Did the Star of 'Alien' Dub a Tokusatsu Movie?

In space, no one can hear you loop!

The 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien is widely considered a sci-fi classic, which has spawned a long-running series of movies. For fans of tokusatsu movies, it turns out that there's a connection between Alien and one of the most celebrated Japanese disaster flicks of all time, Submersion of Japan (1973).

Well, maybe not Submersion of Japan per se but rather its American release, Tidal Wave (1975). According to one of the voice actors who worked on the film, Tom Skerritt (who plays Dallas in Alien) dubs Hiroshi Fujioka's character in the New World Pictures version. The timing actually makes sense, too, as Skerritt was fresh off playing Fred Diller in the Roger Corman-produced Big Bad Mama (1974). (Corman owned New World Pictures at the time.) 

This information comes courtesy of an unlikely source: an article by film critic Peter Rainer in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, dated August 29, 1985. In his column "Peter Rainer on Film," the critic recounts his experience dubbing a couple of small parts in Tidal Wave after reviewing Godzilla 1985 (1984). The review was published under the headline "Return of 'Godzilla' — and Raymond Burr: His presence makes the '1985' version." (For those curious, his Godzilla 1985 review is mostly negative and condescending.)

In the article, Rainer writes the following concerning Tidal Wave:

Tom Skerritt — just the sort of laid-back SoCal beachfront kind of guy you'd expect to dub a Japanese — was the lead voice. 

I was given a couple of different characters to dub — a bathysphere technician and an office boy — and I also dubbed in a long stretch of narration. (I also dubbed crowd screams; in other words, three or four of us stood around in a circle and hollered the same lines over and over while, on the screen, a building collapsed onto a phalanx of unfortunates.) 

Describing his own experience dubbing the film, he writes:

There I stood before the mike with my script in hand, listening for the aural cue (a beep tone) to begin the dub job. My bathysphere technician is saying something simple, like "It's a nice day, Akiko, don't you think?" and I'm not even close. I sound constipated. After a half-dozen trials, I manage to at least finish the line at the same time as the guy up there on the screen, and it's on to the next line. Dubbing is a line-by-line process. At least it was with me.

Among many other credits, Tom Skerritt plays Duke Forrest in MASH (1970), Viper in Top Gun (1986), Sheriff Jimmy Brock in the TV series Picket Fences (1992-96), and David Drumlin in Contact (1997). 

The relevant portion of Rainer's Godzilla 1985 review, in which he discusses his Tidal Wave memories, is shared below in two parts.

Special thanks to R. J. Kizer for sending me the above article.