7.3 | / 10 |
Users | ![]() | 5.0 |
Reviewer | ![]() | 3.5 |
Overall | ![]() | 3.7 |
After being attacked and raped twice in one day, a shy and mute seamstress takes to the streets of New York and randomly kills men with a .45 caliber gun.
Starring: Zoë Lund, Albert Sinkys, Darlene Stuto, Helen McGara, Nike ZachmanoglouThriller | Uncertain |
Crime | Uncertain |
Drama | Uncertain |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy (as download)
Region A (locked)
Movie | ![]() | 3.5 |
Video | ![]() | 3.5 |
Audio | ![]() | 3.5 |
Extras | ![]() | 3.5 |
Overall | ![]() | 3.5 |
Director Abel Ferrara is still best known for his 1992 film Bad
Lieutenant, which starred Harvey
Keitel as a corrupt New York police detective whose life was disintegrating around him. The
script for that film was co-written by Zoë Lund, who met Ferrara as a teenager when he cast her
twelve years earlier as the title character of Ms. 45. Her name at the time was Zoë Tamerlis, and
she has since acquired the cult status shared with other fringe figures from that era whose artistic
promise was cut short by hard living and an early death—in Lund's case, in 1999 at age 37 from
complications related to cocaine abuse.
Ms. 45 is a rape-revenge thriller, which is a subgenre unto itself, as noted in an essay included
with Drafthouse's fine Blu-ray release. One of the many reasons why the film has been
recognized as a classic, despite its initially harsh reception, is Lund's remarkable performance as
she transforms from a helpless and terrified victim into an indiscriminate killing machine. Since
her character is a mute, Lund has to do it all without the benefit of dialogue. With a face and
expressive eyes that could have made her a silent film star, she seems to bring it off effortlessly.
Shot for almost nothing on the streets of New York and in real apartments and offices, Ms. 45
has the look and feel of an amateur film made by people with talent. It was so effective that it
was frequently trimmed for violence, both in Britain and America. The version presented by
Drafthouse is said to be complete and uncut.
Ms. 45 was shot by James Lemmo (as "James Momel"), a frequent cinematographer for William
Lustig. Reports have circulated that Drafthouse has restored the film from original negatives, but
at least some portions have been taken from a print, because I spotted a few of the "cigarette
burns" formerly used by projectionists to note reel changes. Still, the quality of Drafthouse's
1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is impressive, given the film's low-budget origins. Sharpness and
detail vary throughout the film, but at their best they are strikingly good, and at their worst, they
do not interfere with the story. The seedy New York streets and alleys of 1980, when the film
was shot, have been preserved for posterity without the psychedelic overlay that Martin Scorsese
and Michael Chapman gave them a few years earlier in Taxi Driver
. The color palette is muted
and dull (or, at Thana's workplace, pastel) in the early portions of the film, but as Thana's
"mission" gathers momentum, colors become richer and more saturated until, at the Halloween
party where the film reaches its climax, an abundance of rich colors are on display.
Visible damage is minimal, confined to a few scratches and occasional speckling. The film's
natural grain pattern is observable and, in some shots, rather pronounced, but the grain does not
appear to have been scrubbed away by digital means. To the extent the image appears soft, this is
undoubtedly inherent in the original photography.
The average bitrate of 22 Mbps is adequate, given the film's deliberate pace and slow buildup to
its sudden explosions of violence.
Ms. 45's original mono soundtrack is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, and it's a perfectly adequate reproduction with good dynamic range, clear dialogue and a fine reproduction of Joe Delia's score, which serves as both music and sound effects. The track has the slightly artificial quality that fans of the period's exploitation films will recognize, as if many of the voices have been dubbed (and, in fact, several of them were). Certain sound effects are exaggerated to give a sense of how Thana experiences them, although it's worth noting that the gunshots are relatively tame, perhaps because Thana doesn't consider them a big deal.
At one level, Ms. 45 can be enjoyed simply as a grindhouse film about a crazed killer who
accumulates a respectable body count. But the film has endured because so many viewers see
more in Thana than just another opaque psycho-killer. Her actions have logic, method and
motive, and some might say she even has cause. Zoë Lund argued that Thana's response to her
attackers was a metaphor for the rebellion of any oppressed person, but she then went on to
consider the thematic implications of having a woman represent the oppressed. Those
implications are still worth considering. Highly recommended.
2-Disc Special Edition
1980
2017
Day of the Woman
1978
2013
1990
Unrated Director`s Cut
1980
1984
Collector's Edition
1988
1974
Collector's Edition
1983
2011
2013
1986
Uncut
2013
Unrated
2010
2012
1979
Unrated
2005
2009
2005