Best TV Movie Line Edits

A few days ago I had the privilege of watching The Matrix (1999) on AMC as part of some moronic Prisoner-themed weekend. Anyway, eventually I got to a censored line in the film that I nearly forgot was coming, but still cracks me up everytime. After Neo is bugged and La Trinidad sucks the shitter out of his tummy button Keanu exclaims "Jeepers Creepers, that thing's real?!" It gets me everytime, it's just so so stupid, Neo reacts like a sixty-year old farmer seeing locusts had aten his crops (The true line being "Jesus Christ, that thing's real?!").

So this got me thinking about some other TV Line Edits amongst our favourite movies. It's a pretty special kind of censorship that just decides to dub over the original dialogue, not necessarily even with accurate substitute words (i.e. "shoot" for "shit," something like that) but rather with completely new phrasing that should slightly alter the original intent (and in some extreme cases create plot holes). So, with Neo's line at #5, I wanted to countdown the Top Five Greatest TV Movie Line Edits (hopefully by this point you're reading my "Top Five Greatest" simply as the first five I thought of). I could not for the life of me find the Jeepers Creepers edit, but enjoy Neo offering Smith a Flipper:



#4: "Find a Stranger in the Alps"

From The Big Lebowski (1998), a movie filled to the brim with dirty words, nothing capitulates Walter Sobchak's feelings of theft and betrayal like finding a stranger in the alps ("fucking a stranger in the ass). It's an extreme non sequitur that verily makes less sense than the film it finds itself in. Enjoy Comedy Central's interpretation here:


Big Lebowski - Dude, Do You See What Happens????? Do You????? - For more of the funniest videos, click here

#3: "I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this monday-to-friday plane!"

I already embedded this video here, but enjoy it again, dammit. From Snakes on a Plane (2006), a movie ludicrously re-written and re-filmed to cater to an online community of half a dozen kids who wanted a dirtier movie, this was the fabled line of 2006. Sam Jackson delivers it with so much righteous anger and justification that had originally transmogrified an abyssmally sucky film into just a sucky film. This kind of power should not be tampered with. Also notable is the censor's replacement of the same naughty word (motherfucker) with both "monkey-fighting" and "monday-to-friday." Brilliant time had by all.

Courtesy of F/X, anyone else think of Kremlings as Monkey-Fighting Snakes when he says this? I know I do.



#2: "Eating Pineapple."

There's a few legendary lines in the TV Edit of Scarface (1983) but the best is the "eating pineapple" ("eating pussy") line mostly because it actually makes a bit of sense that if Tony Montana tried to eat a pineapple, skin and all he might get his face scarred up. Just Sayin'. Here is a side-by-side comparison of quite a few lines in this filthy, filthy movie:



#1: Yippee Ki-Ay Mister Falcon

Undoubtedly the most famous censorship of all time, John McClane's signature line, "Yippee Ki-Ay Motherfucker," in the original Die Hard is an incredible moment, simultaneously acknowledging Hans Gruber's degradation of him as an ignorant American Cowboy and transforming it into his greatest character strength holding his own disdain for the cultured yet evil German elite. Somehow this just became his catchphrase throughout the Quadrilogy, each time used to a lesser effect, to the point of Live Free or Die Hard (2007) where he self-censors with gunshot.

None of this compares to Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990) in which the line is insanely dubbed over as "Yippee Ki-Ay Mister Falcon." Who Mr. Falcon is we never find out, much to my own disdain. After some I figure McClane and Captain Falcon were just old buddies or something, McClane never realising he was promoted to Captain. Clearly, such a dubbing is worthy of legend almost as great as the original. Right.

There are some other great lines in this video, but fast forward to about 2:00 for the clincher, courtesy of the TBS Superstation:



So, let us now enjoy the hilarious censorship while we can before cable and HBO dominate with their foul language and terminal allowance of blood and sex. Oh the endless shame when there is such opportunity for making fun of people. Tears me up inside. Good morrow.