Christina

by Fuggy

Anyone who was watching Cinemax in the late 1980s will remember Christina.  They showed the crap out of this movie.  And with good reason – it’s a hot one.  Well, the glory days of “Skinamax” are enjoying quite a revival right now, and one new company, Private Screening Collection, is dedicated to re-releasing these nostalgic memories of when T&A was first magically transmitted into your household without your parents knowing about it.

The movie’s titular (heh-heh) heroine is Christina Van Bell, an international jetsetter, model, and trust fund baby, played by Jewel Shepard.  Fans of a certain age will remember Jewel as the bouncy-titted girl in Hollywood Hot Tubs and then later as author of Invasion of the B Girls, an early behind the scenes look at the scream queens of the Eighties.  Christina is captured by a lesbian separatist group run by Karin Schubert, playing a nasty role that would be a women’s prison warden in any other film.  She orders two women to fight, breasts are of course bared, and the winner gets Christina as a prize.  More like Christina gets the winner as a prize.  “After this, you’ll never want a man again,” says the winning fighter before bedding Christina.

And then here comes the Matchbox cars.

Rather than have lesbian sex with Christina, her captors decide to roll toy cars over her naked body.  I didn’t even know this was a fetish; maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, who knows.  But there are two whole scenes devoted to this bizarre practice.  At first little Rolls Royces and Jaguars explore Christina’s hills; then, in the second scene, a tank is brought in apparently to penetrate deeper into the bush.  World cinema had to wait 20 years for another erotic scene involving toy cars.  Yes, I am referring to the first Jackass movie.  Somehow I think I’d rather play Indy 500 with Jewel Shepard’s naked body than with Johnny Knoxville’s, um, anyway.  It’s a curious couple of scenes, but I think I like them, just for the goofiness factor.

Christina gets rescued from her lesbian Le Mans paradise by a team of smugglers.  Christina enjoys this.  “Smugglers or not, they were still men,” she says.  “And I hadn’t seen a man in WEEKS!”  This leads to a short but quite hot sex scene between Christina and the head of the smugglers in his boat’s cabin.  I still remember this scene from way back when.  It looks real, though it obviously isn’t.  It’s a good example of how a sex scene can be memorable if it looks both real and hot enough.

Christina of course has to be rescued again from this horrible life of general pleasantness, so off she goes with another young guy to have more sex by a roaring fire.  Life for poor Christina is horrible, truly horrible.

The movie is chock full of early Eighties jet-setting stereotypes.  There’s also plenty of Eighties electronic disco music, many shots of Mediterranean hot spots, and lots of hammy dialogue to enjoy.  Here’s a gem: “I soon realized I had a love/hate relationship with my captor,” confesses Christina.  “I either needed her desperately, or desperately needed to kick the hell out of her.”  Another thing to look for is a stunt involving a motorcycle and a horse that goes completely awry and nearly ends with a decapitated horse and rider.  I’m going to assume that wasn’t Jewel Shepard herself on the horse, but it’s hard to tell for sure. 

Although the print is complete and seems to be unedited, it’s also very dark and murky.  A brighter, fresher print would have been nicer.  I recently reviewed Felicity, another Cinemax classic, and the transfer came from the director’s personal copy of the film.  It looked absolutely pristine and gorgeous.  Christina also suffers from having no DVD extras.

The last scene cracks me up.  Christina is lying naked next to a pile of her best-selling novels, wearing her thinking glasses, and typing into what looks like an electronic typewriter with 2K of memory and a one line readout.  Ah, high technology from the age of Pong.  “Christina is busily at work on the screenplay of her next film,” intones the narrator with great seriousness, “both writing it and living it.  She’ll be back again soon with another exciting adventure.”  Well, in the end there was just the one movie, so enjoy what there is of it.