Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
And today we are going to be featuring a movie that I feel like is kind of a foundational text for my adult appreciation of cinema. It is the nineteen eighty seven sci fi action satire RoboCop, directed by Paul Verhoven. Rob. I'm so excited we're talking about RoboCop today. Did you come up? I think I know you. You came up with this topic because you recently visited some of the original locations featured in the movie.
Yeah. I was on a family trip to Dallas over Thanksgiving break. We'd never been before. We went there primarily to go to Mao Wolf and then to check out various things in the city, museums and you know, restaurants and whatnot. And I I had honestly kind of forgotten about the RoboCop connection until we were there driving around, and then I look out the window and I see the Dallas City Hall, and then I remember, this is the RoboCop building. This is OCP headquarters, or at least
the lower portion of it. They did a matte painting on top of that to make it into this enormous skyscraper that reaches up to the heavens. Yeah, and then was just generally impressed by the architecture in Dallas. And then once I got back, you know, we started looking at RoboCop again, I was reminded, like, just how present Dallas is in the background standing in for futuristic Detroit.
Right, So RoboCop is not actually set in Dallas. It's set in near future Detroit at the time the movie was made. But some of the architectural landmarks in Dallas really communicate the feeling that they were going for in the world of RoboCop.
Yeah, and it's unmistakable even if you're not from Dallas. Like there's a car chase earlier in the early the film where you see Reunion Tower in the background, which is very identifiable structure. It's this concrete pillar, you know, jutting up into the sky and there's a sphere up there. It's not a perfect sphere, but you know, observation and
restaurant deck and my family actually went up there. But it's pretty fun, has pretty cool history, Like a lot of these buildings, but yeah, it's there in the background. Anybody who knows anything about Dallas, or even seen the opening to the TV series Dallas, would have been able to recognize that this is not Detroit.
This is Dallas.
But you know, nice stand in lots of neat, futuristic looking architecture.
So when did you first see RoboCop?
I saw it, like I think a lot of people of my generation saw it way too young. I think it was playing at a friend's house or kind of like friends of the family at their house, and I ended up watching part of it. And you know, there's plenty there to bring in a young mind, to captivate a young mind, you know, robot fighting, crime, firing, all sorts of crazy guns. But then you know, it's kind of a notoriously violent film. It's got some really grotesque
moments in it, which we'll discuss. It was not appropriate viewing at this at whatever age I was, but you know, I still loved it, grew to love it, and I think a lot of people have this experience. Someone I was talking to in the last couple of years said that their mom had rented this for them at the store when they were young. They were just like, oh,
they need a film RoboCop. This looks fun. They didn't like look at it closely enough to realize it was rated R. And then you know, the violence just washes over them.
And probably a lot of the commentary sort of went over their heads at that age too.
Oh yeah, yeah. All that ends up sticking with you probably is like the cool robot stuff, and there is some really cool robot stuff in this film, the violence and probably the profanity.
So I did a little digging to figure out when I first saw RoboCop, and I was able to peg it to to a year based on a rather a greasy marker, so I knew that. And this is also a very RoboCop sounding reason to be able to know when I saw this. So I first saw it right around the debut of the Windy's menu item The Baconator, which would place this event in the year two thousand and seven, so you know, it was two thousand and seven. I was I don't know how old I was. I
was like twenty or so. I was hanging out with some friends and somehow it came up in conversation that first of all, I had never seen RoboCop, and second I had not yet had one of the new Baconators, and they were like, Okay, we've got to fix both. So we went to Windy's and then we watched this movie and sorry to the Windy's fans out there, the Baconator, at least this one at this time, was not good. And I'm not trying to be a food snob. I totally admit I can enjoy a greasy fast food sandwich.
But whatever I got that day was just not right. It seemed like it had about eight slices of American cheese and like thirty strips of bacon on it. Just too much, too much bacon and cheese. Maybe those things are different now, I don't know. But on the other hand, RoboCop was amazing, and this memory I think sticks with me because the bacon eat or I had that day came to seem like something that you would see an advertisement for in RoboCop. It's like an in universe RoboCop
food item. It's something Emial would be eating while he's like pointing a gun at you and asking if you think you're smarter than a bullet.
Yeah. Yeah, It's kind of the six thousand Sux of Burgers.
It sounds like it'll be hilarious if a Wendy's ad runs on this episode, by the way, So I was struck by how different this movie was than I had always assumed because I'd never seen RoboCop, but I was aware of it as one of these eighties action movies, and I received it the way it had been I think, generally culturally metabolized, which was totally missing the point of it, shelving it alongside these other gory, r rated eighties action movies,
maybe on the level of Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's how I thought of what RoboCop was, and.
I think it can leave that kind of impression in memory if you're far removed from especially in early viewing of the film. I mean, the violence is so violent that it kind of sticks with you and you might forget some of the other stuff. Like I was talking to my wife about this when I was about to rewatch it. She was very, very supporting of me watching RoboCop, but did not want to watch it, and I had to remind her say, oh no, there's a lot of
satire in it. There's more to it than just the violence. Though the violence is there and it's sticking with you for a reason.
