaving your purse lying around so that the casting lady, who refuses to button her shirt, can find it, go through it, and find evidence so she can be all like, “That [censored] is a [censored] hooker detective puffy sleeves!” (This is not a quote from the movie) End rant. At one point, she tried to hide and was almost sniffed out by the assistant (“I smell skank!” - Stacey quote) The romance we can’t handle between our two detectives starts with them sparring and Puffy Sleeves asking Neck Tattoo “So what’s your story detective?” This scene is very reminiscent of the basketball scene in Catwoman http://goo.gl/bFw9fx. There was “sexual tension” and “dominance issues” right away.

Back on the movie set, we finally get to meet everyone’s favorite character in the whole movie Tyrese (a.k.a. Pimp Lucius a.k.a. Pimp Lucifer). When we first see him he is lying to the most gullible security guard ever and telling him he is the set electrician, even though he is so pimped out that Stacey yelled out “Pimp Lucius, what are you doing here?”.  I mean, seriously, he has the whole zoot suit with the hat, giant flashy belt buckle that he wore with a shiny cummerbund, gold chains and everything! The sparkliness kept coming with bedazzled, multi-colored, matching nighties worn by the girls in the fake movie within the movie (which, by the way, is also about vampires just like the real movie which we maybe should mention by now) and strip club glitter on the mayors’ face. Everything was sparkly except the vampires. (Thank you for not being Twilight at least.)

 We knew pretty much right away that Pimp Lucius was a vampire, especially when his eyes began to glow the same purple as his pimp suit. Dana had been drinking for 12 hours at this point and her notes started to sound confused…”Why do they have Napoleon Dynamite’s blood?” and “How does Pimp Lucius know this dude in the blue shirt with the pirate cup?” That dude turned out to be the director, also a vampire, who wore lots of blue and had the glowing eyes to match. Jon wondered how far they would take the eyes matching the shirts theme, but not unlike how the whole movie started strong and then slowed down they gave up on this theme almost immediately (or maybe it only works on male vampires). The most disappointing was probably the director’s assistant. We were looking forward to glowing teal eyes. She was also a vampire, which we picked up right away even before the mismatched glowing eye debacle.

Pimp Lucius was seriously the best thing about this movie. Lygia wants to see a prequel of how he became a vampire, but she wants to be involved in the production so she can prevent the terrible shaky shots, many awful fight scenes, and so she can forbid Chef Sean from doing any of the music (FYI we were very disturbed to find out that Chef Sean and Detective Double Neck Tattoo is the same person and the neck tattoos are real). Lygia’s right, everyone needs more Pimp Lucius in their life and in this movie. What it doesn’t need is more candles! The amount of candles we saw in this movie raised so many questions, such as: “Why are there so many [censored] candles?” “What was the candle budget for this movie? 50 million?” and “Did they really buy all these candles or did they make the cast bring in all of their candles from home?”  I guess that explains why the acting, music, wardrobe and camera work was so bad. They blew the budget on candles.

 

 

 

Despite hiring the most gullible security guard ever, the director got all crazy about security on his set. Someone opened a “heavy” door and he lost his mind, threatening to call the mayor. The whole set was a nightmare. People were trying to wear green sweaters in front of green screens and there was sexual harassment in the form of this actual quote from the movie, “C’mon girl, you was just a hoochie mama last week!” Then, to top it all off, Detective Hooker Puffy Sleeves showed up on set and took over being the diva, yelling at people for being in her light and needing lip gloss, but then she had no problem with the lack of hair dresser. “They’re saving oodles of money by her combing her own hair” (Stacey) “That’s a nice comb though. A rat tail bone comb” (Lygia) “It’s one of the only positive things we have to say about this movie” (Jon)

Meanwhile, we are getting showered with more amazing quotes from Pimp Lucius like, “I don’t know nothing about nothing.”, “I’m just a squirrel trying to get some butt.” (Yes, that’s an actual quote from the movie.) and “What you talking about? I’m ghetto vampire.” Is ghetto vampire like ghetto fabulous? I’d have to say yes! Pimp Lucifer is most definitely ghetto fabulous. Sometimes it almost seemed like he was answering us. (This could have been the booze or really good timing. You choose.) Dana questioned him about his fashion choice of belt buckle with cummerbund, to which he replied “I’m just doing me.” Speaking of belts, Detective Double Neck Tattoo was undercover as a grip for the fake movie and wore a tool belt full of tape. “Why does he have so much tape?” (Jon) “Grips = a lot of tape.” (Dana)

The sparkly mayor showed up (guess the director followed though on his threat) and the reporter (who should have died, but didn’t) called him “your honor” which set Stacey off on a little rant: “Mayor does NOT = your honor! Stupid [censored]!” There was an awful fist shot, which was supposed to be the mayor getting knocked out. “Oh, he got fisted.” (Dana) The director kept blowing blue smoke in Detective Hooker Puffy Sleeves face, which made Detective Double Neck Tattoo say “You seem like you in the cloud.” Then the director bit her and made her drink from his bedazzled pimp cup. “Drink from my pimp cup. You’ve never had Kool-aid like this.” (also, not a quote from the movie).  

We can’t remember when the fight between the director and neck tattoo boy happened, but to prepare the detective removed his grip disguise (just a tool belt) to which Stacey wrote: “Tape belt off = It’s on!” He fights Pimp “don’t you know who I am?” Lucifer and threatens to “handcuff everybody in this building!” (Sir, we know you don’t have enough handcuffs for that. Don’t make threats you can’t follow through on.) All of a sudden, he pulls his random stake and holy water out of nowhere and kills our favorite character. He also fights with the assistant (sans teal sweater) and she gets killed with a stake from nowhere. We should mention that the only good special effects in this movie started with the assistant appearing in blue smoke in the men’s room. It was a nice touch and they did it a few times.

 

Finally we get our gratuitous shower scene with Detective Hooker Puffy Sleeves and the director wrapping her in his blue smoke. “Let me bathe you in my blue smoke girl.” (Stacey) Inexplicably, the movie ends with some shaky, terrible shots in a mass biting scene that had Dana asking, “What is going on?” The response, “vampire orgy”. It’s very possible there was more effort put into the writing of this review than there was into the script of this movie.