A Gun for Jennifer

I managed to see this at a rare screening during the Fantasia Festival a few years back and I was very impressed. Reminded me of early Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45), Wes Craven (Last House on the Left) or even John Cassavetes (Killing of a Chinese Bookie). The basic story involves a young woman (Deborah Twiss), new to NYC, that is saved from being raped by a feminist vigilante gang. The guerillas take her in and give her a job at their front business, a divey strip club, and introduce her to their night-time revenge raids. It gets pretty intense and twisted from there. Political, creepy and sexy. See this if you get the chance, because I don't think it'll make it to your local Blockbusters.

Ardent update on, 'I Spit On Your Grave' and could easily have used a corruption of that film's alternative title and been called, 'Day of the Women'. This has all of the revenge and only mentions the male violence in passing. It might be considered a slightly less exploitative approach but I don't think so. The most repeated line in this film is, 'Shut the f*** up' and this bunch of ladies are no role models for a decent society. Basically we have beaten housewives forming a go-go club and in their spare time ridding the country of it's rapists. The poor picture quality does not help and encourages the feeling that this is just all a little too amateur in execution and conception. It's violent and gory and if just seeing foul mouthed girls with guns is enough then you'll enjoy this more than I. Brave effort nevertheless.

Aside from the low quality video, which could compete with porn from the sixties, and absolutely horrendous audio which couldn't, this movie is lacking a thing two.

For instance, some semblance of decent acting. That's missing.

Writing? Well, it's there. I mean, somebody wrote some words. They were poorly chosen and badly assembled, and every character has the same limited vocabulary, but technically it's writing, and it is unfortunately present.

I won't touch the plot. That would be making the same mistake the producers made.

Any real character development must have been saved for the prequel, so there's that. Rather, there isn't.

That's enough words.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this little flick. Naturally I went in expecting it to be along the same lines as the classic 'girl power' flick, I Spit on Your Grave (….), and while the two share some common themes; this film is certainly different enough for it not to be considered a rip-off. Recently, Quentin Tarantino tried to recreate the seventies Grindhouse style with 'Death Proof', but director Todd Morris actually succeeded in doing that over ten years ago with this film, as if it wasn't for the fact that I know that A Gun for Jennifer was made in 1996, I definitely would have thought I was watching a seventies movie. The plot focuses on a group of man-hating (probable) lesbians who are tired of the way that men treat women and so decide to take the law into their own hands. The story really starts when they save a young woman from being mugged on the streets. They have her shoot the mugger and then allow her to join the gang. From there we follow the girls as they squabble amongst themselves and take down various male criminals in the city...

In true seventies Grindhouse style, the film has a very low quality feel about. The picture is misty and the performances are all clearly delivered by inexperienced actors. However, this really adds to the film's overall quality - it's never overly clear whether or not the film is actually meant to feel like a seventies trash flick, but it does and that's what I really liked about it. The film also does a very good job of painting men in a very unfavourable light, and this benefits it because it makes the girls' little tirade of retribution feel more worthwhile. The plot itself is fairly standard - for the first hour we basically just skip from one victim to another until eventually we find out who the real bad guy is and watch the girls go after him. The plot is thickened with some police involvement, though this isn't really capitalised upon. However, while the film could have been better; I really do think that Todd Morris has done a good job with this film. It's not a brilliant masterpiece, but it's not bad at all and exploitation fans will probably get a kick out of it.

Long before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez even considered the idea, other ambitious fan-boy directors already attempted to revive the Grindhouse cinema. Of course, these directors were inexperienced and unknown, so their movies never properly received the attention they deserved. Todd Morris' "A Gun for Jennifer" is a prototypic example to state this theory. Judging by the story content, the gritty filming style and the excessive amount of graphic violence, it is plain obvious that Morris watched way too many exploitation & trash movies as a kid and then suddenly decided one day to gather together a bunch of friends to shoot his very own and cheap homage to 70's Grindhouse cinema. Well, I can only applaud Todd Morris and everyone else involved in this production, as I could only dream about realizing such a project of my own. Everything about "A Gun for Jennifer" is extremely basic and gratuitous - subject material as well as the elaboration - but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Quite the contrary even; a straightforward plot, amateurish acting and clumsy camera-work are almost fundamental characteristics in order to achieve an authentic Grindhouse movie! Todd Morris borrows and even shamelessly copies several elements from older films, notably "I Spit on your Grave", Abel Ferrara's "Ms. 45" and the virtually unknown "Rape Squad". It's about a beautiful young woman who flees from Ohio to New York City, for reasons explained later in the film, and almost immediately becomes the victim of scum rapists. She gets rudely rescued when a van full of tough chicks passes by and kills the rapists without hesitating. The girls apparently all work together in a nightclub and, since they got a little fed up with the endless amount of unsolved rape cases and various other acts of violence against women, they decided to form some sort of vigilante posse and roam the streets at night. Since she has nowhere else to go and because, after all, these women rescued here, the girl – choosing the false Jennifer – joins the gang. She gradually gets sucked more and more into a world of vengeance and violence, but also the fanatic female police detective Perez comes closer to uncovering their identities.

What we have here, my dear fellow smut & exploitation fanatics (as you are the only ones likely to read the comments for this type of movies), is an almost perfect tribute to politically incorrect early 70's trash! The characters are complete stereotypes (all men are scum, all women are tough mothers), the sleaze-level is extremely high in spite of very little nudity shown on screen, the soundtrack and photography make you feel uncomfortable and the violence is uncompromising to say the least. Although bringing little variety in the killings, "A Gun for Jennifer" is literally a bloodbath of a film and particularly the climax goes far over the top in depicting sick and sadistic ferocity. Deborah Twiss, who also co-wrote the screenplay, as well as her girlfriends aren't likely to win any major acting awards in their careers but the have the exact right looks, charisma and tough facials expression for this kind of role. The soundtrack is simply amazing and contains some marvelously apt songs. If you want to know what I'm referring to, just look up Moloko's "Killa Bunnies" on YouTube! Purely talking in terms of good cinema, "A Gun for Jennifer" probably doesn't deserve a rating any higher than 5 or 6, but I'm generously giving an 8 for sheer respect towards Todd Morris and his crew.