Movie: Even Lambs Have Teeth

 

Production Year: 2015

 

Tubi Provided Summary: After being abducted by a small town full of psychopaths, two beautiful young women take savage and imaginative revenge on their attackers.

 

Film Can Be Accessed At: https://tubitv.com/movies/480194/even-lambs-have-teeth?start=true

 

Does This Movie Pass The Bechdel Test: Yes

 

Character Analysis:

  • Katie: Sensitive, wishy-washy, emotional, intelligent under pressure, very feminine
  • Sloane: Headstrong, stubborn, persuasive, cunning, masculine, and feminine traits
  • Jason: Uncle of Katie, intelligent, determined, dominant, masculine

Minor Characters

  • Jed and Lucas’ Mother
  • The Pastor/Pig Man
  • Jed
  • Lucas
  • Cigarette Man
  • Sheriff Andrews
  • Boris
  • Gemma
  • Katie’s Mother

 

Death Analysis

  • Cigarette Man: First to die, moderate death scene, throat ripped out with teeth, killed by Katie
  • Boris: Second to die, extended death scene, attacked with tennis balls surrounded in nail spikes before being tormented and raped anally with a stick wrapped in barbed wire and rusty nails, killed by Katie and Sloane
  • The Pastor/ Pig Man: Third to die, extended death scene, dragged by a chain attached to a pickup truck for miles before being burned alive, killed by Katie ad Sloane
  • Sheriff Andrews: Fourth to die, extended death scene, subjected to a game of Russian Roulette with one bullet and five shots before being executed on the sixth shot, killed by Katie
  • Jed: Fifth to die, moderate death scene, knocked unconscious and then beaten to death with baseball bats, killed by Katie and Sloane
  • Lucas: Sixth to die, quick death scene, threatened at gunpoint to beat his mother, and when he refused, shot in the head, shot by 
  • Jed and Lucas’ Mother: Seventh and last to die, moderate death scene, killed by Weed Whacker to the face, killed by Katie

 

Survival Analysis

  • Katie, Sloan, Jason, Katie’s Mother: Shown thriving at the end of the film
  • Gemma: Survives the events of the film

 

Final Statistics:

Character Sex Ratio: 5 Females: 7 Males

Character Survivor Ratio: 4 Female: 0 Males (not including ambiguous characters)

Character Death Ratio: 20% of Females to 85.7% of Males (not including ambiguous characters)

 

Final Takeaways: 

Even Lambs Have Teeth follows the standard format of a Female Revenge film. The vast majority of characters are reduced to a few traits if any, and much of this includes their relationship to the female leads. Katie and Sloan’s stories are centered entirely around being sex objects, used for sex trafficking, and then taking the law into their hands. This includes violence while dressed in overly skimpy clothing that leaves little to the imagination.

Because this film follows the exact formula of most Female Revenge films, nearly all perpetrators of violence early in the film are male and most deaths in the film are also male. The deaths scenes are also on par for this subgenre with scenes being drawn out, overexaggerated, and gruesomely violent. 

Even Lambs Have Teeth is an excellent example of a horror film directed by a male with a revenge plot. Two mostly mild-mannered women are broken by their sexual assaults and instead of reporting or getting to safety, they have somehow become maniacal and hysterical calculating killers in a matter of days. The only thing this film has going for it, aside from having strong female leads as seen with the Sex Role perspective, is that it passes the Bechdel Test and offers some male-centric gore.

 

Shared by: Ariana Nichols
Image Credit: IMDb