Watched: 09/06/2025
Format: Criterion
Viewing: First
Director: Abel Ferrara
Criterion Channel currently has a collection of "Nunsploitation" movies, and of their 7 offerings or so, I'd already seen three in my life (Haxan, Benedetta, The Devils) and I'd been meaning to catch Ms. 45 (1981) since seeing something about it a few years ago. So here we are.
And, yes, if I can watch 70+ Lacey Chabert movies, I can watch the remaining Nunsploitation movies.
Director Abel Ferrara was kind of a big deal when I was in film school, coming off of The Bad Lieutenant (worth seeing once, at least) and following up with The Addiction, with the Body Snatchers remake in between. Unfortunately, I kinda stopped tracking indie film a while ago and lost sight of him, but he's been out there making movies all along. He was not afraid of what was too much for an audience, and seemed not just to push margins but lived there.
Thana is a seamstress in a design shop in New York's famed garment district. She's mute, and mousy. One very bad day while walking home, she's first sexually assaulted only to stumble home and find someone has broken into her apartment, who does same. However, this time Thana takes a heavy decoration and kills her assailant.
Traumatized, she moves the body into her bathtub and finds the dead man's gun. Needing to dispose of the body, she dismembers the corpse and begins distributing the pieces across New York. A creep looking to hit on her chases her down with a bit of body in a shopping bag - trying to return her bag to her as his in. In an alley, Thana pulls the gun on him and fires without thinking, and realizes the power of taking the lives of men behaving badly.
Soon, she's out on the street, luring men in with lurid make-up and increasingly super-hero-ish fashion, and killing them, which causes a media firestorm.
Finally, dressed as a nun at a Halloween party, Thana begins her final assault.
Two things:
1) I don't know if I've seen a movie before that stood so squarely with one foot in exploitation cinema and one foot in social commentary. Although written by a man and directed by a different man, the film is largely about the POV of women living among men in constant harassment and fear. Because men can be frightening monsters who do untold damage without thinking about the consequences of their actions.
2) The other thing is that this movie seems squarely in JAL's wheelhouse, and I will be checking in with him if he's seen it.
I have a rough idea of what New York was like in the 1970's through movies, comments by the bands who lived there in the CBGB's era, and various news items, and it seems absolutely batshit in comparison to the modern New York. And I grew up on stereotypes of men, especially on the East Coast, for thinking cat-calling and verbally assaulting women was all in a day's work.
While seeing sexual assault on screen is always squicky, and I think this would be handled differently now, it does effectively set Thana's break/ motivation. And even as she decides to take the gun and goes from self-protection to instigating violence... you kinda get it. Everyone she's going after is trying to do something horrible. In this film, we're murdering misogyny.
But it's also a bit wacky. She has a zany old lady neighbor who has a brat of a little dog. When, say, Thana murders the photographer, man... you're pulling for her. This dude suuuuuuucks.
The harm this guy is willing to do, his arrogance, and the potential for men to take what they want through coercion and violence is seen in plain terms in a world like 1970ish NYC - in part because the city teaming with people means it's also possible to vanish in the crowds. So flipping the tables and just using violence as retribution is clean and final. It can just feel all a bit over the top in a good way.
Also - the violence is maybe a very male-written solution and and doesn't seem to be an endorsement. Rather, it's a reminder to men to stop being dicks, that men's potential for violence and the inability of women as victims to fight back is monstrous and an illusion with the victim's application of a simple tool.
I'm not sure this is exactly "Nunsploitation", as Thana is not a nun. Instead, she's pulling together the dichotomies of virgin/harlot for her Halloween costume, and there's both commentary for the world she's in with the costume and for the viewer, as she goes nuts in the finale. So it's kind of meta-nunsploitation.
Having a lead who can't speak is, of course, a challenge as nothing is ever explained by Thana, and she's a bit of an outsider, anyway, so she's unable to connect. That said - I think it's a sign of Ferrara's direction that what Thana wants and needs is crystal clear as we see her reactions to others, and how she begins plotting. And Zoe Lund's ability to convey her state, but as text and subtext in every scene.
In a lot of ways, this post could go on for another 20,000 words discussing the politics and social implications of each death and each scene. But for what's a grimy exploitation movie, it feels as relevant now as ever. Due to the graphic content, it's not my first recommendation, but it's worth seeing some time.
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