Sandbox:Frontier Enterprises
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Frontier Enterprises Inc. was a Tokyo-based dubbing company founded in 1964 by William Ross, dubbing over 465 feature films and countless Japanese TV shows into English over several decades.[1] Frontier Enterprises was hired by Toho, Toei, Shochiku and Nikkatsu to dub some of their films into English for export, most notably providing English dubs to some of their tokusatsu films. All of their dubs for tokusatsu films have been included on several U.S. home media releases of the films, with their dubs for Toho’s Godzilla films also being included on UK home media releases.
History
William Ross entered the dubbing business in 1959 on a referral by popular Japanese actor So Yamamura. On his first day, Ross showed such skill towards working with the other dubbing actors that the Japanese director quit, leaving him in charge. Ross was later hired as a director by Asian Films, a company that dubbed Japanese films into English for distribution across Asia. When the other dubbing companies in Tokyo folded, Ross founded Frontier Enterprises in 1964 and began to work for all the major Japanese studios.[1]
Ross was forced to rely on any native English speakers he could find in Tokyo to dub his films. Most of the lip-syncing was done by businessmen, musicians, students and any other English people who had little to no acting experience. Ross held auditions and made sure that he hired the best people available, training them thoroughly.[1]
The films were dubbed via the looping method, with Ross directing the recordings.[2] Actors would work in a small studio in Roppongi on Friday evenings, utilising English script translations for the Japanese films they worked on. The actors usually worked till midnight and would return early on Saturday and Sunday mornings, the films were normally completed in a single weekend.[3]
Selected films dubbed
- Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (1966)[1]
- Gappa (1967)[4]
- Son of Godzilla (1967)[1]
- Destroy All Monsters (1968)[1]
- Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds (1977)[5]
- Princess from the Moon (1987)[2]
For unclear reasons, all three of the Godzilla films that Frontier dubbed were given new English soundtracks, all produced by Titan Productions,[6][7] for their releases in the United States. Despite this, the Frontier dubs for Ebirah, Horror of the Deep and Son of Godzilla were used for the films’ releases in the United Kingdom[8] and were later released on VHS, alongside the company's dub of Destroy All Monsters, by PolyGram Video in 1992 and 4 Front Video in 1998. The Frontier Enterprises dub for Destroy All Monsters would first be heard in the U.S. in 1996 when the Sci-Fi Channel licensed the film and Godzilla vs. Hedorah for TV broadcast.[9] After this, the Frontier Enterprises dubs for Son of Godzilla and Ebirah, Horror of the Deep were first released in the U.S. by TriStar Pictures on DVD, in 2004 and 2005 respectively. The Frontier dubs for Son of Godzilla and Destroy All Monsters are included as secondary audio options in The Criterion Collection's Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975 Blu-ray box set.
Voice actors employed
- Robert Dunham[1]
- Cliff Harrington
- Tom Korzeniowski[3]
- Burr Middleton
- Dick Nieskens[2]
- William Ross[1]
- Bud Widom
- Carole Wyand
Gallery
Advertisement for Frontier Enterprises
References
This is a list of references for Frontier Enterprises. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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