I just saw From Dusk Till Dawn on my local UPN station... Man! So many lines were overdubbed, it was like a different script at points. For starters, the bar is now called the "Kitty Twister" (complete with a K superimposed over the T)... Cheech's speech outside it now makes NO sense ("If you can find cheaper *kitty* anywhere... *FORGET* IT!!!"), and the last line is now the classic "Hey, I may be a *bad guy*, but I ain't no *freaky* *bad guy*!"
Anyone else have a favorite TV edit?
Yep, there comes a point when somebody ought to speak up and say "you know, this just isn't working." Some movies just can't be made safe for family viewing.
One of my favourite dubs is A&E's edited Repo Man. Of course, it doesn't lose enough to make it unwatchable, but lines like "flip you melonfarmer" stand out just a little. It's just ridiculous enough to be funny, but not maddening.
Flipping channels over the weekend, I chanced upon one basic cable station showing Showgirls. Naturally that movie would be edited down (to what, a half hour?). So why show it then?
Edited Dumb and Dumber is a classic.
Instead of
"Where should I sign?"
"Right on my ASS after you KISS IT!!!!"
was turned into:
"Where should I sign?"
"Right on my - SANDWICH - after you kiss it!"
Why didn't they just change it to Arse or something that actually would look like he said it??
Sandwich? That doesn't even make sense.
Would almost be better to say 'butt' and just not have the lips match. Not like it doesn't already happen. Either that or cut the scene entirely, except that it's usually even more irritating when that's done. I'm trying to think of an example of a movie where a scene is just so difficult to dub that it's cut entirely. Usually happens to the best parts.
Hmmm...Full Metal Jacket?
Hmmm...Full Metal Jacket?
I think the most extreme form of editing was in "The breakfast club", I think it was TBS that edited the line "eat my shorts" to "eat my socks"
gimmie a break
I remember seeing Tobe Hooper's "Crocodile" on USA once and being greatly reminded of all those films that feature narration instead of dialog. The channel mutes over all swearing so a typical conversation between the actors was something along the lines of " **** this bu****** man I'm ********** geting the **** out of this **********" or " Did you see that ********* it just ****** ****** man oh ******* we are all so ***********!"
A movie like that with 1/3 of the speech missing ends up being very funny, especialy when the sound goes dead for entire sentances. Still, it's better than dubbing over like they did in "Armageddon" once and ended up with Bruce Willis saying "Lets blast this son of a witch." at the climax of the film. Words connot describe how weird it felt to hear that.
--------ooo-'U'-ooo------Kilroy was here.
The doofiest edit I heard (or at least was mocked into my memory of all eternity) was the NBC network airing of Halloween, instead of Sheriff Brackett saying "Kids parking, fooling around, getting high." The line was changed to "Kids parking, fooling around, being sly."
???
This lead to numerous, "Hey, are you being SLY?" jokes amongst my geek club of horror/fantasy/sci-fi friends in school.
Scanners had a terrible edit. The final facedown between Vale and Revok ended with some glowing squiggles shooting out of Michael Ironside's eyeballs just after he said "I'm gonna suck your brain dry."
???
And the line "Smile you son of a b***h." Was looped so that the offending word was muffled by the explosion.
Of course Spielberg as altered the movie permananly so the offensive word no longer appears in the movie itself.
a***ole.
Did they ever play the De Palma SCARFACE on network or cable TV? I imagine that would have been pretty good. I've seen edited versions of THE GODFATHER before that were pretty funny...I guess now they've started playing it uncut on basic cable.
How about the scene in the movie The Mask, the dog was taking a whizz on one of the thugs. Granted it is a bit risque on, say, a saturday afternoon, but the movie also come on late night, when the kids are sleeping. There's no need to have it cut.
You know when we were kids, we would talk about our favorite scenes on a movie? I remember when I was a kid, we would talk about the movie Coming to America with Eddie Murphy. I didn't see the movie at the time, but the other kids would talk about a scene where one mourning, Murphy would yell out, in an african accent, "Good Mourning, America!", and you hear another voice yelling out, "f**k you!" , and Murphy , not knowing what it mean, yells back "f**k you too" and we were dying of laughter. A couple of years later, the same movie came on ABC, channel 7 in New York. In my kiddie mind, I thought the same scene would be there. But, when I saw it on tv, instead of " f**k you", it was "Damn You" and I didn' t laugh at all. It would be funnier if the punchline had the curse word in it.
But, but, but, Bart Simpson says "eat my shorts." What the blazes is going on?
On a related note, recently Doonsebury had a week long story on Refern's kid interning with the CIA in Afgahnistan. Because the strip twice that week used the word "damn", the local newspaper decided not to offend South Carolinians' sensibilities and reran an earlier strip.
Now they did leave the regular strip up on the website.
Son of a witch? Huh?
What is so horrible about "son of a b***h" anyway? You're basically saying that somebody's mother was a dog. The sentiment is pretty nasty (no more nasty than calling her a witch though), but "b***h" is a perfectly legitimate word.
