Hola, amigos/amigas! One of the unintentional sources of charm and amusement for me when I watch spaghetti westerns are some of the badly dubbed-in voices for English-speaking audiences.
One of my favorite SW’S is And God Said to Cain (1970) w/Klaus Kinski, and directed by Anthony Margheriti. I think it’s a great western as far as combining the common SW theme of revenge with elements of horror. That being said, every version of the movie with dubbed in English has a voice for Klaus that is so incongruent with his appearance that I get a good laugh from it wheneverI first hear the voice. There are many other goofy voices that I’ve heard over the years in SW’S, but And God Said to Cain comes to mind immediately.
What SW movie(s) have you seen that had a dubbed in voice so bad that it stands out? What character was it?
The famously bad dub for Franco Nero in ‘Django’ makes the film almost unwatchable …
The one I hate, which turns up a lot, is an actor called Lloyd Batista, who is well known for his role in ‘Blindman’ (1971) … but he dubs a lot of other leading actors in SWs and sounds like a smug prick who thinks he’s so sexy and smooth! … it’s not just his voice, his delivery is so cheesy it upsets me.
I think it’s Lloyd dubbing George Hilton in ‘The Moment to Kill’ and he’s dubbed other biggies like Terence Hill. Just horrible!
Thanks, Aldo! Is Batista the one with the New York/ Brooklyn accent? More often than I care to, I hear this east coast accent in SW’s as well as other Italian cinema genres.
The English voice dubber for Kinski in ‘Black Killer’ stands out as particularly incongruous for someone with Kinski’s physiognomy. Mind you that film is generally atrocious though so it hardly matters.
It’s not New York … but I’m not sure which region it could be from, it just sounds fake, like the way many DJs and TV presenters speak.
I’ve heard quite a few New York accents in Euro-crime films, which are ridiculous, as the settings are clearly not American … and they talk about Dollars rather than Lire … who are they trying to kid!?
Batista appeared in a John Wayne movie, ‘Chisum’ … I think Wayne shoots him early on, but he does get a few lines … also, as I mentioned ‘Blindman’ he plays a main character called ‘Domingo’ and that’s his own voice … very distinctive, but not unlike Frank Latimore, as correctly identified by @Dean You should be able to find some clips on You Tube.
One of the interesting things about SWs for me is how my feelings about these aspects change over the years. Initially I couldn’t stand that Django dub, but now I kind of love it. It has a certain nostalgia to it that always brings back the feeling I had while watching spaggies in my early days. So now I actually enjoy it quite a bit. A similar thing happens with the music for Keoma and Mannaja
For me, almost all the English dubs are pretty bad, but the top 2 are Django are Massacre Time, almost feels like the people they hired to do the dubbing thought they either weren’t getting paid enough or that the whole concept was a bad idea and only gave the bare minimum.
As almost everyone on here is already aware of, I prefer the original Italian language.
Its not so much a terrible dub as it is sacrilege to have LVC playing a lead role and somehow not use his voice in the English dub… and he’s not the only actor missing their own voice here, very strange
The guy who dubbed Frank Wolff in God Forgives… I Don’t’s Spanish version Tú Perdonas… Yo No has a good voice but there’s one part of the dubbing that makes me laugh my ass of:
So, there’s the scene where Cat throws a knife at Bill’s hand and in the Spanish dub Bill lets out a comical scream that sounds like AILALEOOUUU In other dubs of the film I have seen, Bill’s scream is more like a silent grunt/isn’t as extreme.
I’ll have to watch the rest of the other language dubs too to see how their voice actors handle the scene
