The controversial 1981 exploitation thriller Quentin Tarantino compared to “a beautiful flower growing out of a rat’s ass”
It’s definitely questionable that the rape and revenge thriller is one of the exploitation cinema offshoots that Quentin Tarantino has an affinity for, although you couldn’t get away from them at the time.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, countless grim, grisly, and altogether grimy films emerged that were predicated on a similar premise: a woman is the victim of a sexual assault, and she seeks retribution by tracking down and violently dispatching of the people responsible.
It was a form of filmmaking that was very much of its time, but since that was also the time that Tarantino was falling in love with that type of cinema in all of its gonzo, gruesome, and often reprehensible glory, it was inevitable that he’d develop a soft spot for more than a few of them.
Even he has his limits, though, with the auteur describing 1973’s Thriller: A Cruel Picture as “definitely the roughest” he’d ever laid eyes on, while Lady Snowblood had an obvious influence on Kill Bill. Sometimes, he can find himself caught in two minds, as was the case with Abel Ferrara’s controversial Ms 45.
Starring Zoë Tamerlis in the lead role, the plot is as straightforward as it is uncomfortable: a mute seamstress is raped twice in one day by two different assailants, kills and dismembers the second, and embarks on a killing spree across New York City, living up to the film’s international title, Angel of Vengeance.
It didn’t quite get a ringing endorsement from Tarantino, who referred to it as “a reasonably competent, but hopelessly nihilistic, urban nightmare,” summing up his mixed feelings on the picture as a whole by categorising the combination of Tamerlis’ “mesmerising” performance and its more preposterous moments as being the cinematic equivalent of “a beautiful flower growing out of a rat’s ass.”
“By the time she’s facing down an entire gang, like Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the film has become officially ludicrous,” he noted. “But also, despite the ugliness of the set-up, a groovy gas.” It’s an appraisal full of backhanded compliments, but when Ms 45 was released, it was almost universally decried.
As the years passed, though, the perception began to shift, and what was once panned as just another in a long line of exploitation thrillers that tortured their female protagonists was viewed through a different lens as a story of the effect vigilantism can have on vigilantes, the lingering effects of trauma, and a timeless, if heightened and hard to stomach, parable on the dangers that face women in everyday life.
Today, Ms 45 is generally seen as a cast-iron cult classic and one of the better entries from its subgenre of choice, and it’s not much of a surprise that it’s one Tarantino would have a soft spot for.
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