Comparing the two English dubs of A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972)

 

One aspect of dubbing that has always intrigued me is when a film, for whatever reason, ends up receiving more than one English language dub. Throughout the 1960s in particular, this fate befell many an Italian film, but to me, one of the most fascinating examples of this practice is actually from the 1970s: Tonino Valerii’s spaghetti western A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972) starring James Coburn, Bud Spencer and Telly Savalas. So let’s take a closer look at this film’s different English language dubs, shall we?

 

 

The film

A kind of spaghetti western take on The Dirty Dozen (1967), A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die is set during the American Civil War and stars James Coburn in his second Italian western, following Sergio Leone’s Duck, You Sucker! (1971), in the role of Pembroke, a disgraced former Union colonel who is branded as a coward after he surrendered the strategic outpost Fort Holman to Confederate Major Ward (Telly Savalas) without a single shot having been fired. Eager to redeem himself, Pembroke hatches a scheme to take back the fort with a small force, but his pick of men is limited to six convicts scheduled to be hanged the next day, including good-humored looter Eli Sampson, played by Bud Spencer, fresh off the world-wide success of the western comedy They Call Me Trinity (1970) and its sequel They Still Call Me Trinity (1971). Given the choice between execution or joining Pembroke on his mission, the men tag along but tensions soon run high…

A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die is a pretty enjoyable but hardly exceptional western whose biggest strengths are the solid performances of James Coburn and Bud Spencer, who have good chemistry and play really well off each other.

 

Bud Spencer and James Coburn star in A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die.

 

The film exists in two distinctly different variants: the full uncut version running 112 minutes, and a significantly shortened 90 minute US theatrical cut which features different music and a partially different English dubbing cast. The variations between these two cuts are far too plentiful for me to list them all in detail, but briefly summed up, here’s what’s missing from the US version:

• The entire lengthy introduction and set-up in which Bud Spencer’s character, Eli, gets arrested by the Unionists for looting and is thrown into jail with Pembroke, whose character is initially a mystery, is eliminated, thus making the relationship between these characters and how they know each other unclear.

• A somewhat comedic scene in which Eli pretends having to pee in order to avoid getting caught while investigating Fort Holman’s emergency panel is also cut.

• Several scenes have slight trims here and there in order to tighten the pacing.

• The final moments of the film, depicting the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Holman, have been moved to the very beginning as a sort of foreshadowing and is then followed by a long scrolling expository text before the opening credits roll.

 

Looking at the above list of changes, you’d think the original 112 minute European cut would surely be the generally preferred version, but instead it’s actually the 90 minute US cut that remains the most widely seen version of the film. It’s this version that was released on VHS in both the US and the UK as well as several European countries (sometimes under the new title of Massacre at Fort Holman), and it’s also this version that was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in 2015.

Why, then, is this version being preferred? Well, I’d say it’s largely because, in spite of all its shortcomings, the cut version has one major advantage that the uncut version does not: it has James Coburn speaking with his own voice.

Now, the reason why Coburn would dub his own voice for the significantly edited version of the film and not for original version is a mystery that no one really knows the answer to, but as many aficionados of Italian cinema of the 1960s, 70s and 80s will tell you, it wasn’t at all unusual for name Hollywood actors to sometimes have their performances dubbed over by someone else for the English version. In several cases, this was down to a simple question of timing and availability, with actors sometimes being off shooting another film by the time the producer got around to doing an English dub. That might well have been the case here, too, but it’s also possible that Coburn not dubbing his own performance was a result of him and director Tonino Valerii not getting along during the making of the film. According to Roberto Curti’s book Tonino Valerii: The Films (2016), Valerii found Coburn very difficult to work with throughout the shoot and he is quoted describing the American actor’s personality and behavior on the set in decidedly unflattering terms.

 

James Coburn as Pembroke.

It's not just Coburn’s voice that’s different in the two dubs of A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die, though. There are in fact a number of changes not only in voices but also in the dialogue, so let’s take a closer look at the two dubs and compare the differences.

 

 

The original export dub

Unfortunately, A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die is one of all too many Italian films in which the on-screen credits give no indication whatsoever as to who was in charge of adapting or directing the English dubbing. There’s not even a recording studio mentioned, but this is still easily identifiable as a Rome dub thanks to the many familiar Roman dubbers whose voices are present on the soundtrack.

As James Coburn, for whatever reason, didn’t come in to dub his own performance, he naturally had to be re-voiced by someone else, and the man chosen for the job was Michael Forest. Throughout the 1970s, Forest was one of the most popular and in-demand English leading man dubbers. His deep, masculine tones saw him dubbing tough-as-nails characters on both sides of the law in westerns as well as Eurocrime films, culminating with him becoming the regular English voice of Eurocrime superstar Maurizio Merli in the mid 1970s. So with Coburn either unable or unwilling to dub his own performance, Forest was therefore the most obvious and logical choice to revoice him, and he does a solid job of fitting his voice to Coburn’s performance. He’s very good, really – he just isn’t James Coburn, and that’s the problem. Watching an actor with such a distinct voice and persona as Coburn being dubbed by someone else is undeniably distracting, and it takes some time getting used to.

