The Bat (1926)

The Bat, not to be mistaken for the 1959 Vincent Price film of the same title. This one is a old time silent picture. While certainly not the best example of a horror mystery from the silent era The Bat does have some interesting elements to it.

Like The Phantom Of The Opera and so many other silent films of the time The Bat is another killer phantom movie but in this one the character of The Bat is quite ridiculous to look at, The cloaked phantom is terrorizing a New York mansion which I believe is very close to my home in Oakdale Long Island and running amok in his silly bat costume. Most of the film is a game of cat and mouse as The Bat scales walls, runs across roofs and hides in the shadows. Sound a little familiar? I can't say for sure but there seems to be quite a few similarities between this phantom and the super hero we know as Batman. There are many scenes of the phantom bat swinging from buildings by rope but he comes off more like a super villian rather then a hero. The Bat even uses a logo which is oddly reminiscent of Batmans and one can't help but wonder if the Batman creators took some inspiration from this movie.

The film itself gets a bit tedious at times and tends to bore. It tries so hard to be a good mystery and we have way to many characters none of which are all that interesting. This one does offer a bit of racism against the Japanese butler who is often referred to as "Jappy". Naturally some of the characters think that Jappy is The Bat but you will have to figure that out for yourself. "That Jap gives me the willies". It all eventually comes to a somewhat abrupt ending with some witty booby traps.

Its a little hard for me to recommend The Bat to anyone considering there are so many better silent movies out there. Lon Chaney's filmography alone is far superior to anything this one has to offer. However it might be an interesting watch for Batman fanatics. I personally am not a big comic book guy but I would love to know if there are any other similarities between the two characters. The director of this would go on to do a remake of it in 1930 called The Bat Whispers but I don't think I have seen that one to date.

The House That Screamed (2000)

This was a big mistake on my part. The House That Screamed not to be mistaken for the 1969 movie with the same title is a typical shit-fest from the awful 2000's. While the 1969 House That Screamed is also a terrible waste of time, this one takes the cake with bad acting, bad camera work and nonsensical story with random ghostly happenings and bad special effects.

 This one opens up with some gratuitous nudity in the form of a shower scene. This goes beyond gratuitous nudity because the scene seems to have just been thrown in after the fact. This naked bimbo isn't even seen again in the movie. While I do thank the filmmakers for the bare breasted action the rest of the movie is a turd.

A horror writer rents a haunted house for inspiration on his new book. He personally doesn't believe in ghosts but figures it will help the sales of his new novel. While staying in the house he is haunted by vicious ghosts who wish to do him harm. Things happen without explanation and none of it makes much sense. Eventually he "enters the belly of the beast to understand the secrets of the house that screams". He learns that the house holds a vicious cycle and in order to free the spirits of the house he must take his own life. Stupid eh?

Perhaps the most offensive moment in this one is when our horror author is fooled into having sex with a ghost. The female ghost is supposed to add some kind of sex appeal to the movie but she is a over weight, red headed chud with horrible acting skills. When the writer finally gets her in the sack she rides him with her clothes on which is lucky for us. Next her face rots away in what is oddly reminiscent to Evil Dead makeup. I'm not so sure why our writer is so upset. Did he see who he went to bed with? Its not as if he were drunk at a bar and thought he was going home with Barbie only to realize he was waking up with King Kong. This dude was sober and willingly hit the sheets with this beast.

Some of the other atrocities this one has to offer is a suicide scene in which a girl puts a gun in her mouth and blows her brains out all over the kitchen window. Sounds good, I know but you have to see this shit. The gunshot sounds like a fart and the brains hitting the window looks like play dough with a sound effect lifted from The Blob. Next there is a demonic doll which wrestles our character in the kitchen. We also have a little girl running around with an axe and a ghost who died in the civil war. The civil war? What the fuck does that have to do with this house?

Stay away from this movie unless you really like torturing yourself with nonsense.