Yeah, I agree, And at the risk of sounding like a sucker, I think RoboCop has a quite genuine soul and humanity to it, and amid everything else it is, it is a hyper violent action movie, that's true. It is a hair raising depiction of a world in the hands of a moral egomaniacs. It is also a sort of light light sci fi speculation about cybernetics. It is
definitely a hilarious fun house mirror to American culture. Amid all those things, it's about the struggle to keep hold of one's own humanity in a situation where there is enormous pressure from every direction trying to transform you into a soulless machine. So a lot of retrospective appreciation of
RoboCop mentions the satirical aspects of it. So I think you absolutely could look at RoboCop as a satirical vision of a dystopian near future from the time that it was made, which you know, so the mid to late nineteen eighties. And I think one of the main political thrusts of the commentary in the movie is if you ever heard people say I wish the country could be run like a business. The situational premise of RoboCop is to say, Okay, let's see what that would be like.
So it depicts a kind of privatization nightmare where everything that used to be thought of as a public interest in a public good is sold off to corporations to be run for profit. And though that seems to be happening in pretty much all domains in the world of the film, RoboCop especially focuses on the police department in the city of Detroit, which has been bought out by a corporation called Omni Consumer Products or OCP, and OCP seems to be using it primarily in a couple of ways.
You get the sense they're looking at it as a cost cutting center, so maybe they're taking the money for the contract and then just cutting costs down to the bone without regard for how this affects people, and then keeping the difference. But they're also using it as a playground to test out prototypes of new hardware that is eventually destined for military use and thus big Pentagon contracts, and the lot of RoboCop essentially arises as a conflict
between two rival OCP executives. You got Dick Jones and Bob Morton who are squabbling to get their respective lethal robot projects online at the police department so they can eventually step them up, scale them up, and secure defense dollars. So the things that are happening in the movie are happening because of what's going on at the corporate board level. These characters squabbling to get their own projects online and
make bank off of that. And meanwhile, the main good characters are essentially just street level cops who are unknown and unimportant to these power players, but whose fates are controlled thereby.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're just struggling trying to do their job. Also, you know, there's talk of unionization. There are all these other additional elements that are in play kind of at the street level, but OCP is not at street level. They're they're halfway to Heaven in their enormous skyscraper, and and that's where that's where a lot of the plotting and a lot of and ultimately a lot of the action goes down.
That's right. So I thought RoboCop was great when I first watched it. I've seen it several times over the year since then. I've long had an appreciation of it, but most recently, when I watched it just this week,
I sort of think it's better than ever. And one thing that struck me on the most recent viewing is that in a way, I think the sort of police and criminal justice themes are less essential to the spirit of the movie then a lot of people would think, and certainly than I once thought so, Like the characters are cops and some of the villains are career criminals, but they could be in any line of work of what used to be public service sector jobs, and the
spirit of the movie would be similar, though I guess it would be a lot less high octane if this was about like librarians whose branch is bought out by OCP and they want to replace sell the books with advertisements for the new six thousand sux. But I think the deepest idea, like what's at the heart of this movie is that it's about people who are doing a job, whatever that job is, where their bosses do not see
them as human beings. They are treated like inanimate tools or machines, just to be used to their maximum value, exhausted and discarded. And this metaphor is literalized in the case of RoboCop himself, and his redemption is in rediscovering and reasserting that he is a human being, not just a mechanism to be used for profit by somebody else. Yeah.
Yeah, his rediscovery of his humanity, that he is a human and not a product. Yeah, I very much agree with just the how good the movie is. Like, basically, RoboCop shouldn't be this good as I rewatch it in my mid forties here, you know, because it's a film that again terrified and enthralled me when I was at a way too early age, entertained me later on. You know, it's a solid, you know, kind of dystopian action movie
with some laughs thrown in. But yeah, it absolutely delivers satirically, It delivers with the action, and you know, it delivers emotionally. Like when the film really gets into its its own emotional depth, I felt like it those moments still hit pretty hard, or I mean actually hit harder than they ever had because you know, I, for instance, Murphy's son in the film is about the age of my own son.
So it's it's you know, that resonated in a way that it just wasn't going to resonate with me when I was a kid, and then of course all of this on top of the expected nostalgia rush of watching a film like this that, for better or worse, she grew up with.
Yeah, totally. So I see all that, and at the same time I accept RoboCop is probably not for everybody. This is, to be clear, a hard R rated, hyper violent film, So you've got to be in the I don't know in the right headspace to accept it, but if it is on a wavelength that is amenable to you, I think it is excellent.
All right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for RoboCop?
Then Omni Consumer Products has bought out the contract for Old Detroit and wants to replace its human police force with one of a selection of different gun wielding robots. Beat Cop Alex Murphy is killed on the job, and his body parts, including the remains of his damaged brain, are used as scaffolding for one of these projects, a cyborg called RoboCop. Is he simply a tool now controlled in full by his corporate masters, or is there still a human being inside who can act of his own free will?
