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

Get it at Amazon.

Turns out ol’ Buddy Ebsen can’t follow a road that isn’t paved in gold bricks. Perhaps encumbered by his unruly eyebrow hair while cruising down the freeway, Ebsen veers out of his lane, causing a catastrophic traffic crisis one might call a Smash-Up on Interstate 5. This made-for-TV disaster movie sure did.

As California Highway Patrol cop Robert Conrad (Palm Springs Weekend) narrates, the July 4 holiday mishap involves 39 vehicles, forcing 14 people to declare independence from the surly bonds of earth. After the crash, Smash-Up jumps back in time two days in an attempt to invest viewers in the various drivers’ and passengers’ lives before the fickle hand of fate did its due diligence.

The soapy story threads include Vera Miles (Psycho) navigating L.A. single life despite looking like Nancy Reagan; a biker gang with Lolita herself (Sue Lyon) just one pair of leather pants away from passing as a PTA mom; and a young couple on the lam after knocking over a grocery store. As one of Conrad’s fellow officers, future U.S. Marshal Tommy Lee Jones turns in what may be his finest acting ever since the role requires smiling.

You know people tuned in to ABC’s Smash-Up on Interstate 5 just to see the titular demolition derby. Hopefully they didn’t switch channels after those initial minutes, because that’s a mere preview of the full, fucked-up mishap awaiting at film’s end. Cars and trucks collide, flip, fly, go willy nilly and so on, as do stuntmen’s rag-dolled bodies.

Director John Llewellyn Moxey (Circus of Fear) is no Hal Needham — see the latter’s Death Car on the Freeway for a superior primetime fender-bender — yet Smash-Up is excitingly shot and skillfully edited where it counts, with a stunningly affecting mix of slow motion and pauses. Buckle up! —Rod Lott

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After a decade of directing such saucy shorts as For Men Only, Pete Walker finally cracked the hourlong barrier with the Carnaby Street crime caper The Big Switch.

One night, professional ad exec and unprofessional blue-eyed fuckboy John Carter (Sebastian Breaks, The Night Digger) leaves a London discotheque with a lovely bird (Erika Raffael, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush). They head to her pad for a proper shagging. Whilst Carter first goes ’round the corner to grab some cigs for post-coital smoking, she’s shot dead by a hitman hiding in her shower. Talk about a case of the blue balls, mate — when Carter finds her body, no wonder he touches the gun left behind and vamooses without phoning the authorities.

Which is exactly what local gangster/club owner Mendez (Derek Alyward, Walker’s School for Sex) counts on. He blackmails Carter into a secret assignment with a beautiful model named Karen (Virginia Wetherell, Walker’s Man of Violence). Neither Karen nor Carter have a clue what they’re in for — and I ain’t telling, either — but they hope it doesn’t involve their deaths.

This sleek, quick pic is a real fanny-slapper, like a men’s pulp paperback come to life. On cheap paper, those hard-charging, easy-bedding heroes could trot through formulaic exploits dozens upon dozens of times. The Carter character could have fronted an equal amount of adventures, yet went no further.

I enjoyed Walker’s first true feature from start to its photo finish, a marvelously fun sequence that places its climactic chase and shootout within a boardwalk arcade and ghost train attraction. After the baddies are dispatched or discombobulated, the po-po show up and invite Karen and Cater to the station for a cuppa tea.

“Sounds groovy,” Karen says earlier in the film, to which Carter coldly replies, “It is.” They may as well be talking up The Big Switch. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Seven Snipers is one of those movies where you just know the first line of dialogue telegraphs — if not DMs — how the climax will play out. That’s standard op procedure for a setup so plain and simple: With a $10 million bounty on her head, former sniper Voodoo Child (Radha Mitchell, Silent Hill) is targeted for death by people from her past.

Having 116 verified kills over your career is bound to do that to a girl. Since leaving that particular skill set behind, Voodoo’s lived off the grid in the picturesque Australian countryside with a daughter (Annabel Wolfe, My Pet Dinosaur) bratty enough to skip school to bang boymeat.

One morning, a supposed real estate developer (Ryan Kwanten, Flight 7500) shows up at packin’ more than a fancy business card. One shootout — and bulldozer attack — later, Voodoo knows the next person to turn up for revenge will be The Dragon (Tim Roth, 2022’s Resurrection), so she calls former co-workers for reinforcement. Dropping in via helicopter, they also have stupid codenames, such as Milk (Ioan Gruffudd, San Andreas).  

I wish I could say Seven Snipers has more to offer than exchanges of gunfire while Roth scurries around in a shaggy grass suit for camouflage. But that’s all it is. Although it’s nice to see a woman, The Dustwalker’s Sandra Sciberras, in the director’s chair of something as male-coded as gun porn, the Oz action film is predictable, right down to trained experts exhibiting perfect aim … except when presented with the easiest, clearest shots, of course. Like everything in the characters’ sights, you see each beat coming from a mile away. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Courier of Death’s antihero protagonist, J.D., carries a .44 Magnum, but don’t confuse him with arguably the movies’ most iconic cop. J.D. taunts criminals with lines like, “Go ahead, I’m gonna blow big holes in both your legs,” which isn’t as terse, pointed or quotable as “Go ahead, make my day.” Plus, he looks like the dumpier, dumber, less sociable kid brother of Tackleberry from the Police Academy saga.

In other words, he’s no Dirty Harry. “Unkempt J.D.” is more like it.

As played by some doughy dope named Joey Johnson, J.D. and his partner, Frank (Bill Hupfer), are shepherding a detonator-wired briefcase containing $76 million in bonds when bad guys attack. Frank is shot dead in the hubbub. Soon after, J.D.’s homely wife (Joan Becherich) gets murdered as well, leaving our denim-jacketed do-gooder to take down “the organization” behind it, via the only way he can: Acting like a ill-tempered toddler who hasn’t yet the mastered the art of the put-down. Not that his opponents hold an advantage …

Bar Thug: “You think you’re hot shit, don’tcha?”
J.D.: “Yeah!”
Bar Thug: “But you’re dog meat.”
J.D.: “And you’re a miserable little fuck!“

Like all the “grieving” husbands you see on Dateline, J.D. bounces back from the loss of his wife like a handball against brick. The new object of his affection, if you can call what he exhibits as such an emotion, is her friend Kate (Barbara Garrison). She demands to chauffeur J.D. around, which he begrudgingly puts up with because Kate, unlike his wife, is hot. 

But also being a blonde — ergo, dumb — Kate falls for the ol’ knock-at-the-door trick, answering it without looking or thinking, despite the ever-present threat of death hanging over them. It’s yet another example of Courier of Death’s misogynist streak, none more repellent than this exchange:

Sexy-ish Woman, I Guess: “Don’t you care to drink with the lady?”
J.D.: “I don’t see one. All I see is a greedy slut!”

Shot in Oregon, Courier of Death feels like an ego vehicle á la GetEven or Kick to Death: Death Kick, except Johnson isn’t the creative force behind the movie. That’d be pornographer Tom Shaw, which explains just about everything. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.