  

Home Sweet Home (1981)

I first saw Home Sweet Home back in the VHS days when all young teenagers would rent slasher movies and brag about who saw the goriest movie in the school cafeteria. Even in my early teens I knew that this was by no means a great example of a horror film but I absolutely loved it. Looking at it now as a much more jaded adult, I still really enjoy this mess of a movie.

Home Sweet Home is a typical stalk and slash flick about an escaped lunatic who enjoys shooting hard drugs into his tongue. The intravenous injections send this hulking madman into fits of rage and psychotic laughter. His obnoxious laugh is heard through the entire film, while we watch him smash and slash his helpless victims.

While most of these early 80's Halloween ripoffs conceal the killers identity, Home Sweet Home never even attempts to cloak the killer. He is right there in your face from the very beginning and I personally love this spastic psycho.

Most of the characters in this one are pretty lame and most viewers are probably waiting impatiently to see them die one by one in unique ways but there is one totally bizarre character who I can't help but love. There is a sort of punk rock mime running around with a guitar and amplifier strapped to his back. Anyone familiar with the British punk band The Adicts will surely get a kick out of this face painted nut-job. He is an obnoxious prankster who annoys just about everyone in the movie with his rock & roll. He runs in on couples having sex and pulls hard boiled eggs out of his mouth during diner parties. Unfortunately he gets fried to a crisp when the killer catches up with him.

 We also have a sexy Latina babe who gets down to her bra for us and gets cut up with a big Rambo knife. Another dude is crushed under a car hood in what might be the most absurd death scene in the movie. We do get a bit of tit and of course a final girl who gets to see the demise of our junkie-psycho.

If you are looking for a serious slasher flick you might want to skip this one all together. There are plenty of slashers that came out this year. In fact 1981 was the slasher boom. However if you are in the mood for something ridiculous that never takes itself too seriously then Home Sweet Home is well worth a look. Its crazy, silly and still manages to deliver the goods!

Teenage Step-Mother (1974)

Teenage Step-Mother is a fairly boring porno flick from the mid 70's. The plot is paper thin and the whole thing gets very repetitive. Jamie (New Wave Hookers) Gillis takes a much younger woman for his bride. She is actually younger then his two teenage daughters. His new teenage bride has "a problem". She needs to have sex once every hour... on the hour. No matter where she is she needs to take off her clothes and get down and dirty. Even at the wedding she gets down on her knees and blows the priests whistle. Jamie Gillis thinks this all pretty great because he is quite the sex addict himself. However its not long before we have typical 70's incestuous orgies with tons of pubic hair on display. While Mr. Gillis was always one of my favorite XXX actors Teenage Step-Mother really offers nothing new and turns out to be another forgettable fuck-flick from the golden age of porn. Skip it all together! 

Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975)

If you haven't seen this one, you must have been living under a rock. Monty Python And The Holy Grail is as classic as they get. Being one of the best comedies ever made and certainly one of the most popular films to come up in discussion of the comedy genre it safe to say that anyone who knows anything at all about film has seen this movie.

There is no reason to discuss plot when it comes to this movie because it is as random as they come. It is jam packed with absurdities and random acts of nonsense. Monty Python And The Holy Grail is a masterpiece in retard-ism. While excessive viewing may cause brain damage... at the very least you will be laughing. It blends political humor with a history, fables and of course idiotic madness and mayhem. While todays comedies try really hard to shock audiences with sexual themes and sometimes random act of violence. Holy Grail mastered this way back in the 1970's.

Some of the films highlights include a killer rabbit which tears the throats out from anyone who crosses its path causing blood to spray about in a Japanese cinematic fashion, a goofy Frenchmen atop a castle who throws absurd insults around "I fart in your general direction", a brave knight who has all four of his limbs chopped off and continues to fight "Its just a flesh wound", Then we got some naughty nuns who want a night of spankings and oral sex. The classic witch burning scene always sticks out in mind and the anarchist peasants who fight the oppression of King Arthur. "help I'm being oppressed! Did you see him oppressing me?"  Don't forget the knights who say "NEE".

