Zoe Tamerlis

The life of supermodel/junkie Gia Carangi, who died of AIDS in 1986 at the age of 26, has already been the subject of several television documentaries, and the HBO-produced docudrama Gia, which gave Angelina Jolie's acting career a huge boost. In The Self-Destruction of Gia, filmmaker JJ Martin explores the young woman's life through rare home movies and photos, previously unseen interviews with the supermodel, and contemporary interviews with family, friends, and associates of the tragic figure. Fashion world stalwarts like photographer Francesco Scavullo and designers Diane Von Furstenberg and Vera Wang describe Carangi's special spark, and the arc of her modeling career. Longtime lover Sandy Linter talks about Carangi's powerfully fluid sexual allure and her surprising neediness. The late screenwriter/actress Zoe Lund lovingly describes the appeal of heroin, while Carangi's drug counselor, Robert Hilton, discusses Carangi's amazing appetite for the drug and her regular visits to the squalor of a Lower East Side shooting gallery. Carangi's mother, Kathleen Sperr, goes into painful detail about Carangi's final days. Throughout, interviews with Carangi and her peers present the image of an intelligent young woman with a lust for life who was uncertain of her place in the world and profoundly unhappy with a career that thrust her into the limelight because of how she looked. The Self-Destruction of Gia was shown at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

A countrified musician (Gary Knox) cultivates a new, sophisticated image in the Big City. One thing he hasn't refined from his system is the urge to kill. Thus, he's open to the proposition made by the wife (Zoe Tamerlaine Lund) of a very wealthy man (Daniel Chapman). The woman suggests organizing a murder-for-hire operation...and further suggests that her relationship with the country boy need not be confined to office hours. This is certainly a far cry from Double Indemnity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Undeservedly thrashed by mainstream critics in its initial theatrical run, this stylish urban thriller from quirky director Abel Ferrara has since developed a modest cult following. The late Zoe Tamerlis stars as Thana, a mute seamstress in New York's Garment District who is raped by two different assailants in a single evening -- once on her way home, a second time in her apartment by a sleazy burglar (Peter Yellen). She manages to bludgeon her second attacker to death with an iron, keeping his .45 automatic and disposing of his body one piece at a time in various locations throughout the city. When a bystander tries to apprehend her after watching her dispose of another grisly piece of evidence, she shoots him dead with the automatic. This act of violent release triggers a latent misanthropic impulse in the waifish Thana -- who was not very stable to begin with -- and she begins pumping hot lead into any predatory male she can find. The bloodbath continues unabated until the surreal, Sam Peckinpah-inspired climax, in which our anti-heroine escapes a Halloween party to square off against multiple male foes while wearing a nun's habit and blood-red lipstick. This film could be viewed as a distaff version of Ferrara's Driller Killer; where the director's previous effort was purely nihilistic, with a killer driven by urban decay, here he depicts Thana as a gun-toting agent of revenge who seems to have absorbed the collective anger of wronged women everywhere -- including women exploited in other movies of the same genre. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide