The third feature of New York indie filmmaker Abel Ferrara was Ms. 45, a violent, abrasive tale of trauma and vengeance. Also known as Angel of Vengeance, this 1981 crime thriller is about a mute seamstress (played by 18-year-old model Zoë Tamerlis Lund) who takes revenge on the male population after being raped twice in one day.
Many have compared this movie to both Taxi Driver and Death Wish, (the latter of which has obvious similarities), but in the end, Ms. 45 unfortunately feels less inspired. There are certainly some striking visuals and Lund’s portrayal as the movie’s non-speaking anti-hero is fascinating to watch, but movie’s overall development stalls at around the 30-minute mark.
However, if you want to see a creepy version of Manhattan, circa 1980, this is definitely the flick to check out.
After Work
Both locations in this opening sequence were fairly easy to find.
For the first shot, I thought it looked like it was facing some open square. And since the superimposed caption said “Garment Center,” my first guess was that it was Herald Square at 34th Street, which is located at the southern end of this famous clothing district.
Once I was able to identify the modernist building on the far left to be the former Gimbels Department Store on Sixth Avenue, I was certain I had gotten right place.
Similar to Macy’s, Gimbels was a large department store and family business that dominated the New York shopping scene for decades. Founded in the 19th century, Gimbels opened its third flagship store in New York City’s Herald Square in 1910, creating over 27 acres of retail space spread across ten stories.
Gimbels remained a famed fixture in Midtown Manhattan for the next 70 years. But by the 1980s, the company’s profits were severely diminishing, in no small part to rampant shoplifting taking place at their flagship store. In fact, when Gimbels finally closed in 1986, it was cited as the store with the largest shoplifting rate in the country. Some believed this was partly due to the underground passageway that connected it to the nearby Penn Station, allowing savvy pilferers a quick and easy getaway.
After Gimbels closed, the building was renovated and reopened in 1989 as A&S Plaza (renamed Manhattan Mall in 1995). In the late 2000s, business started to slowly dwindle, and by 2020, most of the stores had departed the location. Today, the mall area predominantly functions as an expanded lobby for the offices on the upper levels.
The entrance to the subway was found based on the signage that appeared during a tracking shot in the scene, indicating that they were at the Times Square Station. Based on the environment and street layout, I knew they weren’t in Times Square proper, so I began looking at spots just to south of it where I knew there were additional entrances. After a little poking around in Google Street View, I figured out they were on Broadway and 40th Street, verified by several matching buildings.
Thana Gets Attacked
I first heard about Ms. 45 when it appeared as Gene Siskel’s “Dog of the Week” on the PBS movie, review show, Sneak Previews. As he thoroughly trashed the movie, I was struck by the visuals of the clips being shown and become curious about its locations. To be fair, I wouldn’t say it’s a real “dog,” but my first viewing of the movie left me kind of cold,. Nonetheless, I was still pretty eager to find its filming locations, especially since there wasn’t much that had been identified on the web at that point.
While some of the locations were easy to find, others turned out to be real puzzlers. And this scene’s location was probably the one I spent the most time investigating, proving it to be a real challenge. In the end, it was my research partner, Blakeslee, who was able to finally solve this mystery.
There certainly were a few clues in the scene to help figure out the location, although they might not be super obvious at first. One general clue was the look and layout of the streets, which seemed to indicate that they were somewhere downtown, but it was hard to know for sure.
The other two major clues were the number 25 painted on the garbage cans, and a business sign that appeared in the reflection of one of the windows. After zooming in on the sign, I could see that it was something called, “MY PLACE.”
Unfortunately, with such generic phrasing, it was nearly impossible to find any references to any businesses called “my place.” I eventually found a couple listings in New York Magazine for a gourmet catering company called My Place, but I couldn’t find an address, and I wasn’t even sure if it was the same business.
I then focused on the garbage cans. with the clearly marked 25s on them. Assuming that they weren’t set dressing, I figured the scene took place near a building with a 25 address. But of course New York is filled with a ton of buildings with 25 addresses, so I resorted to a tactic I’ve used before — going to the tax photo archives and doing a search by address number.
