Film Review: Ms. 45
Abel Ferrara's 1981 Cult Masterpiece Established an Unforgettable Mistress of Vigilantism
Ms. 45. Directed by Abel Ferrara. Performances by Zoë Lund, Bogey, and Albert Synkys. Navaron Films, 1981.
The 1974 release of Michael Winner’s Death Wish—the Charles Bronson action classic of urban vigilante vengeance—triggered highbrow contempt, but popular acclaim. Bronson’s bleeding-heart liberal New York City architect become gun-toting avenger after his wife is murdered and his daughter raped by a gang of thugs, became an American folk hero. Bronson reprised the role in four sequels throughout his career, all now enjoying cult status, and the original film spawning a flat, mediocre remake starring Bruce Willis in 2018.
Death Wish also birthed a subgenre of American crime drama—the urban vigilante saga. The taxpaying, patriotic, law-abiding citizen, who finds the criminal justice system severely wanting when he or his family become crime victims. He’s further frustrated by imposed impotence from that very system, since he knows it would turn its full power against him without mercy should he seek personal revenge, and sometimes he’s denied the means of self-defense, via laws prohibiting ownership of guns or other weapons. Many films emerged during the late 1970s and early 1980s focused on personal or generalized revenge of the innocent against the guilty. These were of variable quality and success, and the trope generally survives as a plot driver in many action films, and is still often explicitly seen (e.g., Quentin Tarantino’s two outstanding Kill Bill films, Peppermint, 2018).
Within the vigilante subgenre, a limited group of distinctive films with female protagonists emerged: the “rape revenge” films. These concern a woman raped by one or many assailants, who transmutes her trauma into vengeful rage, then sets out to settle the score with either the assailants themselves, or men whom she perceives as their equivalents. Landmark (and extremely controversial) films of this type include Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman, 1978), and the Swedish import Thriller: A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One Eye, 1973; though this film pre-dates Death Wish, it is considered a classic rape revenge film), directed by Bo Arne Vibenius. Though these films are excellent in their own ways (both are grindhouse classics, and I may be reviewing them here in the future), by far the best entry is arguably Abel Ferrara’s 1981 film, Ms. 45.
Ms. 45’s plot is pure simplicity. The lovely, talented, actress/screenwriter/model Zoë Lund plays Thana, a pretty young seamstress employed in New York City’s Garment District. She’s a mute, and is shy and introverted. One day on the way home from work, a masked assailant (played by Abel Ferrara), pulls her into an alley and rapes her. After coming to her senses, she gets to her apartment, only to find a burglar there—he holds her at gunpoint, learns she’s a mute, then rapes her again. But Thana knocks him in the head with a paperweight, then caves in his skull with a steam iron, killing him; she puts the rapist’s corpse in the bathtub.
Thana dismembers the rapist’s body with kitchen knives, and wraps the chunks of flesh in newspaper, storing them in her freezer. She carries a few of these grisly parcels with her on her daily trips to work, leaving them in trash cans, open car trunks, and other random Manhattan locations. The rapist’s .45 caliber automatic pistol also becomes her new constant companion. A catcalling dirtbag guy on a corner starts following her one day; he sees her drop one of her “packages” in an alley, then runs after her in an effort to be gallant. In an unforgettable, well-shot scene, he comes up behind her. Thana’s at the ready with the pistol, spins around, and shoots him point-blank in the face: her first kill. Just as Charles Bronson did in Death Wish after he killed his first street thug, Thana goes home and vomits, disgusted by what she’s done. But she quickly gets over any reservations, and sets out on her path of revenge. In fact, her first kill got front page coverage in the New York Post. As more dead men turn up around the city, she gets dubbed “The .45 Caliber Killer.”
Thana transforms herself—she ditches her mousy, wallflower appearance, and enhances her work wardrobe, and starts wearing more makeup. At night, she really amps it up, to lure in her prey. Her outfits are elegant, sophisticated, and sexy—her face exquisitely made-up, and she slaps a fully-loaded mag into her .45, with a chambered round. She takes out a pimp beating the shit out of one of his girls—empties a full mag into him. She walks through Central Park, and attracts the attention of a gang of thugs dressed like they’ve just returned (and been rejected) from an audition for Fame. In another excellent bit of camera work, and a wonderful action scene from Lund, she unleashes the fury of her firepower on the gang, holding one hand behind her back, systematically dropping every one of them! Then for some reason, it’s raining, and a limo stops in front of her—the passenger tells her to get in. It’s a very rotund Arab man, who lights a cigarette for her, asks her to spend the evening with him, then gives her a few hundred dollar bills. Thana shoves the cash into her purse, pulls the .45, and empties the pistol into the Arab and the driver. The two limo kills are announced on the radio the next morning—the Arab was a prominent Saudi businessman in town for a high-stakes trade deal.
Thana also blows away a scumball photographer who picks her up at a restaurant while she’s at lunch with her friends from work. She’s suffering from PTSD in a big way, having nightmares about the “masked man” rapist still being out there, and coming after her, and despite her vigilantism and newfound confidence, Thana starts to lose her grip on reality. She’s screwing up big-time at work, incurring the adverse attention of her boss, who’s a cad in his own right—he condescends to Thana because she’s a mute. He’s also attracted to her, and since he’s the boss, he thinks he can get handsy with her by giving her “shoulder massages,” and such—none of this is wanted or invited, and Thana will remember all of this.
