[yasr_overall_rating]
A diva actress is murdered on a film set. Meanwhile, the city’s blood supply is mysteriously being depleted. Detectives Mike Hung and Sasha Colfax go undercover to crack the toughest mystery of their lives in a vampire-infested studio.
Some movies are just plain excruciating to sit through and “Teeth & Blood” is one of them. What haphazard semblance of a story there is, comprises of Detectives Mike Hung (Sean Hutchinson) and Sasha Colfax (Michelle Van Der Water) who are given the assignment of the supposed suicide of a film diva on the set of a horror movie which occurred at City Studios, one of the oldest film companies in Los Angeles. When the diva’s body disappears (quite literally) before making it to the coroner’s van, our two heroes arrive at the facility undercover where Sasha pretends to be auditioning for the deceased diva’s replacement part in the movie and very quickly, comes under the watchful eye of the film’s director, Vincent Augustine (Glenn Plummer).
Mike pretends to be a movie grip and both of them are hired immediately and while at the studio, try to work out exactly what happened to the missing body. More people go missing, fangs appear in people’s mouths, their eyes glow bright purple and you realize that the wood used to build the sets in the movie are more animated than the actors themselves. There is even a half-hearted attempt at a subplot, which involves a mysterious blood bank being opened by Vincent in cooperation with the city’s Mayor downtown for the people who desperately need blood transfusions but it quickly falls by the wayside when the filmmakers probably realized that that particular aspect had been done so much better in “Blade II.” At times, we are watching a movie within a movie but that movie is much more interesting than this actual movie.
At least that film seems to be poking fun at itself and the genre it is representing, “Teeth & Blood” tries way too hard to be serious when in all reality, it is just begging to be lambasted on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and if that ever happens, then “Teeth & Blood” will be infinitely more enjoyable. As an indie filmmaker myself for over 30 years, I couldn’t help but feel like the producers of this film had never shot a single frame of footage in their lives and came up with the story used herein and with a decent budget obviously at their fingertips, figured “How hard could it really be?” And voila! “Teeth & Blood” was born.
It’s so easy to point your finger at the actors and blame them but the fault here falls squarely on the shoulders of the producers, director and writers (yes, it took four people to write this movie). As any good filmmaker knows, the script is the most important element of any movie but here, it feels like the filmmakers either didn’t know, or care about that aspect and the finished result speaks for itself.
Available now on DVD and Digital Video
