Arrow Video: Ms. 45 (1981) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Arrow Films

The third feature film by New York based exploitation provocateur turned Herzogian thinker Abel Ferrara, the savage and uncompromising rape-revenge thriller Ms. 45, might be even after Bad Lieutenant and Welcome to New York the renegade outlaw artist’s still most potent work to date.  A blistering, no-nonsense underground picture that second to The Driller Killer all but cemented Ferrara as a countercultural underground icon, Ms. 45 was initially critically lambasted as exploitation trash but is now canonized as one of the quintessential if not the penultimate rape-revenge picture.  From its scuzzy yet innovative cinematography by James Lemmo (Madman; Maniac Cop) to Joe Delia’s phantasmagorical score ranging from atonal experimentation to funky dance music that grows ever more subversive in context, the film is perhaps best remembered for the emergence of Zoë Lund who herself arose the ranks as a countercultural icon herself including musical composition and eventually penning the screenplay for Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant.

 
The story is simple enough: circa 1980 New York, mute seamstress Thana (Zoë Lund in her screen debut) is brutally sexually assaulted on the way home from work by a masked assailant (Abel Ferrara himself) before being raped again by a burglar in her apartment.  The second time, however, she fights back and inadvertently kills the assailant, taking his gun and cutting up the body into pieces stored in her freezer.  Now armed with a .45 caliber pistol, Thana at first fires in self-defense against the next would-be assailant.  However, it quickly blossoms into bloodlust and at night, donned in glossy lipstick as Joe Delia’s saxophone angrily rages on in between terrifying intonations of the instrument, Thana goes out on a nightly vengeful killing spree.  Coworkers and her landlord start noticing something is amiss with Thana, eventually culminating towards an all-out explosion of ultraviolence involving her boss and others at a fateful Halloween party. 

 
Pointedly angry, strangely empowering and finally a terrifying descent into blinding sociopathy fueled by distinctly feminine rage, Ms. 45 co-authored by Nicholas St. John and co-starring Steve Singer and Peter Yellen is an ironclad pistol whipping of a film.  A kind of grindhouse sleaze-as-art piece that is distinctly New Yorky and all but wholly driven by the largely silent wordless performance by Zoë Lund, Ferrara’s first true masterwork as a take-no-prisoners rape-revenge flick is a bit like a Charles Bronson vigilante justice flick by way of the psychological thriller.  As Joe Delia’s mournful score drones on, we feel as though we’re crawling on our hands and knees through a tunnel into Hell and despite being largely dialogue free on the part of its lead Lund all but engrosses the viewer into her silent world of increasing paranoia and psychosis.  As the film draws nearer its inevitable full blown massacre, the film keenly tracks the turning point in which her killings become ever more motiveless until she’s firing rounds at any and every person she comes into contact with.

 
Initially released uncut on VHS in 1983 before going on DVD in the year 2000 albeit in censored form, the film didn’t see an unedited disc release until 2014 circa Drafthouse Films and Cinedigm who also spearheaded a theatrical rerelease.  A decade later, Arrow Video picked the rights back up with their announcement of a new 4K UHD disc release.  While porting over many of the extras of the Drafthouse Films blu-ray including interviews with Abel Ferrara and Joe Delia as well as two short films about the cult of Zoë Lund, the Arrow release includes numerous newly created extras as well including a new audio commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and film featurettes with BJ Colangelo and Kat Ellinger.  The box also comes with a collector’s booklet featuring rare photos of Zoë Lund as well as a double-sided foldout poster.  Ms. 45 though far removed now from the kind of storyteller Abel Ferrara would evolve into post-Welcome to New York or Siberia is probably still the director’s penultimate picture, a bit like getting into a street fight as a viewer leaving you feeling battered, broken but nevertheless exhilarated by the darkly feminine roller coaster ride to Hell.

--Andrew Kotwicki