All right, let's listen to that trailerati.
Old Detroit has a cancer. Councer is crime.
We need a self sufficient law enforcement robot.
I'm will to take We can go to prototype within ninety days. Where are you from?
Welcome to hell? Are you.
Better alive? You're coming with me? You're gonna be a bad mothers.
This guy is really good, yes, machine Hobo Cop?
What is he? He's a cyborg? You idiot? All hero? What are your prime directors? Are? Protect Davidson? Let the woman go or there will be trouble.
Hold the law.
You are under arrest? What justice gets an upgrade? Look for me, RoboCop? Thank you for your cooperation. Good night.
All right, Well, if you want to go out and watch RoboCop before proceeding with the rest of the episode, go for it. It's widely available as a physical or digital release. Joe, you watched it on the older Criterion Collection DVD, which I understand is pretty awesome. I watched it on the Aero Blu ray which I ran from Videodrome, which I really loved. Both are loaded with extras.
I think I got to upgrade my disc because my old DVD now is playing in a rectangle inside my TV screen. But nevertheless, Yeah, it was a great rewatch.
All right, let's get into the people involved induction, starting at the top with the director. Paul Verhoven born nineteen thirty eight, Dutch director, best known internationally for his string of major Hollywood genre films of the eighties and nineties. This is our first Behoven film. He started out in Dutch cinema and his first full length feature was the nineteen seventy one comedy Businesses Business, followed by seventy three's
Turkish Delight. That's his first collaboration with fellow dutchman and Rutger Hower in his film debut. This was an erotic drama, and the film was a critical success and received a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the nineteen seventy four Oscars. He did three additional Dutch films with Hower, and a nineteen eighty three thriller called The Fourth Man with the Jerome Krabby, another Dutch actor of note that he had
frequently worked with, that went on to international success. After this, he transitioned to Hollywood with the Rutger Hower filmed nineteen eighty five medieval action adventure film Flesh and Blood or It's actually the title often looks like flesh plus.
Blood equals what.
Cinema, I guess. And then then comes RoboCop, which was a big enough hit, though at the time criticized for his violence, certainly that he went on to direct Total Recall in nineteen ninety, Basic Instinct in ninety two, Showgirls in ninety five, Starship Troopers in ninety seven, and hollow Man in two thousand, which was apparently an unsatisfying film for Rehoven. It seems in interviews where he's like, well, this was the first movie that I made that looking
at it, someone else could have made it. You know, he didn't feel like his touch was there. So after this he moves back to Dutch cinema with a string of pictures that lean more historical in theme less sci fi and so forth. But I believe he is set to return to American cinema with a project called Young Cinner, which is currently in development.
Yeah, regarding these other big Hollywood movies, it is a weird string of films though you can totally see the as different as they are the creative threads that run through them, and I would say the thing that they all have in common is excess. He was a filmmaker who was into depicting depicting a kind of carnal excess in terms of sex and violence, but usually to make a point of some kind. Whether he was successful or
not in all of these endeavors, that's questionable, though. I think I would single out Starship Troopers in ninety seven as another movie that I think at the time a lot of people really did not get it, kind of like what happened with RoboCop. A lot of people saw it as a kind of excessive, mindless, hyper violent sci fi action movie that in retrospect a lot of critics have looked back and said, this is actually a quite sharp satire and works much better than we originally realized.
Yeah, and I still need to go back and rewatch it, because I watched it when I was when it first came out, just I just didn't pick up on all the satire, and so the fascist themes in there that are there intentionally, that are being satirized just ended up sitting with me in a very weird way. I was like, I really don't like the humans in this, and of course I don't think you're supposed to like the humans at least by the end of the film, So I
need to revisit it at some point. Now, Rahuvein was apparently I've read slow to accept the Rogocop project, apparently because he didn't really understand the satire at first. And I think it's been said that his wife likes like like set him down, was like no, no, no, see, this is what it's don't you see what it's doing here? And then he was like, Okay, yeah, I see now.
And I wonder how much of that has to do with the excess, you know, because it's like he seems like a filmmaker, you know, who is about pushing for the excessive violence and or sexuality more the violence in this film, but also pushing the satire, like making sure that everything's ramped up enough that you can't miss it, that even at least subconsciously, it's going to needle your brain and make you realize something's not right here or
something's being sad. There's some additional way I'm supposed to interpret this.
Yeah, though, like I said, I mean, I think, especially in the case of Starship Troopers, it seems like a lot of people did miss it at the time and only got it years later looking back.
Yeah, now, the writers on this we have two writers. There's Edward Neumeyer, American screenwriter, producer, and director. This was his first big hit alongside Michael Miner, who I'll get to in a second. He went on to work on Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers two, and Starship Troopers three, which he directed. He also co scripted Anaconda's The Hunt for the Blood Orchid in two thousand and four, and he's actually the writer of the upcoming Young Center project that I referenced earlier.
I have not seen the Starship Troopers sequels, but oh boy, that just sounds like, I don't know, reaching into a snake hole in the woods. I don't know if that was. Maybe they're great.
