Vangelis and Shaolin Drunkard
Aug. 12th, 2022 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietomI saw my first kung fu film while in high school. A local station (possibly KTTV or KCOP) had “Kung Fu Theater” every Saturday night at 8pm and again on Sundays at noon. While the fight scenes were usually impressive, I was more amused by the incomprehensible plots and weird dubbing that never synced up with the characters’ mouths. Sometimes all the females in a given film were dubbed by a single actress who didn’t bother to differentiate between little girls, young women, and old grandmas—conversations between these characters sounded like someone talking to herself, which added to my amusement. I preferred the films that took place in “ancient China”, where the action often featured fantastic or improbable fighting styles and weapons, and the stories were more about revenge than drug deals or prostitution rings.
I had initially assumed the dubbers were either Chinese and speaking in heavily accented English, or Westerners using stereotypical Asian accents: dropping articles, merging R and L sounds, that kind of thing—“I get revenge against man who kill teacher!” I think part of that was an unfamiliarity at the time with what seemed to be the (presumably) Australian accents of the dubbers, which rendered words like China or river as Chi-ner and riv-ah. The dubbers also used exaggerated voices, making the films sound as if they had been dubbed by Frank Oz, Gilbert Gottfried, and Nina Hagen.
But listening to these movies while on THC, especially when using earbuds, made me realize:
1. The dubbers were not speaking in broken English or with mock Asian accents at all, just regular English.
2. As strange as the voices might have been, I appreciated the hard work of the dubbers, not only in doing all the dialogue, but also all the other vocal sounds: eating and drinking noises, crowd chatter, laughter, sighs, grunts and groans in the fight scenes, etc.
3. By focusing solely on the voices (a result perhaps of “disassociation” caused by the THC), I was able to separate the action on the screen from the dialogue, and it was like listening to a very strange radio play:
MAN 1: But uncle, the money was stolen! The landlord will evict us if we don’t pay the rent!
MAN 2: Hmm, maybe that crazy monkey girl can help us!
MAN 3: No, no, she left this morning with that strange man with the sword!
(This, incidentally, gave me an idea for a future music project!)
A few weeks ago, I found a film called Shaolin Drunkard which featured, among other things, a man-sized frog using martial arts! It was quite a hoot, to say the least. I immediately recognized some of the music on the soundtrack. Many kung fu films of the 70s and 80s often “borrowed” music, probably without permission. I’ve heard everything from The Twilight Zone theme by Marius Constant to Klingon Battle (from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) by Jerry Goldsmith; from that old standby, Mars, the Bringer of War from The Planets by Holst to, perhaps most notoriously, several tracks from Neu!’s album Neu! 2 and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn in Master of the Flying Guillotine. Shaolin Drunkard was no exception. In addition to music from the Flash Gordon soundtrack by Queen and the Thief soundtrack by Tangerine Dream, there were many Vangelis pieces from the albums Spiral (1977) and Beaubourg (1978). What sets Shaolin Drunkard’s soundtrack apart is whoever edited the music didn’t just tack on music where it was needed—he or she even did a little remixing: for example, at 10:10, when a villain sneaks into a temple at night, there is an excerpt from Beaubourg (starting at 2:48) accompanied by deep synthesized tones which were not part of the original. The night scene, with the synthesized music and surreal imagery, was like something out of one of my digital wonderland vids.
There were a lot of pyrotechnics used in the film, more than I’d ever seen in a kung fu film before, and an extensive use of puppets: finger puppets, paper cut outs, two—how can I describe them?—“butt puppets” that looked like something out of Lidsville, a sort of metal shadow puppet used to steal a key (and pee in someone’s pipe!), and a fire-breathing “marionette” that battles a giant dragon dance puppet that shoots water. And in one of the most imaginative fight scenes I’ve ever seen, the villain uses a series of large metal rings to create traps for the heroes. The heroes are aided by an old woman who uses several bracelets to recreate the traps then “solve” them like doing a Rubiks cube (“The right ring is the key!”).
“Unfortunately”, after the mid-80s or so, the dubbers, or at least their dubbing style, changed. All the outlandish voices were gone. They were not necessarily better actors, however. The crazy radio play dialogue just doesn’t work when spoken in normal, everyday, placid tones.
Finally, a list of some of my favorite films:
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)
Return of the Kung Fu Dragon (1976)
Shaolin Temple (?) The title in the film is indeed Shaolin Temple, but it is neither the 1976 film nor the 1982 film with the same name. This one concerns a prince who is poisoned, and two sisters have to search for the antidote. Their journey eventually takes them to a “Pagoda of Death”. Viewable on YouTube here.
Tiger and Crane Fists (1976)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, aka Shaolin Master Killer (1978)
Amsterdam Connection (1978)
Five Deadly Venoms (1978)
Image of Bruce Lee (1978)
Sleeping Fist (1979)
Return to the 36th Chamber, aka The Return of the Master Killer (1980)
The Snake, The Tiger, The Crane (1980)
Fury in Shaolin Temple (1982)
18 Bronze Girls of Shaolin (1983)
Shaolin Drunkard (1983)
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002)
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Unknown Title (year?) a reverse of Seven Samurai: two bums come to a village and pretend to be kung fu masters so the villagers will give them food and lodging. Everything goes well until a posse of bad guys show up and the villagers expect the “masters” to save the day.
