Worst editing of language in a movie shown on TV

The laughable dubbed swearing is nothing to do with the tv companies at all.

These "tv versions" became a requirement in the 80's when bad language became so prevalent that it was impossible for BBC and ITV to manually edit the odd word here and there like they had been able to up to that point.

So the tv version was created , mainly for US tv where swearing is still banned aswell as nudity.

Throughout the 80's and 90's these versions were on ITV all the time while the BBC soldiered on with their own editing although they had to admit defeat with Beverly Hills Cop and air the tv version.

These versions are usually prepared at the time of production with violence and nudity often filmed more than once from different angles to provide tv channels with as complete a version as possible so they could reframe some gore/ nudity without cutting the scene and its dialogue.

Some older films were not dubbed at the time and were done later on when the original actors were unavailable so they can be a laugh riot. Check out Basic Instinct for one such example.

Thankfully in recent years the UK has grown up and even the BBC will allow strong language past 10 so they are now back where they were 30 years ago being able to edit themselves only the very strongest worRAB and we rarely get the tv versions although they are useful in enabling tv channels to show some of the swearier films in the daytime.

TV versions of the 80's and 90's were also noticeable for their poor picture quality as they were usually supplied on grotty tape conversions from NTSC instead of nice 35 mm film prints
 
I think it's more amusing when unedited swears 'slip through the net'.

I delightedly remember an early evening BBC1 showing of the Alan Alda/Ann-Margaret comedy 'A New Life' in about 1990, when Alda has a literal 'near-miss' encounter with a transvestite and promptly hoiks him out of the taxi, explaining to him that "I think you should wear a f***ing sign around your neck". Needless to say, my mum was a bit embarrassed, given that this was about 7.30pm on a Sunday night.
 
Not that I remember seeing it but the infamous ITV edit of Robocop sounRAB a right laughathon, cutting almost all the violence and swearing (eg changing "mother****er" to Mothercrusher).
 
Kindergarten Cop when it was on ITV1 last Saturday was pretty badly edited, especially near the end when you hear "You Son of a" and then you see a jump where "bitch" should have been.
 
I remember the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumping Jack Flash being cut to pieces..I think it was on ITV
 
I seem to remember the C word being terribly edited out in the first few minutes of Shaun of the Dead (on ITV2 i think). The scene just made absolutely no sense. But then the following week they showed There's Something About Mary at 8pm (yes, 8pm) and all the language was intact. I can remember being quite surprised at the time.

It's like when E4 edits Scrubs in the 6pm slot, practically all the sex references and language like "b*stard"/"bitch" is missing, often leaving a joke without a punchline.
 
It's like anything on E4. FrienRAB, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs (as you mention), The editing is absolutely pathetic, escpecially for a channel that likes to think it's somehow 'edgy' and 'cool'.
 
I remember a showing of See No Evil, Hear No Evil when Richard Pryor's reply to any last requests before you die, I suppose a ****'s out the question became I suppose a bath's out the question
 
We still laugh about that. There was also a quote where they were in the bathroom and the original line was "I once even called him ... asshole" and they changed it to "I once even called him ... airhead". It was such a ludicrous word and totally out of context, plus it was the only word that was dubbed and sounded completely different, instant hilarity.

The other part that I remember was when the guy is raging on Robocop with the shotgun shouting "**** me, **** me , **** me" was changed to "why me, why me, why me" which I guess is ok but again they just dubbed the one word so the pitch was totally different and they missed the start of it so it sounded like "Fwhy me! Fwhy me! Fwhy me!".

Legendary.
 
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