Excellent, smart action film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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

I actually watched this at least twice on Cinemax over twenty years ago, but was rather inebriated both times and thus couldn't remember anything except the ending. (At a public disco, the titular heroine slips out of her fur coat — she's stark naked otherwise — and starts boogying.) I must've been really toasted, it seems, because otherwise I'd have recalled just how awful this made-in-Europe softcore skin flick is.Christina von Belle (American B-movie bimbo Jewel Shepard) is a filthy rich heiress with a thirst for hedonistic adventures. After orgying at a seaside villa with her boyfriend (Ian Serra, the guy from PIECES) and another couple, she's kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang of lesbian terrorists called, for no explained reason, the 10th of November Group. The leader of the terrorists is played by "mature" porn star Karin Schubert, whose dubbed accent sounds like Zsa Zsa Gabor channeling Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS; Josephine Jacqueline Jones (BLACK VENUS) has a small role as one of the amorous amazons. Thus we're treated to a super-lame catfight, a bit of girl-on-girl petting and Christina's erotic dream-fantasies, in which she lolls naked in a cloud of dry ice vapor as black-gloved hands push toy cars and tanks across her body. (???) Christina eventually escapes from the island of sapphic militants only to fall into the clutches of a handsome Mediterranean smuggler, whom she naturally shags even though he, too, is holding her for ransom. Yet another escape is engineered with the help of a lovestruck teenage lad. (She boinks him, too.) Mr. Smuggler's goons take off after her, so the flick is climaxed by a dopey slapstick chase sequence in which a stunt driver on a motorcycle is almost killed.I suppose fans of Shepard (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) will want to see this, but can't imagine anyone else getting much out of it. I certainly didn't. Christina is strangely dull and restrained despite the ample nudity and potentially exploitable situations. Shepard, while nice enough to look at, has zero screen presence in the title role. (She does get naked every ten minutes or so, at least.) The script is ludicrous — not, for the most part, in a good way. An annoying techno-disco score that positively screams "mid-'80s!" just makes things worse. Still, I'm feeling generous at the moment, so I'll give it a few Brownie points for Shepard's lovely derrière and the scattered unintentional laughs amid the dialog.

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.

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..