MOVIE: Tooth and Nail (2007)

This movie is one of the annual “8 Films to Die For” series put together by After Dark Horrorfest.  The films are typically released into theaters for a very brief period of time (a weekend, I think), and then head straight to DVD.  I couldn’t swear to it, but I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually watched one of the movies from this series. I’ve seen them around, but to be honest, they always looked so awful I was kind of afraid to give them a try (oh stop — I know YOU think I have no standards, but the reality is I have very specific and exacting standards, they just happen to be much, much lower than yours!).

A couple of weeks ago, however, Dish Network was offering two of the movies from the latest incarnation of this series on Pay-Per-View for one low, low price.  I couldn’t resist a deal like that, so I recorded them both and only just got around to watching the first one this weekend.  And to be honest, though my expectations were extremely low, I have to say this movie was surprisingly not-that-bad!  I mean, it’s pretty bad, of course, but it was also fairly entertaining and had a few truly clever little moments scattered around here and there.  Color me astonished!

The story is set a few years in the future, after humans have depleted all stores and fixins for gasoline on the planet. Without gas, the world has completely fallen apart, and many people have either starved to death or died in violent attacks brought on by other people who are starving to death. So much for Thomas Hobbes being all glass-half-empty when it came to the human race, eh? 

A small group of survivors has holed up together in an abandoned hospital, where they’ve found a ton of food and supplies. One day, a couple of them are out scrounging when they come across a young woman who’s been injured. They take her back to the hospital and are horrified when she describes being attacked by a gang of people she calls “Rovers” — murderous human beings clad mostly in fur (that’s how we know they’re evil, naturally!) and wielding all kinds of Dungeons & Dragons-style weaponry, who kill anybody they encounter and then roast and eat their corpses.  Nom nom nom!  Yumsville!

Somewhat ridiculously, the good guys are all named after cars (Nova, Ford, Durango) and the bad guys are all named after carnivores (Lobo, Jackal, Dingo). Try not to hold this fact against the movie, though — it’s hard, I know, because that’s reallllllly stupid (and also the total opposite of my instincts when it comes to delineating good vs. evil in the modern world, I might add — I’m much more likely to want to root for the carnivorous wildlife than the SUVs, in other words).  But if you can get past the little moments of ridiculousness like these, the rest of the movie isn’t really as bad as it might sound.

Anyway, the Rovers, alas, have followed the young woman to the hospital, and that night, they begin their attack on the little group of survivors. Luckily, they only seem to attack at night, which leaves plenty of daytime for hand-wringing, panicked in-fighting, and scouting around for good hiding places.

The other good news is that it turns out the Rovers are also REALLY stupid. This is always helpful.

Unfortunately, the Cars quickly discover smarts are really no match for the swords when fighting with limited resources in a confined space (“Never fight a land war in Asia!”), and it’s not long before it becomes clear there’s no way they can really compete with the Carnivores.  By the final act of the film, only two Cars are left, though, luckily, they also just so happen to be the smartest characters in the whole movie and, coincidentally, the only two I was rooting for myself.  Oh, frabjous day!

The denouement of this movie was surprisingly clever, if you ask me, and while there were still some elements of it that made me roll my eyes, overall I was impressed with the method used to put the last of the Carnivores out of all of our miseries.  Not sure it would really work, but it was a cool concept that made it a lot easier to forgive some of the extremely silly lines in this movie, such as, “I don’t want to get chopped up by some two-bit ass clowns!” or, “Survival of the fittest: say hello to the winning team, bitch!” 

Actually, that last one’s not too bad, come to think of it. . .

And did I mention that Michael Madsen is in this? Michael Madsen, the Boyfriend whose write-up I still cite as one of my all-time favorites? THAT Michael Madsen!  Is in this movie! I wasn’t sure if I should be glad or disheartened by that fact at first, to be honest (dude, where did your career go, my man?).  Instead, I mostly just ended up being disappointed because clearly the filmmakers didn’t have enough money to pay his salary for more than an afternoon and seriously, they should’ve at least tried putting on a bake sale to keep him in the flick longer.  I would’ve gladly dropped a twenty on some cupcakes for an extra five minutes of Madsen onscreen, myself, and I’m SURE I’m not alone on that score.  Mike is one of the scariest mutha-fathas I have ever seen, and all he has to do to make me pee my pants with fear is simply glare sternly in my direction — frankly, I gots chills already.  Just think of how useful that could be in a film of this nature!  But instead he’s insanely underutilized here and eventually just kind of vanishes without a trace (I never did figure out what happened to him — maybe he got killed and I somehow missed it?).  Missed a bet on that one, fellas.

That said, the other actors do a decent job here themselves, and many of them were also recognizable faces as well (Rachel Miner is from Californication, Rider Strong is from Boy Meets World and Eli Roth’s movie Cabin Fever, Michael Kelly was on the Sopranos, etc.).

All in all, this was a pretty entertaining little movie.  Yes, most of it is kind of stupid.  I recognize that, I truly do.  But if you watch a lot of bad horror movies like I do, you start to appreciate the ones that have a few unique ideas sprinkled into their mixes.  This one had just enough elements that were original to make the parts that were supremely silly mostly forgivable.  For what it is, it’s surprisingly decent.  That’s hardly glowing praise, I realize, but fans of bad horror flicks might find this one worth the price of a rental.  You could do a lot worse.  And if you’re me, you probably already have!

[Netflix me | Buy me]

Genre: Horror
Cast:  Rider Strong, Rachel Miner, Michael Kelly, Robert Carradine, Michael Madsen

Tags: Horror