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The Abductors
[Monterey Video]
1972; color
Directed by Don Schain
Starring: Cheri Caffaro, Richard Smedley, Patrick M. Wright, Laurie Rose & William Grannel
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In a move I'm sure will surprise no one, we decided to rent The Abductors when we returned Ginger. (No doubt this cycle will be repeated, and completed, when we return this and rent Girls Are For Loving but you'll have to wait for next week for more on that topic.) Picking up not at all where our previous story leaves off, and just in case you had absolutely any doubts from the title what the plot is about, the film opens with a panty clad woman with her hands tied behind her back being led down a hallway by two appropriately sleazy characters. She struggles, she screams, but to no avail; she's quickly deposited on her back on top of a filthy mattress in a dark room. As the door closes on this unfortunate lass, the next scene opens with a car full of giggling, possibly drunk, girls careening down the highway. Almost immediately an unseen assailant shoots out one of their front tires and literally a second later the screaming girls are dragged from their convertible, thrown into a heap on the side of the road and forced at gunpoint to strip down to their panties by one dude while another douses their vehicle with gasoline. Then it's bound and gagged time for this trio while the guy who previously gassed up the car adds their clothes and a match to the package and kaboom - cue the theme music! (I honestly forget if it's the same music they rolled over the credits in the original but the tune feels like it was pulled straight from some obscure cop show and I'm not a hundred percent sure it wasn't.) After we watch the car burn for a while, and much to my amusement I realize the font they use for the credits is the same one I am using for the liner notes in the Niagara / Hitmen package I've been working on all week, we find ourselves at the point where a bikini clad Ginger receives the phone call from the guy she occasionally freelances for, which leads to her coming to his office to get the backstory on the crimes / her assignment (in an outrageous denim hot pant and cropped jacket combo which of course does not include a bra), and you know what that means, at least if you saw the original - bad dialogue, bad delivery and icky sexual innuendo. Which is mostly icky because this dude is old and not attractive; or at least way too old and unattractive for me to believe any hot young blond would want to fuck him unless it was for financial gain and Ginger is supposed to be a trust fund baby or otherwise rich chick of some sort. Anywhoo, then to paraphrase the aforementioned old unattractive guy we're "on our way to abduction land." (Seriously, he really does say that to our heroine. I only changed the word "your" to "our" to include the audience. Oh, these Ginger movies - bless their collective heart!) The Abductors is arguably better made than the original on pretty much every level, except for plot and acting of course (but since when are those two things important to filmmaking), although probably no less offensive to those who are easily offended. Either way, there is no question the production values increased markedly and may I add, Ms. Cafarro looks rather fetching in this one. I can't wait to see what they come up with for the third one; euphemistically speaking, of course.
—Bunny
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