The Abductors (1972)

I finally got a chance to watch The Abductors (1972), the sequel to 1971's softcore PI movie Ginger.  Cheri Caffaro is back as frequently naked arse-kicking private detective Ginger, while the team behind the camera, including director Don Schain, is also pretty much the same as for the first movie.  What's changed is the level of professionalism: The Abductors is, in just about every way, far superior to its predecessor.  Most significantly, Caffero herself looks far more comfortable in front of the camera and, while unlikely ever to win any acting awards, delivers a much more naturalistic performance.  Moreover, her character, this time around, isn't burdened by a heavy backstory and related flashbacks to her schoolgirl gang-rape ordeal.  Consequently, Ginger is allowed to focus entirely on the business of delivering kick-ass justice to every degenerate rapist scumbag who stands between her and solving her case.  The edge of sadism which characterised a lot of her violent encounters with bad guys in the first film is also toned down somewhat for this second outing: no castrations or point blank shootings here - she instead has to be satisfied with torturing a senior villain for information using a scalding hot shower.  Elsewhere, the production values seem somewhat higher in the sequel, (although it was clearly shot on a low budget), the supporting performances better, the action sequences far more convincingly staged, with the script providing better dialogue and hanging together better, plot wise, than was the case in the original.

Indeed, the plot of The Abductors is far more straightforward than that of Ginger.  In place of the first film's relatively complicated sex, drugs and blackmail ring dominating a resort town, the sequel features a series of young cheerleaders and beauty queens being abducted in and around a small town.  With no ransom demands being made, Ginger is sent in to get to the bottom of it all.  Of course, with this being a sexploitation film, it turns out the girls are being taken by a gang that breaks and 'trains' them into becoming sex slaves for wealthy businessmen.  Obviously, the 'training' involves lots of nudity, slappings and bondage.  Naturally, when one of the girls resists, the obvious solution is to torture and rape her - the latter of which, she apparently enjoys.  Which brings us to the film's central problem, (for contemporary audiences in particular): the idea that women actually enjoy being sexually dominated and assaulted by men.  To be absolutely fair, The Abductors is somewhat less rapey than Ginger and, arguably, improves upon that film by at least not forcing its heroine to endure a rape ordeal before she finally triumphs.  This time around, Ginger is far more strongly portrayed as a strong and resourceful character, who doesn't need to be rescued at the last minute by her male colleague and can't be dominated, sexually or otherwise, by any man.  What the film does, instead, is to transfer all the violent and sexual ordeal and torture to Ginger's female sidekick, who is infiltrated into the gang's lair by allowing herself to be abducted.

While the ordeal of Carter, the sidekick, starts of violent, it quickly turns into another male rape fantasy, with the villain getting information from her by sexually stimulating her while she's tied up.  Naturally, as this a sexploitation, flick, she can't resist and even enjoys it all. Luckily, though, she's rescued in the nick of time.  Watching The Abductors, it is clear that Don Schain and his team had carefully studied audience reactions to Ginger and tailored the sequel accordingly - cutting back the violence and sadism, dialling up the eroticism and strengthening the central character.  The Abductors leaves me somewhat conflicted: while I applaud its depiction of a strong female lead resistant to male aggression, the amount of violence and rape visited upon other female characters, (all except Ginger herself are depicted as victims), is still disturbing and indicates an underlying misogyny, (though par for the course for movies of just about any genre in the seventies).  Setting aside these reservations, The Abductors stands as a well paced softcore action movie, with well staged fights and chases, efficiently directed by Schain and featuring a score by Robert G Orpin that wouldn't have been out of place in a seventies private eye TV series.  The third and final instalment in the trilogy, Girls are for Loving (1973), would see Ginger face off against a female villain in a plot that ramped up the 'James Bond' elements.