The Teeth Beneath

The Teeth Beneath (2005)

Written and Directed by: Zach Tovey and Jason Eisener

Starring: John Swinamer, Tyler Knowlton, Jermaine Arsenault, Matt Bloun, Zach Tovey, Evan Elliot

This is a local indie horror flick that I'd heard about and seen posters for at various venues but hadn't yet had the opportunity to see. But now I have. Heh heh.

Anyway, it's about this skate shop (the Pro skate shop on Blowers Street. I love Halifax) that has this indestructible monster with a weird bunny mask (which was apparently killed by angry villagers in the time of Puritans. I guess) living in the basement. When a bunch of guys try to rob the store late one night, it wakes up and then makes life difficult for the store's employees.

Along the way, various... entities show up - a shaggy haired, wheelchair bound guy with a gas mask and a katana, for example, or a Russian gangster. It's about the weirdest movie ever.

But never mind that. I had fairly low expectations of this movie, but it was actually surprisingly good. It had a really low budget, but they managed to make a lot of it. A lot of the acting was kind of mediocre, but mostly it was okay, and it was written well enough.

And it had a pretty good sense of humour (the occasional shit joke aside). Which is always important. Yeah, so it was incredibly stupid, but that was sort of the point.

There were a couple of things in there that made no sense to me at all , but I managed to get over that.

It was really short, too. Probably under an hour. I think they could probably expand it, get a bigger budget... actually, it's fine as it is.

Yep. That was really weird. From what I can tell by delving into the depths of The Coast website (there's no listing on IMDb (stupid IMDb)), this Jason Eisener guy directed Hobo with a Shotgun (great title), one of the bits of Grindhouse. Cool.

Oh yeah, the music was pretty good, too (some of the '80s techno stuff was a little irritating, but the other stuff was okay).

The movie reminded me of Return of the Living Dead for some reason (but set in the beautiful (?) city of Halifax, full of places I recognize. I can't shake the feeling that I've met one of the guys in it at some point in my life).

I watched the other short films on the DVD - The Standing was pretty good. It's about these people who just... stand. Spooky.

All in all, it was way better than some other shite I've seen out there and it's made in my home town. Town pride!

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