Available from Arrow Video 10/28/2025
Following two rapes in one day, a young woman decides to take matters into her own hands and kills men around New York City.
Trigger warning: Rape-revenge
Written by Nicholas St. John and directed by Abel Ferrara, Ms .45 is a classic of the rape-revenge genre as it establishes some of the genre’s tropes and is a blueprint for many other films to come. The story here is on the brutal side, but that is part of the point. The lead character is pushed to the edge of sanity by the assaults she suffers and then snaps, leading her to kill and kill some more. The writing of the story is fairly simple, but it works, and the direction has a flare for the dramatic and stylistic.
Lead Zoë Lund, as Thana, is fantastic. This is her film; she knows it, and she makes the most of it. There are a few issues with how the character is written, but Lund makes her more than what is on paper; she makes her human and a badass. Yes, some of this is in the writing and direction, but the majority of it feels like it’s coming from Lund’s performance and her aura (almost). She’s the center of the film and she brings all the viewers along with her, keeping their attention and making the most of everything set in front of her. She is Ms .45. The cast around her is mostly decent at their part, but they pale in comparison with her.
The film here looks fantastic, in major part due to the cinematography work of James Lemmo. The way he frames Lund and the city of New York works great for the story and emphasizes the grimy, icky parts of the city back in the late 1970s-early 1980s. The work here is calculated but not too much, it’s pretty while being just right for the story, it’s what cinematography should look like for a film like this.
Ms .45 is one of those films that has survived the test of time in part due to the issues at hand still being incredibly relevant, the performances (the lead in particular) being on point, and that extra je-ne-quoi of films from the era that works great for this type of story.
This new release of Ms .45 comes courtesy of Arrow Video and is packed with extras as their releases tend to be. Here, these extras are numerous, so let’s talk about the best of the bunch. The new restoration done by Arrow Video from the original 35mm camera negative looks fantastic on the Blu-ray version that was reviewed, and the sound was decent (different sound systems will vary of course). The extras themselves, the things you can watch on here are led by a brand-new audio commentary by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Quickly following in preference by the two shorts Zoe XO and Zoe Rising by filmmaker Paul Rachman. The featurettes Where Dreams Go to Die by Kat Ellinger and The Voice of Violence by BJ Colangelo are fantastic. Finally, the two archival interviews, one with director Abel Ferrara and one with creative consultant Jack McIntyre are must watch items.