Ms. 45 (4K UHD Review)
Director
Abel FerraraRelease Date(s)
1981 (October 28, 2025)Studio(s)
Navaron Films/Rochelle Films (Arrow Video)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Like many of Abel Ferrara’s best films, Ms. 45 (aka Angel of Vengeance) has always existed at an uneasy confluence between the grindhouse and the arthouse. Oh, it’s an unabashed exploitation film, as Ferrara himself has freely admitted, produced on a shoestring and distributed directly to the kinds of theatres that were only too happy to make a buck by exhibiting sleazy fare. Yet audiences who were drawn in by the provocative posters ended up getting a bit more than they bargained for: a naked female cry of rage against a dominant patriarchy where women are subjected to potential indignities and humiliations everywhere they turn. Instead of titillation, Ferrara served up a helping of feminism—albeit a particularly caustic form of feminism, but still. If revenge is a dish that is best served cold, then Ms. 45 is a rape/revenge film that’s got ice in its veins.
The rape/revenge genre has long been an exploitation film staple, but rape/revenge stories have hardly been unique to the cinema. Literature is replete with variations of the theme going back more than two and a half millennia, all the way to the Greek tragedians. It was a natural for the film medium, although the nature of the subject matter led to issues with censorship. Yet as the Production Code began to wither and fade away during the Sixties, filmmakers began to explore the concept more directly, eventually leading to genuinely sordid fare like Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (although to be fair to Zarchi, there’s a bit more going on with that film than may be obvious at first glance).
Mainstream filmmakers began openly exploring the concept as well, but the disreputable nature of the genre meant that critics sometimes viewed their work through an exploitation lens—you can move the grindhouse into the arthouse, but you can’t take the grindhouse stain out of the rape/revenge genre no matter how hard that you try. Granted, a revered international filmmaker like Ingmar Bergman didn’t have the same issue with The Virgin Spring in 1960, but as far as mainstream critics are concerned, what the Swedish gods get away with, the cows can’t. (And it doesn’t help that when the essence of Bergman’s story made its way stateside in 1972, it was twisted beyond all recognition into the ultimate in brutal grindhouse rape/revenge films, Wes Craven’s disturbing The Last House on the Left). So, if you’re going to interrogate the very nature of the genre, then who better than a filmmaker who already had one foot in the grindhouse but was inching his other foot forward into the arthouse?
When Ferrara made Ms. 45 in 1981, he had just two feature films under his belt, both of them falling firmly into the exploitation category. He made his debut in the literal grindhouse with the adult film 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (under the pseudonym Jimmy Boy L.), and followed that up with the nasty but blackly comic The Driller Killer. Both were written by his frequent collaborator at the time, Nicholas St. John, and it was clear that the two of them already had ambitions that went beyond many of the more straightforward exploitation films of the day. There’s always been plenty of room for that in exploitation cinema, from the satire of Joe Dante to the sociopolitical explorations of Stephanie Rothman. So, when St. John delivered the script for Ms. 45 to Ferrara, it was equally clear that their own take on the rape/revenge genre was going to be something a little different. Yet it took a third collaborator in order to make that happen, but more on that in a moment.
Ms. 45 is the story of Thana (Zoë Tamerlis Lund), a mute seamstress who works in New York’s
Garment District. Her innate beauty hides a shy, retiring nature that makes her an easy target for patronizing behavior from the men in her life, from literally being patted on the head by her boss Albert (Albert Sinkys) to facing a gauntlet of catcalls and whistles when she walks to and from work. On one of those trips home, she’s dragged into an ally by a rapist who brutally assaults her. (Ferrara himself plays the unnamed rapist in makeup that seems like a deliberate callback to his character Reno in Driller Killer). She manages to drag herself home, only to discover that her apartment has been broken into by a petty thief, and when he finds out that she doesn’t have any money, she’s sexually assaulted yet again. Only this time, she gets the upper hand on him, killing him and then taking his gun for her own. Instead of calling the police, she hides the body and then decides to teach the men of New York City a lesson in manners at the point of the gun—gaining more and more self-confidence with each one that she kills.
