Ginger (1971) Starring Cheri Caffaro, Duane Tucker & Calvin Culver Directed by Don Schain Written by Don Schain

Back in the day, exploitation films lured the audience to the theater with the promise that they would display debauchery, depravity, explicit sex, horror, and violence far beyond anything the audiences had ever witnessed before, but they often paid off with no sex, no gore, plus bad dialog, dubbing, and acting. Sometimes this sales pitch versus delivered goods ratio bordered on outright fraud. Try watching “The Severed Arm” or “Crypt of the Living Dead” sometime and ask yourself: “Why the hell would anyone ever have paid money to see this?”

Truth to be told, there were a lot of shit sandwich Happy Meals sold by these hucksters.

But there were some exploitation filmmakers that lacked the sophistication, restraint, or respect for humanity to pull back their punches. The Ginger movies, staring the lovely Cheri Caffaro delivered abundant nudity, soft core sex, and violence with a sleazy flair that perfectly suited the backwater drive-ins and downtown grind pits of the early 1970s.

Ginger (1971)

In the first of the series, Cheri Caffaro stars as super spy Ginger McAllister who undresses, screws, castrates and karate chops her way through an unlikely gang of drug dealers imported from an ABC After-School Special. Duane Tucker, as the gang’s mastermind, Rex, deserves special mention for his incredible, eyebrow-arching performance and time-capsule-worthy fashions. Tucker went on to further fame in roles like Trucker #2 and Guard in Squad Car.

For some weird reason, most of the soft core sex scenes feature gross, naked old men. (Investors?) This, unfortunately, was a trend that continued throughout the remainder of the series.

My favorite moment in the film comes when Ginger is comforting an abused hooker who works for the gang.

Cathy (crying): “Every night I’m getting laid backwards and forwards. I’m getting to hate the very sight of men. But I still want a family, that house, a husband, children. Help me Ginger! Please help me!”

Ginger (removing Cathy’s top): “I’m not a man. But I’ll help you.”

Ginger then simultaneously renders hot girl-on-girl action as therapy while she grills Cathy for info on Rex’s gang. Priceless.

The Abductors (1972)

Cheerleaders are kidnapped, raped and tortured and sold into white slavery until Ginger comes to the rescue. Once again, we are treated to abundant full frontal nudity, outrageously skimpy or see-through outfits for Ginger, naked middle aged guys with mustaches, and vintage 1970s atmosphere. Since this is 1972, of course the cheerleaders wind up enjoying being sex slaves, but they are rescued in spite of themselves.

Favorite moment: Ginger gyrating to cheesy 1970s samba music shaking maracas, wearing a see-through macramé outfit. The whole thing takes place on some suburban patio and leaves you wondering if there was a wife-swapping orgy after filming wrapped.

Girls are for Loving (1973)

In the series finale, the producers (Cheri Caffaro’s husband, among others) pull out all the stops and relocate filming from New Jersey to the beautiful isle of St. Thomas, where Ginger and the evil seductress Ronnie St. Clair (Jocelyne Peters) battle over some ridiculous nonsense about diplomatic agreements or corn futures or something. This time Ginger sings, strips and dances in a nightclub show.

The movie also introduces a black sidekick for Ginger (Timothy Brown) in what seems like a bid for Blaxploitation cred. This is borne out by one of the posters for the film which practically features Brown as the star. That’s fairly ironic, considering the first movie featured a black villain who rapes white girls while rolling his eyes and spewing nasty lines of dialog about “White Bitches.”

Favorite moments: Any of Ginger’s fight scenes featuring unconvincing topless karate. Epic.

If tits and torture was all that the Ginger movies offered, then they wouldn’t rise above the level of a typical grind house roughie. But the movies try very hard to be action packed spectaculars; and even though their low budgets usually betray them, they move fast enough to allow you to enjoy the poor acting, bad dialog, or cheap FX in passing without interfering with all the nudity and sex. The character of Ginger, a liberated, sexually demanding, tough chick, is also a big part of the fun. She sheds her clothes without a hint of modesty, jumps into bed without any shame, and threatens the private parts of a dozen bad guys gleefully.

It would be impossible to reproduce the magic of a Ginger movie today, either because the filmmakers would pull back on the sleaze lever in fear of political correctness, push the sleaze lever too far and kill the gleeful buzz of it, or pile on the irony to the point of campiness. But mainly, you couldn’t make another Ginger movie without the charms of someone like Cheri Caffaro. Like Pam Grier, or Dyanne Thorne of the “Ilsa” movies, Caffaro carries her movies, not with her acting chops, but with an uninhibited willingness to go along with the sleazy proceedings. One gets the feeling that, back in the swinging seventies, off-screen, Caffaro would have dropped her skimpy outfit and jumped into the hot tub for an anything goes romp without much prompting.

And if that’s not true, then maybe she really was a helluva actress…