The Abductors (1972)

I love this movie so much

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Blistering performances.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

In this second film of the "Ginger Trilogy" the detective known as "Ginger" (Cheri Caffaro) is called back into action to investigate the disappearance of four beautiful young women. Since the abductions appear to have been planned well in advance and all of the ladies disappeared in the same general area both Ginger and her boss "Jason Varone" (William Grannel) suspect that this is the work of a local sex slave operation. So in order to break the case a beautiful woman has to volunteer to be bait and hope that everything goes according to plan. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this film was better in some areas than its predecessor ("Ginger") but lacking in a couple of others. For starters I thought the acting and camera work were slightly better. However, some of the scenes lacked passion and the script could have used some improvement. In short, I rate this film about the same as I did the previous movie. Average.

Three cheerleaders and a beautiful blonde beauty pageant winner mysteriously disappear(kidnapped) when a gang out to abduct beautiful young girls and sell them into bondage to middle-aged, grizzled business men operates at the beginning of this fun yet tasteless film. Like the first Ginger, The Abductors has the copious nudity, non-PC lingo, and, at its heart, Cheri Caffaro back again as Ginger. You know Ginger - the girl working for a detective agency right out of college with martial arts training and one heck of a bod. A bod you know you will get ample chances to view. While I didn't like this one quite as much as the first Ginger movie, it does mirror the style and flavor of that first film. William Grannel is back as Jason Varone with all the acting talent of a drying, freshly painted wall - yet his scenes with Caffaro are fun and flirtatious. Caffaro gives a much more steady performance in this film becoming very comfortable in Ginger's clothes(and out of them). There is quite a perverse angle to this film with the whole white slavery into bondage thing, a rape, and several soft-core sex scenes of basically forced consensual sex. Acting ranges from mediocre(Cafarro and Richard Smedley as the love interest for Ginger, and Patrich Wright as a heavy) to bad(Grannel and Laurie Rose as Carter Winston - I just got so sick of hearing that stupid name!) But likes it predecessor The Abductors is a whole lot of fun and a trip down that seventies lane with its far out clothes and a style of film totally lost in today's milquetoast PC era.

Cannibalism and the white slave trade are two subjects that hold a prurient vicarious fascination for many young people and when either is featured in a film it will usually guarantee at least a limited measure of success at the box office as long as the movie is reasonably competently produced. There have been a long string of such films going back to silent movie days and stars such as Rudolph Valentino. Many young women going abroad for the first time have confessed to experiencing fantasies in which they either find that they are destined to become part of the diet of some savage captors, or that they have been allotted to a place in the harem of some secluded middle eastern or oriental despot with little prospect of ever escaping. Both situations have certainly occurred on occasion in the past, in the latter case there are a few well documented stories of women who have created themselves very successful lives and become famous in the process. However in my opinion, it is stretching fantasy too far to contemplate a school in a secluded part of North America where girls abducted from their families are forcibly trained to be the willing "companions" of successful business men who are queuing up to pay very large sums of money to purchase their own complaisant "sex slave". Admittedly police records show that there have been some cases where girls who were forcibly abducted have developed a relationship with their captors such that they make no effort to escape even when this becomes possible; but such a situation seems unlikely to develop in more than a limited number of cases; and what very successful businessman would be prepared to rely on his purchase not being one of those who eventually seize an opportunity to escape, in the process putting him behind bars for a large part of the remainder of his life? Nevertheless this is precisely the scenario for "The Abductors (1972)'', the second of the "Ginger" films. In general I do not usually enjoy films which are pure fantasies (such as the later James Bond films), or which stretch the bound of credulity too far, and this reduces the rating I might otherwise give the film. However it is probably the most coherent and sophisticated of the three films in the "Ginger" series and, once the viewer has accepted its basic premise, the story unfolds with fewer gaps or holes than in the other two films. It is nevertheless almost the ultimate in soft porn sexploitation, and anyone considering viewing this film for the first time is entitled to have some idea of what to expect. - SPOILERS AHEAD - It opens with the abduction of three young cheerleaders who are forced at gunpoint to undress in front of their captors and then told they are to be trained to become the sex toys of rich men. The cost of refusal would be torture, and a curtain is drawn aside to give them a glimpse of an earlier recalcitrant captive being tortured. Still obdurate, this girl is later raped (quite graphically on screen), after which she gives no more trouble. The good guys set up another girl as a decoy to lead them to the scene, but they lose track of her after she is captured and also facing the worst. Three rich men (looking in some ways rather more like College nerds than powerful business men) are taken to the hideaway to claim the three captured cheerleaders they have "bought" but this still does not alert the good guys to its location, and almost in despair Ginger herself then becomes a second decoy to be abducted in turn. This leads to a barnstorming climax where the good guys finally locate and attack the hideaway just in time to save the day. Surprisingly this is not the finale, this film still has one more twist, probably intended to add a little more credibility to the story. It is all meaningless, empty of real characterisation, and without any social value; but it hardly misses a trick and is fun to watch for those who occasionally want to relax and enjoy a pure fantasy of this kind. It features enough bondage to make it politically incorrect for the mainstream cinema today, and so there are not many new releases which compete with it in this respect; DVD copies of this 30+ year old film will therefore probably continue to sell for some time to come.

I remember when I was a boy, I could walk down to the foot of the road late at night, look up on the hill and see the giant drive in screen glowing with Cheri Caffaro's figure in another predicament. I never heard the dialogue, but who needs it in this movie series. Ginger's power was her sex appeal, and even though she might have been bound and gagged, her captors were the ones who were truly helpless against it. This movie would never be shown on any broadcast channels, not even USA, and that's too bad, it's a gem in the rough.The acting was usually wooden and inconsistent, some of the editing was less than perfect, the sound has that studio resonance, the outfits were truly 70's, the music was eerily close to disco and the story line was old when the Romans dwelled the earth, but it's good B-movie fun.The girls are pretty in their 70's way sporting the sexually open styles and high, high heel shoes. It is true to it's period in that respect.I can just picture the screen lighting up with Ginger seducing one of her gullible captors to release her as she slowly sways against her bonds. Movies like this are best left to those of us who like our B-movie cinema.Sure, in the era of political correctness and equality, it would get it's share of disdaining looks, but when you look back at the movie, especially some of the dancing scenes, you just have to laugh.and realize that even the Romans, the most civilized society, warranted a little debauchery in their own society, and that there was no harm, no foul on the big screen on a warm summer night.