Ms. .45

Abel Ferrara's second film is a step up from his The Driller Killer in almost every way, though it maintains the gritty, New York street feel that he has become know for. This is one of those vigilante on the rampage films. Try to image a cross between Death Wish (to which it has most commonly been compared) and Roman Polanski's, Repulsion and you might get something like this. It's about a young, mute woman who is raped on her way home from work (Ferrara is probably one of the few directors bold enough to stage two rape scenes within the first ten minutes of the film). The second one occurs in her apartment, but she manages to hit him across the head with a blunt object and kill him. Not knowing what to do, she carefully dismembers the body, puts the parts in plastic bags which she keeps in the refrigerator, and then day by day disposes of the plastic bags at various locations. Actually, these scenes remind of the scenes in Psycho in which Norman Bates cleans up after mother. Unfortunately, those two incidents throw the girl over the edge and pretty soon she's blasting away every man that glances her way. It's a memorable piece of independent filmmaking even if there are better examples of the genre.