I haven't seen him now. As for Michael Minor, also director and screenwriter of various projects, this was his first big hit as well, which you followed up with scriptwork on nineteen eighty nine's Deadly Weapon, which he also directed, lownmower Man two, and also Anaconda's The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. He also directed nineteen ninety nine's The Book of Stars, which looks like I got some good reviews.
I think it's more of a drama. Early in his career, he directed a number of music videos for the rock band Y and T.
I don't think I know them.
I was not familiar. Look like some sort of a rock band or metal band, but I just don't know. Now. Our star of this is, of course, Peter Weller, playing essentially a dual role Alex Murphy and then the RoboCop that Murphy becomes, and then Robocop's attempts to reconnect with the Alex Murphy he once was. Weller was born in nineteen forty seven, American actor and director who's acting work goes back to the early seventies and he's still active today.
We previously discussed him in more depth in our episode on Penos KOs Manto's The Viewing.
As we go on to discuss Weller in this role, a point of comparison that I think is maybe worth making is to the actors who play Batman, where there's a dual role, where there's like, you know, you have your face revealed in one sense as Bruce Wayne, but then also for part of the movie you are just a mouth and chin.
M yeah, so you know. Luckily, Peter Weller has a very handsome mouth and chin, very expressive. I think the other interesting thing that was surely intentional is that, especially at the time, he was a very gaunt actor, you know, a very thin man, which you know, you need a skeleton to go at the in the middle of all of that gear that he ends up wearing in the RoboCop suit. So I think that that probably was a huge factor as well. You need somebody that can literally
be the skeleton of this thing. Now as Murphy, I you know, he's basically just a likable good cop that we don't really to know all that much. We learn more about him through RoboCop as he tries to reconnect with his past, and this results in various moments where RoboCop the cyborg is trying to connect with the remnants of his own humanity, you know, and his memories of his family, and I think Weller does a really great job in those moments, like they I kind of weld
some tears up in those moments myself. And then also just as in terms of the action scenes, I think it's a very nice physical performance. So there are certainly times where the robot movements look silly, you know, walking around as RoboCop, and I think maybe they're supposed to, but there are also some great flourishes that really bring
this metallic hulk to life. I think about the way that he positions his hands when he's firing that enormous pistol of his I don't know if this is something that actually makes sense in the use of a pistol, but it looks really good when RoboCop does it.
Well, there's a range kind of ballet to the way that he moves, like he doesn't just raise his arm to shoot his RoboCop gun, if you know what I mean. Rob There are some shots where he can almost kind of like he raises both arms, like he raises his other arm as a kind of counterbalance. Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, yeah, it does feel very mechanical like this, like his upper torso is the turret of a tank, you know.
Yeah, but also so I see, Yeah, it is mechanical, and it almost looks like he's doing a counterweight or counterbalance. But it also kind of looks like a dance like it like ballet or something where the arms both go out.
Yeah. If they had not done those things, I think RoboCop the character would have been a lot more just visually unappealing. So I was noticing a lot of that and rewatching the film. Now Weller came back to play RoboCop again in the sequel RoboCop two, but by RoboCop three, he was played by a different actor, Robert John Burke of the best known probably for Thinner Dust Devil I'm to understand it well, or was unavailable because he was filming Cronenberg's Naked Lunch at that point.
You know, I've never so RoboCop two is interesting. It I think it is quite good, but it's very different than the first RoboCop and has a has a different kind of mindset. RoboCop three I've never seen, but it's on paper seems like it could be hilarious, So I'm I kind of want to get into it.
It has a great cast, and it's and it's interesting too in that by three they're like, you know, kids love RoboCop. Let's maybe let's make one that's not rated R. And so that's what they did. But yeah, I've never I've never seen it, but but I would like to love robo Cup two. It really ups the ante, especially on the stop motion violence.
Yeah, so three has what I know about it is that I think it has rocket Ninjas and it is no. Its reputation is quite terrible.
Yeah, but it has Stephen Root in it, so it's kind of got to apply to Stephen Root rule. How bad can it be if Stephen Root isn't it? I should also note that Weller has returned to voice RoboCop in recent years. I believe they put the character into one of the Mortal Kombat games. And there's a new RoboCop video game that I am not technologically equipped to play,
but I've read some interesting things about it. Sounds like it does an interesting job of sort of drawing from all three films to create a like a fourth narrative that you can play through. I don't know that the satire is there. So if you've played this new RoboCop game, right in and tell us what you think.
All right.
The next actor of note is Nancy Allen playing the cop. Anne Lewis born nineteen fifty American actress who kicked off her film career in nineteen seventy three is the last detail. She followed this up with supporting roles in a string of horror movies, including seventy six Is Carrie, then a string of roles in films of the films of Brian the Alma seventy nine's Home Movies nineteen eighties Dressed to Kill and eighty one's Blowout After Robocops. She appeared in
both Robo sequels. She was in Polter Guys three in eighty eight, she was in nineteen ninety eight Out of Sight, She was in Children of the Corn six six six, Isaac's return in nineteen ninety nine, and her last acting credit was in two thousand and eight, So it sounds like maybe she sort of quietly retired from cinema.