Thana also starts targeting innocent men, like a poor guy she meets at a bar, who starts talking to her about his wife. He loves her very much, but had a sneaking feeling she was having an affair, since she’d been spending lots of time away from home of. Thana appears interested in his story, and they go outside to share a park bench. The man reveals that he followed his wife one night, and discovered she was having an affair—with another woman. Thana had her .45 out, aimed at his head, pulled the trigger—and it didn’t fire. The man—both stunned and angry—asked if it were some sick joke, and grabbed the pistol from her hand. He placed it to his head, pulled the trigger, and it fired. This was one of the most intense scenes in the film—you don’t know if Thana will shoot him, walk away, comfort him, cry—rethink her life—whatever. But it turns out she’s just become a stone-cold killer. The man’s story, as sad and nerve-wracking as it was, elicits no sympathy from her—he’s another target for her anger, which has gone beyond any justifiable motive of vengeance, directly into the insanity of murder for its own sake.
The film’s climax is an office Halloween party. Thana’s finally agreed to attend her workplace Halloween bash, and agreed to be her boss’s date. She’s planning to go out with a bang (though not the kind of “bang” her boss has in mind, despite her flashing him smoldering, flirtatious glances on the days leading up to the event)—a shooting spree to take out the boss, and all of the dirtbag men involved in the business. Thana, at this point, is totally submerged in madness, and arguably sees no chance of escape. She chooses a “slutty nun” costume for the party, and her prepping for the party is a sensual montage. She applies her lipstick while veiled, and kisses every cartridge as she adds it to her magazine. Thana slaps the mag into her .45, her black garter belt and stocking ensemble plainly visible. She poses with the gun in various shooting poses before leaving her apartment one last time.
Her boss—costumed as Dracula—arrives with Thana on his arm. He’s beaming with pride—she is his trophy, his conquest, and he’s enjoying every second. She plays along, and accompanies her horny superior upstairs, where he wastes no time “exploring” her. From the camera angle, it’s not precisely clear what he’s up to, but it appears he’s kissing her through her clothes down to her feet, making note of her “mound of Venus,” and so forth. He definitely wants to show his prowess at oral technique when he lifts her “habit” to reveal her sexy lingerie—and the .45 snugly shoved in her garter belt. She takes aim, and blows his head into oblivion. Thana begins her final rampage from the second floor of this luxury apartment, moving down the stairs, shooting all the way, driving dead-on kill shots into every visible male. She’s only stopped when one of her girlfriends seizes a large knife from a caterer’s table and drives it into her lower back. Thana turns around in shock, then finally exclaims a single word: “Sister!” She then collapses dead to the floor, ending the film.
A lot’s been written and said about Ms. 45 since 1981. It’s been called an exploitation flick, a feminist empowerment film, a Death Wish knock-off, and for my two cents—a cult masterpiece, and a singular artifact of late 20th century American cinema. It’s also a fine exemplar of the “guerrilla filmmaking” for which Abel Ferrara became famous. Authentic New York location filming, without permits—the cast and crew arrived at a spot, began the shoot and left, consequences be damned. A technique used with genius in another Ferrara classic in 1992, Bad Lieutenant, which also starred Zoë Lund, and for which she co-wrote the screenplay. Ferrara also struck gold with another New York location film, the incredible Christopher Walken crime drama King of New York, which pre-dated Bad Lieutenant by two years. New York City is the ultimate backdrop for American film. Perhaps it’s my Northeastern American urban background, but you can’t beat it. My own city of Philadelphia (which never measured up to New York—ever, for any reason, in any way, nor could it ever do so) is simply a backwater which lacks the intensity and energy to bring off the gritty type of crime drama which only New York can deliver. Abel Ferrara’s done a masterful job capturing New York with a raw, ‘70s-‘80s in-your-face vibe, with blood, dirt, grime, and gore up-front. It’s unabashed, honest cinema, analogous to Henry Miller’s prose or the dark tabloid/crime-scene photography of Weegee, as displayed in classic collections like Naked City.
Zoë Lund was the motive force for Ms. 45. She was the protagonist of the film, in what had to be a truly challenging role. Lund had to act without saying a single word, relying on facial expressions, body posture, costume, and subtle, non-verbal cues to bring Thana to life. Thana was a very complex character. She starts the film an introverted, sheltered mute, whose rather humdrum life is centered on the dual axes of her job and her apartment. But because of the rare trauma of being raped twice in the same day, concealing her justifiable killing of the second rapist, she transforms over the course of the film into an assertive, predatory, sophisticated, sexy femme fatale, delivering lethal vengeance on behalf of women treated like sewage every day throughout New York. Her atavism and trauma drive her devolution into a cold-blooded killer, leading ultimately to her self-destruction. Lund had no lines to read or to work with—only situations which Thana either found herself reacting to, and eventually planning; she had to credibly portray this complex character through sheer physicality—she did this brilliantly, and I submit that Zoë Lund’s role in Ms. 45 is worthy of study by any aspiring actor. Her death at such a young age in 1999 was both a tragedy and a terrible loss to the artistic world.
Ms. 45 is worth checking out, and in my opinion, worth adding to your physical media collection. I loved this film on my first watch around three weeks ago—an amazing piece of work. It’s led me to explore the other Ferrara New York City works I referenced above, which I may be addressing as reviews in the future. It may be difficult to find at a reasonable price (I acquired mine on eBay for around $30.00 I think), but if you’re into grindhouse cinema, the vigilante-revenge subgenre, or just a regular cinephile who digs a damn good picture that doesn’t jerk you around with CGI, garbage writing, or politically correct sermonizing--this is one of the best!