This is a tactic than can be hit or miss, and in this case, it was a miss. So, after hours of sifting through hundreds of vintage photos, I was back to square one.
After that, I started working off a couple other less-substantial clues that appeared in the reverse shot. In it, you can see a big rig driving by, indicating it was traveling on a somewhat major thoroughfare. Also in the shot, you can see a building on the far right side of the frame that has a large window, possibly indicating that it’s a church or maybe an industrial building of some kind.
Meanwhile, as all this was happening, Blakeslee was doing his own investigating, and also coming up empty. But when he focused on the garbage cans, he noticed that in addition to the 25, they had a large T painted on them. From that, he guessed that they were on a street that began with a T.
Fortunately, there are only a handful of Manhattan streets that start with a T, and after consulting a database, the one that made the most sense was Thompson Street in Greenwich Village.
As soon as Blakeslee checked out 25 Thompson in Google Street View, he saw many promising things. First, the corner building had a cylindrical post at its entrance, just like in the movie. Second, in the other direction, the corner building at 15 Watt (a former power house) had a large window on it, also like in the movie.
Feeling confident, he dug up some tax photos from the area just to see if he could find some further evidence. In the archives, he found a 1940 photo of the next street over with a matching pattern on a buildings’s sidewall.
He also matched up a tall building that appeared in the scene with One Fifth Avenue, located just north of Washington Square Park (and briefly featured in the 1928 silent comedy, Speedy).
The narrow passageway where Lund gets pulled in is now sealed off on Thompson, but you can still theoretically get access to it through a parking lot on Sixth Avenue.
Depositing a Hand
Unlike the previous location, this sequence’s location was easy to nail down. With a view of the Empire State Building and all the stone, Neo-Classical buildings along the Avenue, I was pretty sure we were on Fifth, somewhere south of the Flatiron Building. It was just a matter of checking out the eight or nine blocks until I could spot a matching building, which ended up only taking me a few minutes.
What’s rather funny about this scene is how fake the severed hand looks. I know this is a fairly low budget, but you can almost smell the cheap rubber through the screen.
The Chase
Without any major landmarks or signs to help me solve this location, it was a T-intersection that helped me figure things out. And the fact the cross street at the intersection had two-way traffic helped narrow things down.
Figuring this was shot somewhere in downtown Manhattan, I knew of only a couple two-way streets in that area which had multiple T-intersections, and that was Canal Street and Bowery.
I almost immediately rejected Canal, since the architecture there doesn’t really look like what appeared in this sequence. So instead, I focused my attention on Bowery in the Nolita neighborhood, checking out any street that formed a T. Eventually, I landed on Spring and backtracked a couple blocks to see if I could spot some matching buildings.
After a little looking around, I could see several corresponding structures on Mott, placing the loitering guy on the southwest corner of Mott and Spring. It’s a good thing I found those buildings on Mott, because the blue corner building looks drastically different today.
From there, I was able to track the geography of the chase by finding other extant buildings along the way. Most of what is seen in the sequence still survives today. The one big difference is the open lot the two characters run through at the end, which is now mostly occupied by an apartment complex. The northern half of the lot is still open, and is now a city-owned/privately-leased space called Elizabeth Street Garden.
This community sculpture garden has been on this site since 1991, which used to be home to a public school and playground, Then, after the apartment complex at 21 Spring was constructed in 1981, there was talk of building a new school on the remaining open space, but it never panned out. After siting vacant for nearly a decade, the open lot was finally leased to a local gallery owner who developed it into a park-like environment, adorned with native plants and trees, as well as sculptures and architectural pieces.
The Elizabeth Street Garden is one of those wonderful oddities that many people don’t know about and is what makes New York such a curious place. But sadly, its lifespan might soon be over as there is a pending plan to build a housing development for low-income seniors on the lot. Don’t get me wrong, creating housing for needy folk is certainly a worthy endeavor, but it’s a shame the garden has to be sacrificed. You’d think there’d be someplace else in this vast city where the building could go up.
Alley Chase
This part of the chase sequence is made to look as if it all took place in one corridor, but the action actually jumps by about six or seven blocks. The first part on Jersey Street was quickly identified, as I was already quite familiar with the narrow, two-block street in SoHo. When I lived in the West Village, I would regularly visit the Mulberry Street Library at 10 Jersey Street.
