The worst censorship I’ve ever seen was when CBS showed John Carpenter’s version of The Thing for the first time on non-cable TV. They butchered it beyond belief, cutting out all but the briefest glimpses of The Thing. All of the special effects shots with the creature were gone. (“It’s gone MacReady!”). Not only that, but they re-arranged scenes, taking some from the middle and sticking them at the end (!!). I think that if you’d never seen the movie before, you’d be hard-pressed to tell what was going on, or why people were so scared.
The weird thing, of course, is that nothing in those scenes violated any network codes. There was no sex, no nudity, and no human blood. Only monster blood and general grossness. When the movie showed on syndicated and local networks, it fared better. They didn’t butcher it the same way.
The BEST case of network dubbing was a line in the original The Godfather where James Caan, as Sonny, comments on their plan for Michael to do the hit on corrupt police chief Sterling Hayden and the other capo. He’s supposed to pick up a gun when he goes to the men’s room during a meeting in an Italian restaurant.
Original Line: “I don’t want him coming out of the room with his dick in his hand!”
Edited Line:“I don’t want him coming out of the room with a stick in his hand.”
Only a minor sound edit. It’s clear what the real line should be, and even the altered version makes sense without being insulting to the viewer’s intelligence.
The Comedy Central cut of Office Space doesn’t dub–they just blanked out the words and/or cut the scenes. The scene right at the beginning where Michael Bolton is in his car singing along to the profane rap song is really a wonder of bad editing. But my favorite scene with the words cut out is this:
Peter Gibbons: He’s going to ask me to work on Sunday and I’m going to do it, because I’m a, which is why I work at Initech in the first place.
Michael Bolton: Hey, I work at Initech and I don’t consider myself a.
Samir: Yes, I am also not a.
Samir’s line just cracks my “stuff” up. I am also not a!
I need to watch the whole thing on TV sometime just to see what they’ve done to it.
p.s. I’ve only seen Half Baked on Comedy Central. I ought to rent it just to see what I’ve been missing.
The funniest instance I know of involves Sylvester Stallone’s cop vs. terrorist flick, “Nighthawks.”
Rutger Hauer plays a Wolfgar, a German terrorist who has just taken a bunch of people on the Roosevelt Island tram hostage. He has a personal grudge against Detective Deke Da Silva, played by Stallone. Wolfgar is communicating with the negotiator, Detective Fox, played by Billy Dee Williams.
The dialogue is supposed to go something like this:
Hauer: I will exchange one of the hostages for a policeman.
Williams: I’ll be right there.
Hauer: NOT you, Fox! I … want… that BASTARD!
Williams: What bastard?
Stallone (listening in on conversation): Me.
**
Instead, what we heard was…
Williams: I’ll be right there.
Hauer: NOT you, Fox. I… want… that <“buzzard”> "
Williams: What <“buzzard”>?
Stallone: Me.
**
What made it so hilarious is, the voice that said the word “buzzard” sounded EXACTLY like the helium-sucker who used to say “butter” in the old Parkay margarine commecials!
Whenever Starship Troopers shows up on basic cable, it’s edited to remove all of the female toplessness in the shower scene and in the love scene between Dina Myer and Casper Van Diem, with those scenes either cropped or blurred. But none – and I mean none – of the graphic violence is removed. Dismemberment, decapitation, brain sucking, or whatever, is all left in. It certainly plays right into the hands of the people who say the U.S. has screwed-up views on violence and sex.
Made it to the end, and nobody has mentioned my favorites:
[ul]
[li]Weird Science.[/li]Chet’s Original line: “But first, let me…butter yer muffin!”
Chet’s TV line: “But first, let me…better know ya, muffin!”
[li]Caddyshack.[/li]Al Czervik’s Original line: “Hey everybody! We’re all gonna get laid!!”
Al Czervik’s TV line: “Hey everybody! We’re all gonna take a shower!!”
[li]Sixteen Candles.[/li]Long Duck Dong’s Original line: “No more yankee my wankee!!”
Long Duck Dong’s TV line: “No more yankee rum drinkee!!”
