
So our friends at Remezcla collaborated with Latino USA on a special one-hour episode about Latinos, Latin Americans and film. One of the show’s audio stories focuses on the art (or comedy?) of dubbing English-language films into Spanish. The producers and editors of the episode have had some pretty engaging conversations about dubbing in general, and while there might be one or two examples where a Spanish-language version outshines its English-language counterpart (see this one, which wasn’t dubbed), I am of the school that when it came to dubbing in Spanish when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, the results always made me cringe.
Here are five examples from my childhood that I found again as we were discussing this episode. And yes, they still freak me out.
Patton (1970)
The guy who was George C. Scott’s voice in this classic never really did it for me. Or did he?
The Godfather (1972)
The voice actor who played the dubbing role of Marlon Brando has always sounded like someone who did one atrocious Marlon Brandon Godfather impression in Spanish. It starts about halfway into the video. You have been warned.
Rocky (1976)
This one was painful when I watched it as a kid on TV in Puerto Rico. The Rocky Balboa voice still haunts me to this day.
Back to the Future (1985)
The cop voice always made me laugh, and it still does. And why does Marty sound like one of my friends?
Ghostbusters (1985)
This version seemed to be always on in the late 80s. It took me years to get rid of the Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd voices. But they are back now.
Now it’s your turn. Tweet me @julito77 with your choices.