Plot
Miss Mary Meadows is a young woman who works as a substitute first-grade elementary school teacher. She enjoys taking long walks in her suburban neighborhood, wearing traditional clothing and tap-dancing shoes. She drives a 1956 Nash Metropolitan ("It reminds me of an old pair of saddle shoes I once had"). Unknown to everyone, she is a secret vigilante who kills local thugs who accost her or when she witnesses them committing crimes. She always carries a small semi-automatic pistol in her purse and speaks in a childlike, innocent manner. She lives by herself in a small house and talks occasionally with her mother over the telephone about what she did during the day.
Investigating the vigilante killings is a local sheriff. [nb 1] He soon meets and develops an attraction to her due to her old-fashioned clothing and style of speech. When he begins to suspect Miss Meadows may be the vigilante he is looking for, he is torn between whether to arrest or protect her.
When Miss Meadows meets an ex-convict named Skylar, who she learns served time for molesting young children, she begins to fear for her young students' safety. When Miss Meadows approaches and threatens to kill Skylar if he continues hanging around the school or her kids, he begins stalking her.
It is eventually revealed that all of the telephone conversations that Miss Meadows has been having with her mother over the course of the film are imaginary. As a young girl, Mary Meadows witnessed her mother's murder in a drive-by shooting outside a local church after attending the wedding of a family friend. This traumatic incident left Miss Meadows so emotionally scarred that she entered a fantasy world in which she imagined that her mother was still alive, then began to go after and kill criminals whom she viewed as a threat to society.
The various criminals that Miss Meadows kills on-screen include a trucker who tries to abduct her at gunpoint in the opening scene, a young man who committed a mass shooting at a local diner, and the town's Catholic priest whom Miss Meadows finds sexually molesting a young boy.
When Miss Meadows learns that she is pregnant after a sexual encounter with the Sheriff, she decides to accept his proposal of marriage. On the day of the wedding, Skylar kidnaps Heather, one of Miss Meadows's students forcing Miss Meadows to go to Skylar's house (wearing her wedding dress) to try to stop him. She manages to free Heather, but becomes a captive herself. Heather escapes and attracts the attention of the Sheriff who is passing by after leaving the church and enters Skylar's house. Inside the house Skylar finds Miss Meadows' gun in her purse and threatens her with it, but is saved by the Sheriff who shoots him. Seeing Miss Meadows' gun still clutched in Skylar's hand, he notes "It has his prints now". He and Miss Meadows proceed back to the church.
A year later, Miss Meadows and the Sheriff are married; she still wears her tap shoes and he has taken up the accordion. Now parents to a baby daughter, they are content to be peculiar together. As Miss Meadows prepares to go out before dinner, the Sheriff tells her "Be careful"; she replies "I always am", leaves the house, and does another little tap dance on the sidewalk.
- ↑ The Sheriff is never named, and billed simply as "Sheriff".
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