Ms .45When the world abides monstrosity, even the innocent can be made into monsters. Ms .45 is an action/suspense movie about a deaf/mute seamstress named Thana (Zoë Tamerlis), who works in New York City's Garment District making dresses for a creep of a boss named Albert (Albert Sinkys). On her way home from work, she is raped by a masked assailant in an alley, and--even more horribly--raped yet again by an intruder (Peter Yellen) after she returns home. In desperation, she kills the burglar, and is left to reconcile her trauma. She tries to cope by punishing the horrible men of the Big Apple with the same .45 caliber pistol the burglar used to threaten her and rob her of her security.
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Directed by provocateur Abel Ferrara--who also plays the first rapist, though is credited as "Jimmy Laine"--Ms .45 is an example of a "rape-revenge" movie, a subgenre of exploitation films that (obviously) operates on the conditions that the female protagonist is raped, and then gets revenge on her assailant, or men in general, as is the case with Thana. These movies are generally exploitation films; yet despite Thana's back-to-back violations, there is no nudity, and each event is meant to disturb without titillation. Instead, the "exploitation" factor in Ms .45 comes from the consistent episodes of violence that follows. Thana kills the burglar with a clothing iron--symbolic of her profession and gender--but doesn't call the police afterward. Although she has committed manslaughter, it was in self-defense, as he consistently threatened to shoot her if he didn't comply. Instead, she takes matters into her own hands, and dismembers her attacker in her bathtub, wrapping the parts in newspaper and cramming them into her fridge and freezer in heavy duty garbage bags. This behavior is certainly not normal for anyone, not to mention a rape victim. But what Thana realized on that terrible day is that all men (at least all of them in this cesspool portrayal of New York City in her eyes) are horrible predators, who have no qualms about exploiting her and destroying her. Almost every episode that follows in Ms .45 only reinforces this perception, by way of multiple encounters with disgusting men. Thana's boss--arguably the least convincingly heterosexual fashion designer ever--comes onto her and browbeats her in equal measure, in between bouts of blowing up at his other employees. A scummy greaser who accosts women on a street corner chases after Thana after she (deliberately) abandons a shopping bag filled with chopped up burglar. As he unwittingly corners her in a deserted alley with the bag, she instinctively whips around and puts a bullet through his forehead with the eponymous .45--her first symbolic "victory" in her blossoming war against men.
"Rape-revenge" movies tend to be build around the "vigilante" subgenre of action/suspense films. Some time after killing the greaser, Thana is quietly seething with anger watching a slimy photographer (S. Edward Singer) suck face at a restaurant, then shamelessly flirt with her and her co-workers at lunch after the other woman leaves. Thana invites danger by allowing him to take her back to his studio apartment; but no sooner than they are alone than Thana draws her gun and blows him away in a bloody hail of gunfire, splattering his canvas backdrop with ichor. By this point, Thana feels compelled to snuff out men before they can become a threat to women, acting as a self-appointed avenger for the women of her city. But Thana misses an important detail while at lunch; one of her friends, Laurie (Darlene Stuto), angrily calls out the photographer for his transparent objectification of her and the others and doesn't need Thana's protection--she can handle herself just fine. This raises the question about just who Thana is really doing this for. She is (understandably) convinced that if she can be so casually attacked twice in rapid succession, that it could happen again, so she is proactively preventing such a reoccurrence by simply cleaning up the streets herself. But all men become monsters to Thana, even those who are simply sad and lonely. Consider her encounter with a barfly (Jack Thibeau) who opens up to Thana about his wife's infidelity, and his twisted decision to strangle a cat in the wake of that revelation, which is all the justification she needs to execute him. Ms .45 paints a portrait of an insidious city in broad strokes, devoid of morality or gentility--that "NYC Sleaze" found in many movies depicting the pre-gentrified city, when it was known by another unfortunate nickname, "Fear City". (Coincidentally, Abel Ferrara would go on to direct yet another "NYC Sleaze" action flick aptly called Fear City.) This take on the city is a constant and unrelenting one, and represents Thana's outlook on the world. She is a sensitive and gentle woman, much too soft to survive in this urban jungle. But one has to wonder if Ferrara isn't making the point that Thana's view of the city was already twisted a bit from the start, and that she was already convinced that all men want to do is to exploit her. When Thana's colleagues are walking home from work together, they seem relatively indifferent to the cat-calling from men on the street, but Thana observes each and every leer and jeer; the threats behind this unwanted attention is clearly heightened for her. Everything in Thana's world seems wrong somehow; even an obscenely nosy landlady named Mrs. Nasone (Editta Sherman) and her obnoxious dog, Phil (Bogey the Dog), seem preternaturally insistent on poking into her business at the most inconvenient times. Thusly, Thana's world has a decidedly surreal quality to it, suggesting that she is--and has been--mentally unstable all along; the attacks are just the catalyst for her breakdown, similar to Carol's in Roman Polanski's Repulsion. This builds to the climactic Halloween party Albert coerces Thana into attending, where she comes dressed in an equally iconic and unsettling "sexy nun" costume. As the party music--with blaring trumpets and synthesizers--plays on and the guests groove, Thana lures Albert into seclusion before slaying him, then turning her gun on all of the men at the party, deliberately avoiding shooting any women. Her rage at being violated by men has transformed her into a rabid monster herself, and she no longer differentiates between one man or another. This is the saddest message in Ms .45, that because Thana is unable to overcome the trauma of her attacks, she destroys others herself, albeit in a different fashion; she always remains the victim.