Is Children of the Corn six six six the six hundred and sixty six movie in that series?
It might be. I feel like there are that many of them. I've attempted to look. I don't think I've ever seen one. I love Stephen King's original short story. It's very creepy, but it's hard to figure out where to even contemplate beginning with the Children of the Corn movies.
Why would it take Isaac that long to return?
I don't know. I think maybe he was out for a movie or two. I don't know.
Okay, so I really really love Nancy Allen as Lewis and RoboCop. Maybe my all time favorite buddy cop partner in a buddy cop movie. So the movie shows kind of multiple ways that the police characters react to the pressures that they're under in this plot. You know, some of the cops in the movie just become unthinking functionaries of OCP, Like they just keep their heads down, do what the boss says. They don't ask questions, even when
they are essentially ordered to assassinate RoboCop. Later in the movie. Others are shown having emotional crises, like there's one guy who just always in every scene seems to be freaking out. Lewis is an interesting like she keeps cool under pressure, and she thinks for herself and she uses compassion. She's the one who's able to understand what's going on, to see that RoboCop is actually Murphy when she gets in
his face and says, it's you Murphy. Yeah, And to see that there's some part of him that is still human, and to save his life when Dick Jones is trying to have destroyed in the third act or second or third, I don't know, later on in the movie, and I think Nancy Allen does a great job with this role. She's she's tough, down to earth, plays it smart human. I really like her in this role.
Oh yeah, she's really the heart and soul of this movie in many ways, in a very real sense and an intentional sense, you know. And she's and it's also great that she's not written as a love interest. Yeah, you know, she's a capable action hero in her own right in an action movie, but her compassion is really her main strength. And that's and without her, if you take her character out of this, you don't get any kind of a positive resolution for the characters in the setting.
I agree. I think a lesser movie would have tried to have some kind of romantic relationship between the two, and it just that's not what this relationship is about. And I'm glad they didn't go that direction.
I watched a featurette on the Arrow Blu Ray where they're interviewing her about this role, and Nancy Allen does point out it's very interesting how she ended up getting the part, and you know, the sort of callback experience and so forth. But she said she showed up in Dallas and they were like, how about a shorter haircut? And because she had longer hair, and she's like, okay, she gets it, goes out, gets her haircut, and then she's like, oh my god, I got my haircut way
too short. I've got a terrible haircut for this movie. I don't think it looks terrible, but it is very short. So it's interesting to think about that. Looking at the character, I think it ultimately works really well for the character. But at the time I think she was a little horrified. She was like, I think I've gone too far.
I think this was the first movie I saw Nancy Allen in, so I just think of this as her natural haircut. So when I see her in other stuff with longer hair, I'm like, oh, here she has long hair.
Now, all right, let's get into some of the corporate characters here. We'll also come back to a few cops. This is we've talked about this actor before, but Dan o'hurlehey plays the old Man.
Oh boy, the villain from Halloween three, shows up as a I don't know is he a villain? And yeah, he's a sort of unwitting villain in this movie. You don't see him. He's not as direct of a schemer as some of the other corporate villains. He's more just kind of like sitting there presiding over all of the wickedness that goes on, mostly oblivious to it.
I you know, going into this, and perhaps the character changes a bit in the sequels, I don't remember. I've probably seen Rebel Coop two more than I've seen any of them, so maybe he's more of a villain in too. But in this one I feel like he is essentially God or perhaps Zeus. You know, he's The corporate meeting rooms of OCP are in a place where skycris skyscrapers touch the heavens, and his appearance at a meeting is spoken of in terms of a holy visitation, and we
never hear his name. He's just the old man. It really does feel like he actually comes down for these meetings from heaven or from Mount Olympus, carrying with him the aloofness and distance of a divine father who wants the best for his creations. He wants to create Delta City. Remember, he's the idea man. All this robot cop stuff is just in service to this grand dream that is going to make the world better, at least for some people. He wants to fix his creation, but he doesn't really
understand mortal existence. All that.
Well, you're right, and I think the comparison dozeus his apt because in some ways he is kind of an arbiter of justice or a moral authority in some way, but he doesn't really seem to have much understanding of morality at all. It's like he is like an amorl arbiter of justice.
Yeah. Yeah, so it's an interesting role to look at again, thinking of it's easy to go in and think about his role in Halloween three, you know, where he is this evil corporate guy, and we also talked about him in the last Starfighter episode we did he plays he plays a good guy in that he's covered in alien makeup.
In this I guess I would say he is functionally a bad guy in terms of the effects of his behavior, but he is doesn't have bad guy energy on screen. He's just sort of like an oblivious god who's bumbling around destroying people without really realizing it.
Yeah, and ultimately he's not a power to be overcome by our heroes, but to be appealed to. Yeah, so we'll talk about that when we talk about the climax. But yeah. Dan O Hurley great actor of stage and screen. He lived nineteen nineteen through two thousand and five. Ah, but then we are true villain. Are one of our true villains on the corporate end of things. Here is the character Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox.