Despite being called a street, most New Yorkers would consider Jersey Street to be an alley, and it certainly reads that way on film. Located just south of Houston, the narrow passageway is open to vehicular traffic, but you’ll seldom see anyone driving or walking through it. And the fact no one knows the origin of the street’s name kind of adds to its illusive appeal,.
Up until recently, Jersey Street was particularly noteworthy to me for having what was believed to be the oldest manhole cover in New York City.
Harkening back to 1866, the well-worn “Croton Aqueduct DPT” cover in front of 10 Jersey Street was a prized destination for the nerdiest of urban explorers. But sadly, after some roadwork was done in 2017, the old ironwork was wiped away from existence. Today, all you’ll find is a square of asphalt with a new “Made in India” cover in its place.
As depressing as it was to see this Jersey Street relic disappear, it turns out an even older Croton Aqueduct manhole cover —dating back to 1862— still survives in the city. Better still, this cover is less weathered than the Jersey Street one, probably because it sits on a sidewalk and not in a road. The only drawback is that its location is far less charming than Jersey Street — found across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, in front of what is currently a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant at 616 Eighth Avenue.
In addition to Jersey Street, this movie’s sequence also filmed in the nearby Great Jones Alley. And once again, it was pretty quickly identified, mostly because Great Jones one of the most used alleyways in NYC movies, especially during the 1980s.
In fact, the exact same spot where Thana shoots the guy would be used a couple years later in the 1985 comedy-drama, Desperately Seeking Susan, starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna.
Brew Burger
This restaurant scene, which appears to have taken place at one location, was actually made up of three different locations.
The first establishing shot was found by doing a general internet search for “Brew Burger” addresses until finally landing on a matching building at 810 Seventh Avenue (EST. 1969).
Brew Burger was a local chain of restaurants owned and operated by the Riese company, the largest privately held restaurant organization in the city at the time. By 1975, the company had amassed over 35 Brew Burger locations in Midtown Manhattan, less than three years after its first opening.
Considered a slight step-up from your average fast food establishment, Brew Burger marketed itself to a young crowd, offering a complete dinner package for around 7 bucks, which included unlimited beer, wine or sangria. As an added bonus, the restaurant chain had a reputation of hardly ever asking a customer to show ID, making it a go-to destination for underage drinkers.
While popular at its inception, the chain ended up fading away by the early-1990s, although the Riese enterprise continued having a strong foothold in the NYC casual eating market. The company operated numerous national franchises, such as TGI Friday’s, Houlihan’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC. They also developed their own restaurant brands, including Tad’s Steaks, Charley O’s, Martini’s, and Tequilaville.
Even though the exterior from this scene was an actual Brew Burger on Seventh, the interior was another restaurant all together on E 54th, mostly likely the continental establishment, Cecil’s.
The location was found by Blakeslee who thought the modern building across the street looked familiar. Turns out, it was a building he and I had recently been studying in connection to another missing location – in this case, for the 1979 comedy, Going in Style. Once we confirmed the modern building was located at 880 Third Avenue, we determined that the restaurant was on the north side of E 54th Street. This was based partially on the modern building’s columns, as well as the direction of the traffic.
The action then switches to Broadway where another Brew Burger was located, implying we are at the same place.
This third “Brew” location was figured out by identifying some of the tall office buildings that appear in the next scene.
Photographer’s Studio
As I mentioned in the previous entry, I found this Broadway location based on the tall office buildings in the background. Since I knew they shot some other stuff in the Garment District, I figured this scene took place somewhere in the same general area. As a matter of fact, it was filmed just a couple blocks south of the subway entrance used in the opening sequence, so I was able to lock things up pretty rapidly.
Then, when it came to the photographer’s studio building, I could see the number 54 near its entrance. So I just looked for any buildings near the Broadway location with a 54 address and soon ended up on W 39th Street.
“Bus” Lockers
This was definitely the most captivating location from the movie. The highly-stylized station was of particular interest to me because it also appeared in the Madonna movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. In that movie, it’s implied that it took place at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and every single website covering the subject seemed to agree.
