Unpopular opinion: bad dubbing makes bad movies better, not worse

I used to hate badly dubbed foreign horror flicks because the voices never matched the lips. Then a friend told me 'the mismatch is part of the charm, it adds to the awkward vibe.' Now I actually seek out movies with terrible dubbing because it makes me laugh more than the plot ever could. So which side are you on, do you prefer subtitles or bad dubbing for a bad movie night?

2 comments

2 Comments

clairem3818d ago

32 minutes into a bad dub of a Thai horror movie called The Victim, the lead actress screams "My foot is in the bucket!" when she's clearly holding her hand over a bleeding wound. That disconnect is pure gold. Do you actually prefer the dubbing to be so bad it's nonsensical, or do you like it more when the voices are just slightly off but still follow the plot? I feel like there's a big difference between a funny mismatch and something that completely kills the scene's pacing.

emmam3218d ago

Haha "My foot is in the bucket!" that's amazing... I'm honestly torn because I love a good weird mismatch that makes no sense, like when the voice actor sounds way too cheerful for a murder scene. But then I've also sat through a whole movie where the dub was just slightly off, like the voices didn't quite match the lip flaps but the plot still worked... and I actually felt kind of disappointed it wasn't worse. Guess that says a lot about my taste, huh... I'm the kind of person who watches bad dubs specifically for those moments where you can't tell if the translator was messing with us or just ran out of time.