The Journey of O

During the 1960s and 1970s many European film credits were americanised, replacing Italian or French or German names of cast and crew with something that sounded more like the Hollywood article. That was not an entirely European practice - for a long time many American immigrant actors had their names anglicised to gain wider acceptance.

Have you ever wondered whether American actors had ever been on the receiving end of such a practice, that is, that their American names had been considered not commercial enough in a certain market and replaced by something French or Italian?

This film is one of the very very few (to be honest: the only one I know of) in which de-Americanisation was deemed necessary to improve market acceptance. At least the German release of this film has the names of cast and crew turned French. For instance, the female lead is credited as 'Adine Lahaie' and indeed she has been made to closely resemble Brigitte Lahaie - although only on the artwork promoting the film. I am pretty sure the artist modelled at least the breasts of that image on Brigitte and not on this actress.

Why? At the time when the film was first distributed, the French simply produced the best (in terms of production values) pornography and Brigitte Lahaie was their top star. The sex cinema customers knew that, and hence it appeared to be a clever move to associate one's product with this origin.

You cannot give a fair review of a film, most especially if it is not the original release.Journey of O in the current DVD release is not the original release. The original film version, contained pee scenes that were edited out by VCX in the 1980's. As a result, more scenes of porn legend Serena were added to fill the gap.

The film star, Claire Dia has a pee fixation, unfortunately... you will see none of that in the current release. Also, there is some bad editing in the last 20 minutes of the film that cut from one scene to another, and back again. Just sloppy work by VCX.

The plot in incoherent and has little to no point to its relevancy. The acting is good, as is the sex. But, falls flat halfway through. especially since it was edited poorly and the pee scenes, the main plot point, was removed.

I really do hope that a uncut, original version is eventually released, I highly doubt it.But, this is the only version available... It's a fair film to a point, and truly a 1970's film...but lackluster because of the editing and cut scenes.