The Tooth Fairy Year: 2005 Director: Chuck Bowman Written by: Stephen J. Cannell, Corey Strode, Cookie Rae Brown Threat: Witch Weapon of Choice: Hatchet Based upon: none Color/B&W/3D: Colour Language: English Country of Origin: USA IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
Anchor Bay (and IDT I suppose) have been putting out a series of in house produced horror flicks with Stephen J. Cannell as the driving force. It's an interesting turn for him. Part of me hopes he's the next Charles Band and that we'll see a lot of these. For now they are of a higher quality than Full Moon's stuff was, and at the very least, that's nice.
A man has purchased an old--haunted?--house and turned it into a Bed &Breakfast. He invites is girlfriend/somtimes fiancee and her daughter up. A couple other people show up as well. And apparently the witch that used to inhabit the house, is not happy at all about the arrangement, as she starts to kill people.
This surprised me. I was expecting something pretty low quality both in production values and in story, and it was excellent in both respects. Far better than most straight-to-DVD movies anyway. There were still weaknesses, but they were hardly noticeable. The movie was more gory than I expected and the effects were carried off pretty well.
The acting was particularly strong. The script was very nice and the entire premise, which seemed a bit of a stretch at first, worked out nicely. I'm not as averse to children as Rish is, but I doubted that having a little girl protagonist could really carry the movie very far. It didn't seem to hurt it a bit.
I was particularly impressed by the vision the Chuck Bowman seems to have brought to the film. This is nearly the first feature he's directed after a lifetime of television and also, nearly the first horror anything he's done. He seems to have the knack. Mr. Cannell ought to have him back again.
Part of me wishes I could have seen this on the big screen, but to tell you the truth, it was always going to find its audience on DVD. I definitely enjoyed it and I think you will too.
Posted: December 26, 2006

Rish's Reviews
To make a long(ish) story short (also -ish), a little girl and her mother go into the country to visit her estranged boyfriend (the mother's not the little girl's) and his refurbished boarding house/hotel/bed & breakfast. Problem is, the old woman who used to live there was a witch, known as the Tooth Fairy due to her habit of stealing local children's last baby teeth . . . before she killed them. Her presence is still felt in the area, as well as the scumbag rednecks and ghosts of children. Quaint.
This was a really, really good one. I don't know if it counts, but it probably ought to be on my list of best films of the year.
The thing is, The Tooth Fairy really shouldn't have been as good as it was. Direct-to-video, shot in budget-conscious Canada, and featuring C-list stars at best, the story was surprisingly solid, the characters well-developed, dialogue entertaining, the villain was pretty scary (though the film really isn't), and it ended up being quite satisfying.
I do have to acknowledge that the villain in 2003's Darkness Falls was very, very, very (yes, that's three) similar to the villain here (though kudos to Tooth Fairy for not making her CGI.*
Tyranist mentioned, as the film began, that IDT Entertainment, which made this (and now owns Anchor Bay) is the Full Moon Pictures of the 2000's. At first, I thought that was some kind of sarcastic comment, but as I thought about it, I realized he was dead-on. There were some good low-budget, great low-budget, and absolutely horrible low-budget films made by Charlie Band and Co. back in the day, and they entertainingly included previews of their upcoming fare (back when videotapes tended not to include trailers). You pretty much always knew what you were gonna get with those guys, and now that Full Moon is dead, all we think of were the really good films they put out.
It's too soon to know whether this will be typical of this new company, but the three IDT movies we've watched have been exemplary of the above Full Moon rule (The Garden was pretty good, Left in Darkness was quite bad, and Tooth Fairy was really good).
Let's see, anything else? Carrie Ann Fleming who played the title character in Dario Argento's fantastic Jenifer has a role here. And the ubiquitous little girl (played by ubiquitous child actor Nicole Muņoz) wasn't bad, really, but couldn't help but keep bringing up the posters of Silent Hill, whose whole campaign consisted of the image of a kid I swore (incorrectly) was her without a mouth.
*Oh, oh, oh, I almost forgot. I would be COMPLETELY remiss in not mentioning the absolutely unintentional hilarity of the villain's death scene at the end. Holy Jane-Seymour-Circa-1973, it was funny. Highly recommended.
Posted: December 28, 2006

Total Skulls: 28

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?