In the final movie of the Ginger Trilogy, jet-setter and amateur detective Ginger McAllister (Cheri Caffaro) faces her arch-enemy Ronnie St. Claire (Jocelyn Peters), the Anti-Ginger, an evil jet-setter and amateur criminal mastermind. The story has something to do with St. Claire extorting millions from an upcoming international trade agreement, by kidnapping, murder, and judicious use of her body. The plotting wants to be serpentine but is actually only vague, and seems in large part improvised during shooting.

After two successful grindhouse sleaze hits, you can almost feel star Caffaro and producer/director/writer/by-then-husband Don Schain aching for major-market validation. This is the most expensive - and expansive - Ginger movie, with exotic locales, including ski resorts and the Virgin Islands, standing in for the earlier New Jersey climes. The standard Ginger tropes are definitely there; Federal agents are as incompetent or nonexistant as the cops in the first two movies, Caffaro and Peters take off their clothes as often as possible, and Ginger must be tied up and raped at least once (and end up enjoying it - political correctness mavens are advised to check their apoplexies at the door). These moments of sleazery show a lot more planning and care than the spy plot, but are less numerous than in the previous two pictures; the end result is a movie that tries to be a Ginger movie and a mainstream spy flick, and fails at both.

Which didn't stop us from going on and on about it at The Bad Movie Report.

The previous two Ginger DVDs from Montery Home Video (Ginger and The Abductors for those keeping score), were watchable if rather soft in the image department. The transfer on Girls is a departure, as it is not only soft - the image on my VHS copy seems to be clearer! - but rather too dark. Way too dark. Way way too dark. Sound was never the strong point of movies like this, either, but you can hear everything. I wish someone would have at least played with the EQ a little on the cheesy 007-wannabe end song, though - that's the point at which Ginger lives up to her puzzling label "The Female James Bond".

The extras mirror those of the last two Ginger discs, but do show some improvement. The Filmography persists in the error that somehow long-dead Jayne Mansfield was involved in Caffaro's 1976 Too Hot to Handle, but they finally seem to have snapped to the fact that yes, that was Lana Wood in A Place Called Today (Caffaro's debut). This page also has an astounding picture of a freakin' huge ad for The Abductors plastered across a building, one presumes on the legendary 42nd Street...

"Dossier" continues the practice of placing 17 publicity stills over three pages, rendering them small and fairly useless, but it also includes five nice shots of advertising slicks and one-sheets over three pages, and therefore at a size one can actually view and appreciate.

As promised in the Abductors disc, the Caffaro "Bedroom" pictorial is presented here, re-titled "Confidential Photos". Eight photos of Caffaro in the altogether - they didn't even bother with clothes to take off for this shoot.

Finally, there is a nice bonus for the Caffaro fan - and once more, I can't imagine anyone else owning this - a complete pin-up calendar for 2004 , downloadable to your computer via a DVD-ROM drive. Each month has a different photo of Cheri in a state of undress, at 1024x768 and nice resolution. I just wish the image on the feature had been this clear!

Dr. Freex, 1/14/2004