Recommended for: Fans of violent vigilante stories and revenge flicks from the late Seventies/early Eighties that depicts New York City as an urban cesspool, where innocence is a liability, quickly quashed and ravaged. Although scenes involving rape and dismemberment are handled off-screen, Thana's increasingly violent murders and the disturbing premise makes Ms .45 really only appropriate for mature audiences with the stomach for it.
"Rape-revenge" movies tend to be build around the "vigilante" subgenre of action/suspense films. Some time after killing the greaser, Thana is quietly seething with anger watching a slimy photographer (S. Edward Singer) suck face at a restaurant, then shamelessly flirt with her and her co-workers at lunch after the other woman leaves. Thana invites danger by allowing him to take her back to his studio apartment; but no sooner than they are alone than Thana draws her gun and blows him away in a bloody hail of gunfire, splattering his canvas backdrop with ichor. By this point, Thana feels compelled to snuff out men before they can become a threat to women, acting as a self-appointed avenger for the women of her city. But Thana misses an important detail while at lunch; one of her friends, Laurie (Darlene Stuto), angrily calls out the photographer for his transparent objectification of her and the others and doesn't need Thana's protection--she can handle herself just fine. This raises the question about just who Thana is really doing this for. She is (understandably) convinced that if she can be so casually attacked twice in rapid succession, that it could happen again, so she is proactively preventing such a reoccurrence by simply cleaning up the streets herself. But all men become monsters to Thana, even those who are simply sad and lonely. Consider her encounter with a barfly (Jack Thibeau) who opens up to Thana about his wife's infidelity, and his twisted decision to strangle a cat in the wake of that revelation, which is all the justification she needs to execute him. Ms .45 paints a portrait of an insidious city in broad strokes, devoid of morality or gentility--that "NYC Sleaze" found in many movies depicting the pre-gentrified city, when it was known by another unfortunate nickname, "Fear City". (Coincidentally, Abel Ferrara would go on to direct yet another "NYC Sleaze" action flick aptly called Fear City.) This take on the city is a constant and unrelenting one, and represents Thana's outlook on the world. She is a sensitive and gentle woman, much too soft to survive in this urban jungle. But one has to wonder if Ferrara isn't making the point that Thana's view of the city was already twisted a bit from the start, and that she was already convinced that all men want to do is to exploit her. When Thana's colleagues are walking home from work together, they seem relatively indifferent to the cat-calling from men on the street, but Thana observes each and every leer and jeer; the threats behind this unwanted attention is clearly heightened for her. Everything in Thana's world seems wrong somehow; even an obscenely nosy landlady named Mrs. Nasone (Editta Sherman) and her obnoxious dog, Phil (Bogey the Dog), seem preternaturally insistent on poking into her business at the most inconvenient times. Thusly, Thana's world has a decidedly surreal quality to it, suggesting that she is--and has been--mentally unstable all along; the attacks are just the catalyst for her breakdown, similar to Carol's in Roman Polanski's Repulsion. This builds to the climactic Halloween party Albert coerces Thana into attending, where she comes dressed in an equally iconic and unsettling "sexy nun" costume. As the party music--with blaring trumpets and synthesizers--plays on and the guests groove, Thana lures Albert into seclusion before slaying him, then turning her gun on all of the men at the party, deliberately avoiding shooting any women. Her rage at being violated by men has transformed her into a rabid monster herself, and she no longer differentiates between one man or another. This is the saddest message in Ms .45, that because Thana is unable to overcome the trauma of her attacks, she destroys others herself, albeit in a different fashion; she always remains the victim.
Recommended for: Fans of violent vigilante stories and revenge flicks from the late Seventies/early Eighties that depicts New York City as an urban cesspool, where innocence is a liability, quickly quashed and ravaged. Although scenes involving rape and dismemberment are handled off-screen, Thana's increasingly violent murders and the disturbing premise makes Ms .45 really only appropriate for mature audiences with the stomach for it.