Ms .45

Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45 centres on Thana, a young seamstress in New York who is mute and works alongside other women in a garment factory. Walking home from work, she is attacked by a masked stranger, and a second assault follows once she reaches her apartment. This time she fights back and kills the intruder. From there she begins disposing of the body piece by piece while arming herself with the dead man's .45-calibre handgun.

Her evenings change shape. Dressed provocatively, she moves through the city alone, drawing men toward her and shooting those who approach. What begins as a response to her own attackers widens into a campaign against men generally, and her daytime life as an ordinary worker becomes harder to keep apart from her nights.

The film is the second of the seventeen features Ferrara has directed, following The Driller Killer and preceding Fear City. Nicholas St. John wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Zoë Lund, credited here as Zoë Tamerlis, as Thana, alongside Albert Sinkys, Darlene Stuto, Helen McGara and Editta Sherman; Ferrara himself appears as the first attacker. It runs eighty-one minutes. On IMDb it holds 6.8/10 from around 15,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.7/10 from roughly 420, while critics gave it 7.4/10 across thirty-five reviews, a warmer reception than the audience scores suggest.