Christiane Krüger(I)

Christiane Krüger, the daughter of German movie star Hardy Krüger, was born on September 8, 1945 in Hamburg, Germany, four months after V-E Day brought an end to the war in Europe. She has appeared mostly in German-speaking movies and television, though she has made forays into English-language roles, including the 1985 TV mini-series Le bonheur au bout du chemin (1985). However, she is most famous to American audiences for her turn as an Eva Perón clone in Radley Metzger's exploitation cinema classic "Mother" (1973). Basically a grindhouse flick with Metzger's typical arthouse pretensions, "Mother" (a.k.a. "Little Mother", "The Story of Evita" and "Blood Queen" in the UK) is a roman a clef loosely based on the life of Eva Perón, updated from the 1940s and '50s to contemporary times. In the film, Kruger played Marina, a schemer who sleeps her way to the summit, first by becoming a TV weather-girl before making it as the wife of a top South American politician who becomes President of his beknighted country.

In this celluloid potboiler, the cruel and sadistic, Machiavellian Marina is the real power behind the throne and becomes so powerful, other politicians conspire to assassinate her lest she replace her bewitched hubbie as president. Like any Metzger film, female nudity is plentiful, and though there are many instances of body-doubling, in a generous amount of scenes, Krüger herself appears in the all-together, showing the charms that captivated the TV station manager, the future president of a banana republic, then said banana republic itself. Surely one of the summits of trash cinema!