Review of Christina

Christina (1984)
Jewel Shephard fans might like this ,but it's pretty weak as "Eurotica" goes
20 February 2010
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
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