Cheech ‘n’ Chong’s Next Movie: They cut out not only the foul language but all the drug references. Hello, drug humor was 70% of C’n’C’s schtick! Why bother showing this movie on network television?
I think my favorite, though, is Smokey & The Bandit, where they sub Jackie Gleason’s “sumbitch!” with “scumbum!” Of course, they also try to overdub Jerry Reed’s “Nice ass!” (to Burt Reynolds, referring to Sally Field) with “Lotsa classsss…sexy!”. Nice try, but, no.
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To tell the truth, I actually get weary of excessive swearing in a movie. Really, is it necessary to have someone say “fuck” 178 times in two hours? Does it make the movie funnier? Better? That much more realistic?
I find it funnier when a character says something other than a bleepable word. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when the kid is trying to collect money for the kidney operation and Jennifer Grey bats the collection can out of his hand, he yells out “You heartless wench!” I laughed my ass off! Sorry, “butt” off.
I forget if it was on Lifetime but I saw a TV version of Goodfellas where “Two n-----s just stole my truck!” was changed to “Two jerks just stole my truck!” and “You know who goes to jail? N----- stick-up men!” became “Stupid stick-up men!”
The word in question was edited out when Family Channel used to show Blazing Saddles. USA Network would edit it out when showing the film during daytime, but not in primetime. Yes, it’s sad that I’ve watched the film that many times on TV, and that I know this.
Then again Family Channel used to edit out “hell” and “damn” from mild stuff like Support Your Local Sheriff.
ABC and ABC Family (formerly The Family Channel) have been doing some weird things with movies recently, from adding a bra to a Bond girl to further bowdlerizing Blazing Saddles. The latter included the above mentioned removal of the N-word and replacing “Kansas City faggots” with “Kansas City horses.”
Honorable mention: changing Lardass in Stand by Me to just plain “Lard.”
My vote is for the TV version of “The Blues Brothers.”
In the very beginning, The Penguin (Sister Mary Stigmata) has Jake and Elwood in her office in the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage, trying to get them to recognize the seriousness of the orphanage’s financial situation and get their help. When the Brothers begin using extremely foul language, she starts hitting them with a ruler:
Jake: “And I said, ‘looks like you’re really up shit creek.’”
Penguin: whacks with ruler
Elwood: “Christ, Jake, take it easy–”
Penguin: whacks with ruler
Jake, Elwood: “Shit! Ow! Christ! Fuck! Son of a bitch!”, etc.
Penguin: whack whack whack whack whack whack
The TV version was… pathetic.
Jake: “And I said, 'looks like you’re really up. —Thecreek.”
Elwood: “Hey, Jake, take it easy–”
Jake, Elwood: “Ow! Darn! Stop! Hey!”
And while in the hospital I saw the edited version of Blazing Saddles. So much was blanked out I wondered if I’d accidentally found a Jerry Springer show.
My favorite dubbed line in Smokey and the Bandit is when Jerry Reed tells his dog “hold on to your ass Fred”, on network TV it became “hold on to your hat fred” with the word “hat” being a totally different voice.
It depends on the circumstances. Even when I was a kid I always cringed when there was “adult language” that was obviously only put in to get a PG rating- see C.H.O.M.P.S. for an especially egregious example. But when Dante in Clerks says “try not to suck any cock on your way over there” it is fitting. The issue is not so much realism as it is characterization, even when the voices on dubs match and the words don’t stand out like a sore thumb you can still tell when a character just wouldn’t say what you heard.
I just saw The Road Warrior on UPN, and man, did they mangle it. Not only did they chop out as many violent bits as possible, but they also changed the Adult feral kid’s voiceover from an Aussie accent to an American one; and also kinda covered up the Mohawk guy’s buttcheeks with some dark tinting.
They also removed the line spoken to him by the Humungous after Mohawk guy loses his golden guy lover. Originally, the Humungous had said, “We’ve all lost someone we love.” The line is now gone from the TV version.
What messed up The Blues Brothers is that John Belushi died before the movie could be dubbed, so they got his brother Jim to dub in the clean lines, and Jim doesn’t really sound much like John.
Funny you should mention that, as it was on tv this very day. They changed all of the “fucks” to either flip or forget, which made for some amusing moments.
Jab1,
John Belushi did NOT die before Blues Brothers finished production. He may have done enough drugs during the shoot to kill a large horse, but he survived long enough to give us the travesty that is 1941.
My personal favorite was “The Great Outdoors” on the USA Network. In one scene, there’s several times where people tell others to blow things our their ass. However, in the edited version they tell them to go blow it out their, in a completely different, unemotional and off-sync voice, “Oh, go blow it out your -kazoo-.” “Why don’t you go blow it out your -kazoo-!” “Ok, no one is going to be blowing anything out their -kazoos-.” Single funniest scene in a movie for all the wrong reasons.
A friend of mine from Malaysia tells me that when they showed The Shining they had to edit it so heavily to remove the supernatural elements (weird censorship laws) that the plot was almost completely changed–he had no idea it was a movie about a haunting. He thought it was about a guy who goes crazy with an axe in a big hotel…