In other words, Ms. 45. Is a rape/revenge drama that ultimately divorces cause from effect. While Thana does manage to kill her second attacker in flagrante delicto, she never makes the slightest effort to locate her original attacker. The dual rapes are horrifying acts that push her over the edge, but once she’s crossed that line, she takes it out on men in general, including those who are guilty of far lesser crimes against womanhood. Every single wolf in New York City has the potential to become prey instead of hunter, which means that they’re now facing the same risks that women have had to face every single day of their lives. Thana hasn’t just turned the tables on the men of New York City; she’s turned the tables on the patriarchy itself.
None of that—and I do mean none of that—would work without Zoë Lund in the lead role (a fact that Ferrara has always acknowledged). Lund was just seventeen when they shot Ms. 45, but she was already an old soul, and the choices that she made in life would eventually lead to her untimely death twenty years later at the age of 37. She didn’t need any dialogue in order to covey Thana’s suffering, and Ferrara wisely held the camera on her face during the rape scenes rather than getting bogged down in the prurient details. (He also slyly turned a later opportunity for nudity into a jump scare instead.) Lund was able to express as much through her mute facial expressions as Falconetti did in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and I don’t make that comparison lightly. Ms. 45 may be an Abel Ferrara/Nicholas St. John film, but it’s also a Zoë Lund film in every sense of the term.
That’s because Lund ended up having a profound influence on Ferrara’s life and worldview, and while they only officially worked together one more time on Bad Lieutenant in 1992 (she co-wrote the script and made a cameo appearance), they stayed in and out of touch until her bitter end. Ms. 45 would have been a very different film without her—the story was there in St. John’s script, but it still would have been easy to take his narrative in a far more openly exploitative direction, like Craven did with Last House on the Left. Lund helped elevate the film, and in so doing, she helped elevate Ferrara into a becoming a different kind of filmmaker. As a result, Ms. 45 is a rape/revenge film like no other: a pure exploitation film that manages to transcend both the grindhouse and the arthouse. There’s never been anything else quite like it.
Cinematographer James Lemmo (credited as James Momèl) shot Ms. 45 on 35mm film using Arriflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. This version uses a 4K scan of the uncut original camera negative that was done by Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging, with digital cleanup and grading performed at Resillion (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 grades are included). The budget for Ms. 45 may have been rock-bottom, but Lemmo was still able to use good quality film stock, so the image is still quite sharp and generally fine-grained. It’s not quite spotless since there are a few fleeting scratches visible, but it’s relatively clean and the few minor defects will probably only be noticeable on larger screens. The contrast range isn’t the strongest and the blacks aren’t the deepest, but Lemmo was shooting with available light, so it’s probably exposed that way on the negative. The colors are somewhat muted, and yet there’s some nice depth to the shadings. It’s not bright or vivid, and yet there’s a wide array of subtle colors on display (especially during the opening scene with the garment buyer and the closing scene at the party). Ms. 45 was never going to be dazzling in 4K, but it’s still never looked better than it does here—it’s a big step up from the previous Drafthouse Films Blu-ray, and it’s safe to say that first-run grindhouse prints in 1981 couldn’t have possibly touched this.
Audio is offered in English 1.0 mono LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. It’s clearly a low-budget mix of somewhat limited fidelity, but everything still sounds clean and clear with no significant noise or distortion to mar the experience.
