Teeth (18)

5:49pm Thursday 19th June 2008

British consistently stands head and shoulders above its neighbours in teenage pregnancy rates.

As sexual education continues to fall on deaf ears, perhaps the time has come for a radical solution: screenings of writer-director Mitchell Lichtenstein's satirical coming of age story as part of the national curriculum.

In the space of 93 hysterical, blood-drenched minutes, the first-time feature filmmaker creates a nightmarish world in which youthful fumblings are punishable by horrific mutilation at the hands - or the demonic loins - of a naive heroine.

Husbands and boyfriends will be crossing their legs in anguish as characters lose more than their dignity, severed from the appendage that symbolises their masculinity. Teeth draws plenty of blood as Dawn blossoms from shrinking violet into seductress.

Lichtenstein spares the blushes of his heroine, but doesn't afford her victims the same courtesy, relishing graphic close-ups of their humiliation, capped by one pet dog getting a meaty treat it will never forget.