DVD review: A Gun for Jennifer (1997)

 

Allison (Deborah Twiss) comes to New York City from Ohio to escape an abusive husband and ends up entangled with murderous female vigilantes who routinely castrate suspected rapists and batterers. Allison's dilemma begins when she is attacked. Before she is harmed, five masked women pounce upon the attacker and kill them. Allison tries to flee, but the women surround her and demand that she join them to prevent her from going to the police. They ask her name; thinking quickly, she takes the name "Jennifer" from a nearby storefront. Jesse (Freida Hoops) is the psychotic leader of the group and takes them on an increasingly crazed city-wide spree that results in the deaths of numerous well-to-do misogynists.A Gun for Jennifer is written by Deborah Twiss and Todd Morris who also is the director. Solid acting from almost all the cast  although there´s one or two exceptions, the camerawork and editing is good. It has a good gritty big city atmosphere, New York isn´t a very nice place in this. Most of the male characters in this are more or less male chauvinists if they aren´t rapists or sadists. It is well paced. There is many more layers in this flick than one might expect and soon things escalate and get more and more violent as the group of vigilantes set their sights on higher profile targets and finds themselves going up against the mafia. There´s gore, nice juicy squibs as people get shot and we get to see the bloody aftermath of genital violence (nice fx). There´s some brief T & A in this and there´s male rape by pool cue.
This review is based upon the german region 2 DVD release from Independent Partners, it´s uncut and english audio is available.
Rating: 6½ out of 7. Violent and gritty A Gun for Jennifer is easily one of the best vigilante-flicks around! Highly recommended!

/JL