Exploitation Flick With a Grim Pulse

Read Time:5 Minute, 22 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Ms .45 [Limited Edition]
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Genre: Exploitation Thriller, Revenge Drama
Year Released: 1981, Arrow Video 4K 2025
Runtime: 1h 20m
Director: Abel Ferrara
Writer: Nicholas St. John
Cast: Zoë Lund (credited as Zoë Tamerlis) as Thana, plus Albert Sinkys, Darlene Stuto, Helen McGara
Where to Watch: available October 28, 2025, pre-order your copy here: www.arrowvideo.com, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: Abel Ferrara’s MS. 45 wastes no time showing what kind of story it wants to tell. The film drops us into a version of New York that feels dangerous even in the daylight—crowded, indifferent, and predatory. Within hours, Thana, a garment-district seamstress, is assaulted twice. What follows isn’t just another revenge narrative; it’s a stripped-down character study about how trauma hardens into purpose. Ferrara and Zoë Lund, who was only seventeen during filming, created something raw and unnerving from material that could have felt exploitative in lesser hands. Nuns, guns, and exploitation, but with surprising depth!

Lund’s performance anchors the entire film. Without a single line of dialogue, she tracks Thana’s shift from panic to precision entirely through movement and expression. Early scenes make her seem overwhelmed by the city; later on, it turns her into a threat that the city can’t handle. The transformation happens in silence, without catharsis—just an evolving posture and the weight of a gun she never should have needed to carry. Lund keeps Thana from becoming a symbol; she’s simply a survivor trying to reclaim control in the only way left to her.

Ferrara’s filmmaking is on point. At barely eighty minutes, there isn’t an ounce of excess. He shoots New York as a hostile ecosystem—narrow alleys that corner you, apartments that close in, streets that feel like traps. The grainy textures and ambient noise work as atmosphere and indictment; you can practically smell the sweat and exhaust. Joe Delia’s score, all restless basslines and percussion, gives the film its pulse. The budget shows, but it’s part of the aesthetic honesty—no refinement, no distance, no escape.

The assault that opens the story is filmed without sensationalism, and that restraint makes the aftermath hit harder. Ferrara treats Thana’s aftermath with the same detached precision as a crime procedural, drawing the audience into complicity before they realize it. By the time she takes to the streets, the moral ground has already shifted. The question isn’t whether she’s justified, but whether anything could stop the spiral once it began.

As her actions escalate, the film becomes less about vengeance and more about contamination. Thana stops targeting specific men and starts seeing threats everywhere—a reflection of a city that’s made fear the default. Ferrara refuses to give viewers the comfort of justice or empowerment. The violence isn’t redemptive; it’s a dead end. By the time the final act arrives, empathy and horror occupy the same space, forcing us to question how easily outrage turns into obsession.

Thana, dressed as a nun, moves through a crowded party as the music pulsates and chaos brews. It’s a lurid, absurd, and unforgettable scene—a twisted pageant where costume and reality collapse. The scene captures the film’s central idea: that repression and violence eventually become part of the same performance. MS. 45 isn’t meant to feel smooth or rehearsed. Its awkwardness mirrors the volatility of its subject.

The film’s place in the rape-revenge canon is deliberate. It keeps the structure but drains it of satisfaction. There’s no triumph, no reset, no moral clarity. Ferrara isn’t asking what revenge looks like—he’s asking what’s left after it. By the end, Thana has become both avenger and victim, a person hollowed out by the very act that was supposed to restore her. Ferrara’s camera never turns her into a spectacle. Even when the movie leans into exploitation territory, there’s a strange empathy beneath the grime. The few tender moments feel like challenges to the film’s own cynicism. They remind us that violence doesn’t just destroy people; it erases the possibility of softness.

As a record of early-’80s New York, MS. 45 is invaluable: a city still rough, desperate, and indifferent. As a film, it’s tight, uncompromising, and unexpectedly emotional. Lund’s presence gives it its soul, and her final expression lingers long after the credits. The 4K restoration preserves that raw texture—the grain, the haze, the dirt under its nails—without dulling its edge.

MS. 45 stands as one of the most vital and unsettling revenge films ever made. It’s brutal but never hollow, angry but never careless. Ferrara turns exploitation into confrontation, forcing the audience to look directly at the cost of survival. It’s not a story about empowerment. It’s a story about endurance—and what happens when the world gives you no other language to speak it in.

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[photo courtesy of ARROW VIDEO, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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