From the outset, we know she’s hot and she’s bad. As the credits roll, Ginger (Cheri Caffaro) cruises along in her gold, open-top ‘Vette, parks the car and emerges wearing a micro-mini-skirt and go-go boots. She enters a building and wiggles down the hallway to the office of a well-heeled private detective agency to hear an intriguing proposition. They offer her 50 grand to infiltrate a drug/prostitution/extortion ring and collect the evidence that’ll put them away for good.

The bad guys include a spoiled rich young man who thinks crime is an antidote to boredom, Rodney (gay porn star Casey Donovan aka Calvin Culver); African-American Jimmy and an associate, DJ, who handle the drug deals; and a squad of reasonably attractive babes who provide other “personal services”. They are led, unconvincingly, by weird Rex Halsey (Duane Tucker), who…well, more about him later.

Ginger insinuates herself into the gang by first seducing Rodney in a bar with a provocative dance, part of which involves slowly grinding her butt into his crotch. Next day Ginger is in a skimpy bikini, soaking up sun on the beach (in an apparent attempt to rid herself of those prominent tan lines) when she is confronted by Halsey’s girlfriend and three other female gang members (also in bikinis). Ginger easily bests the girlfriend in a catfight, pinning her face-down in the sand. Ginger strips off the loser’s bikini-top, using it to tie her hands behind her back, then pulls the bottom portion off to tie her feet together. Viola!

This feat establishes Ginger’s image as a bad ass, but arouses suspicions. However it pleases one of the girls, Kathy, because she secretly despises her hooker life and wants to escape. Ginger cheers her up and gains her trust in a carpet-munching scene (Kathy is nekkid, Ginger isn’t).

Kathy sets up a nocturnal seaside rendezvous to deliver information to Ginger. But Kathy ends up dead on the beach with a plastic bag over her head. Ginger encounters DJ nearby, beats the snot out of him and then chokes him with her super-wide metal-studded belt.

Meanwhile, Ginger’s detective boss goes undercover as a “customer” and meets up with one of Halsey’s girls in a hotel room. He asks her why such a beautiful babe would do work like this, to which she responds, “I like it, and it’s what I’m best at.” When she’s stretched out on the bed, surprise! He’s got handcuffs hidden under the mattress. (This is a great technique for GIMPers). She agrees to cooperate with the authorities and asks him to remove the cuffs and take his money back. But he screws her anyway while she’s still cuffed. Hey, he says, “there’s enough of your body free to do the job.”

Jimmy has been itching to get some “sweet white ass” from one of his junkie clients, Allison. He arranges to meet her in a dilapidated building where she arrives, desperate for a fix. Jimmy wants more than her money – he commands her to strip and lie on the “cold hard floor.” “Spread those legs, white girl – wider!” Payback by rape ensues. Ginger has promised sexually-frustrated Rodney that the following night he’ll “get everything”. By that she meant tying him to a bed with his Johnson hanging out, stripping herself and inducing him to a hard-on, then threatening to slice off his manhood with piano wire if he doesn’t give her info about Halsey’s operation. After initial hesitation, he sings like a canary, but then makes the mistake of calling her a bitch. Ginger flashes back to a guy who dumped her, so she severs Rodney’s genitalia just for spite. Yikes!

Ginger phones Jimmy, inviting him to meet her for some more “sweet white ass”. When he arrives, she confronts him with a gun, calls him “black boy” and even slings the n-word at him. She strips, massages her tits, and puts her gun on a nearby dresser, challenging him to get to the gun before she does if he wants her goodies. Jimmy loses the contest.

Inevitably, Ginger heads for chez Halsey. When she enters, he incapacitates her with several punches to the belly, strips her, lays her on the bed and ties her wrists behind her back (but not her feet). She cops a defiant attitude, but he brandishes a gun.

A controversial, oft-discussed “rape” scene follows. On one hand, Ginger looks terrific in a very lengthy scene as Halsey gropes and finally humps her. But Ginger should be feeling nothing but revulsion toward this loser, yet she shows signs of being turned on. That detracts from the effectiveness of the scene.

In any case Halsey finishes up, hogties Ginger and shoots her up with heroin. He then walks out the door and meets his fate (offscreen – wish they had shown that).

No one in Ginger has any redemptive values (except maybe Kathy, who makes an early exit). Even Ginger is motivated more by vengeance and past emotional trauma than respect for the law. She seduces, kills and maims without an ounce of remorse. So cumulatively the movie itself is morally ungrounded. Not that this is bad. In fact, its pervasive meanness and “political incorrectness” help make the movie watchable. Some more sample dialog, after Ginger lops off Rodney’s cachungas:

Halsey: “What did you find out about Rodney?”

Liz: “He’s in the hospital. He was castrated”.

Halsey: “When do they think he’ll be out?”

Liz: “Rex, what the hell difference does it make? He had his balls cut off. He’s better off dead.”

Movie minuses: There’s the usual poor acting/editing/directing. Action scenes are perfunctorily staged. When the dialog isn’t lurid, it’s corny or melodramatic. The pacing is often slow. The male-torture scene, while not graphic, is still cringe-worthy. The racial slurs (on both sides) are awkward.

But the movie’s biggest problem is Duane Tucker. His “portrayal” of head villain Rex Halsey is completely inept. He tries to come across as psychopathic and sinister, but succeeds only in being kinda fey. We never for a second believe that he could actually overpower Ginger, or that even with her hands cuffed behind her, she couldn’t mop up the floor with him. By the time Ginger has choked, shot and emasculated the other gang members, there isn’t a true menacing threat left. And a GIMP flick without menace is a LIMP flick. Really, he’s got to be one of the worst villains in movie history.

Fortunately, the final act of the film is salvaged by Caffaro’s willingness to show herself getting naked, cuffed, “raped” and hogtied. That’s what it takes to distract us from Tucker.

Despite its flaws, Ginger does deliver bondage, sex, rape and amorality. Basically, it’s a warm-up to the sequels, allowing its audience to wade into the sleaziness that the rest of the series wallows in. Hey, there’s a first time for everything, and this one could’ve been worse.