The Ginger Trilogy (1971-1973)

A trio of truly awful, softcore, psuedo-bondage/action films starring the overly blonde Cheri Caffaro (who once won a Bardot look-alike contest). For those of you who thought to yourselves, "Hey, there just aren't enough tits or handcuffs in those Bond films", then these are the movies for you.




We first meet Ginger as she drives our nation's byways in her sports car to the movie's theme song, which is a knock-off of the Mannix theme (if it were made today, it would be Pat Benatar's "Stop Using Sex As A Weapon", but then, this movie would not be made today). She arrives at the private investigation agency of series regular Jason Varone (William Grannell), who, despite her lack of training in the investigation or law enforcement fields, hires her to go after small-time crime lord Rex Halsey. Perhaps it has something to do with them already losing two people on the job. Ginger is then given her very own secret agent briefcase, which is a normal briefcase with a gun, camera, tape recorder and some handcuffs tossed in.








To set the tone for the entire movie, our very first scene is of a half-naked, screaming woman, hands tied behind her back, being dragged down a corridor, She is thrown onto a mattress in a storeroom, as her captors tell her, "Maybe some time in solitary will cool you off."

Then (just in case you were out getting popcorn during that first scene), three cheerleaders are out driving in the country in an Olds convertible when one of the tires is blown out by a shotgun blast. The three are pulled out of the car by an equal number of thugs, and then we find that the forces of evil, just as in the first Ginger movie, employ a Token Black Dude to do the heavy work. He points a gun at the cheerleaders and commands, "Strip! Everything but panties! Do it!" The girls comply, they are tied and gagged, and their clothes thrown in the convertible, which is then torched. The thugs take off with their booty (giggle), and the titles run as grown men in the audience sob, "That car was a classic!"

Writer/director Don Schain had a larger budget to work with here than on his first eponymously- titled Ginger movie, and it shows in some better production values and acting. Not enough was spent on the technical aspects, however; several slow zoom-ins and outs are executed jerkily, spoiling the intended dramatic effect; too much of the location sound is hollow and boomy, either a badly placed microphone or lack of an actual boom.

Caffaro is more at ease with the character this time around, possibly because this time Ginger isn't quite such a psychopath. As a result, her acting has improved, too. Jennifer Brooks is the real winner, this time around - she is impossibly cute, and manages to be quite likable, even though she has to bear the weight of some the worst lines in the film. Most of Schain's dialogue, in fact, while not terrible, is of the sort that looks really good on paper, but when human mouths try to say it, the words just fall flat, like a clapper on a muffled bell.

In a remote, snow-covered lodge, a man and a woman lie near the fireplace, enjoying each other immensely. So immensely that they are unmindful of the three men outside arriving via parachute. Unmindful, that is, until the men burst into the lodge, guns drawn. The lead thug (Robert C. Jefferson, a black actor, as is traditional) barks, "Get off that couch and strip!" Our first clue that, once again, we are on Planet Ginger, home to Ginger MacAllister, "the female James Bond", and a land where sex or a naked woman is only a few frames away.

Unfortunately for the naked woman in this case, she is taken outside in the snow, tied to a tree, assaulted, then shot as a light plane lands nearby. The naked man is hustled onto the plane, then drugged. As the plane takes off, explosives planted in the lodge blow it up real good. This time, we're not dealing with petty blackmailers or a white slavery ring - somebody's playing for keeps.

Girls Are For Loving probably marks the point where Caffaro come into her own as a performer; the tenativeness of her first outing in Ginger is gone, and small periods of discomfort and artificiality she evidenced in The Abductors have smoothed out totally; here, she is totally confident in her performance, and the lengthy number outlining The Scintillating Talent of Ginger MacAllister is actually pretty good. Jocelyn Peters, though certainly easy to look at (Ronnie likes to address her henchmen in the nude) is, as an actress, not up to the character's demands. This does have the effect of making Caffaro look even better. The character of Ronnie also has an added benefit of actually softening Ginger's character. In the first two films, Ginger's sexual drives seemed almost predatory; here, she's an emancipated woman. Timothy Brown, possibly best known to most as Spearchucker Jones in the TV series M*A*S*H*, would make a fine action hero if he had any action scenes to back him up.

This final Ginger movie tries to be more than its predecessors in more ways than one. The photography has been upgraded considerably, and the location shooting is handsome (though one can't help but suspect a Roger Corman "I want a vacation let's shoot an island movie" setup). This is certainly the best-looking of the Ginger movies - it's just a pity that its action setpieces still show poverty of a very different sort.