Arrow’s Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Ms. 34 is UHD only—there’s no Blu-ray included in the package. The insert is reversible, with new artwork by Sister Hyde on one side and the familiar theatrical poster art on the other. There’s a two-sided foldout poster featuring the same two designs, as well as a 60-page booklet with essays by Robert Lund, Brad Stevens, Kier-La Janisse, and Paul Rachman, plus archival photographs and an autobiographical sketch by Zoë Lund. Everything is housed in a rigid slipcase/slipcover combo featuring the Sister Hyde artwork. The following extras are included:
- Commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
- Interviews:
- Abel Ferrara (HD – 7:45)
- Joe Delia (HD – 10:06)
- Jack MacIntyre (HD – 10:32)
- The Voice of Violence (HD – 18:56)
- Where Dreams Went to Die (HD – 15:55)
- Zoe XO (Upscaled SD – 6:21)
- Zoe Rising (HD – 5:55)
- Theatrical Trailer (HD – 1:44)
- Image Gallery (UHD, 13 in all)
The new commentary is by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, author of Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study and Ms. 45 (Cultographies), so needless to say, she’s done her homework when it comes to the genre in general and Ferrara’s film in particular. She opens not so much with an overview of the genre itself as with an overview of reactions to it, both positive and negative, and then examines how Ms. 45 fits into it. The film has a lot of fans from different walks of life despite the fact that it’s an unrepentant exploitation film, but in Ferrara’s view, all films are exploitation films. Heller-Nicholas analyzes the themes and motifs across his filmography, and she also dives into his relationship with Zoë Lund, who she (correctly) argues is as much the auteur of Ms. 45 as Ferrara or Nicholas St. John. She quotes from a variety of sources during the commentary, not just her own, so this is a great exploration of critical thought regarding the film.
The archival interviews were all originally recorded for the 2014 Blu-ray from Drafthouse Films. Abel Ferrara says that he usually worked back and forth with St. John on the scripts for their films, but this time St. John wrote it on his own and delivered it complete. Yet the film only came together once Lund was cast, because without her, they had no movie. He describes her as having the intensity and genius of a Pasolini while still being a delusional junkie (although he notes that she was still clean when they made Ms. 45). Joe Delia explains how he first became associated with Ferrara, and details their approach to the unusual score for Ms. 45. Jack McIntyre is an old friend of Ferrara’s who served a variety of roles on the low-budget film. He said that since they only had about $60,000 to work with, they had to do everything themselves, even acquiring and training the dog. As a result of doing everything on the fly, he feels that Ms. 45 is a real time capsule of New York City during that ear.
Arrow has added two new visual essays for this release. The Voice of Violence is by critic BJ Colangelo, who says that Ms. 45 doesn’t just rage against the machine, but unloads into the chest of patriarchal power—a true Angel of Death. She gives voice to Thana by analyzing how her treatment by men shapes her character (and not just the rapists, either). Where Dreams Went to Die is by Kat Ellinger, who takes the longer view to examine how the reality of the sleazy New York milieu shown in Ms. 45 turned the tables on the fantasy of the American Dream from the Fifties. It was the death of the Production Code that gave the cinema the opportunity to explore this seedy underbelly, and she provides an overview of the other post-Code films of the Seventies that helped lay the groundwork for Ms. 45.
Finally, in addition to the trailer an Image Gallery (which is in full 4K, always a nice touch), there are two short films about Zoë Lund that were both directed by Paul Rachman. Zoe XO (2004) follows her ex-husband Robert Lund as he drives around New York City and reminisces about her, with Rachman overlaying images of Zoë in order to evoke her spirit. Zoe Rising looks back at her childhood via the memories of her mother, artist Barbara Lekberg. It’s accompanied by a discordant piano piece, Quadruped Suite, which was composed and performed by Zoë when she was 12.
That’s all the extras from the Drafthouse Blu-ray save for some unrelated trailers, but there are a few items missing from various overseas releases. The Region 2 DVD from Seven 7 in France offered two featurettes: Auto-defense: autopsie d’un genre cinematographique (aka Self-Defense: An Autopsy of a Cinematic Genre) and L’ange de la vengeance: la sortie francaise (aka Ms. 45: The French Release). The French Region B Blu-ray from ESC Editions offered two different interviews: Flirting with Success with Ferrara and She Wants Revenge with critic Brad Stevens. The Region B Blu-ray from X-Cess Entertainment in Germany added an introduction from the ubiquitous Dr. Marcus Stiglegger, and they also included a version of the shorter R-rated cut derived from the U.S. VHS release.
While including the R-rated version here would have been interesting for comparison purposes, there’s only one Ms. 45, and it’s the one that Arrow has now delivered in full 4K. It’s the film that Ferrara, St. John, and Lund set out to make, and as much as I hate to repeat myself (no, really), it’s never looked better. Highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).