This stuff is moronic and genius at the same time and it has proven to be a timeless piece of cinematic trash which is respected by the old and the young and if you don't like this movie it is probably because "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"

Lady Snowblood 2 : Love Song Vengeance (1974)

One thing that I have noticed over the years is that its pretty normal for Samurai films to be heavy on politics. Many times it seems that the film itself serves as a coverup for a political message. The films of Akira Kurosawa are often about political power and the destruction of systems. While Kurosawa's films always keep the viewer interested some Samurai movies can get confusing and boring with this subject matter. As wise men say, never speak religion or politics at the diner table. I can't help but think that many of these movies, especially the more exploitative titles would have worked better without such a heavy political subtext. The Hanzo : The Razor series for instance. Some of those would have clearly been better off without the political mumbo-jumbo.

 This follow up to Lady Snowblood sports the same director and of course the same leading lady. It still manages to entertain with its excessive violence and bloodshed but it gets way to political for its own good. This one starts off with Yuki a.k.a. Lady Snowblood on the run from the police. She rips thru dozens of them with he Samurai sword but is eventually captured and sentenced to death. She is ultimately rescued by some political types who in return want her to assassinate an anarchist. From here the movie gets pretty confusing with to much governmental talky talk. Lucky for us the gore and carnage continues throughout the films entirety.

   The overkill on politics is not the only problem with the sequel. The choreography in the fight scenes doesn't seem as well planned as the original film and the cinematography doesn't hold up either. The truth is that Lady Snowblood 2 is still fun and worth a watch for fans of the first film but I don't think there is anyone out there who would prefer this to the original. Then again its hard to hold up to such high standards. After all Lady Snowblood is one of the best exploitation Samurai films ever made.

We're Going To Eat You (1980)

When the average horror fan looks at this title they are probably reminded of the tagline for Lucio Fulci's cult classic Zombi. While the two films are worlds apart... or at least a continent apart. They do have one thing in common. That is of course flesh eating!

 This 1980 Hong Kong trash flick perfectly blends Kung Fu and cannibalism. A good friend of mine at Videodead blogspot recommended this one to me. He said this one is about a whole island of Leatherface's. I feel that was a pretty good description of the movie. There is a whole slew of these seemingly retarded cannibalistic mongoloids running around, grunting and groaning in true Leatherface Texas Chainsaw Massacre fashion. We're Going To Eat You is highly entertaining with plenty of comedy, gore and surprisingly good Kung Fu. It is wall to wall action and best of all it is all done in bad taste.

The story follows a secret agent who ends up in a village full of Kung Fu-ing cannibals armed with meat cleavers. Along his travels our super-agent runs into a giant transvestite, a old-timer thief who always seems to get himself into trouble, a Chinese guy who looks a bit like Shemp Howard and a woman who eats human hearts. The only thing this movie is missing is some bare breasted Asian women and hopping vampires. For those familiar with the insanity of Hong Kong horror flicks, this one offers up all the unexpected mayhem that can usually be found in the genre.

We're Going To Eat You never disappoints and is a must see for fans of this brand of filth.

Nightmare City (1980)

Nightmare City also known as City Of The Walking Dead is Umberto Lenzi at his best. Over the top gore is nothing new for the infamous Italian director. After the great Cannibal Ferox this one comes in a close second in the splatter department.

Nightmare City stars Hugo Stiglitz (Cyclone) in almost what can be considered an action role. He is amongst the first to learn that the city has been invaded by the walking dead. Armed with a machine gun Stiglitz goes to war with the ghouls and heads for the hills in a battle of survival. Nightmare City proves to be one of the most entertaining and fast paced Italian zombie flicks ever made. The violence is so gratuitous and over the top. The zombies look more like burn victims then anything from a standard zombie film and they are also extremely agile. They climb, jump, run and use anything they can find as a weapon (including guns).

