Ginger McAllister — aka 1971’s Ginger — is back and sluttier than ever in The Abductors! The blonde bimbo-cum-superspy (Cheri Caffaro, Too Hot to Handle) cuts short her pool time in the Caribbean to take on another do-or-die case “just for fun” from her paisley-leaning boss (William Grannel, Carnival of Blood).

This mission — slightly more James Bondian because she’s given swallowable “radar disks” — involves finding out who and what are behind the kidnapping of four attractive teenage girls. As viewers, we’re privy to the answer: These cheerleader types (one of whom is played Jeramie Rain, aka Sadie of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left) are sold to rich, old, white men willing to pay “up to $100,000” for their services — in other words, sex slaves, but with the classier title of “mistresses in bondage.”

Ginger’s investigation instantly introduces her to a dapper (by 1972 New Jersey standards) advertising agency owner (Richard Smedley, The Naughty Stewardesses), who assists her endeavors by publicizing an undercover hottie (Laurie Rose, The Suckers) in the market in hopes of luring the abductors to snatch the bait. He also climbs aboard Ginger, because hell, who doesn’t? If she’s not conducting her secret-agent business in a transparent shirt with no bra underneath, she’s conducting her secret-agent business in a macrame top with no bra underneath — either way, those clothes are coming off before long, whether you want them to or not. Action of the sexual kind is more prevalent than that wrought by weapons, vehicles and fisticuffs.

The “ick” factor is thicker with Don Schain’s sequel than with its predecessor. Not only was he obviously cool with shooting then-wife Caffaro being missionaried and manhandled — he wrote and directed the damn thing, after all — but he’s keen on depicting each curvy hostage being milked by villainous hands, and posits that rape will turn a woman into proverbial putty — and that goes double for virgins. Even Ginger herself is party to the misogyny, being gifted with the strange habit of jacking off her male enemies after she’s captured them. No wonder Ms. McAllister’s third and final chapter was titled Girls Are for Loving. —Rod Lott

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Across three adventures in the early ’70s, twentysomething tramp Ginger McAllister was the 007 of 42nd Street. Written and directed by Don Schain, the titillating trilogy starred his then-wife, Cheri Caffaro (Savage Sisters), a living Barbie doll without the winning smile or sparkling personality. In the eponymous first flick, Ginger, our rich, pampered heroine is completely unqualified for her dangerous mission, but the authorities hire her anyway to the tune of $50,000 because she’s a statuesque blonde who’s more than happy to show off her tanlines.

Her assignment: At a posh New Jersey resort, she is to infiltrate a snatch-and-smack ring — with the infrequent foray into blackmail — run by seven bored adult children of the jet set. The mealy mouthed mastermind behind it is Rex Halsey (Duane Tucker, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), who might be wearing a dog collar at one point, but definitely looks like the bastard offspring of comedian Andy Kaufman and Rocky Horror Picture Show transvestite Dr. Frank N. Furter.

The undercover work requires Ginger to get naked a lot, which is not a problem for her or Caffaro; I suspect her disrobing to full-frontal nudity is the movie’s raison d’être. If it’s not to trick a bad guy into castration by piano wire, it’s to have her nipples violently nursed by Rex as foreplay to being raped. Which is more disturbing:
a) that Schain’s framing and Caffaro’s acting via false eyelashes suggest Ginger ultimately enjoys being sexually assaulted, or
b) that Schain later became the producer responsible for Disney’s High School Musical franchise? (The answer is “a,” just to be clear.)

Good side or bad, the characters speak haltingly, less for dramatic effect and more for struggling with words they’ve been tasked to repeat; thus, everyone. Talks. Like. This. Specializing in that delivery — as wooden as the paneling on the walls of a ’70s porn set — is our leading floozy. Caffaro closes the initial chapter that is Ginger by confessing, “Right now, I just feel sorta blah.” Sentiments shared, Ging. —Rod Lott

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One of the special features on the Blu-ray release of John Wick is a throwaway promo piece called “Don’t F*#% with John Wick.” In a more-perfect, less-PC world, that would have been the film’s title. Heck, I’d settle for it being the tagline, as those five words possess a surplus of cock-rockin’ attitude, whereas the two here … I can’t think of a more inert name in action-movie history. A wick is a part of a candle, for God’s sake, yet this flick is all about the fuse.

Proving once again that he is most effective playing characters who speak softly and carry a big ol’ gun, Keanu Reeves is Wick, your average strong, silent, stoic type. Mere days after the death of his beloved wife (Bridget Moynahan, Battle: Los Angeles), the grieving Wick receives a gift from beyond the grave, so to speak, arranged by the missus prior to expiration: the cutest widdle beagle you ever did see — house-trained, even! At a gas station, snot-nosed Russian criminal Iosef (Alfie Allen, TV’s Game of Thrones) takes note of the pup and Wick’s suh-weet ’69 Mustang. When Wick politely shuns Iosef’s purchase offer, the Russkie is so enraged that he breaks into Wick’s place that night and beats him up. And steals the car. Oh, and kills the dog, just to make certain audiences will be all-in on Wick’s side.

