Ms .45 (1981)

A shy and mute seamstress (Zoe Lund) goes insane after being attacked and raped twice in one day, in which she takes to the streets of New York after dark and randomly kills men with a .45 caliber gun.

The director, Abel Ferrara, who would go on to make other genre films, with this one featuring a cast of people you likely never heard of performing just as well as "real" stars would. Ferrara himself appears under another name as a rapist, and Steve Dash also appears under another name, though Dash is hardly a notable figure.

The eerie music is reminiscent of Italian horror, which struck me as beautiful and perfect for such a film. Really, this is a very slick production and a much more enjoyable film than "I Spit on Your Grave". While "Grave" is the best known of the revenge films, and the one that really started the subgenre, this one just looks better. With all due respect to Meir Zarchi and Camille Keaton, this one should get more praise than it does.

I love that the insult "get bent" is used... its employment is not nearly often enough these days. I also appreciated the free advertising for the P. Chimento trucking company of Patchogue, New York. This, more than anything else, really shows that the film was made in New York City, as anyone from outside the area will have no idea what it is.

The name of Zoë Lund's character, Thana, is reminiscent of the Greek god of death, "Thanatos". Sigmund Freud used the word to refer to the human "death instinct", which leads people to take risks, seek thrills or behave destructively in ways that could lead to death. Was this intentional? I have no idea. But it is fitting.

Fmovies: In Manhattaan, the mute seamstress Thana (Zoë Tamerlis) is a timid woman that works in the fashion industry and spends most of her idle time at home. One night, she is raped in an alley while going back home after hours and when she arrives at home, she is raped again by another criminal. However, she reacts and kills the assaulter with a flatiron. The disturbed Thana loses her sanity and uses the rapist pistol to kill men on the streets of New York.

"Angel of Vengeance" is a cult-movie by Abel Ferrara with elements of "Death Wish" when a simple woman goes insane after being raped twice in one day and she uses the criminal's gun to kill every man that makes a pass on her. I have just watched this film for the fourth or fifth time on VHS and it has not aged. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Sedução e Vingança" ("Seduction and Revenge")

Note: On 12 May 2017, I saw this film again.

Well produced, directed, written, acted, study of rape. Displays her progression from horror to revenge to delusional homicide.

She is snatched into an alleyway where she is violently assaulted and raped. She then meanders to her apartment, not realizing it is being burglarized. She is sitting on the couch trying to cope with her rape when the burglar appears before her, and discovering that she is mute, proceeds to rape her at gunpoint, knowing that she can't call for help. During the rape she kills him by striking his head with a blunt instrument and then with an iron. She now has possession of a .45.

Without detailing the entire film, she begins by killing out of fear and anger. Her next step is baiting rapists. After suffering from persistent flashbacks she pursues any man she sees touching a woman. She then progresses into seducing and killing men.

Slight problems I ignored via suspension of disbelief: Where DOES she get all those bullets? She makes sounds while barfing and actually mutters her friends name at the end; Histrionic device or was her muteness a sign of emotional instability in the first place?

Ignore any titillatng VHS covers or advertisements; this is neither Gone With The Wind nor Porky's. Does one HAVE to see this movie? No. Will one have wasted one's time if one SEES this movie? No.

Ms .45 fmovies. Neneh Cherry already specifically stated in a song that this is a woman's world, so who are we to argue with that? Women RULE this world, whether they carry around .45 caliber guns or not… Infamous cult movie director Abel Ferrara's interpretation of feminism revolves on a mute and seemly defenseless young beauty that wipes male scum from the face of the earth with a pistol. After being the victim of assault and attempted rape TWICE in one afternoon, Thana kills her second assailant and chops up his corpse in the bathtub. Whilst getting rid of the bagged body parts, she randomly kills numerous other men on the trash-filled streets of New York. "Ms.45" has quite a lot in common with Ferrara's breakthrough film "the Driller Killer", except that it doesn't contain so many tedious moments and that you actually have sympathy for the Thana character, whereas Reno Miller could die instantly for all I cared. Strictly talking from a cinematic point of view, "Ms.45" is a much better film than "Driller Killer" as well. Ferrara manages to retain his depressing yet realistic portrait of dead-end New York, but the camera-work is much more steady and versatile. Zoë Lund, who remarkably looks like Nastassja Kinski, is a terrific anti-heroine and the fact she plays a mute even increases the complexity of her character. Lund later co-wrote "Bad Lieutenant" before sadly passing away at the young age of 37, due to heart failure. Unfortunately, however, "Ms.45" didn't stand the test of time very well. The graphic violence and definitely the controversy has been surpassed severely nowadays and I sincerely doubt that the new Playstation-generation will be impressed by Ferrara's take on the explicit revenge-flick trend. Luckily selected group of film buffs including myself still consider this to be a quintessential cult gem that'll live on forever. Kill 'em all, Thana!

