Her Name was a Gun

A woman who can't speak goes on a killing spree after being sexually assaulted in 1981's Ms .45. It could be described as Repulsion meets Death Wish, though it's about 85% the latter. Does it really say anything about the reality women in the city have to deal with? I don't think so. But as a nightmare, it's not bad.

For reasons not explained, a young woman named Thana (Zoë Tamerlis) is incapable of speech. She works as a seamstress with a few other girls her age for a small time fashion designer, Albert (Albert Sinkys).

One day on her way home from work, she's raped by a man with a weird, clownish mask. When she gets home, she interrupts a burglary. The burglar rapes her but she manages to kill him with his own .45. Shortly thereafter, she declares war on men, taking that .45 on a rampage throughout the city at night, at first targeting abusive pimps but soon settling for cat-callers or even guys who might possibly, from a distance, look like they might be giving their girlfriends a hard time.

Director Abel Ferrara, despite being clearly influenced by Repulsion, never manages to do what Roman Polanski did with that film--really put you in the head of woman with a deep, intense fear of men. The men and some of the women in Thana's life just seem oddly annoying and pushy. It also doesn't seem realistic that none of her friends or coworkers express concern for her walking alone on the streets of early 1980s New York. Her landlady is cartoonishly abrasive, which made me laugh a few times. In one scene, she's inexplicably wearing grapes on her head, like she's Dionysus.

Like Death Wish, thugs for Thana to gun down are conveniently plentiful and easy to kill, cops and bystanders don't seem to notice her gunfire, and she seems to have become an expert markswoman overnight. Not to mention the fact that she's able to fire her gun as many times as she wants without reloading.

All of these things make the movie more of a nightmare fantasy than a commentary on what women have to deal with from men or a commentary on vigilantism. Thana is less of an avatar for the audience than Charles Bronson is in Death Wish. Her inability to speak and Ferrara's filmmaking not being as empathetic as Polanski's renders her a bit inscrutable. Some of her victims are actually more fleshed out than she is. But Tamerlis is pretty captivating in the role, first as a quiet little mouse, then as the cold vamp. She gets a whole new wardrobe after she's raped and there's no explanation for that, either.

Ms .45 is available on Shudder.