This one is a laugh-riot from start to finish. It always gets a laugh when the zombies wipe their mouths after munching into some human flesh. Or when the surgeon suddenly becomes an expert in throwing knives and sends a scalpel flying into a zombies neck. The main focus is certainly bloodletting. In one of the most memorable scenes a chick in a workout leotard has her tit cut off by a zombie armed with a knife. The films climax is also highly entertaining. Almost 30 years before Zombieland, Nightmare City takes us to a carnival where we watch Hugo Stiglitz and his girlfriend fight off hordes of blood thirsty zombies atop a roller coaster. Heads explode, eyeballs are punctured, throats are slit, axes are buried into achy-breaky skulls and realism comes last. My kind of movie.

  Over the weekend I was lucky enough to catch this one under the stars at a drive-in with a few good friends. While people stayed inside their cars for most of the other films that played over the weekend, Nightmare City seemed to have brought most of the gore hounds out from behind their windshields. It was great to hear the crowds reaction to this cult classic. The film got all the laughs and cheers at the appropriate times. This was the first time I have ever seen Nightmare City with an audience and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. Long live Umberto Lenzi, long live Nightmare City and as Joe Bob Briggs would say "The drive-in never dies". This one is a must see for anyone who loves Italian cinema, trashy zombie movies and splatter flicks.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (1973)

Bob Clark would give us one of the best slasher movies ever made, Black Christmas. He would also give us one of the best comedies ever made, Porkys. However before he would go on to do those ground breaking genre flicks he would do what is arguably one of the worst zombie films ever made. At the very least it is one of the strangest zombie movies of all time. Its called Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and man is this one weird!

I first watched this thing back in the VHS days. I must have been about 15 years old. The gory VHS box screamed take me home. It depicted a fat hippie in striped pants being mauled by a decrepit zombie. Needless to say in my teenage years I was totally disappointed. Not even sure if I made it all the way thru the film. All these years later I had another chance to see this thing. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things was playing a weekend long zombie-fest at a drive-in somewhere in bumble-fuck America. This time around I saw the movie thru slightly different eyes. Perhaps it was just the fact that I was living out a life long fantasy of mine and seeing this thing in a old time drive-in amongst other weirdos but this time I almost enjoyed it. Almost!

The story involves a group of hippie types who take a boat to a creepy cemetery on a foggy island with the plans of raising the dead by prayer to Satan. These losers ought to be lined up and shot for multiple reasons. First off they are not children. They are adults. Why the hell would a bunch of young adults believe in magic and devils and stuff like that. Number two, they are the worst dressed group of morons I have ever seen in my life. Last but not least these ass-hats deserve a bullet for their annoying and seemingly endless dialogue. The whole first half of the movie we have to listen to these dip-shits go at each other with ancient witty humor. To say the least, I absolutely hate these dicks and wish painful, violent death on each character. Luckily for me, that is exactly what I got.

 So these dorks pray to the prince of darkness and try to bring a rotten corpse back to life. The corpse goes by the name of Orville and turns out to probably be the best character in the movie. Perhaps it is because Orville doesn't speak. Anyway Orville can be seen in all his glory in the poster on the left of this script. Orville is dragged into a old cabin and thrown about as if he were a toy. Hence the title, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. These hippie kids have no respect for the dead so why should the dead respect them. Eventually Orville springs to life as a flesh eating zombie but so does the rest of the cemetery. The walking dead rip into our classless shit-head hippies one by one and devour their flesh and blood. The films strongest point is how good these walking corpses look. They look as good as the undead in Lucio Fulci's Zombi. Its almost to bad these zombies didn't get a chance to be in a better movie. What hurts the film is the seemingly endless talk that goes on between the hippies. Another problem is that there really isn't enough gore in the movie. While the zombies look fantastic there is very little of the red stuff. A bit of blood & guts goes a long way. There is also no nudity and not really any profanity. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things received a PG rating which does seem a bit strange but I can understand why.