What Iosef doesn’t know (presumably because he doesn’t check LinkedIn): Wick is a retired assassin — one of the best. Knowing that Wick will exact revenge, Iosef’s pot-smoking pop, New York crime lord Viggo (Michael Nyqvist, clearly relishing the chance to embody a hammier version of his Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol villain), places a $2 million bounty on his former employee’s stringy-haired head. That kind of dough tends to bring out a stack of applicants; playing the more notable sharpshooters are Adrianne Palicki (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) and Willem Dafoe (The Grand Budapest Hotel).

The directorial debut of Chad Stahelski, Reeves’ longtime stunt double (Constantine, The Matrix trilogy and Man of Tai Chi, Reeves’ own surprisingly formidable behind-the-camera birth), John Wick is the rare eight-digit action pic with an A-list star that earned considerable critical acclaim. Yes, the movie makes for a terrific time, but it also arrives to home video a tad overpraised; had Reeves not been in a box-office slump for the better part of the past decade — especially nipping at the heels of 2013’s epic-disastrous 47 Ronin — I suspect the buzz barely would have reached a mild boil.

That’s not to say John Wick isn’t well-built or well-oiled — far from it. Stahelski keeps things moving at a dizzying pace and his neon-and-nighttime transition shots would have Michael Mann nodding like a proud papa. The balls aren’t just to the wall — they’re framed by Hobby Lobby. It’s just that the film isn’t a game-changer of the genre; the main reason for its Welcome Wagon reception is that it doesn’t do what so many expected it to: suck. —Rod Lott

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Antoine Fuqua’s The Equalizer bears only nominal resemblance to the 1980s television series of the same name, in which British thesp Edward Woodward spent four seasons on CBS prime time as force of vengeance-for-hire Robert McCall. The big-budget actioner casts decidedly non-British Denzel Washington in the same role, yet more accurately could be titled Denzel Does Damage. Not for nothing does Fuqua frame his Training Day star strutting his stuff toward the camera as an explosion mushrooms from behind in slow motion.

Secretly a former intelligence agent, the widowed McCall now lives a lonely life of routine as a minimum-wage worker at a home-improvement chain. When not hauling lumber, he can be found sipping tea and reading Great American Novels at a greasy-spoon diner. It is there he gets drawn back into the world of bam-bang-boom when he comes to the defense of his friendly neighborhood teen prostitute (Chloë Grace Moretz, 2013’s Carrie), thereby stepping in the pile of doo-doo that is the Russian mafia.

Have no fear, for Fuqua allows McCall to do that Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes thing where he stylistically surveys the room and figures out all the shit that’s about to go down before it goes down. McCall does one better than Holmes by estimating how many seconds each ass-kicking will take. The Equalizer is also The Timekeeper.

It all coalesces in an after-hours showdown inside the Home Depot stand-in, where McCall employs various tools from the shelves to booby-trap the big-box store with gory results. While clearly the film’s showstopper sequence, it doesn’t compare to the highly similar, hardware-enabled plan of revenge exacted by Kim Basinger in 2008’s While She Was Out. Of course, that sleeper didn’t have white-hot star power at its center; the cucumber-cool Washington plays badass so well, he’s the reason you’ll forgive the corny subplots and other ludicrous touches. —Rod Lott

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Eight reasons why Blade is all 10 kinds of hot awesomesauce.

1. It was a mash-up before mash-ups were popular: Shaft plus Dracula plus any number of martial arts films. Without Blade, we’d never have had Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. You think about that.

2. It made a franchise out of a C-list comic-book character, giving us all hope that watchable Ghost Rider films might yet be possible.

3. It played absolutely to Wesley Snipes’ strengths. A shame he later became trapped behind the badass façade, but Blade reminds us of the talent hidden in all the crappy DVD movies since.

4. All due love to The Matrix, but Blade beat it to the leather-clad, sunglasses-wearing, martial arts ass-kicking genre by a good year.

5. It was a financial success, leading Marvel Comics to consider putting money and talent behind later films rather than going the Albert Pyun route (that’s a Captain America reference, the 1990 version, which firmly sits atop the pantheon of so-bad-it’s-really-bad films).

6. N’Bushe Wright, the female lead, should have been bigger after this. So good, perfect for the role.

7. It’s blessedly R-rated, giving us plenty of blood and severed limbs, and it was made early enough in the computer era to forgive it its FX faults, rather than condemn it for some unimpressive CGI blood (as contrast, see Blood: The Last Vampire for how bad CGI bloodletting can get, because there’s no other reason to watch it).

8. Stephen Dorff plays snarky suckhead quite well; Kris Kristofferson redefines the concept of “grizzled”; Udo Keir’s customary overacting plays perfectly in the setting; and Donal Logue finally came into his own as a fun-loving vampire.

9. Can I be the only one praying for a crossover with the current Marvel movie universe? Blade/Spider-Man? Blade/Wolverine? Blade/Thor? Please?

10. Blade led to Blade II, which finally gave director Guillermo del Toro a commercially successful display of his talents. Without Blade, no Blade II; without Blade II, no Hellboy or Pan’s Labyrinth. Therefore, without Blade, no reason to live. —Corey Redekop

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