Movie Review: Fable: Teeth of Beasts (2009)

by David Hayes

I really, really, really wanted to like Fable: Teeth of Beasts. You don't run across a micro-budget dark fantasy very often. There's a reason for that, though. Having no budget, when completely manufacturing a fantasy world, is a huge hurdle to get over. If you have no money, you must have a stellar crew, engaging and charismatic cast and the story has to be tight like a tiger. Unfortunately, Fable didn't have any of that. I will say, though, that the film is ambitious. Probably one of the most ambitious micro-budget films I've seen. With that said, ambition can only go so far. The story, if I can make this out, revolves around Lilith Noir (Melantha Blackthorne), a freelance lady bad-ass in the city of Fable. Fable is a parallel dimension, essentially, where demons and ghouls and homeless people all live together. There is a weird little sub-story about a human girl that crosses over (due, I think, to a combination of 1983 Aptiva special effects and a heavy, heavy dose of bad acting) from our world to Fable, but that is abandoned pretty quickly. Lilith gets the job to stop a Gallu Demon (Dale Denton). This being a fantasy/horror film, she succeeds in the end, but at what cost? I'll tell you what cost... my retinas burn.

Buy Fable: Teeth of Beasts on DVD

Fable suffers from a freaking menagerie of issues. The acting is sub-par on nearly all fronts. Blackthorne delivers her lines slowly, moves slowly, gestures slowly, fights slowly, shoots slowly, seduces slowly... this film was so slow I swore that Michael Bay had something to do with it. Her plodding, cardboard delivery wasn't helped in any way by the tongue-twisting dialogue from writers David R. Williams and Matt Yeager. This film was slooooooow, if you didn't get that yet. I watched the counter on my DVD player until it hit around 100 minutes. Seriously, people. There was a nice performance from genre vet Kathleen Benner as The Spirit of Rage, but I couldn't hear half of it. Which brings me to the technical aspects. To be fair, I've made some crappy, crappy films. I'll admit that. No matter how bad they were, though, they were all in focus. FOCUS! In order to hide the soft focus (and when I say soft, it looks like vaseline smeared on the screen), some awful after effects were used. Now, this is my segue to the visual effects department. I can only imagine the hiring process went like this:


Effects Guy: "Hi, I'm Ted, I'm here for the visual effects job."

Producer: "Hi, Ted. We are creating a dark fantasy/horror film with heavy effects elements, like completely new worlds and creatures!"

Effects Guy: "Cool! What's your budget?"

Producer: "About fifteen dollars and some McDonald's coupons."

Effects Guy: "Oh, well. That's cool, I'm not very good anyway."

Producer: "You're hired!"


Uugh. Fable: Teeth of Beasts is available from Dark Roast Releasing.