Dick Jones is one of my all time favorite movie villains. I love him, and I love all the corporate villains in this movie, but Dick Jones is great and Ronnie Cox in this role. Ronnie Cox was simply born to play business creeps in Paul Verhoven films. One of my other favorites is his role as Coohagan, the villain who runs the for profit in Ours Colony in Total Recall. And this is a spoiler for Total Recalls though if you don't want it spoiled, closure ears for a second.
But in that movie, if you'll recall, he wants to prevent the use of an alien device that will make the atmosphere of Mars breatheable because he wants to protect his racket selling oxygen to the Mars colonists.
Yeah, yeah, what is scoundrel?
Though?
It's interesting. I was digging into it and this movie. You know, you now think of Ronnie Cox, you think of characters like Jones, But apparently he was playing somewhat against type on this one. He'd been mostly known for playing pleasant, white collar type characters. He made his screen debut in the nineteen seventy two John Borman thriller Deliverance. We see him playing the guitar, and he's actually playing the guitar in that dueling banjo scene because he's also a singer songwriter.
He is the character in Deliverance who has like the strongest moral compass. The others are are more like ruthless and practical, and he's like, no, we've got to go to the authorities and explain what happened and admit what we did and all that, and you know, Bert Reynolds has to argue with him and say, no, we got to cover it up, which, again, yes, I guess seems against type to me because I was more familiar with
him playing characters like Dick Jones. But yeah, I guess you could look at it the other way around as well.
Yeah. The same year, seventy two, he also pops up in The Mind Snatchers, a sci fi film that has a cast that includes Christopher Walken, Joss Ackland, and Tom Aldridge. So some interesting names in there, I've never seen it. A fair amount of TV work followed, but he popped up in seventy nine's The Onion Field, eighty two is the Beast within eighty four's Beverly Hills Cop, it's sequel,
and then he did Robo Cop. Subsequent credits include not only Total Recall, but the nineteen ninety Captain America film, the TV series Cop rock Star Trek the Next Generation, and I don't remember this, but apparently has an uncredited role in Deep Blue Sea.
Is he basically playing Dick Jones in that? Like he's a corporate I would have Silver Lord. Yeah.
Yeah, because it's kind of like post RoboCop. That's one of the main reasons you're thinking about casting him. I'm like, I'm guessing, and you know, basically probably printed money there for a while.
You can imagine the Deep Blue Sea is just in the RoboCop universe, like they're making smart sharks. That just seems like another thing OCP would do.
Yeah. I don't think I said his birthday. He was born in nineteen thirty eight, and he's still out there. I think he still performs as a musician as a musician, and I think he may still be active as an actor.
I don't recall off hand. Oh, but we have another corporate character to talk about here, the character Bob Morton played by Miguel Ferrer, who lived nineteen fifty five through twenty seventeen, American actor and son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, which of course made him George Clooney's cousin. George Clooney apparently showed up with him to a lot of these auditions back in the day they were oh living together.
Yeah, what if a young George Clooney had been in RoboCop Farrera.
He had a real knack for playing scoundrels started off in early eighties television and some forgettable films. Pops up as a first officer in Star Trek three after Robocopy appeared in nineteen eighty nine's Deep Star six, one of the many underwater horror films of eighty nine.
I think he undergoes a harrowing, explosive decompression in that film.
Oh man, that's probably right. He was in nineteen nineties The Guardian ninety two's Twin Peaks. Fire Walk with Me ninety four is the stand the mini series this Man did three episodes of Tales from the Crypt I think that's commendable. I'm not sure who else did that many. He was also in ninety six's Project Alf ninety seven is the night Flyer Moulan. In nineteen ninety eight he did the voice of the main villain. He was in two Thousands Traffic, and he pops up in Iron Man
three and twenty thirteen. He did a lot of voice work late in his career and appeared in the twenty seventeen Twin Peaks revival.
Miguel Ferrer is also great in this movie. Like I said, I love all the corporate villains. He's a perfect foil to Dick Jones. So Ronnie Cox is older, colder, more calculating, and Miguel Ferrera's character, Bob Morton is a young hotshot who thinks he's the next big thing, and they play off of each other well, but they're like both so detestable.
Yeah yeah, Like Morton comes off as more likable in some regards, but it's because he's less directly awful and also doesn't resort to direct murder, though is also is very culpable for human deaths, So it's like they are both horrible, but they're different shades and degrees of the
same awfulness. Yeah, Morton's this ambitious, coked up business bro who's definitely going to high five you in the men's room, but you know, at the end of the day, he's totally gonna sign off on civilian or police deaths if it lets him advance.
Up the corporate ladder.
Yeah, these are two corporate characters, one more villainous than the other. Both of both I think you could think of his villains, but are they're essentially both lawful evil to a certain degree. We also have to have a little chaotic evil in this and that's where we have the character Clarence Bodiker played by kurtwood Smith.
