Badmovies.org Forum

I picked up a cheap ($7.99!) double-sided DVD with two Bruce Lee films on it, THE CHINESE CONNECTION and FISTS OF FURY.  I just can't resist cheap DVDs (God bless you MADACY home video).

Anyway, the dubbing on TCC had me laughing my ass off!  Bruce Lee sounds like Barry White!  In fact most of the actors are dubbed over with really deep voices.  For about the first 20 minutes of the film, I kept wondering if there was a problem with the way my DVD player was reading the DVD.  The voices sounded so funny, I thought it was playing the audio track at 3/4 speed or something like that.

Any other good examples of amazingly bad dubbing out there?

Better you should ask if there are any examples of remotely good dubbing out there. As much as I hate dubbing (picture it: Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" with Saturday-morning-cartoon actor voices), Jurgen Prochnow's performance in "Das Boot" actually improved when he dubbed his own lines into English. Maybe it's a cultural thing. (The lips still didn't match half the time.)

I also bought this DVD at a suncoast and you should look through "Chinese Collection" because there are certain sections of it that make me think it was copied off a VHS of SVHS tape because of tracking problems.

About 95 percent of dubbed anime is completely awful.  I will never understand why so many idiots would rather watch it in poorly translated and acted English than in its intended language, especially now that DVD allows the studios to put both dubs and subtitled versions on the same disc.

The dubbed version of Ghost in the Shell is one of the most offensive atrocities I have ever witnessed.  The movie begins with a scene in which a female human/cyborg police officer is communicating with her partner via a kind of electronic telepathy.  Her (male) partner comments that she has a lot of static in her brain.  In the Japanese version she replies, "It's that time of the month."  

But for some reason in the dub they changed her reply to "Must be a loose wire."  It's insane--the movie has copious amounts of nudity and graphic violence, and the translators think we're too sensitive for a simple PMS joke.  And to think that most American fans actually prefer that version of the movie makes me want to vomit.

I've seen the dubbed version of Ghost in the Shell, and I agree that the dubbing is terrible.  I didn't know about the PMS joke, but in general it was just bad.  I hope that the actress who dubbed the main character's voice didn't get paid more than minimum wage, because she put the minimum amount of effort into the role.

There is a kung fu movie called the crippled masters its one of the best or worst movies ever just depends on how you look at it
If you have'nt seen it you should check it out.

Aw, Ghahd, you had to remind me of that...

Dubbing presents a terrible challenge, in that Language A will present a concept in a single word that Language B requires five sentences to express, and vice-versa--hence all the "Speed Racer" type repetative dialog in anime and kaiju flicks--and "GITS" (as in, "You Stupid Gits") had tons of heavy-duty concept to crowd into such little time...I think the actress just gave up on emoting in order to concentrate on speed-reading her lines without flubbing. (Try it sometime!--try to match her speed without going "blbblbbpp!" in the middle of a sentence. I can't do it.)

I have other issues with the video (Kusanagi tearing her own android body apart probably had techno-freak manga creator Masamune Shirow vomiting through his nose with laughter), but now I tend to ignore the dialog and lose myself in that superb (and freaking loud) score. Thankfully, I'm familiar with both versions of the manga.

Tip for perverts: Dark Horse Comics edited Kusanagi's little cyber-vacation with her girlfriends--heavily--for the US version of the "Ghost In The Shell" manga. You would have killed to see the full version in anime, trust me on this. Three pages of well-oiled action can be seen in color in the Japanese manga volume. Two of those pages are reprinted in Shirow's "Intron Depot." Daaaaaaaamn.

Every month you can see more of Shirow's yumyums--albeit usually fully-clothed--at http://www.seishinsha-online.co.jp/ with English text available.

>Anyway, the dubbing on TCC had me laughing my ass off! Bruce Lee >sounds like Barry White!

Ha!  You should have been going to the movies when they were first released!  I think the first time we actually got to hear Lee's true voice was Enter the Dragon --- and it was weird in reverse.  We were used to Lee having this deep, resonant voice...

Nothing can top ZOMBIE 90 EXTREME PESTILENCE on the bad dubbing department. Maybe it was a joke but its DEFINITELY the worst.

Have to agree with the squishmister. Subtitles only frighten the illiterate...hope i spelled that right...i just can't realy get an actors full performance till i hear the voice. I've seen all the Toho films in the original language,and prefer them that way. I wonder if people in other countrys feel the same way about our film output? The word-length problim is inevitable unless we all spoke the same language. Oh,well.

I've always preferred films in their original language.  Many of my friends are of a different opinion of course.  I can say that the dubbing for "Princess Mononoke" was fantastic and I have watched both versions (Japanese and English - gotta love DVD) a number of times.

Andrew

Yeah, Mononoke's got a great dub (Neil Gaiman should have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay).  Another great dubbed anime is Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, which was Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film.  It's the only anime where I actually prefer the dub.

I usually prefer to watch anime dubbed.  But that's me.  I used to only buy the subtitled versions, until I realized it was affecting the way I watched the movie.  Watch some movie, look down and read the text, look back up, look down.  It gave the movie a slightly staccato effect.  I'd imagine others are better at avoiding this, but I tend to focus one place at a time.

As far as the voice acting, it doesn't usually bother me unless it's really bad.  I think it depends on which version you see first.  If you saw it in the original japanese, than almost any dub would be terrible.  The only version of AKIRA I saw for years was the subtitled one.  Then I watched the dubbed version and thought it was awful.  The only version of GHOST IN THE SHELL I've seen is the dubbed one, and the voices have never bothered me.

Of course, now I buy DVD and get both versions.

As a diehard GITS fan, I have to urge you to watch the subtitled version.  The Japanese voice actors are superior in every way to their American counterparts, and I'm sure there are many more translation flubs like the PMS joke I've mentioned (but I've never been able to watch the dub all the way through to find out).

Another important point about GITS is that the original Japanese version has MUCH BETTER music on the end credits than the dub.  Unfortunately Manga put awful techno on the end credits, completely spoiling the creepy ambiguity at the end of the film.  Even worse, they put it on the Japanese language track on the DVD, so the only way to hear the movie's ending the way it was meant to be heard is on the subtitled VHS version.  Grrr....

Yep, if anything proves the value of PROfessional actors for a dub job, its Princess Mononoke. Had to like the script as it was.too. The refusal to make the leader of the foundery people a mindless vile monster  is a lesson more american writers should take to heart.