There’s The Hollywood Smile, And Then There Are Creepy Monster Teeth

What is it about monster teeth and mouths in movies that can be so mind-warpingly creepy? Is it some innate jag in the psyche? A primordial hard-wired fear of being eaten?

From a young age, we all became very familiar with the Tooth Fairy. We loved the Tooth Fairy – drop out a baby tooth, and overnight she rocked up with money. It was a pretty sweet deal, even if string and a slammed door was involved. A time when innocence ruled and it made inflation feel good.

Then in 2008, Mexican historical fantasy and horror filmmaker Guillermo del Toro gave us his interpretation of Tooth Fairies in Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

There’s nothing golden about them. These hideous, minuscule, multi-legged winged creatures attack in inescapable swarms to eat your teeth. That’s right: they eat your teeth. Just the thought of that is sound-crunchingly spine-chilling. Ravenous for calcium, they’ll strip a victim of absolutely everything that they are; but it’s the teeth they covet because of the high concentration of the mineral they seek.

It’s not a story to tell little kids. Or big ones. You can be facing retirement and still not want to hear about that.

So we have teeth being monstered, monster beings with teeth and the Tooth Monster (aka the Tooth Child): one of the creepiest ever creations to hit scream screens. Not a product of the big screen, but rather the fear fiction raised within the rise of the internet. ‘Creepypasta’ is the term for horror-related legends and scare stories shared around the internet, with a chunk of its criteria being that they often seem like they could be true.

Think campfire frighteners without the campfire, camping, or companions you can pass the torch to.

Channel Zero:Candle Cove created the Tooth Child; a humanoid form impossibly, eerily and dreadfully comprised entirely of human teeth. With just the suggestion of eyes with an ill-defined mouth, it is the physical manifestation of the spirit of a child murdered by his own brother.

What a way to get him back…

Horror films are a reflection of our societal fears. They’re an outlet for the underlying negative emotional sensations that people and communities feel under perceived psychological threat – from economic crises, failing safety nets and having no confidence in ably navigating a changing world. Creepypasta is the instant noodle variety of those increasing fears.

The very first of the horror film genre was Le Manoir du diable, an 1896 French trick film released in the US as The Haunted Castle and in the UK as The Devil’s Castle; changes that were easy with it being a silent film. Directed by Georges Méliès (1861-1938) with a background in magic and acting, he became renown for his technical and narrative developments in the early days of cinema with a focus on fantasy and science fiction.

What may be more familiar is his 14-minute, hand-coloured 1902 print A Trip to the Moon (La Voyage dans la lune), ranked 84th in the 100 greatest films of the 20th century. Inspired by Jules Verne’s 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, five astronomers are shot into space in a bullet shaped capsule, which hits the ‘Man in the Moon’ in the eye as he watches.

The astronomers (sans any kind of space suits) watch the Earth rise in the distance, unroll their bedding and sleep. Saturn leans out of a window in his ringed planet, a comet passes and from each star in the Big Dipper a human face looks out. Yes a long way from this dentist Sunbury people feel at home with. The iconic image of the goddess Phoebe sitting in a crescent moon swing is from this film.

She creates a snowfall, awakening the sleeping astronomers, and in seeking shelter in a cave, they discover giant mushrooms. (Where’s the cheese?) They open an umbrella (necessary space gear) which promptly takes root and becomes a giant mushroom itself. The alien insectoid inhabitants, Selenites – which explode when met with force – surround the newly arrived travellers and take them to their king. He’s thrown to ground, explodes, and the five earthlings run back to the capsule, hitting the angered and pursuing Selenites who blow up all over the place.

A rope is used to tip the bullet-craft of the moon, into space, eventually landing in the ocean where it is rescued by a ship. There’s an honorary parade and a captured Selenite is displayed.

Taking three months to make, it was one of the most complex of Méliès’ films. Costing ₣10,000 ($US37,500) and converting to about $1.24m today, it was the mechanically operated scenery and the Selenite costumes that made it so expensive. Early episodes of Dr Who could probably give a nod to the Selenite depictions since they were made of only cardboard and canvas, but they were of quite intricate design and construction for their time. (So sit down now, Dr Who.)

With one of the earliest uses of special effects, A Trip to the Moon was a film of scientific ambition and discovery. A reflection of the lofty anticipated endeavours of a new century. A glorious flight of fancy, it converged a satirical aim at the elitist attitudes of the scientific community, while relating to the overall sense of wonder people had for an unexplored universe.

The body of knowledge in the century that ensued, went on to achieve what was utterly unimaginable in 1902. Indeed, science and fiction coyly held hands back then; what proliferated is pretty much the basis of our current and future world.

Released across twenty countries between 1902 and 1908 (1938 for Italy), a very lucky and unique few would have seen Georges Méliès original screening, and viewed Neil Armstrong’s televised moon landing in 1969.

One giant leap indeed.

This very first ever sci-fi movie didn’t give us monsters with terrifying teeth. But considering that in the scheme of things, it only took only 77 years for (Sir) Ridley Scott to take on the mantle that four directors had already rejected. It was just his second feature film that gave us the unforgettable alien in Alien. An exceedingly small step in time from NASA having pioneered moon exploration in 1969, and Hollywood delivering xenomorph extraterrestrial terror a mere ten years later.

Being creeped out in space was relatively new.

George Lucas had galloped us into the intergalactic Galactic Empire with Star Wars two years before, and it was an epic space opera adventure with romantic individualists rather than militaristic heroes. He took mythology, the underpinnings of humanity, and ancient psychological motifs to offer life lessons from a galaxy far, far away. Now deeply embedded in modern popular culture and a continuing subject of much academic research, nothing exploded out of anyone’s chest.

In Alien it certainly did. Monster teeth immortalised. And the species of chestburster and xenomorph anchored it a masterpiece that defined the space horror genre.

For those who weren’t there in ’79 it’s impossible to appreciate how it secured its status as the most horrifying sci-fi ever made. It was intense with suspense, with completely groundbreaking special effects, all due to Swiss artist Hans Reudi Giger (1940-2014).

The unsurpassed master of the biomechanical, H.R Giger was primarily influenced by surrealist Salvador Dali (1904-1989), creator of the Cthulhu Mythos H.P Lovecraft (1890-1937) and the hauntingly twisted worlds of printmaker and illustrator Alfred Kubin (1877-1959). All in some way representatives of symbolism, dystopian melancholy and the murkiness of the human psyche.

No wonder he was so great at terrifying us.

The monstrous, endoparasitoid extraterrestrials, facehugger and xenomorph that ungraced and unhinged us in Alien was Giger breathing life into his nightmarish science fiction motif. The chestburster was a collaboration of design between director Scott, and special effects artist Roger Dicken when apparently Giger’s version was too big to fit a ribcage. Italian special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi completed all the practical use aspects of the xenomorph.

Giger and Rambaldi’s mean dream of a pharyngeal jaw that dripped a clear slime of utter malevolence was a mouth-mounted hydraulic flesh piston that punched clean through just about anything.

Especially reality.

Horror films afford us a sense of control because of the psychological distance that’s placed between us, and what we see. We feel safer and more reassured than when we watch a gory documentary because clearly, truth is always much more disturbing. Scary movies are a heady mix of suspense, shock, psychological relevance and captivating story that let us release the fear within.

And who can’t do with a bit of that.

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