Still seen as something of an enfant terrible director Abel Ferrara has an impressive back catalogue of 54 films to date that includes King of New York & Bad Lieutenant and at 73 years of age he’s still going strong. As a director he had made a name for himself with the controversial Driller Killer back in 1979 that found itself banned in the UK when the Video Recordings Act came out and he double downed on the controversy with the release of Ms.45 in 1981
Set in New York, 1980 the film sees seamstress Thana (Zoe Lund) raped at gunpoint on her way home from work and when she returns to the safety of her apartment she is raped by a burglar; but this time she fights back. Bludgeoning her assailant with an iron, she takes his gun and begins to dispose of the body piece by piece. Fuelled by her trauma, Thana sees that sexual threat is everywhere in the city and decides to bring a .45 calibre solution to the problem.
Like Driller Killer this was penned by Ferarra’s frequent collaborator Nicholas St John and like Driller Killer, despite the filmmakers protestations, it’s very much an exploitation film. With shots from the rape scenes and also the dismemberment the film was edited on its initial release but this sees the cuts reinstated in new limited edition that arrives in 4K UHD that buffs up the grime of its New York setting and which Ferrara famously filmed guerrilla style as the film was shot on a shoestring and filming licenses were low on the filmmakers list of priorities. As the film progresses Lund’s character becomes increasingly unhinged by the violence as she offs men (who are presented here as nearly all uniformly awful) wherever she can and becomes increasingly sexualized wearing more and more make-up and in the final scene a nun’s outfit with stockings. Ms.45 ends in a fitting a climatic party scene – one that sees a musician play a trumpet that emits the sound of a saxophone! – that plays like a Brian De Palma style homage in slo-mo.
And in fairness despite the conditions under which it was shot Ms.45 is a decent enough shocker with a lead performance by the then 17 year old Zoe Lund whose own life story is worthy of a film itself. Having got Ferrara’s phone number she blagged and owned her audition but her life after this quickly spiralled downwards. Flitting off to Italy she began taking class A drugs notably and catastrophically heroin, a drug which she was keen to sing the praises and clearly affected her mind set claiming that she had joined the Red Brigade and took Ms.45 and re-edited it herself and drove around Italy showing it on a bus to raise funds for the organisation she claimed to be a member. Tragically she passed away in 1999 aged 37 from drug related heart failure.
This limited edition 4k UHD & Blu-ray has a host of bonus features that includes….
- Brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films from the original 35mm camera negative
• 4K (2160p) UHD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless mono audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Brand new audio commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, author of Rape Revenge Films: A Critical Study and Cultographies: Ms. 45
• The Voice of Violence, a new featurette with film critic BJ Colangelo
• Where Dreams Go to Die, a new featurette with film critic Kat Ellinger
• Archive interview with director Abel Ferrara
• Archive interview with composer Joe Delia
• Archive interview with creative consultant Jack McIntyre
• Zoe XO, a 2004 short film directed by Paul Rachman
• Zoe Rising, a 2011 short film directed by Paul Rachman
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sister Hyde
• Perfect bound collector’s book featuring new writing by Robert Lund, previously unseen photographs of Zoë Lund, plus select archival material including writing by Kier-La Janisse and Brad Stevens
• Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sister Hyde
It’s the brief archive interviews that are best and what the disc would really have benefitted from is a commentary by Ferrara and St.John. Instead we get a rather academic commentary by author Alexandra Heller-Nicholas as is the featurette ‘Where Dreams Go to Die’ that’s comes across as something of a film student’s dissertation. Nonetheless the transfer of the film is as good as might be expected and the film has its moments and plays a little like a female centric version of Death Wish that had been released back in 1974 and would see Charles bronson reprise the rile in the first of several sequels in 1982 the year after Ms.45 was released.
For Ferrara completists and exploitation fans the disc is a must have and at a brief 79 minutes it doesn’t hang around.
related feature : We take a look at Abel Ferrara’s ‘Zeros and Ones’ starring Ethan Hawke – reviewed here
related feature : We chat to Abel Ferrara about the making of, ‘Zeros and Ones’
Here’s the Ms.45 trailer…..
Ms.45 is released on Limited Edition 4K UHD on 27th October 2025
