Ginger

Ginger (1971) stars Cheri Caffaro as Ginger McAllister, a 23 year old woman who takes an undercover assignment for a private detective.

Rex Halsey and his crew have found a way to coax money out of the local rich kids. They get people hooked on drugs, prostitution, and blackmail people into paying them. Rex and Rodney and the crew look at it as steady income.

Private detective Jason Varone has sent two people in to investigate, but both times were failures. Ginger seems to have her reasons why she wants to go undercover. She doesn't seem to care if she survives or not. Ginger will use her mind and her body to get in good with Rodney, Rex's go to guy, and get the answers she's looking for.

Cheri Caffaro is the best thing about the film. If you want to see more of Ginger, the Abductors is the next film in the series.

This film is the first of a 3-film series, and is the worst of the 3, mainly because the other two films have the benefit of a higher budget due to profits from the first film.

In this series-opener, our hero Ginger, played by Cheri Caffaro (who won a Bridgett Bardot look-alike contest as a teenager) plays a private investigator who infiltrates a gang of women. As part of her initiation she fights the leader, with the loser being stripped naked and tied up on the beach. The rest of the movie follows pretty much the same theme: women finding one reason or another to get tied up nude and sometimes having sex.

One redeeming quality about this film is that its one of the few films to openly use bondage as a recurring event and still come away with a mainstream "R" rating in the US. This is because the film (and the series as a whole) has the benefit of being made in that window of time called the Sexual Liberation and before the feminists and Politically Correct enthusiasts got ahold of the movie industry and theatres. In fact, the "Ginger" series might have disappeared all together had it not been for three simple technological inventions: the VCR, the home computer, and the Internet. Now, like-minded individuals can get together and express their common interests, including mainstream "B" movie bondage/adventure films.

Collectors will want to get all three films, but those on a budget will probably just want the second film ("The Abductors") and the third film ("Girls Are For Loving").

I don't have too much else to post here that the previous commenters haven't mentioned. Extremely cheap (a lot of it obviously filmed in motel rooms), surprisingly unerotic despite the ample nudity and sex, and sorely lacking in action and excitement. And with a lead character running around all of this who never comes across as cunning, intelligent, or even sexy. The movie is also sorely lacking linking footage, with people all of a sudden in situations that come out nowhere, or their fates left up to question. Apparently, the filmmakers didn't care enough to show us this, so why should we at all for the entire movie?

"Ginger"'s plot is flimsy, the dialog is wretched, its sentiment very un-PC (and just a tad bit racist), its look cheap, and the acting... um, well, I'll be kind and say a few people at least try to say their lines with feeling. Yet despite all these things going against it, I was thoroughly entertained.

Cheri Caffaro, the star of this made-in-New Jersey sexploitation "thriller," is largely what held my attention. Nearly a foot taller than any of her co-stars, with a slim figure, long-bleached blond hair and nearly non-existent eyebrows, Caffaro is more handsome than pretty or sexy. She could easily be mistaken for a transsexual ("Ginger: The Gender Avenger"--now THAT would've really been interesting). As an actress she's... better than some of the other non-actors in this movie, but she's got presence. Her "seductive" dance in a nightclub is a camp classic--made more so by her visually offensive pink outfit. There's a lot of sex and nudity, and more than a passing nod to bondage enthusiasts, with three scenes that have characters handcuffed or tied to beds, including the late Calvin Culver, better known as gay porn star Casey Donovan. Perhaps Culver/Donovan's work in hardcore movies is why he didn't balk at being shown Full Monty. Viewers also get treated to an anemic cat fight on the beach and some tepid lesbian bonding. Though all the sex is decidedly un-erotic, these scenes certainly work better than "Ginger"'s clumsy action sequences.

"Ginger" kind of plays like a relic from the porno chic era, only minus any hardcore content. Even the opening credits, with our heroine cruising the Jersey Turnpike in her gold Corvette, had me thinking of the title sequence of "Deep Throat" (yes, I know "Deep Throat" was released a year later, but I saw it before "Ginger"). And like a pornographic film, "Ginger" has absolutely no redeeming social value. And I enjoyed every minute of it!

Delightfully awful "Thriller" about a leggy blonde going undercover to catch a gang of bad guys and gals that are fleecing rich people somewhere in New Jersey and getting them hooked on drugs as well. Yes, the acting is really as bad as you may have heard. Cheri Caffaro says her lines with little conviction, yet she is one of the better thespians involved. I just loved the flashback scenes she goes through that are suppose to be so poignant but turn into being pure dreck - and a real hoot. Caffaro knows something about hoot, well, hooters that is. And so does the rest of the female cast. The detective helping Caffaro, William Grannel, has little acting talent either, but the worst performance which is so bad it becomes camp is by Duane Tucker as Rex Halsey, the guy that is the mastermind behind all the bad doings wearing a neck scarf throughout and has at least four buttons undone on his shirt. Everything he says he seems to be saying with such conviction to the audience as he madly overacts - rolling his eyes and saying pronouncements with facial gestures in the foreground of some of the cheapest sets I have seen in a film in some time. We do get many, many girls in various stages of undress though. The script is implausible. The budget super-cheap. With all its defects - and they are legion - I too enjoyed Ginger and look forward to seeing the two sequels. This movie is definitely a product of the 70s, a time when filmmakers could virtually and would do virtually anything they thought would be provocative. No PC here - and I find it refreshing. Movies today are so scared to walk the fine line that they have become flat in many ways. Ginger isn't flat(you gotta see it to believe it) at all. It is a guilty pleasure to be sure but one that I found very entertaining and was laughing with and about it from start to finish.