But I could never find any vintage photos of Port Authority that seemed to support this idea, which bugged the hell out of me. So I hoped that perhaps this scene from Ms .45 could offer some more clues as to its whereabouts.
After searching through tons of vintage photos of any bus station that existed in New York City during the mid 20th century, I couldn’t find anything that looked remotely like what appeared in this scene. Plus, in Desperately Seeking Susan, you can see a sign for a Gate 456, but as far as I could tell, no bus station in NYC had gates that went up that high.
I finally started focusing on a sign that appeared behind Zoë Lund in Ms. 45 which read, “TO AIRPORTS.” Now, I had always assumed that that was for a special bus line that went to the local airports, but then I remembered reading about an old practice of setting up airport check-in terminals in Manhattan to help streamline passengers’ experiences. I knew of one on the west side of Manhattan as well as another in Howard Beach, but I couldn’t find any decent pictures of their interiors.
That’s when I enlisted Blakeslee’s help who has knack for digging up rare and random old photos. But instead of finding a photo of the West Side Airlines Terminal, he ended up figuring out that the scene was shot at an East Side terminal — something neither one of us had heard of before.
The big clue came from something I probably never would have spotted — the name CAREY on the side of a passing bus seen through the terminal’s doors.
As soon as he started researching the Carey bus line, he discovered a document that indicated that it operated exclusively out of the East Side Airline Terminal. From there, he was able to unearth a bunch of photos, clearly showing it was the same place from both movies.
A color photo of the main rotunda was a good piece of evidence, showing the the same tomato-red columns and bluish green walls. To further verify things, we were able to find a great B&W photo showing one of the gate entrances with the exact same style of lettering above the doors. It was then that I realized what I thought was Gate 456 in Desperately Seeking Susan was really Gates 4, 5 and 6.
We also found a B&W photo of the Terminal showing the same doors featured in Ms .45.
The East Side Terminal was the second of the three terminals built in Midtown Manhattan and the closest one to the Midtown Tunnel (which took traffic to both Queens’ airports). As the building neared completion in late-1953, The New York Times declared, “passengers will find the last word in conveniences while the city will be relieved of bus traffic congestion.”
The building was dedicated on November 30, 1953, offering the same services available at the other terminals in Manhattan. Customers could buy their tickets, check their luggage, and board one of the buses to either JFK or LaGuardia Airport. (A service that would be impossible in today’s high-security air travel.)
According to promotional material, it was predicted that the East Side Airline Terminal would serve 7,000 passengers daily, but that number fell way short. Less than a year after its opening, it was estimated that nearly 10,000 travelers were processed there per day.
Despite opening with a bang, a mere two decades later, the practice of midtown airlines terminals had become vastly outdated. The West Side Airlines Terminal closed operations in 1971, and the East Side terminal saw a severe reduction in its use. So much so, in December 1977, the customer parking lot on the roof was converted to tennis courts.
The writing was on the wall, but the Terminal squeaked along for another eight years. The only advantage was, with such a low volume of customers using the facility, it made the East Side Airline Terminal an ideal place for productions like Desperately Seeking Susan and Ms .45 to film there.
Finally in 1985, the building was sold to developers for what was then the largest sum paid at auction for a parcel of Manhattan land. A few years later, a 57-story luxury apartment building went up on the site, with conference rooms at what would’ve been the terminal’s second-floor rotunda.
Killing a Pimp
There wasn’t much to go on in the scene. It was all in a fairly tight shot of the two actors without much detail other than glass and a couple door frames. But the scene did show a couple business signs reflected in the windows – one for Burger King and another for Florsheim Shoes (which wasn’t super obvious at first).
I first started working on Burger King, hoping there’d be some information of its locations back in 1980. But annoyingly enough, I couldn’t dig up any concise references to all of Burger King’s New York locations. I found some listings in a 1982 issue of New York Magazine, but none of the addresses looked right.
Next, I worked on Florsheim. Like what happened with Burger King, I found a something in New York Magazine that listed a bunch of of shoe store’s outlets in Manhattan, but after looking at each address in Google Street View, I determined that none of them looked right.
