"Ms. 45" (1981)

The rape-revenge story is one of exploitation cinema's trickier set of films to get behind. Too many of the films sexualize the rape incidences or use it as a convenient plot device to justify the vengeance that follows. Ms .45 largely avoids both of these by coming at its story from all sorts of unexpected angles. The two successive rape scenes are brief yet painful to watch, and complicated by the fact that the protagonist (Zoe Tamerlis) immediately kills her second attacker in the process of trying to save herself. The film turns initially into her disposing of the body bit by bit, while also recovering from the trauma of what happened to her. The film takes her trauma seriously and acknowledges the psychological damage this kind of event would leave on someone, and her actions, at first, stem from an uncertainty about how she feels over what's been done to her and how to handle it. Soon she channels this trauma into a hell-hath-no-fury empowerment, seeking vigilante justice not on her attackers but on all of mankind. She finds chauvinistic assholes who deserve some comeuppance and brings about a distinctive brand of feminist smackdown, which garners her the increasing attention of the police and media who dub her "Ms .45" for the caliber of pistol used. The empowerment is all the more potent for the mousy nature of the character who literally is unable to speak -- she's voiceless in a way Holly Hunter's character is in The Piano -- and the film suggests she was exploited and taken advantage of long before she was sexually assaulted; the incident simply awakens something deep inside her that she's been holding back. And yet director Abel Ferrara never lets the blood-strewn path she creates go completely indulged. The film notes the progressively morally slippery slope she's falling down as the targets she pick become more and more arbitrary. It's the rare rape-revenge narrative which often earns its bloodbath and seriously considers the consequences both of its protagonist's victimization and the questionable actions she takes to regain her sense of self.

Grade: ★★★