When its all said and done CSPWDT is one of the most bizarre PG, zombie, comedies of all time and for that it does deserve a look. Plus it is a pleasure to watch these people die. Now that is something that everyone can sink their teeth into!

Demons (1985)

Out of all the movies that I have ever caught on the big screen, be it a midnight movie, a creature double feature or a all night horror festival, I believe Demons is the one movie that I have probably seen the most times with an audience. While Demons never seems to get old for me, this weekend I had the privilege of seeing it yet again with an audience, however this time I watched it the way the gods intended it to be seen. At the drive-in of course!

 Seeing this blood drenched monster flick under the stars amongst rows of cars filled with gore-hound ghouls was an experience all in its own. The film print looked great and the reaction was what one would expect from such an awesome crowd. For those who have never seen Demons, the basic plot although full of holes... is about a group of people who get trapped inside of a movie theater while an untitled horror film is playing. While this may not sound like the worst thing that could happen to someone, things do turn for the worse. Its not long before members of the audience are being attacked by blood-thirsty Demons from hell.

Its a good thing that this movie is so much god damn fun because the story is as stupid as they come. If you try to follow this thing with any kind of logic you are bound to end up scratching your head in confusion. Things seem to happen for no apparent reason and there is never any explanation to back them up. Normally this would piss me off to no end but Demons is something special. The gory spectacle that splats across the screen is so damn entertaining that you tend to ignore the fact that the whole thing is really brain-numbing and dumb. The Demons cult following rightfully so usually has a strange obsession with the character of Tony played by the great Bobby Rhodes. Tony is a jive-talking, foul-mouthed, black-pimp who takes two of his bitches to the movies. When his main girl Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) becomes a Demon and rips her friends throat out Tony, or super-pimp as I like to call him, takes charge of the situation and leads the movie-house crowd down a path of survival. It is a combination of the dialogue and the dubbing that makes Tony the super-pimp a cult icon of his own. Sometimes I feel that there is a bigger fan base for this character then the actual movie.

Partially written by Dario (Suspiria) Argento and directed by Lamberto Bava (Macabre), I think its safe to say that they pulled much of their inspiration from George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead. Super-Pimp is kind of like an over the top version of the character of Ben from NOTLD. This of course even stranger when you think of where Demons comes from. It is of course an Italian film and I can't think of any other Italian film that portrays a black man as such a beloved bad-ass. I guess they knew there was going to be a bigger market for this thing in the United States and risked it. I just can't see Italy loving this character in the mid 80's the way us Americans do. Long live Super-Pimp!

Aside from Bobby Rhodes character Demons sports one gory special effect after another. It comes complete with eyeballs being pushed into the sockets, throat ripping, teeth falling out, exploding latex pimples (complete with green puss), scalping, strangulation, stabbings, torsos are completely ripped open from the inside and of course plenty of flesh chomping. This thing played in the drive-in as part of a weekend long zombie festival. While I personally do not really consider Demons to be a zombie film, it does have enough of the elements to work amongst them. Apparently demonic possession is transmitted thru saliva just like zombie-ism because thats how these monsters wreak their havoc.

If you like fast paced, insanity mixed with heavy metal and pimps then Demons is a must see. Its pure splatter-house entertainment and plot comes second.

Hitch Hike To Hell (1977)

This one comes from the director of the awesome 1950's monster movie The Monster Of Piedras Blancas. Jumping forward to the sick and twisted 70's there is no doubt the depravity would have to be amped up to ten.

Hitch Hike To Hell is one of those pre-slasher sickies from the 70's about a sex-maniac terrorizing young women. You know the type. This one follows a mammas boy named Howard who comes off like a cross between Norman Bates and Jim Carrey. A normal day for Howard consists of going to work where he drives around this big red, goofy van and drops dry cleaned laundry to customers. More often then not Howard picks up female hitch hikers, rips their clothes off and strangles them with wire hangers. You see its not that Howard hates hitch hikers. He just hates run aways because his sister ran away from home and upset his mother.

