Ms .45

1981 "She was abused and violated. It will never happen again!"
6.8| 1h21m| R| en| More Info
Released: 24 April 1981 Released
Producted By: Navaron Films
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A shy and mute seamstress goes insane after being attacked and raped twice in one day. She wanders the New York streets at night in a sexy black dress with her attacker's gun strapped to her garter belt, blowing away any man who tries to pick her up.

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Director

Abel Ferrara

Production Companies

Navaron Films

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Ms .45 Audience Reviews

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.
FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
Thy Davideth Ms. 45 is about some woman who gets raped by a couple of guys. Then she goes on her period and decides to kill men. This movie would make a great guide for those idiotic feminists who want to dabble in sheer misandrism. @#&+$! Well, I didn't care about this movie. The violence is nice but the story is worthless and the pacing blows. A waste of time....
sol- 'Angel of Vengeance', or 'Ms. 45' as it is better known, this early career urban drama from Abel Ferrara follows a mute woman who becomes mentally unhinged after being raped both on her way home and upon arriving home after startling an intruder. Hardly ever smiling and conveying all emotion through her expressive eyes alone, Zoë Lund is superb in the lead role and the film gets off to a strong start as she initially takes a semi-rational approach to the double rape. Having killed the second rapist, Lund dismembers the body in a darkly comic manner, carrying it out of her apartment in bits and pieces. These early scenes come with some neat horror touches too, like Lund imagining blood and guts coming up from the drain of her bathtub, and as alluded to, the first half of the movie is quite strong. The second half though pushes the boundaries of both credibility and audience sympathy as Lund goes from accidentally shooting a man who followed her down a dark alleyway, to viciously killing all men who try to pick her up, to going out of her way to seduce and then murder as many men as she can lure. Understandably, she is meant to be psychotic by the end of the film, but she also becomes complete unsympathetic as she starts seducing men just in order to have victims, all the while using the one gun with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of bullets (!); plus, she is a perfect shot every time. The final attack scene that the film builds up to nevertheless needs to be seen for itself and there is something to be said for the film giving the revenge thriller formula a feminist spin.
ElWormo Ms 45 is a movie where all the bad points seemed to cancel out all the good points, leaving a film which is very average in terms of quality, despite the fact that this is not an 'average' movie. It has a certain giallo-esque charm and rawness to its approach and the seedy tone is reminiscent of something like Fulci's New York Ripper (which it actually predates), yet it is hampered by being overly simplistic concerning the rape/revenge subject matter it chooses to explore; in a nutshell - mute girl is raped, and so she decides to kill every man she meets... The end. It's that shallow, and unfortunately a slew of less than great performances (the female lead does a decent job however) plus some rather amateur set pieces, and possibly the most annoying saxophone riff ever to be repeated 5937259 times in a row (by a guy on a trumpet not a sax, whoops) lead this one down a dark alley it's best staying away from. I fell asleep for a few minutes during the middle and couldn't even be bothered to rewind.HANDGUN (1984), although flawed, does this kind of thing a whole lot better and I would unreservedly recommend that instead.
chow913 First off I've always been a fan of Italian grind house exploitation films. However I've never enjoyed the rape revenge genre. It's an interesting concept which always falls flat. 'Ms. .45' finally breaks that mold.The film's super arty directing and music really make it shine. There are however MANY leaps in logic. It's unclear if these are just sloppy plot holes or intended oddities to make the audience think. There are also clearly many other story elements taken from earlier rape revenge films.The plot: We start out in Manhattan's garment district. How do we know this? Because after the opening title it states, "Garment District, Manhattan." As to whether this was actually filmed in NYC or Italy like so many other 1980s films I have no idea. We never see any landmarks. Although the appearance of NY landmarks in other Italian films has never guaranteed they were actually filmed in NYC either.Thana (I'd never have figured out what her name was if it wasn't for the Italian subtitles. Everyone always sounds like they're calling her "Hanna" or "Diana.") is a pretty young woman with the whole shy sexy school girl look going on. She's working as a fashion tailor in 9th Avenue's only sweatshop which actually employs ONLY pretty Caucasian girl whom actually speak English... or Italian.On her way back to her apartment above the stereotypical old spinster Thana is raped by two separate men in two separate attacks within 3 minutes. First in an ally by a masked stranger, and second by a burglar inside her apartment.The rape scenes themselves have to be the tamest in film history! Seriously, all rape is violent but these two rape scenes last only seconds and are just a close up of Thana's pain filled face. Rape revenge fans are expecting more! The first attack leaves Thana mute? It's NEVER explained if she was simply mute all along or traumatized by the attack. But anyway she's mute throughout the film. ('Thriller: A Cruel Picture.') During the next attack Thana clubs the burglar with a glass apple killing him instantly. At this point she has a psychotic break with reality. Being raped in two totally separate attacks within 3 minutes can do that to a girl. Even though her killing was 100% morally and legally justified she doesn't call the police and instead calmly dismembers the body. What she can't fit down the toilet she saves in the refrigerator and gets rid of the body parts piece by piece by simply leaving them in random street trash cans all over the city over the course of the film. And yes, we do get to see random bums find those body parts.The biggest plot hole is that Thana's .45 caliber rage isn't taken out on actual rapists or her masked rapists, or even criminals in general. She just kills random people. So she's not out for justice? She's just a psycho killer? In fact the second person she kill is just a guy trying to give her back purse! WTF? Thana does kills some muggers, but one guy she just meets in a bar and the other guys are just slimeballs trying to pick her up. I guess the mere fact that they were trying to pick her up and not simply rape her proves they're not rapists.She also keeps getting hit on by her boss. I kept guessing the climax would be that he was the first masked rapist. But the masked man is never revealed. The movie simply ends with Thana dressing up as a nun and going postal on her coworkers at their Halloween office party. Wait, her coworkers were her friends! Why's she killing them? It's also never explained where she gets all the extra ammo. Hello, they didn't have GunBroker.com in the 80s. The film passes up a great opportunity for a scene like 'The Terminator' where the title character just calmly walks into a gun shop and loads up. She'd be too young to buy ammo legally so we can only presume the burglar with the .45 brought a lot of ammo with him.In conclusion this is a very odd rape and revenge film as there are rapes but no real revenge, just the heroin going postal on people totally unrelated to her suffering.Despite all the MAJOR plot holes I really did enjoy this film for its arty directing and music. The shooting scenes are done very well. It's like 'Bad Lieutenant' meets 'Nikita' meets 'I Spit On Your Grave.' A jail bait school girl wielding a .45 is always worth watching. I look forward to the sequel, Mrs. .357.