In the late 1980s, a new product appeared on the Soviet black market: the American VHS tape.

The entrepreneurs who imported this contraband faced the same translation problem as TV stations in Western Europe, but they came up with a new, rather odd, solution. Instead of dubbing the movies with the voices of Russian actors, they used a single, male translator.

With the movie’s original sound somewhat muted, the narrator provided a spontaneous translation of the dialogue. Often, he recorded the track while watching the movie for the first time, which precluded lip-syncing. His businesslike performance showed complete indifference toward the actors’ genders and the characters’ emotions.