Cristina, demonio o mujer

My review was written in September 1984 after watching the movie on a video cassette screener copy.

"Chrisitna" is the third, and least interesting, of the European-made featurefilms from producer Harry Alan Towers, created for the Playboy Channel and various overseas theatrical and home video distributors. Softcore opus features plenty of nudity, spotlighting attractive women, but not much more.

Bookended by threats of numerous sequels, pic limns the adventures of Christina (Jewel Shepard), a jetset playgirl and publishing empire heiress, who has a habit of being kidnapped for ransom. In fact, this episodi film consists solely of bad guys (and bad girls) nabbing her, having their way with her and then losing her to another antisocial group.

Along the way, Christina has a run-in with several femme veterans of Towers-Playboy's "Black Venus" film, but the ensuing martial arts fights by women are embarrassingly fake, as are director Paco Lara's cheaply staged action-and-chase sequences. Though pacing is much sprightlier than the average sex film, this exercise in voyeurism remains stillborn.

Having replaced first choice Monique Gabrielle (the memorable dream nude of "Bachelor Party") in the title role, Shepard displays a beautiful body and a toothy grin, but (partly due to weak material) creates no character meriting one's ongoing interest, whether or not the series of additional films materializes.

Pic's oddest touch is the recurring device (a la "Alice in Wonderland") of Christina falling asleep when in danger, cuing goofball dream sequences in which gloved hands roll Tinkertoy-size cars across her nude body. Domestically, pic might have had theatrical chances as a programmer but onde again, Towers has opted for unacceptably haphazard dubbing, even thouth the actors articulate in English.

This film reminded me somewhat of "Autumn Born," an earlier Lloyd A. Simandl film about another pretty young woman being held against her will. In both films the kidnappers include at least one dominant lesbian woman who wants the pretty girl for her own pleasures.

In Christina, I recall a scene in which two women battle each other for the right to possess Jewel Shepard. The winner takes her into a room, gives her a bath, and then seduces her. It was a very erotic, if not particularly explicit scene.

Later, after trying to escape, another woman captures and forcibly takes Christina. Jewel Shepard might not have been the greatest actress of her day, but she certainly had a hot body, one that could even attract other women!

This is a Spanish film from which it appears that Christina is an extremely affluent young lady who fancies herself as a private eye. We are told that there are a large collection of novels about her that are extremely popular in Europe. We are also told this is the first of them which has been filmed, but that many more are on their way and should be appearing soon. However this film was released some time ago (1984), and as far as I know we have so far been spared from any second offering. May this happy state long continue. Similar films to Christina have appeared many times in the past but have usually been significantly better in quality. For example, one need only think of the 1970's Ginger series which, even though they did not score very heavily with either the critics or regular filmgoers, were far more polished and enjoyable to watch than Christina.

I saw this film listed as a late night offering on a local TV channel and guessed that it would be in Spanish with English sub-titles. Such films can be very valuable in helping to learn the language concerned, and so I decided to tape it. Unfortunately I guessed wrong, it was dubbed in English, and I did not even receive this limited return for the time I wasted watching it. The screenplay was farcical and the acting almost non-existent. Since it is now 20 years since Christina was released, we may perhaps assume that this film "bombed" and the threat of any similar follow up films is lifting. But should this ever again be considered, its perpetrators should be forced to watch "The Avengers" or even "Charlie's Angels" until they have some concept of what can make a featherweight film of this genre enjoyable to watch..

It has the worst story, the worst dialog, the worst dubbing, the worst action scenes, but it features the best B-movie babe: Jewel Shepard. Jewel plays Christina Von Belle, the world's richest playgirl, who gets kidnapped an all female all lesbian terrorist group. She escapes from the lesbians only to be captured by some smugglers / gourmet chefs. Yes that's right... gourmet chefs! You have to see it to believe it! Fortunately Jewel never keeps her clothes on for more than five minutes. Check out Jewel in her prime taking a shower, taking a bath, taking a sauna, dancing totally nude while everyone else is clothed, and making sweet beautiful love to the world's ugliest male costars. And then there are the infamous toy car scenes... This movie is a definite 10 out of 10 and it's finally available on DVD.

For some reason in the 1980's the makers of "Eurotica" started casting American B-movie bimbos in their films. This never made any sense to me since there have always been PLENTY of beautiful women in Europe--in fact, that's one of their great cinematic resources(it sure isn't well-written English and dialogue and competent dubbing). Moreover, these American actresses really tended to take away a lot of the "exotic" European feel of the movies, especially considering a lot of them were not particularly talented to begin with and were often horribly over-exposed back in America, appearing in countless awful no-budget American movies or MTV videos. Anyway, like Tawny Kitaen in "Gwendoline", Claudia Udy in "Joy", and (worst of all) Monique Gabrielle in "Emmanuelle V", this movie features a perennial B-movie American actress, Jewel Shephard. To be fair though, this one of Shephard's earliest films made BEFORE she started appearing in every bad 80's direct-to-video movie under the sun. And she does look very good here. Besides, I don't think this really would have been any better with a more "exotic" European actress in the lead.

The plot is some nonsense about a rich heiress who is kidnapped (twice) while on vacation with her lover and another swinging couple. She is bound and mistreated (although not nearly enough as far as I'm concerned), but eventually is helped by a Spanish admirer. Oh yeah, she also has A LOT of softcore sex (cue the stereotypical soft-focus and horrid soft jazz music)with both male and female partners.

Francisco Lara Polop was a Spanish director who generally made his living imitating better Italian directors in various Spanish-Italian co-productions. Harry Alan Towers who produce and wrote the screenplay (under the name "Peter Welbeck") was an interesting character who, according to director Jess Franco, spent half in time making movies and the other half in jail. Towers had teamed up with cult director Franco on some of the latter's best films back in the late 60's/early 70's, and he also partnered with the genuinely talented Italian director Massimo Dallamano. Clearly, he had fallen on hard times by the 1980's, but then so had European films in general (Franco sank even lower, eventually making hardcore porn and SOV fanboy-type stuff). As for Shephard, she probably doesn't put this high on her resume either (but then I wonder what movie she does--"Hollywood Hot Tubs" maybe?). I think her fans at least might enjoy this, but it's pretty weak as far as "Eurotica" goes