After a hard day at work and strangling young run away girls Howard goes back home to Mamma and drinks root beer. I'm not making this stuff up. Howard is a total geek. Root beer comes up quite often in this movie but in one of the films most memorable pieces of dialogue, Howard asks his Mamma if he can "go down to Swanson's for a root beer". Naturally his worried mother doesn't allow it because boys shouldn't be out after dark. Little does mommy know that Howard is a bat-shit loony who gets his jollies off by killing young girls. The Professor from Gilligan's Island shows up here as the police chief and it is his job to catch Howard and put an end to all the senseless killing.

This one ends up getting a bit repetitive after a while. Go to work, strangle a girl, go back home and drink root beer. Still it manages to be entertaining enough to make it through the duration but the replay value is not so high on this one. It does throw in a random scene where a confused Howard meets his first flamboyant homosexual and an unexpected scene with a very young murder victim. Hitch Hike To Hell is a average time passer for those who really like 70's movies about sicko's. Just don't expect to much.

Curfew Breakers (1957)

I picked this thing up thinking it was going to be a juvenile delinquent film with greaser gangs fighting on the city streets. Man was I wrong. Curfew Breakers may have marketed itself as a JD flick on Johnny Legend's Untamed Video but it turns out to be more of a drugsploitation movie when it was all said and done. This makes a lot of sense considering the original title was Hooked and then Narcotics Squad. Being a fan of the silly druggy genre I wasn't all to disappointed.

Curfew Breakers starts like an episode of dragnet with old geezer police trying to break into a teenage drug ring. Things get more serious when a high school kid kicks the bucket from "a hot shot". For those unfamiliar a hot shot is when a dealer purposely sells a junkie poison bag of goods. We see lots of this in blaxploitation flicks like Hammer and Coffy. Anyway the cops are after the killer drug dealers and come across typical greasy haired street kids with hep 50's jargon and a bad attitude. The lead female Julie is a bit of a babe with torpedo-tits and a tight sweaters but she seems to be running with the bad crowd. The portrayal of heroin addiction is surprisingly accurate for a movie in the 50's, similar to Frank Sinatra's The Man With The Golden Arm. As the police close in on the dealers the teenage junkies have a hard time getting a fix and they resort to crime. In one of the films highlights two delinquent street kids shoot and kill a gas station attendant only to end up burning alive in a explosive car crash. This one also comes complete with two ridiculous songs one of which involves a scat-singing weirdo who looks like hes about 45. We also get a pretty cool artsy-fartsy withdrawal sequence and plenty of cheesy 50's dialogue.

If you're not a square and you dig cheesy drugsploitation flicks of the yesteryear you could do worse.

  

Like Mother... Like Daughter (1972)

Not to much to say about this stinker. In case you couldn't tell from the title, this early 1970's smut-fest involves a family that is really quite into each other and when I say "into each other" I mean they have family orgies. Incestuous themes was nothing new in 70's porno films. In fact there seems to be an endless supply of the stuff and after seeing the great Taboo (1980) a movie is going to have to be pretty good to stand out from the piles of never ending incest fuck flicks. That however is not the case in Like Mother, Like Daughter.

In this one mommy shares her new hubby with her teenage daughter. A typical night consists of step-daddy banging out his wife while the daughter sits on her mothers face. Sounds pretty good, I know but the family fun is about to be disturbed when the real father comes back into the picture. Having worked in Japan for the past 15 years, his daughter can't even remember him. With the drop of the hat he decides to take his wife to court and gain custody of his daughter. Now this sounds like a pretty good idea considering mommy has been bopping her teenage daughter but the funny thing is that daddy is unaware of all the incest action that has been filling the happy families nights. He just wants his daughter because hes a prick. So what can be done about all this. Just do what comes natural. Yep you guessed it, daddy's little girl seduces her unknowing father and blows his whistle. It all comes to an abrupt end when she bites her fathers banana. This is by far the best scene in the movie. In fact its probably the only moment worth watching. Once daddy finds out that his own daughter was the one performing oral sex on him, he runs away in shame and the filthy fucking family lives happily ever after. Did I ever tell you how much I hate happy endings?