Yeah. This raises another interesting theme of RoboCop, which is it depicts a world of an alliance between sort of big capital and big crime, like the criminal bosses and the corporate bosses essentially are working together against everybody else.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Other antagonists in the film, though, are very much part of the corporate machine. You know, It's like they're to large degrees they can just be like, I'm just trying to climb up the corporate ladder here, I'm just doing what I have to do. I am part of this company. I'm part of OCP. But yeah, Clarence Bodicker is very much of the criminal world and is just evil. Just doesn't seem to love anything in life. It's just full of hate and violence. Even his cronies are not safe.
He does seem to genuinely love crime like he loves his work.
Yeah. Now. Kurtwood Smith the born nineteen forty three is an American actor of stage, screen, and TV that may be best known to many for his role as the dad on That seventies show, but this was his big breakout film role. And this was another case where, according to some of the extras, I was looking at you know, was very much against against type. This is not a
guy who'd done a bunch of villain roles. They were thinking about other sort of established villainous actors like Michael Ironside, but they ended up liking kurtwood Smith apparently because Verhoven liked how he kind of looked like Heinrich Himmler in
The Little Glasses. He liked the idea of this being like a more of a cerebral villain to be to be the adversary of RoboCop, who obviously nobody's gonna best RoboCop physically, no human is anyway, as we'll see, So you need somebody who's more scheming, someone who's more of a hyena.
I can see how this movie would have been again diminished if it had gone a different direction, if you had the standard boxy, tough guy in the heavy role, not Toss Michael Ironside. I mean, I love Michael Ironside, but the casting of a slightly nerdy looking but still imposing actor like Smith here is really inspired for this role, and it makes the character as memorable as he is instead of just another violent Hinchman. The Himmler image does
come through. There seems to be something not just brutal, but kind of transcendentally evil about the Bodicker we got, and it's also there in his name. He's not like, you know, Biff Drago, He's Clarence Bodiker.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great performance. He's just so so nasty, so sadistic, and like the scene where he's eventually apprehended by RoboCop, roughed up and brought in and he's like spitting, he spits blood onto the Police Desk just just a
wonderful performance. He followed up RoboCop with roles in nineteen eighty eight Rambo, Three Dead Poets Society, in eighty nine, Star Trek, The Undiscovered Country, ninety two's Fortress, ninety three's Boxing Helena, and ninety five's Under Siege, Too Dark Territory, plus lots more.
Under Siege, Too Dark Territory. That's a movie with hacking in it. Yes, if you haven't seen it, it's about hacking, all right.
Getting back into the cop characters a bit. We have Robert Dukey in this playing Sergeant Reid With nineteen thirty four through two thousand and eight, another mainstay of all three RoboCop movies. His acting credits go all the way back to the original Outer Limits. In the sixties, he
worked a lot in TV and film. He did one of the voices on the nineteen sixties Harlem Globetrotter's cartoon, and he had a memorable turn as the villain in the nineteen seventy three black exploitation film Coffee, which starred Pam Greer. He acted in three Robert Altman movies, seventy five's Nashville seventy six is Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Setting Bull's History lesson and nineteen ninety three shortcuts.
In this he plays the police sergeant who is putting up with impossible pressures imposed by OCP as they've come in and taken over.
So, yeah, it's a pretty standard role, but a notable actor, all right. Getting back into the criminal world. Here we have Ray Wise playing Leon Nash. This is one of the criminal henchmen. To Botiker born nineteen forty seven. Wives is probably best known for his role of Leland Palmer and Twin Peaks, but he also played the doom doctor Alex Holland and Wes Craven's Swamp Thing from nineteen eighty two.
Other credits include eighty two's Cat People, Cheevers, Creepers two from two thousand and three, X Men First Class from twenty eleven, and Wrong Cops from twenty thirteen. Like a lot of these actors, he was apparently going in a somewhat different direction here, a little bit against type in the casting of this movie.
Yeah, he also has a kind of weird energy as a henchman that it works.
Yeah. We also have to mention we mentioned Emil already. This is one of the other violent members of the gang, has more of a anarchist vibe to him. You know, he's got the punk haircut and so forth. He is also a spoiler alert, he's the guy who gets melted by toxic waste.
The extent to which RoboCop is a melt movie is non zero. There is a melting scene, and Emil is the poor soul who melts.
Yeah. Played by Paul mccrane born nineteen sixty one. He made a big splash, you know, unintended because he does splash in this movie. But he made a big splash in nineteen eighty's Fame, and he was also a lot later a long time cast member on Er. He doesn't melt in either of those films, but he did follow up RoboCop with nineteen eighty eight's The Blob, so maybe he hadn't had quite enough melting yet at this point
in his career. I did see in some of the exits they were like, oh, he was really down for all this makeup. He was down for this melt scene.
So he both melts and splashes in the same role. Yeah, it's weird.
Rewatch this film knowing how horrible this character's fate is. And even as we're shown how horrible this character is, like he is not a nice guy, but his fate is so disgusting that you can't help but feel a little bad for him and see him at least as some sort of a tragic character. You want to be like, oh, dude, you're making all these terrible choices in life, and we know where they are leading you.
