The Ladies Club

I absolutely loved this movie! I was a teenager when this came out years ago. Me and my sisters always understood it and enjoyed it. There's always some male chauvinist thinking, all this is ridiculous and extreme! Well if Charles Bronson can do it so can we! I think WOMEN make excellent Vigilantes! Even today so often the justice system drops the ball in our court and we have to do what we can to make our best shot. Very emotionally charged this movie was. Low-budget B-movie Yes, it made about 289,000 at the box office, but to this day it is a rare cult classic. And rightly so! There also was a sequel I'm hoping to find that as well. The movie was excellent and if you are a victim of sex crimes yourself you really understand and feel the depth of these characters. I really wish they'll make more movies like this! Maybe it'll make a Predator think again before doing such heinous crimes. It will be all so nice if Predators like this could be castrated automatically with their prison sentences. Now we're talkin!

Too bad no one knows of this film. A group of rape victims, angered over the lack of justice in their respective cases, go on a vigilante spree, capturing repeat sex offenders and castrating them. If only the country could embrace this message, what a wonderful world it would be.

It seemed like this movie couldn't make up its mind how seriously it wanted viewers to take it. The idea is good: a group of (female) rape victims band together to inflict vigilante-type punishment on rapists and other (male) predators, but is the actual movie a variation on popular themes from THE ACCUSED and DEATH WISH, or a genre-spoof? It depends on which scene you're watching. The rapists exaggerate their disgustingness to the point of being campy (even the great character actor Nicholas Worth, who was the established go-to-guy for playing terrifying, hideous, disgusting rapists, plays clownishly here, like a cartoon bad-guy). But the scenes where the women try to cope with the psychic damage they suffer from being raped are portrayed seriously, like in THE ACCUSED.

I had the feeling they could have fixed this if they had spent a bit more time on the script and on the directing and really decided on what they were trying to do. I look forward to a possible remake.

Actually, this film was ahead of its time...I was working in a video store when it came out on video. I don't think it ever went to the big screen. Although it is rather violent (with due intent), this is really a great film for women and by women. We are forever the victims of crimes such as rape. This film just goes to show that if women finally banded together and fought back, woe be to MEN who think that they can get away with violating us like that! It also shows what ramifications can happen with citizens try to take the law into their own hands. Yes they will get punished, but is it worth it? YES! The Ladies Club was definitely on a low budget, I think it could have been done much better, but it is still worth seeing. It is tragic but the viewer (if sympathetic) can feel vilified by the actions these women take. The initial rapists, in a few scenarios, are set free by our court system, as does happen in real life. For those men, they put out their own brand of 'justice' and it is justified. Too bad that it is now hard to find on video and never seen on TV in re-runs. Oh well.

This, like ENOUGH, starring Jennifer Lopez, and others dealing with abuse issues are movies about what many women feel about wrongs done, and are a good way to work through the anger without actually having to go to jail for "acting out!" I am waiting for this one on DVD.