Ms .45 Review - Angel of Vengeance Review

I can't outright recall what possessed me to ever see Ms. 45; I imagine it had something to do with searching the internet for sexy nun pictures, as seems to be the most iconic image of the movie as a whole.

Ms. 45 is an 1981 low-budget exploitation film that takes some obvious cues from the Charles Bronson classic revenge film, Death Wish. However, the main difference between Death Wish and Ms. 45 is the overall theme where instead of a wronged man killing the criminal scum in cold blood, it's a wronged woman killing... well, just men in general. I am tempted to say that she kills sleazeballs and cleans up the streets but... no.

Considered to be the best of the rape-revenge movies, Ms .45 was probably intended to be a film about feminist empowerment, where a weak and vulnerable woman was victimized, but manages to become a powerful and dangerous figure who won't be victimized ever again. But anyone who thinks that Ms .45 is about feminism is just as crazy as Thana. A majority of the men she kills or attempts to kill are entirely non-threatening – the scene that comes to mind is when Thana tries to shoot the Asian guy who is just unlocking the door to his apartment. No, Ms .45 is a movie about a psycho-killer who takes out her victimization against anything with a penis.

Ms. 45 begins in the Garment Center of Pre-Giuliani Manhattan, and just to avoid any confusion, the location is actually written on the bottom of the screen: "Garment Center – Manhattan". Nestled within the hustle and bustle of the city is a designer clothing studio that makes some of the most god-awfully ugly clothing I'd ever seen. It's like 80's New-Wave was personified into a single human being who ate a bunch of red-white-and-blue saltwater taffy, and then wiped its ass on curtains. We're introduced to the lead male role, Albert (played by Albert Sinkys), who is quite possibly the gayest straight man on earth. Seriously, when you see the part where he asks our female protagonist/antagonist out on a date towards the end of the movie, you will have a brain aneurysm.

I'd bet a million bucks that Albert's gay persona is to avoid the countless workplace sexual harassment laws he violates throughout the course of the film.

Speaking of our protagonist/antagonist, we meet Thana, aka Zoë Tamerlis, a seventeen year old mute seamstress. Played by Zoë Lund, Thana is a knockout, not in a provocative kind of way, but (for now) on the ‘reserved sexiness' meter, she makes my meat thermometer pop its top. Anyways, after Albert (aka homo-perversus) violates shy and reserved Thana's personal space, she leaves work for the day and she walks home down a street that looks like a gauntlet of a woman's waking sexual nightmares. I shit you not, when I say that there are no less that fifty men lining the streets, cat-calling Thana and her female co-workers. If ever American Gladiators needed an idea for a final event for the women's competition, this would be it. But you also get the feeling for the ultra feminist direction that Ms. 45 is headed: All men are pigs, all men should be shot, and babies should come from turkey basters as nature intended.

Miss Brooklyn 1981 leads the pack through the valley of the shadow of penises.

So we cut to a few scenes between Thana shopping for food in a market, and an unmasked burglar breaking into Thana's apartment. If you've seen the inside of her apartment, you'd wonder what the fuck was worth stealing, but I digress... Thana walks home only to be pulled into the shadows by Dr. Frank-N-Furter's evil burn-victim brother and she is raped at gunpoint.

The only differences between the two are sexual preferences and an open flame.

Surprisingly, the rapist is actually played by Abel Ferrara, THE DIRECTOR OF THE MOVIE. Freaky. So the rapist earns the title of "Fastest Man on Earth" and Thana stumbles back to her apartment in a confused daze, only to be raped a second time by her would-be burglar. Holy shit, someone pissed off God. Remember kids, being mute is no excuse for not saying your prayers before bed. Christ...

I've read that, even for a grindhouse movie, these rape scenes were so shocking that after Ms. 45 premiered a great portion of both of these rape scenes were cut and have never been re-released anywhere outside of France. Not even Japan. Perhaps if they added an octopus it would be green lit in the land of the rising sun, but until then Ms. 45 will probably never see an uncut DVD release in the US. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

So, as her second rapist is wrapping up his sloppy seconds, Thana takes a glass apple from her table and bludgeons him in the head with it, followed quickly by the iron from her ironing board. From here Thana calls the police because in reality no jury on earth would ever possibly convict a seventeen year old girl of killing her armed burglar-turned-rapist.

Oh, wait. No. She doesn't call the police, but instead acts like any sane and rational person and instead drags the body into the bathtub where she proceeds to dismember the rotting corpse with a saw, and then stores the victim's body in her refrigerator long enough to dispose of the pieces properly.

Oh, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, your excessive violence makes you the only anime ever worth watching.

I have no idea what the mindset of a violently raped woman is, so I'll try to steer-clear of touching on that subject, but after dicing up the rapist she killed, Thana starts becoming mentally and emotionally distant. Because her first attacker is still on the loose, and she begins to see threats everywhere and she's becoming paranoid. Everyone at work is worried about her, and she continually fights to keep her downstairs landlord's ugly little dog from sniffing around her apartment. In the meantime, she's throwing away the second rapist's body parts all over the city, and as The Fonz's retarded greaser cousin tries to play White Knight and give back Thana's ‘accidentally discarded' paper bag, Thana runs from him and, trapped and fearing another sexual assault, she shoots the greaser right between the eyes. Thana is one hell of a marksman, er-marksWOMAN for being a mute seventeen year old inner-city seamstress. She runs home and is met by her landlord, an old eccentric woman who can't act for shit. The next morning a bum mistakes one of Thana's bags-o-murders for a lunch bag and almost goes Donner Party on its contents before realizing it's a human hand in the bag.

