MovieChat Forums > The Quatermass Xperiment (1956) Discussion > REALLY BAD dubbing

REALLY BAD dubbing

posted 11 years ago by bok602
4 replies | jump to latest

Can anyone explain why this otherwise exceptionally well-made film shot itself in the foot by re-dubbing the voice of the astronaut's wife so badly?

I looked in the trivia section to see if there was some compelling reason why the actress' lines were all hastily re-recorded, but there was nothing mentioned.

And it's not like it was just an isolated instance of dialogue replacement; her every line is clumsily and ham-fistedly dubbed over. And done so badly and obviously that it jars me completely out of the film; no attempt whatever was made to match the audio level or even mix it in with the rest of the audio track.

Every word of dialogue she speaks is literally pasted on top of every scene she's in, almost as though somebody decided after the film was completed to just go in, cut out every section of the sound track that had her voice in it and replace it with a bald, flat, monotone recording.

Any film fans out there have any insight?

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

[–] capkronos 10 years ago

According to Wiki...

Another American star provided by Robert L. Lippert was Margia Dean, who played Judith Carroon. A former beauty queen,[21] Dean was allegedly cast on account of her association with the 20th Century Fox president, Spyros Skouras.[13] According to executive producer Michael Carreras, "Skouras had a girlfriend who was an actress and he wanted her in pictures, but he didn't want her in pictures in America, because of the tittle-tattle or whatever, so he set it up though his friend Bob Lippert".[49] Val Guest recalled of her, "She was a sweet girl, but she couldn't act".[50] Her American accent was considered out of place in the film and so her lines were dubbed in post production.[21]

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[–] bok602 10 years ago

Ah! The sordid truth comes out!

"If you don't know the answer -change the question."

[–] capkronos 10 years ago

I was in the middle of watching it and had to pause to see just what in the heck happened there. It *is* very distracting. Oh well, back to finish the movie. It's good so far (other than that awful dub).

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http://thebloodypitofhorror.blogspot.com/

[–] hobnob53 10 years ago

While I agree that Margia Dean's dubbed-over voice was terrible, the Wikipedia story simply doesn't ring true.

Margia Dean was not some newcomer to movies in 1955, as the Wiki entry (which I'd previously read on that site) implies. In fact, she had been acting in films steadily since 1944 and ultimately appeared in something like 54 films and 7 TV shows before retiring in the early 60s. She routinely made as many as 3 or 4 pictures a year, of varying quality and in roles of varying sizes, but whatever her talent she was hardly inexperienced and was continually given work.

Spyros Skouras may or may not have fobbed her off on Robert L. Lippert but if so it was years earlier, since she acted in many Lippert films during the 40s and early 50s, all in Hollywood. In fact, there's no evidence she ever acted at Fox, Skouras's studio, and by the 50s she was working away from Lippert Pictures. If Skouras didn't want her seen in Hollywood films to keep her under wraps, he was about a decade late.

As far as her American accent being unacceptable, the problem is that whoever looped in her dialogue was also an American (or perhaps a Canadian, or a rare Briton who can imitate an American accent convincingly, which I very much doubt). But in any case her looped-in voice was not a British accent of any kind. So whatever her alleged problem may have been it wasn't her having an American accent. Val Guest may have found her a bad actress but they didn't loop over her voice because of any accent issues. Considering her lengthy experience her performance couldn't have been any worse than having her dubbed so abysmally. Or did Spyrous Skouras think no one would recognize her with a different voice?

As of this writing, Margia Dean is still alive at 92. Maybe someone should ask her why she was dubbed.

Even when I saw this film as a kid, Dean's badly dubbed voice detracted from an otherwise excellent movie. But the Wiki article doesn't really make sense when you know all the facts.