Besides striped cats and hot cider, there are few things that warm a chill Sunday evening like rage cinema. Anger is good for the heart.

But it was disappointment, not anger, when I recognized the actress who played Corinne Burns, the plucky, vulgar heroine of “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” (1981). Diane “Nights In Rodanthe” Lane. The kind of woman who women who want to be with Richard Gere fantasizing about being. (Diane, if you had to pick a character to base the rest of your life on, why pick Cherry Valance from “The Outsiders”?)

In any case, however out of her element she might have felt, it’s buried in swagger as Corinne, a wicked and awesome aspiring rock singer who tickles the fancy of the media after getting fired from her job as a fry cook — on camera — in an ersatz “60 Minutes” show. From that inch, she takes a mile, using that bit of fame to launch her band (the eponymous Stains, with a 13-year-old Laura Dern backing) onto the scene, throttling her mic as she exhorts her fans. TV news anchors are tongue-tied by the girl they call “this extraordinary person.” Corinne the Rockstar makes Joe the Plumber look amateur.

The indulgent thing about the movie is that our hero is no hero — heroes are two-dimensional good guys. Heroes don’t taunt their audience and dye their hair like Cruella DeVille. Heroes don’t have crowds of copycat fans turn on them and throw toilet paper and pots of dye at them.

Rather, and with the tights and panties to prove it, Corinne is a superhero: flawed and all the more interesting because of it.