Then, after rewatching the scene, Blakeslee found a crucial clue in it that had previously eluded me. As the two characters walk by the first entrance, you can see for a split second a number on the door — and he interpreted to be the number 48.
From there, it was a matter of finding the same building with a 48 address. As tedious as it sounds, it just came down to looking at each street, one by one, hoping to find something that looked promising. This can be done using Google Street View, or sometimes using the Municipal Archives of NYC tax photos.
After hours and hours of going through New York’s 48s, we hit pay-dirt on W 8th Street in Greenwich Village, confirmed by the matching door frames. It’s a little strange they filmed there, since they didn’t film anything else in that neighborhood, as far as I could tell.
It did make sense that there was a Florsheim there, since that section of West 8th Street was known for its shoe market in the 1980s and 90s. But by the mid-2000s, the street’s once-brisk retail business started to fade.
Some locals blamed it on the Village’s super-gentrification verses the charmless, rough-and -tumble character of West 8th. Although, it was considered “cutting edge” in the 1970s.
Pressure to spruce up the block also came from preservationists, who long argued that the garish window displays and signage didn’t belong in the Greenwich Village Historic District. Eventually, the neighborhood’s upscale transformation caught up with West 8th Street, and it is now home to fancy boutiques and expensive restaurants. (Not a pimp in sight.)
Bethesda Fountain
Getting Picked Up by an Arab
It was cleared that this extended sequence took place both and and right outside of Central Park. The first part at Bethesda fountain required no research as it’s an iconic feature in New York City.
Finding the location of where Thana is picked up by an Arab businessman was a little tougher to nail down, but there were enough clues to be able to figure it out. The biggest issue was that it was shot at night with rain, making it hard to see anything very clearly.
But I could see a sign on the corner that directed traffic to the west side, indicating that we were on the east side of Central Park on Fifth Avenue. So I just looked for any entrances through the Park along Fifth. Once I reached the one at 85th Street, I was able to find enough matching buildings in the background to satisfy me.
Thana’s Apartment
For the longest time, I assumed that this apartment was somewhere in the east or west Village, since they shot a decent amount of stuff there. Luckily, there was a sign for a “FIND” Coffee House on the ground floor of the apartment building.
Of course, doing a Google search for “find coffee” is going to get you a lot of unwanted results. But somehow, I got super lucky and found a NYT article from 1971 that described the FIND Coffee House.
It seems FIND was a recently established project with the National Council on Aging, standing for “Friendless, Isolated, Needy, and Disabled:.” The coffee shop was set up as an informal meeting place for a segment of the elderly community who would normally spend their free time at the nearby Port Authority Bus Terminal.
As described by one 80-year-old woman in the article, she would go to the bus terminal’s waiting room to just “watch the world go by.” But since PABT was considered a high-crime area, Project FIND created an alternative hangout for the local residents.
When they first started developing the establishment, one of the first tasks was to check on the habits of the so-called “terminal sitters.” They did this by setting up a table in the terminal waiting room, gathering data from nearly 300 sitters. The median age was 69, the average income $1,500 a year, and nearly all of the regulars would sit alone.
When it came to building the coffeehouse, the Port Authority provided workmen to do much of the renovation. After it opened in June 1971, about 400 senior citizens signed up for the shop’s free membership, and it obviously survived at least until the winter of 1980 when this movie was being filmed.
I couldn’t find out when it finally closed, but it certainly seems like the kind of place New York could use these days, offering a safe and inexpensive meeting area for seniors with a fixed income
I’m pretty certain the interior scenes from Ms .45 were also shot in this 43rd Street apartment building. From what I could see through the front door, the fixtures looked like a match, and perhaps someday, a kind resident will let me inside to take a peek at the upper floors.
Loading a Trunk
Findng this location was simple enough since you can see a small park surrounded by a cast-iron fence on the left side. They are many small parks in Manhattan, but my first instinct was that it was Gramercy Park. This is for a couple reasons: one, because, it tends to be a popular place to film for movie bakers; and also, the surrounding buildings looked fairly high end, which is typical for that area.
Fortunately, as soon as I started looking around the park, I was able to find several matching elements, confirming this location.
