La Fragancia De La Pasion Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  9/2/2004

The Little Details

Running Time: 88 min.

Production Date: 3 / 10 / 2004

Director: Nick Orleans

Cast: Ashton Moore, Jill Kelly, Marc Davis, Temptress, John Decker, Julia Parton, Jenny MacArthur, Alexandra Silk, Elizabeth X, Brick Majors, Randy Spears, and Jack Hammer

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: I’m not sure about this one. At first glance I’m guessing this is another Adam & Eve compilation, but it’s also very similar looking to their The Scent of Passion.

Initial Reaction: Somebody should be slapped for this one.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who insists that their movie be completely in Spanish

Who Should Avoid It: Pretty much everybody.

Audio /Video Quality: The audio is completely dubbed in Spanish. This isn’t that big of a deal here as the video for the sex scenes is slowed slightly for romantic effect so most of the audio was dubbed anyway. The video is very soft. It’s almost a smokey type look to many of the scenes. I hesitate to say grainy, as the entire movie has a very soft feel to it, and the video feel matches it very well.

Music: The music is done by Saint, which to me is a wonderful thing. Saint has a very sexy style, and is very easily recognized. It’s a sexy mix of techno, the standard porn music, soft piano music, and many other styles, depending on the mood of the scene. It’s frequently a little overpowering, but that’s also some of Nick Orleans’ style.

Menus: The menus are okay, The main menu has a minor bit of animation, but is decently done. The chapter menu is fairly basic, and lets you choose a scene based on a small clip from each scene and a chapter number.

The Feature

La Fragancia de la Pasion is a re-release of Adam & Eve’s The Scent of Passion with the audio dubbed in Spanish. As I’ve already reviewed the original movie, I’m going to stick to some general thoughts on the differences between the two releases and my thoughts on this one.

When I picked La Fragancia de la Pasion out of my Pile-O-Porn, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Yeah, the picture is similar to The Scent of Passion, but I didn’t see anything noticeable to compare the two as there’s only a couple lines in Spanish on the front cover and the back cover doesn’t contain anything but the legal fine print. On checking the legal fine print after the disc started, I see that it’s all for The Scent of Passion. I have nothing against re-releasing a title in a different language, but for God’s sake, let people know! All it would have taken here was four words inside a pair of parenthesis on the front cover under the title. That takes virtually no space, wouldn’t affect the aesthetics of the front cover, and most importantly, might make a possible customer happy because they like Ashton Moore or the overall look of the boxcover and saved their hard earned money for a different title rather than one they already have in their collection. As is, the cover appears fairly deceptive to me.

After I popped this title in and saw what it was, I also did a quick search among the nine affiliates offering it on Adult DVD Talk at the time. Out of those nine, only two of them mentioned that this was a re-release of The Scent of Passion with the audio dubbed in Spanish. One of the nine mentioned The Scent of Passion, but did so in a way that didn’t make it clear that it was a re-release and didn’t mention the Spanish language while another mentioned that it was entirely in the Spanish language without mentioning The Scent of Passion. The remaining five affiliates didn’t mention the Spanish language or The Scent of Passion. With over half of the stores offering it not appearing to realize that this is a dubbed re-release and barely twenty percent appearing to know what the DVD really is, I can’t help but fault Adam & Eve on their packaging of this title.

I’m also left to question why The Scent of Passion would be the first title to be re-released like this. It’s basically an all-sex movie, which I guess makes it an easy title to dub and re-release, but it also makes it seem like a bit of a wasted effort. I would think that it would be much better to re-release something with a bit more of a Spanish appeal or a bit more dialogue. Here the little bit of dialogue which was dubbed could be easily skipped without really affecting the overall movie at all. Carmen Luvana seems to be working very well with Adam & Eve, and has even done some extras just in Spanish. It would seem like a much better idea to re-release one of Carmen’s earlier titles, and since she seems to realize that a significant part of her fan base speaks Spanish I would think she would be fairly willing to help release one of her titles in Spanish. Even better, I would recommend that Adam & Eve make their upcoming releases bi-lingual. I’m far from an expert on DVD authoring, but an extra audio track doesn’t seem to take up a lot of space on a DVD and neither do menu screens. They could easily have an opening menu which directs you to either a set of English menus or Spanish menus, as well as having the disc go right to the appropriate audio track when the movie starts. I can understand Adam & Eve wanting to re-release some of their earlier titles on DVD, but in that case I’d suggest reworking some of their earliest titles which have very weak DVD releases. They could re-release these on the bilingual DVDs I just suggested and hopefully draw in both English and Spanish speaking fans each movie rather than limiting themselves to just Spanish speaking fans.

The release of La Fragancia de la Pasion is a good idea that turned into a bad thing due to a few small details. Adam & Eve has a decent idea releasing their movies in the Spanish language, but this isn’t the best way to do it. The packaging is fairly deceptive and the movie is done in a way that the dubbing doesn’t really add much to it. I’m hoping that the cover problems can be chalked up to a first time experience, as otherwise I’d be recommending that somebody has their balls used as a pinata. La Fragancia de la Pasion just doesn’t smell right.

The Extra Stuff

Unlike the original release of The Scent of Passion, which had plenty of extras, this release barely has anything for extras. The only extras here are weblinks and a seven and a half minute interview with Carmen Luvana which is in Spanish.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Straight, anal, masturbation, lesbian, toys, tit-fuck, and group

Raincoat Factor: Very high

Condom Usage: High

The Bottom Line:

Currently, Adam & Eve’s DVDs can be found online for between $8 and $25, with several stores offering this line of DVDs for around $15. Skip this one. The Spanish dub isn’t worth the money and the entire DVD lacks compared to the original release of The Scent of Passion. No, you won’t have the movie in Spanish, but you’ll lose a lot more going with this movie to get it than you will going with the original and not having a couple minutes of dialogue that really don’t matter that much to the overall movie.

Note to Adam & Eve: There’s nothing wrong with the idea of releasing movies in other languages, but this was a very poor choice to try it with. It was also an extremely boneheaded move to do so without really acknowledging that it had already been released.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight