Why I think that dubbed movies are always better than sync sound.

[TheKungFuRobber]

I think that all movies should be dubbed. I just can't see good audio ever being shot in sync sound, and given that there are a lot of great actors out there whose accents are mostly distracting, it is much for the better that there are hired voice artists or that people get another chance to get their lines on key. I grew up watching Hong Kong martial arts films, Italian Westerns and old Horror. All of which were shot without sound and dubbed later. The volume is much louder unlike modern films which come across as mumbing.

In the case of Jackie Chan, I prefer his dubbed Cantonese voice which I feel is a lot clearer and sounds much less irritating, and his English voice actor was much clearer than his own very lispy voice along with the mumbled nature of sync sound. Take the original English dub of Police Story 3: Super Cop for instance, done in Hong Kong with an English voice actor and then compare it to the later re-recording done in 1996 when the film came out again, when the studio decided that the film needed Warren G and Tupac to make up part of the soundtrack. It's just not as good. I enjoyed the film all the same and feel that the revised edit of the film did a good job of remixing the sound effects in contrast to the much more cartoonish Mad Max 2 style sound effects and soundtrack of the 1992 release, but I feel that they made up part of the film much better. All in all, for marketing reasons I felt it was unneccessary. SuperCop is a masterpeice of Hong Kong filmmaking, it shows some absolutely mad stunts. In a certain context, I would say it was the craziest movie Chan has made in terms of it's off the wall action scenes and feel that the film would have been just as successful had the film been untouched for it's 1996 release. Interestingly enough, Police Story 3 SuperCop was the first Hong Kong film in which Jackie Chan used his own voice and perhaps American audiences prefer Chan's own voice though. It wasn't a new film when it came out and maybe Dimension just saw it as a necessity to redo the soundtrack. I also feel that the re-arrangement and editing of scenes didn't do anything for pacing. I think Dimension did a good job of re-grading the colour for scenes which gives the film a more fleshed out and bright appearence, but at the same time the slightly gloomy colours of the original HK version added to the insanity of the film.

On the other hand I felt the US version of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath was much better than the Italian version. The re-ordering of scenes in the US version makes for a better film, although I didn't care much for the alterations made to The Telephone. I feel that the colours are better on the US version too, and the extra scenes with Boris Karloff which were filmed for the US version are a welcome addition. I also think that the music created fo the US version by Les Baxter was much more fitting in tone for the film. Having watched both versions, I wouldn't watch any other version of the film. Black Sabbath remains one of the best gothic horror films I have watched, and the cinematography in the The Wurdalak sequence, the use of purple hues and ominous colours and dark sets are well ahead of their time. I would highly recommend you watch it if you haven't already seen it.

[Killer Meteor]

One reason I find latter day Shaws a bit tedious in between fights is the limited number of dubbers for the Mandarin tracks. The Venoms are a bunch of young lads in their 20s and the dubbers sound much older and posher then the characters look.

[sym8]

I loved the street fighter dub,for me the voices just seemed to match the the characters and mood of the film much better than the Japanese original.

[Cognoscente]

On 10/12/2019 at 12:41 PM, Killer Meteor said:

One reason I find latter day Shaws a bit tedious in between fights is the limited number of dubbers for the Mandarin tracks. The Venoms are a bunch of young lads in their 20s and the dubbers sound much older and posher then the characters look.

They needed young Northerners.