Michael Forest.

Telly Savalas was the only other native English speaker in the cast, and unlike Coburn, he did provide his own very characteristic voice for the English version. This was during a time when Savalas was appearing in a lot of European productions and that same year he managed to squeeze in appearance in another five Italian and Spanish films (the giallo The Killer is on the Phone and the mobster flick Crime Boss, both for Alberto De Martino; the spaghetti western Pancho Villa and the horror film Horror Express, both for Eugenio Martin; and the comedy western Sonny & Jed for Bruno Corbucci). Unfortunately, his part as the villainous Confederate major was probably the least memorable of his European roles as he really gets very little to do here, but it’s nice to at least get his own voice.

 

Telly Savalas did his own dubbing.

 

The rest of the cast is made up of a mixture of Italian, French, German and Spanish actors who were all dubbed, starting with beloved Italian comedic actor Bud Spencer, whose English voice is provided by Richard McNamara. A veteran of the Roman dubbing scene as both actor and director since the early 1950s, McNamara had already dubbed Spencer’s voice for the two Trinity films as well as in Blackie the Pirate (1971), Black Turin (1972) and …All the Way, Boys! (1972) and thus was the natural choice to do so again, with his slow southern drawl and folksy delivery fitting the hulking comedic actor to a T.

 

Richard McNamara (left) dubs the voice of Bud Spencer.

The sleazy and unpleasant Sergeant Brent, the sole member of the Unionist army sent to go along with Pembroke and the six criminals on the mission to retake Fort Holman, is played by German character actor René Kolldehoff, whose English voice is dubbed by longtime dubbing actor/director Robert Spafford. Spafford’s gruff sandpaper voice fits the grizzled-looking Kolldehoff perfectly and it’s no surprise that he was chosen to dub Kolldehoff in various other films made around the same time, such as Shadows Unseen (1972), …All the Way, Boys! (1972) and Revolver (1973).

 

Robert Spafford (left) dubs the voice of René Kolldehoff.

 

As for the smaller roles, Union Major Ballard, Pembroke’s old best friend who approves the mission, is played by Spanish actor José Suarez, and dubbed by the mellifluous tones of the great Tony La Penna, who imbues the character with a natural sense of authority, whereas the chatty Confederate Sergeant Spike is played by French actor Georges Géret and very fittingly dubbed by Edward Mannix, who later would go on to replace Richard McNamara as the regular English voice of Bud Spencer.

 

Tony La Penna (left) dubs the voice of José Suarez.

 

Edward Mannix (left) dubs the voice of Georges Géret.

The six convicts who join Pembroke on his suicide mission are not really given enough screen time or dialogue to develop them as anything more than cardboard characters, and this is one of the film’s significant weaknesses, but they are nevertheless played by several familiar character actors, and several of them are dubbed by familiar voices, too. Namely, Donald MacIvers, the mule skinner convicted for defrauding the army, played by French actor Guy Mairesse, who, in keeping with his character’s name, is dubbed with a Scottish brogue by Glaswegian character dubber Charles Borromel, whereas Will Caulder, the black-market profiteer, is played by Italian actor Adolfo Lastretti and dubbed by the ever-present Ted Rusoff, and Samuel Piggett, the private convicted of murdering his commanding officer, is played by longtime stuntman-actor Benito Stefanelli and dubbed by Larry Dolgin.

 

Charles Borromel (left) dubs the voice of Guy Mairesse.

Ted Rusoff (left) dubs the voice of Adolfo Lastretti.

Larry Dolgin (left) dubs the voice of Benito Stefanelli.

Another familiar voice heard in this dub is that of Craig Hill (better known for his on-screen appearances in a long line of Italian and Spanish westerns), who dubs the voice of the bearded Union sergeant who reads out the crimes of the convicted men to Pembroke – played on the screen by the film’s assistant director Giuseppe Pollini. And finally, the seemingly kind-hearted old farmer Pembroke and his crew encounter on their way to Fort Holman, played by Spanish character actor Paco Sanz, is dubbed with the unmistakable voice of veteran dubbing director and character dubber George Higgins, who was the go-to guy for dubbing frail-looking and eccentric old men. Higgins had also previously dubbed Sanz in such films as Passport to Hell (1965), Django, Kill! (If You Live Shoot!) (1967) and In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Colt (1971).

 

Craig Hill (left) dubs the voice of Giuseppe Pollini.

 

George Higgins (left) dubs the voice of Paco Sanz.

Overall, the dubbing cast features voices that match well with the physical appearance of the on-screen actors and the English dub is generally very good overall. The only real drawback is the loss of James Coburn’s real voice, and while that is certainly regrettable, one does get used to it after a while – especially if well-accustomed to post-synchronized cinema, which I suspect most people watching the film will be.

Since the credits give no indication as to who was in charge of the English dubbing, all we can really do is guess, an my best bet would be that the dubbing was directed by Gene Luotto, who had handled several of the early 1970s Spencer-Hill movies and who seemed to favor Richard McNamara as the voice of Bud Spencer – unlike Nick Alexander, who instead preferred to cast Edward Mannix as Spencer’s voice, as he did in Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) and Even Angels Eat Beans (1973). This is obviously just speculation, though.