Balki Bartokomous and Larry Appleton from Perfect Strangers

(Left to Right) Balki Bartokomous and Larry Appleton from one of my personal favorite sitcoms, Perfect Strangers.

Thana's next victim is Cousin Larry Appleton from the Perfect Strangers sitcom. Thana and her friends are approached by Cousin Larry but the group's leader, Miss Brooklyn 1981, curses him out in the middle of a restaurant. As they leave, Larry pursues Thana, trying everything to get her in the sack with him. It turns out he's a photographer for fashion models and she follows him up to his studio. Cousin Larry walks into his studio and turns to her, but before Thana even steps out of the elevator she shoots him repeatedly with her .45 pistol and then returns to the ground floor.

So now Thana is no longer acting on defense, and instead has the means and the will to act on the offense. From here on out Thana turns seamstress by day, female vigilante and man-murderer by night; kind of like Batman + The Punisher – Penis. Thana goes from her modest appearance to a foxy femme fatale by wearing tight black leather pants, putting more makeup on her face than The Joker and walking the streets as a prostitute, killing the men who pick her up and knocking off pimps who beat their girls. In one scene she's surrounded by five gangbangers, which includes nunchuck Dave Chappelle, and killing off all five with six shots of her .45 pistol. Again, this is a mute seventeen year old inner-city seamstress shooting gangbangers with pin-point accuracy. Either she's got natural talent because her dad killed JFK, or operating a sewing machine and operating a .45 semi-automatic pistol are about the same thing.

As the movie progresses Thana goes from killing off the scum of the streets to questionably killing men who honestly weren't doing jack shit. She's picked up by a rich Arab who is willing to pay top dollar for her services; but she blows him away (with her gun, not her mouth).

"If you like puffing on that cigarette, I have something else almost as big..."

This guy was only buying what she was selling, and being very polite and non-threatening about it, and she killed him in cold blood? I guess this is the point where the 'feminist' theme of the movie falls to shit and goes straight into Son, er.. Daughter of Sam territory. This isn't "Thelma and Louise", this is "Thelma and Ms. Hyde".

Is that your "I want you" look, or your "I want you DEAD" look? I'm getting mixed signals...

One interesting scene is when Thana meets a strange man in a bar. This guy spends about four full minutes in a monologue, telling Thana the story of him and his wife, the deterioration of their marriage, and his discovery of her affair. He pretended he was working late, stalked his wife, snuck into the building that she went into, and found his wife having sex with another woman. He then went home, brushed his teeth, changed his clothes, and strangle his wife's cat. The man's killing of a traditionally feminist symbol creates a nervous scene, but nothing prepares you for what happens next. Thana tries to shoot the man but the gun malfunctions and doesn't go off. The man, likely pushed over the edge by being betrayed by yet another woman, takes the gun, raises the gun to his head, stares into her eyes, and successfully shoots himself.

Hands down the "strangled cat" scene is the most unnerving scene in the whole movie.

Meanwhile, the old landlord lady who can't act for shit and dresses like Mimi Bobeck is always questioning where she's going and what she's doing like she's Thana's ultra-snoopy Jewish mother. Even scarier is that the old lady drowns the audience in exposition through talking to her dog.

So Thana does her damnedest to avoid her crazy landlady but the landlady begins to suspect that Thana is crazier than she is (and she might be right). Thana knows that the landlady's dog, Phil, is digging where he shouldn't be, so she offers to take the dog for a walk. In probably the most cruelly hilarious scene in the movie, Thana is walking Phil down the middle of a busy street, trying to kick the little dog under every car tire within reach. Unsuccessful in getting the dog ‘accidentally' run over, she takes it to the riverside, ties it up, and cocks her pistol. This scene mirrors the cat-strangling scene in which Thana is actively attempting to kill a dog, a traditionally masculine symbol.

The final part of the movie (without giving away the ending) revolves around a Halloween party. Earlier, her boss confronted her about her poor work as of late but, to the shock of all of us watching this movie, the gayest straight man on earth propositions her to be his date to a lavish Halloween party, to which she agreed. Now dressed in her trademark naughty nun outfit, and with the lines between her seamstress and vigilante lives becoming increasingly blurred, she goes to the party with her .45 pistol strapped to her thigh.

Zoë Lund's performance is completely silent up until the very end of the movie, but her acting is fantastic. Her speechless, entirely physical performance of being raped is what makes those two scenes so shocking and hard to watch, and it speaks well of her talent in Ms .45. She convincingly takes the character of Thana from a shaken, terrified victim to a cold-blooded man-killer without a single word.

Interestingly enough, as Thana becomes increasingly more deranged, her clothing ironically becomes more and more provocative: We first see her dressed very plainly and unremarkable, but as her murderous persona rears its ugly head she takes to dressing in skintight leather and heavy makeup. Finally she transforms into the iconic image of a sexy nun in thigh-high stockings with a gun tucked away therein.

In closing, most people believe this movie to be a feminist vigilante film, but in the overall scheme of the movie, Ms .45 is a social horror about a person being driven to psychosis by the overwhelming weight of the world around them. The film probably isn't considered all that ‘shocking' by today's standards, but I imagine it still carries some weight in the hearts and minds of anyone who has felt as vulnerable as Thana. Ms .45 is not necessarily a great film by any standards (outside of Zoë Lund's great performance) but it is a good watch, and I'd suggest it if you want a good, gritty vigilante movie.

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Ms .45 (Angel of Vengeance) Review

Ms. 45 is not exactly "Death Wish" in high heels

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