[/ul]
As for Casino on USA, my friends and I use the overdubbed lines from that movie constantly. The absolute BEST thing about it is that they have Sharon Stone’s character exclusively using “freak” for fuck. So you get classics like: “FREAK YOU, YOU FREAKIN’ MOTHERFREAKER!!”
I’ve heard that the Coen brothers really get into the edited versions of their movies, which is why the dubbings are so odd. Fargo has some delightfully weird ones. My favorite is “Frosted Snow Demons!”
Oh yeah, and the worst ever is in the Die Hard In An Airport Movie when Bruce Willis sets the plan on fire and says “Yippee-ky-yay, Mr. Falcon!” I mean, that’s the tagline for the whole series! Everyone knows what he’s saying anyway. I watched this on one of those movie shows with hosts, like Dinner and a Movie, or Movies for Guys who Like Movies, and after this denouement, they go back to the hosts, one of whom looks puzzled and says “I don’t get it, who’s Mr. Falcon?” The other one looked pained and whispered something in Host A’s ear. Host B said “Oooohhhhhhh.” When the networks themselves are making fun of the dubbing, you know it’s bad.
This reminds me of a bit from Eddie Murphy’s Delirious concert (horribly misquoted from memory):
Eddie: So, I got a call from Bill Cosby and he’s talking about his kids saw my act, and he’s all (Cosby voice) “The kids came back and they said you said filthin’ foul foul filthin’ filthin’ foul.” (Normal voice) So I said, "Bill, I never said filthin’ foul.’ (Cosby voice) I know what you said, but I say filthin’ foul foul filthin’ foul. (normal voice) But I never said filthin’ foul. So I called up Richard Pryor and asked him about it, and he said (Pryor voice) “Tell Bill to have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.”
I swear that I once saw The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre uncut on broadcast TV. It was in the late 80s-early 90s on the Los Angeles ABC affiliate.
That same station showed Last Tango in Paris very heavily edited. [sub]When I lived in that part of the country I worked late and watched the late movie most nights.[/sub]
For just plain stupid dubbing that does make sense in the movie: In Goonies, when the older kid was supposed to say ‘shit’, the dubbed version replaced it with ‘stuff’, and the mother got mad at him for saying ‘stuff’.
VH1 played Showgirls recently and it was changed or dubbed either visually and hearing alot. Why even show it on TV.
When I was in the Navy in the Persian Gulf (United Arab Emirates and Bahrain) the USO played a very much edited Basic Instinct, instead of a 1 hour and 30 minute movie, it was cut done to about 45 minutes, I missed the violence and the sex, that was the only good parts.
Radio, but my favorite example- Back when I lived in Columbus, OH, there was a certain “local alternative station” which I listened to consistently until I the following incident occured.
They were playing Sublime’s “What I Got”- There’s a line that’s supposed to go “I got a dalmation, and I can still get high
I can play the guitar like a mother fucking riot”
It’s altered to be "I got a dalmation, I can still get fwiff
I can play the guitar like a mother fwiff**fwiff- just a wooshing sound, no attempts at redub
“Don’t get angry when my mom smokes pot.”
Becomes “Don’t get angry when my mom fwiff”
However, the next line “Hits the bottle and goes right to the rock” is fine. And, with “Santaneria”, they don’t bother with any mention of “smack[ing] her head around” or a mention of killing a new boyfriend.
Then you were lucky. The words they dubbed in instead of blanking parts out were just atrocious. After Gene Wilder sobers up, Cleavon Little asks him what he likes to do. Gene: “Playing Cards. Screwing.”
Cleavon: “Lets play cards”
The Bowdlerized version has Wilder saying “Saloon.”
I recently watched some of Lifeforce on a local station. I don’t know if they got the movie that way or they chopped it up themselves but it was so badly cut that it ended several minutes before it really ended. They didn’t even bother to show credits. I guess they just had a lot of trouble editing around the naked woman.
The part where Gene Wilder is describing his creation and Teri Garr asks him if the creature will have everything in proportion. Wilder agrees with that assessment.
Teri Garr Movie: “Well then he would have an enormous schvanstucker!”
Teri Garr TV: “Well then he would have an enormous …personality!”