Ultra-dark-and-violent-loving director Abel Ferrara's first film (this one) is, like a lot of his peers' first efforts: a low-budget affair but one that got him attention and jump-started his career.

The actors in here are nobodies and really not that good, particularly the landlady (Editta Sherman) who is so horrible an actress that she's interesting only because she's so inept. Zoe Tamerlis, who played the main character, is almost mesmerizing in her role even though she's a mute so we never hear her voice. She has a pretty face and gave us some effective facial expressions. Too bad she never made it as a star.

The story is strictly a female "Death Wish." A nice girl gets raped not once but twice within hours, snaps, and goes out on a killing spree. Pretty basic revenge on the lowest of levels but a satisfying film nonetheless and, at 80 minutes, breezes by. Definitely worth a look if you like these kind of low-budget revenge flicks.

Thana (not Hannah as one might mistake to hear) hasn't had a good lot in life. She doesn't have really any family or friends, she works for pittance as a clothing workshop, and can't speak as a mute. She's also very attractive, and one day walking home she's pulled into an alley and raped by a man in a mask. She staggers home, bewildered by the whole thing, but before she can get her bearings she comes upon *another* man, in her apartment before she got home, who was in the midst of theft. He instead decides to go ahead for the rape. Twice in one day? Fat chance of that - she finally takes her moment, and Thana hits the guy to the ground and then with an iron kills him.

From then on the film takes its beat as something of a quandary, but a truly fascinating one: this isn't quite an exploitation flick, but it's not really a vigilante action-revenge picture like Death Wish, and yet it has hints of both. It's like Abel Ferrara and his writer St. John took the revenge element of Death Wish, of taking it to the street to rid the scum, but took it also to another level like in Polanski's Repulsion. Here Thana isn't some expert at self-defense, and shouldn't be as good as she is with the .45 she pulls off of the rapist #2. But she is good at getting her chance to kill people, and she does, even if they haven't really done anything to her (one of the more curiously ambiguous scenes is when Thana meets a guy at a bar, he keeps rambling outside about strangling his cat, she's about to shoot and it doesn't fire, he takes the gun and instead of shooting her shoots himself)

True, not all of the acting Ferrara is able to gather up totally works; some of them, like two actors playing a pimp and a prostitute (even for one scene) falls flat as believable streetwise (better is Thana's boss, a creep who wants to have his way with her but hides it under a thin veneer of professionalism and care). And it may also be true that Ferrara's film paints men- hell, just most people- as jerks or losers or total dogs, and really who will miss them when they're gone? It's that part of it that makes it an exploitation flick, especially in that one sequence at night when Thana goes out and kills the most amount of people (a whole group of gang-bangers in the park, an Arab and his chauffeur in a limo, the cat strangler). And as part of tugging at the weakest of heart strings, there's a neighbor who has a little dog and (gasp) will the dog make it through the end of the film?

A lot of this is pulp, but it's well directed and given a score that is fresh and cool in an early NY 80's sort of way. And when we do take it most seriously it's when looking right into Thana's face and her eyes, which start off terrified and dazed and a little in a surreal mindset (watch when she is surrounded by (over) concerned co-workers, or when she's in the bathroom and sees a hand near her breast that isn't there), and soon turns cold and bloodless. It's almost a symbolic kind of turn, hence even the name Thana which dates back to Greek mythology. This isn't someone to root for, which is what mucks up the traditional angle of a B-movie. Instead Ferrara is after something a lot deeper. Ms. 45 is action and a bit of horror (dismembered body anyone?) but it's also a sad tale of a girl without any hope, who is going crazier by the day and dresses out in black like a spider out on the prowl.

It's got some bad-ass dimensions of drama, and a rath