Movies that should NOT be edited for TV

[Vermin Boy]

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?

[AndyC]

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.

[raj]

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?

[systemcr4sh]

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??

[AndyC]

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.

[Private Joker]

Hmmm...Full Metal Jacket?

[Private Joker]

Hmmm...Full Metal Jacket?

[Susan]

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

[Goon]

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.

[Chadzilla]

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.

[jmc]

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.

[BlackAngel]

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.

[raj]

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.

[AndyC]

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.

[AndyC]

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.