I admit I hadn’t seen the rape-revenge parable Ms. 45, mostly because it has far too much brutal rape for my decidedly non-rapey tastes. With the new Arrow Blu-ray, I finally gave it a try and, well, it’s definitely one of the scroungiest, scummiest, rape-filled movies of all time. It scars me every time I close my eyes.
But I now understand why it’s one of the most feminist-coded flicks of all time, even if it didn’t mean to be.
With a truly skeevy atmosphere behind a low-rent, disco-funk soundtrack, mute New Yorker Thana (Zoë Tamerlis, Special Effects) is a low-level seamstress who, on her way home from picking up groceries, is raped by a nameless vagrant … and then, mere minutes later, again raped by a burglar. She bashes the burglar with an iron and, thankfully, kills him. Finding his gun among the debris, she becomes what the alternate title suggest: an Angel of Vengeance.
Exacting her bloody will, the traumatized Thana shoots a “Noo Yawk” guy point-blank in the head, in glorious color. Throughout the next couple of days, she shoots a sleazy pick-up artist, a stereotypical pimp wanting his money, and the total cast of The Warriors coming out to play (on their off-time) and getting killed for their troubles.
In the stunning climax, after lovingly kissing bullets as a preamble to a massacre, Thana lays waste to all the men at the work party, all to an ominously post-punk beat and while dressed as a nun. Man, there’s no way around it: The movie is about a woman who justifiably slaughters half of the most chauvinistic section of New York City proper, with a little left over for the outer boroughs. Where were these copycat murders?
Much like the big city it skewers, it’s an abrasive and downright abusive portrayal of a woman at the end of her noose, and we’re in her bloodstained way. A cloistered holy warrior in a world of unchecked perversion and wanton lust, Ms. 45 is the type of film that should be shown to males on their 13th birthday with a chemical-castration prescription as a caustic topper. It’s the least we can do!
I’m glad I saw Ms. 45, but I feel like I must volunteer at a battered women’s shelter or something, because it gave me feelings I must deal with — and soon. At least let me pay for your bullets, Zoë! —Louis Fowler