Bag Lady
There’s not much to go on in the scene to figure out its filming location, but I got extremely lucky in guessing where it took place. As the bag lady pushes her cart towards the street corner, you can see that the building across the street sold sporting goods.
Even though there’s plenty of sports shops in New York, the most famous one is Paragon on Broadway, which I hoped was the one from this movie. Even before I started investigating, I had a feeling that it was that popular store. It was a place I had studied previously in figuring out a location from the 1987 “comedy,” Ishtar.
Even though the corner building, the bag lady passes looks very different today, there’s still a little bit of wood molding I was able to match up, confirming the location. And, of course, as you can see in the modern photo above, Paragon Sports is still open for business.
One small note about all these scenes involving Thana surreptitiously depositing body parts around the city. I found this to be the most intriguing part of the movie. There was a darkly comedic element to the idea of a young woman slowly discarding evidence of her murder — something out of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Chinatown
The sequence in Chinatown was one of the few places that had its location published on a couple movie websites. I found at least two sites that indicated the sequence began on the corner of Pell and Mott, and after looking at modern views of the area, I concurred with this assessment. Plus, I was able to confirm a Baskin-Robbins used to be there.
Even though the rest of the sequence wasn’t specified in these sites, a good portion of it was easily findable as the two characters walked down a geographically-natural path from the ice cream shop at 36 Pell.
The only part that wasn’t super obvious was the apartment the young man goes into. The one big thing I worked off of was a large building in the background which I thought looked like a public school.
So I just searched for any schools in the area of Chinatown, and eventually figured out that it was P.S. 130, an elementary school on the corner of Hester and Baxter Street.
Suicidal Man
This was another location that was identified on a few websites, including IMDb. Of course, finding this location would not have been a very difficult task with the picturesque view of the 59th Street Bridge something that can only be seen along Sutton Place on the Upper East Side
Walking the Dog
I got fairly lucky in figuring out the two main locations from this sequence.
The second half taking place near the Hudson River was found after doing a search for powerhouses in Manhattan. The large industrial building seen in the second “before/after” image above was a typical structure that used to line both the East and Hudson Rivers, but after a little digging around, I was able to confirm that it was the IRT Powerhouse on 12th Avenue.
What I was not prepared for was the fact that it still exists today! I know that there are a few extant power facilities along the East River, but I had no idea there was still one on the Upper West Side, complete with one of its original smokestacks.
The part where Thana ties the dog up along the river, I only was able to get a general idea of where it was shot, but was unable to get the exact spot or find a matching rock. You can easily access that part of the river’s shoreline which is inside Riverside Park South.
When it came to the first part where Thana is struggling with the dog in the middle of traffic, I thought it would be fairly impossible to find. However, for some reason the scene initially reminded me of Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, and as luck would have it, that turned out to be correct. That’s a pretty rare occurrence, as my initial instincts can often be wrong.
It just so happened I was already quite familiar with that part of Ninth as it wasn’t too far from my mother’s old apartment. I guess it was basically a combination of the direction of the traffic, the buildings in the far background and the public housing on the left that made be think of Ninth Avenue just north of the Meatpacking District.
Overall, both Blakeslee and I ended up getting pretty lucky in figuring out all of the major locations for what is largely a so-so film.
While I enjoyed the array of Manhattan filming locations, my overall reaction to this movie has always been mixed. (Reviews when the film first came out were also mixed, but have since become more favorable with modern critics.) The idea of a female avenger is fine, but the movie has just too many ugly scenes, leaving you with an unnecessarily unpleasant feeling.
The best thing about Ms .45 is Zoe Lund’s performance, making the most out of a role with zero dialogue. The atmosphere is also quite intriguing, painting a dark and ambiguous picture of a city of depraved souls. But this portrayal of an unforgiving urban landscape eventually gets tiresome and cliché. The same way Death Wish oversimplified New York City’s crime problem by having thugs and muggers on every street corner, Ms .45 likewise simplifies the plight of a fragile woman by having every male New Yorker a misogynistic asshole.
That being said, when it comes to NYC-set exploitation films of the late 70s and early 80s, you could do a lot worse than Ms .45. (I’m talking to you, Maniac.)
NYC in Film 