 

 

The shortened, re-dubbed version

If little is known about the English dubbing of the original European version of A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die, then we know even less about how the dubbing of the shortened version came to be, but the commonly accepted belief is that it was created for the film’s theatrical release in the US in 1974. Not an unlikely supposition, as there are certainly several earlier examples of Italian films that were given a new English dub for their US releases, such as Hercules (1958), The Mask of Satan (1960), A Bullet for the General (1966) and Danger: Diabolik (1968) – all of which were re-dubbed by Titra Studios in New York because the American distributors were dissatisfied with the original export dubs done in Rome. In the case of A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die, the dissatisfaction likely stemmed from the absence of James Coburn’s own voice on the soundtrack, and so he was apparently persuaded to come back and dub himself for the US release.

 

Newspaper ad from the film's American theatrical run in 1974.

But surprisingly, this re-dub was not done in New York as one might have expected, but in actually Rome, and thus making it one of the very few films to have received two different English dubs recorded in Rome – the only other known example I’m aware of being Sergei Bondarchuk’s Insurgent Mexico (1982). Also rather curious is the fact that while many of the voices were re-done for this new dub, others again were not. There are, in other words, quite a few differences from the original export dub, so let’s examine them more closely.

Obviously, the most significant change in the new dub is the addition of James Coburn’s real voice. This definitely adds a lot to his performance and is by far the main selling point of the re-dub.

Meanwhile, Telly Savalas’ dubbing of his own voice is retained for the re-dub, and also remaining are Richard McNamara as the voice of Bud Spencer, Robert Spafford as the voice of René Kolldehoff, and Edward Mannix as the voice of Georges Géret.

One notable dubbing performance that was not retained, however, was that of Tony La Penna as the voice of the Union major played by José Suarez. For the new dub, Suarez was re-voiced by Edward Mannix, which is a bit of an odd choice considering that with Mannix’s dubbing of Georges Géret being retained, we are then left with Mannix dubbing two reasonably large roles here, which feels a bit lazy even if Mannix, as always, performs well, and these characters admittedly never share any scenes.

Below you’ll find a comparison video of a scene featuring José Suarez and James Coburn together. Give it look to check out the difference between Coburn with and without his own voice, and to compare La Penna and Mannix’s dubbing of Suarez, and see whose take you prefer:

 

 

Also re-dubbed was the Union sergeant played by Giuseppe Pollini, with the pleasant-sounding voice of Craig Hill in the original export dub being replaced by a much harsher and older-sounding actor whom I cannot identify. The same fate also befell the old farmer played by Paco Sanz, with George Higgins’ voice on Sanz being removed and replaced with that of character dubber Robert Braun.

You can compare the dubbing performances of Craig Hill and his unidentified replacement as the voice of Giuseppe Pollini in this video:

 

 

And here you can watch George Higgins and Robert Braun’s takes on dubbing Paco Sanz and decide who you prefer:

 

 

Additionally, several of the convicts who go along on the mission are not only re-dubbed but, in some cases, also slightly re-named. Gone are both Charles Borromel and Ted Rusoff as the voices of Guy Mairesse and Adolfo Lastretti, respectively, although Larry Dolgin remains as the voice of Benito Stefanelli. The video below highlights many of the voice differences of the various convicts in the two dubs:

 

 

The most curious aspect of all about the new dub, however, and something which I only became aware of as I started to do a more detailed back-and-forth comparison of some of the scenes, is that while the voices of Richard McNamara, Robert Spafford and Edward Mannix are retained from the longer export dub, all three of them actually re-recorded their dubbing performances, at least in part. I say in part, because a lot of the time, their dialogue remains the same and is probably re-used from the earlier dub, but then we also have several instances where McNamara, Spafford and Mannix have clearly re-recorded new dialogue. I suspect this was done in order to create a more sanitized and profanity-free version that would be more acceptable for US television airings. That would certainly explain why such lines as “the cheeks of my ass” in the original dub is changed to “the cheeks of my tail” in one of McNamara’s lines, or, more hilariously, why one of Spafford’s lines goes from “Go fuck yourself!” to “Go fly a kite!” in the re-dub! Yes, really!

That said, there are also other changes in McNamara, Spafford and Mannix’s dialogue that don’t have anything to do with profanity, and which seems to have been done for… well… I don’t know, really. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for it to be honest. Anyway, check out the video below for some examples of sanitized re-dubbing:

 

 

 

Final thoughts

In sum, I would say that the best way to experience A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die is to watch the full 112-minute cut with the original English export dub. It’s simply a better film in this version, and the various trims, music changes and sanitized language just do not do it any favors whatsoever. The replacement voices are not at all bad, but there was nothing wrong with the old voices, so they don’t really add much.

The only thing the shorter version has going for it is the presence of James Coburn’s real voice, and it’s worth checking out for that reason alone, but it’s nevertheless an inferior version that cannot be fully recommended.