This one comes complete with a really shitty and typical jazz soundtrack, lots of hairy sex and a street named "Stag Road". The great Jamie Gillis shows up for some sleazy 70's sex but offers nothing special here. There is also a pretty gross moment where one of the actresses gets her period blood. The camera eventually cuts away and tries to pretend we didn't see what just happened but god damnit we saw it! This one turns out to be nothing more than a run of the mill porn flick with average to boring sex scenes.

Ms. 45 (1981)

Ms. 45 is one of the best rape revenge films ever made. This one takes the familiar rape/revenge concoction and sends it off in a totally different direction. Between Abel Ferrara's brilliant direction and Nicholas St. John's writing, Ms. 45 becomes more of a piece of art to be debated and discussed rather then pure exploitation. While the film does still manage to hold those beloved elements of an exploitation film, it seems to be something more. Something with a controversial theme. That theme is of course feminism.

  Zoë Lund does a brilliant job in this movie. Her acting is on point and she gives the main character Thana so much life. Considering Zoë Lund was only 17 years old when she took this role on, makes it all the more astonishing. Thana is a silent mute who seems to be completely disgusted with the male gender. This repulsion will of course grow when she has the worst day of her life. On her way home from work with her sleazy boss Thana is harassed by the droves of horny men on the New York City streets. They give her all the usual "hey baby, hows it going" pick up lines, blow her kisses and whistle at her as she walks by. Before she gets home to her apartment she is pulled into an alley by a masked rapist played by no other then directer Abel Ferrar.

The rapist comes complete with a gun and one of those creepy translucent masks from movies like Alice Sweet Alice and Last House On Dead End Street. The masked scumbag rapes Thana at gun point and makes it a point to tell her "See ya, later. I'll be back baby". Thana picks herself up from the filthy city street and makes her way back home only to realize that another man has broken into her home. When the burglar finds nothing worth stealing he takes it out on the freshly raped Thana and yes you guessed it, she is raped again. This time around the rapist doesn't get away so easy. Thana picks up a clothing iron and caves the dirt-bags head in.

Since our main character has been sexually assaulted twice in one day, I think it is safe to say that she might not be so mentally stable. Her repulsion for men grows to a deep hatred and its not long before she goes on a brutal killing spree of revenge with the loaded gun she stole from the now dead rapist. One of the things that makes Ms. 45 so much more interesting then the average rape/revenge flick is the fact that the main character isn't really acting out vengeance on the ones that did her wrong. Instead she takes her anger out on the entire male gender. This would of course be explored again in a later French film called Baise-Moi (2000) but it was done much more effectively in Ms. 45.

   It is this thought provoking feminist theme that so often brings Ms. 45 into discussion and debate. While it is arguable that all or most rape/revenge films have the underlining message that ALL MEN ARE SCUM!!! This movie takes it to a new level. However I feel that most view this movie slightly wrong. While at first glance it may seem that  Zoë Lund's character is the ultimate feminist, it doesn't mean that the film is a pro-feminist movie. In fact it portrays her more as a damaged human being with many social and probable mental disorders. In this review I used the word repulsion a lot because the character of Thana greatly resembles the disturbed character of Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965). In fact the similarities are so great that I am almost positive that Ferrara and the Ms. 45 crew were highly influenced by Polanski's horrific art-film. Damaged in the brain or not the audience can't help but love the character of Thana. The remainder of the film we watch the fem-fatale blow away men with her beloved pistol. Some of them seem to deserve it and others... not so much. It all comes to violent end where Thana dresses up like a nun and massacres the men at a Halloween party. 

Ms. 45 has the perfect blend of art and exploitation. It comes complete with locations from the great genre film Death Wish, a pretty cool musical score and it really captures the mean streets of NYC in a time long past. A must see for genre fans.