When growing up I was one of those kids that really enjoyed Hong Kong action flicks – The Five Deadly Venoms was one of my favorites – and at the time I enjoyed the awkward dubbing, which always felt deliberate and added to my enjoyment.

Though as I got older I began to notice that it was a situation I was only able to accept in those movies because an actor’s voice is crucial to their performance and if the voice – beyond the words actually spoken – doesn’t ‘fit’ the person who’s supposedly speaking the entire movie somehow felt off and out of sync (pardon the pun).

Which is why if I watch foreign movies I prefer subtitles though that isn’t to say that there’s a guarantee that they’re accurate though when combined with the images I find them much more effective and oddly, less distracting.

Which brings us to Lodewick Crijins’ Bumperkleep – known as Tailgate in the United States, a movie I rented on Vudu though I wasn’t aware at the time that it was foreign, never mind dubbed.

It’s actually pretty engaging though due to the awkwardness of some of the dubbing I’m not entirely sure what the intention of the director was.

By my reckoning it’s a thriller with black comedy and horror overtones, an impression oftentimes based on what people are saying and how they’re saying it.

And speaking black comedy, this movie is startlingly funny at times and as I said, I’m not sure that it’s deliberate.

Beyond some of the aforementioned dubbing, there’s a scene where the a family is being pursued by the killer though a small hamlet. Seeing that the movie takes place in either the Netherlands or Belgium there’re a lot of people riding bicycles, which the family are constantly placing in danger as they barrel though the streets.

In fact, by doing so they’re endangering more people than the killer happens to be, who’s actually pretty moderate as far as murder goes (though to be fair the implication is that he’s been at it a lot longer than the movie actually shows).

As I said, it’s strangely funny and I wonder if seeing a subtitled version might darkened the tone somewhat.