Just remembered my favourite bit of censoring. When somebody says "goddamn" and they just blank the "god" part. It doesn't work at all, because it sticks out like a sore thumb. Like most of these techniques, it actually draws your attention to the coarse language. It's pathetic.
Anybody have one station that would play the movies intact?
There were a few years when we just wouldn't even watch some movies unless they were shown on City TV out of Toronto, because City, which was independent and kind of unconventional, would broadcast them in their original form. Now more of the stations are doing the same.
I once tried to watch the edited Mallrats on USA. Wow. You never actually hear Jay's real voice. Everyone says, "Darn! I can't see the gosh-darn boat! Melonscratcher!".
It's probably been mentioned, but The Big Lebowski. The whole Strange in the Alps line.. Ha ha.
>Edited Dumb and Dumber is a classic.
"I once crossed a bulldog with a s**tzu." Lauren Holly looks at him and he just stands there giggling. The punchline is completely missing.
Some other favorites;
Lethal Weapon;
"Martin, you're being an a***ole." > "Martin, you're being an airhead."
Tremors;
"Jesus Christ" > "Judas Priest", "
"Broke into the wrong goddamn rec-room didn't you, you sum-b***h!" > "Broke into the wrong gol-durn rec-room didn't you, you big jerk!"
I'm almost afraid to ask, but... Strange in the Alps?
Oh yeah what about:
"Killer klowns from outer space? Holy s**t!"
to
"Killer Klowns from outer space? Holy .. smoke.."
My GOD! How can you people stand this senseless butchering? It would drive me insane in seconds. But then I'm probably spoiled from living in a country with virtually no censorship at all. Films broadcast on TV here are (almost) always the same as the theatrical release. At least that's a small upside to being eurotrash.
Of course, my favourite example is the Spanish children's show that featured full frontal nudity. You don't see that every day.
Isn't it interesting how some cable networks are more strict on censoring than others. You can sell ass whore b***h and a ton of other things on the main networks like NBC (even last season on ER they said 's**t). And yet movies with original PG-13 ratings on TBS and the like are getting a major swing of the censor axe.
I've heard "Son of a snitch!" and "airhead" instead of a-hole is common. Once I caught Goonies on the Disney channel. Every "Oh,my God," is changed to "Gosh,", but the dubbing is messed up so they say, "Oh, my God-sh,".
I love how when editing the word a***ole, the edit hole not ass.
Also Mallrats and Clerks might just be the best editing ever because Kevin Smith reportly purposely did the WORST EDITING EVER. He didn't want them to air the movies in the first place so he edited them really really poorly.
Randal ordering Porno's is simply
I need one of the following (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and (mute) and that's all, oh yeah, what was that you wanted.
ARMY OF DARKNESS - "I got news for you pal, you ain't leadin' but two things right now, Jack and ------ ...and Jack just left town.
Makes no f**kin sense like that!
I don't remember the exact line.. "That's what you get when you f**k a stranger in the ass"
I can't remember the butchered version perfectly, but ass becomes alps.
How's this for obnoxious editing:
The T.V. version of the movie Prince of Darkness was edited so that the whole story was just a dream
JUST A DREAM!
Done no doubt to avoid offending people. Didn't work; I was offended.
How about Back To The Future? It's funny to watch on tv: "Geez Louies Doc!" and"You sonofabutthead."
>Of course, my favourite example is the Spanish children's show that featured full >frontal nudity.
What show was this? Xuxa?
>Isn't it interesting how some cable networks are more strict on censoring than >others.
Sometimes, but not always. USA/SFC will allow things like "ass", "p**sed" and "son of a b***h" in the shows they produce, but they'll censor them out of shows they buy the rights to. That makes no sense to me. USA will even censor the slightest bit of nudity, even if you don't see anything. At one they were airing Highlander and they put a blurry patch under a woman's arm while she changed her top with her back to the camera, since you could see the side of her breast. Ok, so they don't like nudity, but then on La Femme Nikita, the main male star of the show got out of bed completely nude and walked away from the camera in a well-lit room, with no censoring or obstruction of the view of any kind. His bare butt was on clear display for several seconds. Of course if they ever air Lethal Weapon, they'll censor the nearly identical scene of Mel Gibson.
In an early episode of the show First Wave, the star discovers a cloning factory where all the bodies are nude, but hanging by strategically placed straps so that you don't actually see anything. However, any scene that would have given you a good look at any of the female bodies (you could see about half their breasts on either side of the straps), they electronically zoomed the picture in on the star to crop the bodies out of the frame. In a later season, they had a female wrestler as a guest star and she started out hanging nude in the exact same kind of straps and there was no censoring.
One of the worst offenders is Comedy Central. Anytime there's nudity or graphic violence, instead of just cutting the scene or blurring out the offensive image they zoom the view, making the picture fuzzy and distorted, to crop it out. A good example is the prison shower scene in Half Baked.