Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Ms .45 Blu-ray Movie Review

She's No Angel

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 22, 2014

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.

Thana (Lund), whose name is undoubtedly derived from the Greek word for death, is a junior seamstress at a small maker of women's wear owned and operated by Albert (Albert Sinkys). He's a tyrannical and demanding boss, but he is solicitous of Thana (maybe a little too solicitous), because she is young and also a mute. Her co-workers, who are all women, also try to look out for her as much as they can, but Albert keeps them busy, with barely enough time even for lunch.

Thana lives alone in an apartment she rents from the nosy Mrs. Nasone (Editta Sherman), whose yappy dog, Phil, plays a key part in the story. On her way home from work one day, Thana is dragged into an alley and raped by a masked attacker (director Ferrara, credited as "Jimmy Laine"). Thana pulls herself together to get home, but when she arrives, she interrupts a burglar (Peter Yellen), who first demands her money and then rapes her a second time. But something snaps in Thana as the burglar takes his time brutalizing her. While he is distracted, she smacks him in the head (with a glass apple; symbolism fans take note!), then finishes the job with a steam iron.

Now Thana has two unfamiliar objects in her apartment: a body that has to be disposed of, and the burglar's .45 caliber pistol, which she finds interesting. She begins carrying the gun in her purse, and the first time she uses it is purely a reflex. But shooting a man obviously connects with some deeply felt need, because soon enough Thana is dressing to kill and venturing into dangerous places with the calm demeanor of Charles Bronson in Death Wish, except that Thana isn't just looking for rapists. Any man who expresses an interest in her will do. Meanwhile her excursions provide convenient opportunities for scattering the burglar's remains all over the City of New York.

Is Thana a crazed spree killer pushed over the edge by her attackers, an extreme version of Catherine Deneuve's paranoid Carol in Repulsion? Or is there more to it? Ferrara goes out of his way to show the men in the film from Thana's point of view, as leering, preening sexual predators with no sense of boundaries, treating every young woman around them as a potential conquest. A noteworthy example is the photographer (S. Edward Singer) whom Thana and her co-workers spot at lunch. He and his girlfriend are ostentatiously making out in the restaurant, but as soon as she leaves, he hits on the entire group from Thana's workplace, then follows Thana out of the restaurant with entreaties to come to his nearby studio. (She goes but not for the purpose he expects.)

One of the dark jokes of the photographer sequence, and of all Thana's encounters with men, is that none of them realize she's a mute, because they're all so busy chattering pick-up patter or talking about themselves that she only has to look back at them and nod. The men assume she's interested, because, well, who wouldn't be? Isn't that her function in life? If nothing else, Ms. 45 teaches the object lesson that it really is a good idea to get to know the woman beneath that tempting surface, because you never know what might be waiting for you there.

Ms .45 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Ms .45 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Director Abel Ferrara (1080p; 1.85:1; 7:45): The director speaks about the origins of the project, the making of the film and his early days as a low-budget filmmaker working with a group of friends.



• Interview with Composer Joe Delia (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:06): Delia describes in detail the lengthy process of developing and synchronizing the film's signature score, which plays a crucial role in making it the memorable experience that has garnered Ms. 45 such a strong following over the years.



• Interview with Creative Consultant Jack McIntyre (1080p; 1.85:1; 10:32): McIntyre, who has a cameo as the bum who finds a body part in the trash, recalls working with Zoë Lund and the atmosphere of the New York street scene in the late Seventies.



• Zoë XO (1080i; 1.33:1; 6:23): In this 2004 short film, Robert Lund recalls Zoë, their marriage, her departure and what he later learned about her death in Paris.



• Zoë Rising (1080i; 1.78:1; 6:01): In this 2011 short film, Zoë's mother recalls her daughter. Photographs of Zoë as a child and excerpts from her journal are shown, along with a brief recording of Zoë speaking about her sense of alienation.



• Trailers
• Ms. 45
• Miami Connection
• Wake in Fright
• The Visitor
• Trailer War
• Drafthouse Alliance



• Booklet: The insert that Drafthouse has prepared for Ms. 45 collects a rich and provocative assortment of essays:
  
  
  • "Death Walks in High Heels: The Silent Avenger of Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45" by Kier-La Janisse, a former programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and now a programmer for Fantastic Fest, as well as an author of several books on film.
  • "Ms. 45" by Brad Stevens, author of books on Ferrara and Monte Hellman and a regular contributor to Sight and Sound.
  • "The Ship with Eight Sails and with Fifty Black Cannon" by Zoë Lund, written in 1993 and first published in 2001; an essay by the star about Ms. 45.
  • "The Zoë Lund Project" by Paul Rachman, director of the two short films listed above, who explains their origin.
  
  The booklet also contains photos, a reproduction of the film's one-sheet and disc credits.

Ms .45 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.