I had initially assumed the dubbers were either Chinese and speaking in heavily accented English, or Westerners using stereotypical Asian accents: dropping articles, merging R and L sounds, that kind of thing—“I get revenge against man who kill teacher!” I think part of that was an unfamiliarity at the time with what seemed to be the (presumably) Australian accents of the dubbers, which rendered words like China or river as Chi-ner and riv-ah. The dubbers also used exaggerated voices, making the films sound as if they had been dubbed by Frank Oz, Gilbert Gottfried, and Nina Hagen.
But listening to these movies while on THC, especially when using earbuds, made me realize:
1. The dubbers were not speaking in broken English or with mock Asian accents at all, just regular English.
2. As strange as the voices might have been, I appreciated the hard work of the dubbers, not only in doing all the dialogue, but also all the other vocal sounds: eating and drinking noises, crowd chatter, laughter, sighs, grunts and groans in the fight scenes, etc.
3. By focusing solely on the voices (a result perhaps of “disassociation” caused by the THC), I was able to separate the action on the screen from the dialogue, and it was like listening to a very strange radio play:
MAN 1: But uncle, the money was stolen! The landlord will evict us if we don’t pay the rent!
MAN 2: Hmm, maybe that crazy monkey girl can help us!
MAN 3: No, no, she left this morning with that strange man with the sword!
(This, incidentally, gave me an idea for a future music project!)
A few weeks ago, I found a film called Shaolin Drunkard which featured, among other things, a man-sized frog using martial arts! It was quite a hoot, to say the least. I immediately recognized some of the music on the soundtrack. Many kung fu films of the 70s and 80s often “borrowed” music, probably without permission. I’ve heard everything from The Twilight Zone theme by Marius Constant to Klingon Battle (from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) by Jerry Goldsmith; from that old standby, Mars, the Bringer of War from The Planets by Holst to, perhaps most notoriously, several tracks from Neu!’s album Neu! 2 and Kraftwerk’s Autobahn in Master of the Flying Guillotine. Shaolin Drunkard was no exception. In addition to music from the Flash Gordon soundtrack by Queen and the Thief soundtrack by Tangerine Dream, there were many Vangelis pieces from the albums Spiral (1977) and Beaubourg (1978). What sets Shaolin Drunkard’s soundtrack apart is whoever edited the music didn’t just tack on music where it was needed—he or she even did a little remixing: for example, at 10:10, when a villain sneaks into a temple at night, there is an excerpt from Beaubourg (starting at 2:48) accompanied by deep synthesized tones which were not part of the original. The night scene, with the synthesized music and surreal imagery, was like something out of one of my digital wonderland vids.
There were a lot of pyrotechnics used in the film, more than I’d ever seen in a kung fu film before, and an extensive use of puppets: finger puppets, paper cut outs, two—how can I describe them?—“butt puppets” that looked like something out of Lidsville, a sort of metal shadow puppet used to steal a key (and pee in someone’s pipe!), and a fire-breathing “marionette” that battles a giant dragon dance puppet that shoots water. And in one of the most imaginative fight scenes I’ve ever seen, the villain uses a series of large metal rings to create traps for the heroes. The heroes are aided by an old woman who uses several bracelets to recreate the traps then “solve” them like doing a Rubiks cube (“The right ring is the key!”).
“Unfortunately”, after the mid-80s or so, the dubbers, or at least their dubbing style, changed. All the outlandish voices were gone. They were not necessarily better actors, however. The crazy radio play dialogue just doesn’t work when spoken in normal, everyday, placid tones.
Finally, a list of some of my favorite films:
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)
Return of the Kung Fu Dragon (1976)
Shaolin Temple (?) The title in the film is indeed Shaolin Temple, but it is neither the 1976 film nor the 1982 film with the same name. This one concerns a prince who is poisoned, and two sisters have to search for the antidote. Their journey eventually takes them to a “Pagoda of Death”. Viewable on YouTube here.
Tiger and Crane Fists (1976)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, aka Shaolin Master Killer (1978)
Amsterdam Connection (1978)
Five Deadly Venoms (1978)
Image of Bruce Lee (1978)
Sleeping Fist (1979)
Return to the 36th Chamber, aka The Return of the Master Killer (1980)
The Snake, The Tiger, The Crane (1980)
Fury in Shaolin Temple (1982)
18 Bronze Girls of Shaolin (1983)
Shaolin Drunkard (1983)
Shaolin Soccer (2001)
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002)
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Unknown Title (year?) a reverse of Seven Samurai: two bums come to a village and pretend to be kung fu masters so the villagers will give them food and lodging. Everything goes well until a posse of bad guys show up and the villagers expect the “masters” to save the day.