Well, his friends are like Bodiker in the gang, and they don't. It just shows how unloyal they are to each other when the way they react to him, like he's melting and he runs up on ray Wise, and ray Wise is he goes like help be and ray Wise is just like, don't touch me. Man.
Yeah. Now you're going back into the corporate world in the midst of all of these villains and all it's easy to miss some how great some of these other small performances are like you have this character Donald Johnson, who's this kind of I guess a corporate OCP, yes man, and also just sort of a business goblin. I don't know,
he's he's always there in these scenes. He's never he's never the you know, the central point of the scene, but he's he's there, He's attending all these business meetings and he makes every scene better.
Yet he smiles a lot. He just brings a real positive energy to these board meetings where robots murder his colleagues.
Yeah. Yeah, and he's largely unfazed by it. He's like, business has got to keep moving.
Looks like we hit a snag. Yeah we'll well, we'll do better next time. Yeah.
Yeah. This character is played by Felton Perry born nineteen forty five. He was also in nineteen seventy three's Magnum Force. He did a lot of TV, played a lot of detectives, and with a cast member on the nineteen eighty series The Greatest American Hero.
Now, RoboCop has a lot of great special effects and one notably terrible but in a lovable way special effect. So I feel like we got to talk about the effects a bit.
Yeah, And as always, we can't mention everybody like this especially is a film where you had a whole crew of very talented artists in different fields and we can't possibly cover them all. So we're just going to cover I think like three main names that should be mentioned.
First.
We've already mentioned the melting and the makeup involved there. Rob Botein has special makeup effects credit on this Born nineteen fifty nine. A true cinematic gore master, and I think this is the first film we've looked at on Weird House that has directly involved him. His makeup credits include So many Great Things, Squirm from seventy six, The Original Star Wars from seventy seven, The Howling from eighty one, John Carpenter's The Thing from eighty two, Legend from eighty five,
Total Recall from nineteen ninety. He also did creature designs on nineteen eighties Humanoids from the Deep That's a fish Man Movie, ninety seven's Mimic, and nineteen ninety eight's Deep Rising.
His work on The Thing is especially iconic.
Oh yeah, I mean this is just a master of practical makeup effects. You know, these are things that you know, you got to throw him into the same conversation with names like Screaming Mad George. You know, just an absolute master. He doesn't seem to have worked much in the twenty first century at all, though, at least in terms of being credited on things. And I have to realize I
don't know. We always stress this, but it's my understanding that sometimes affects people's names don't actually make it into the final credit some things, So I don't know. Maybe he's working in other capacities behind the scenes. But according to you know, like the databases outside of a working on an episode of Game of Thrones, yea, his his work in recent decades has been sparse.
Do do we know or just assume that Beteen is largely responsible for the emial melting scene.
I didn't double check it. It's probably there's so many extras the ero release I didn't get to watch them all, but I assume he had to be have played a pivot role in that. It's just too disgusting looking.
Okay, but another main effect. So there are a lot of great special makeup effects in the movie. Also, there are interesting makeup effects clearly involved in realizing the unmasked RoboCop effect when he takes his visor off and you can see Peter Weller's face jutting out of this robot exoskeleton. I'm sure that took a lot of effects work to
make it look as good as it does. But there is another big thing in the movie which is the rival project to the RoboCop project ED two nine, one of my favorite aspects of RoboCop, which is achieved largely with the help of stop motion effects that look great and are some of the funniest special effects I can think of seeing.
Yeah, this is such a great creation. ED two o nine sometimes referred to in the credits as ED two thousand, so I guess maybe at some point in production they called him AD two thousand.
I don't know.
ED two o nine is better two nine, if you will. But Craig Hayes is credited as as AD's creator and designer and also designer and constructor of the large prop for ED two nine. So when we see ED two o nine in the film, he's either standing there as a physical, practical robot that's I think actually made out of out of wood and other materials, you know, and he doesn't move around much like just basically the top half rotates to point guns at you that sort of thing.
But and then the rest of the time, as we'll discuss, he's a stop motion effect. But Hayes was involved in designing it. Apparently, you know, looked to various things like looked at trains, a little Bit and and other mechanical vehicles and robots to sort of design it, but also looked at at the Orca that the head of ED Tone two nine is apparently partially based on the Orca.
I can see that.
Yeah. So Hayes did visual effects work on other notable films that he worked on Jurassic Park as part of Tippet Studio. He also worked on Hollowman, Blade two and two thousand and three's The Matrix Revolutions. Now I mentioned Tippet Studio. Yes, Phil Tippett is is credited as the creator of the ED two nine sequences, more specifically the
stop motion sequences. If you're not familiar with Phil Tippet born nineteen fifty one, he is one of, if not the best known living masters of stop motion and monster special effects. Somehow, this is our first Tippet film, I believe on Weird House Cinema we've mentioned him in passing you know, connections on other films, but I don't think
we've talked about him in depth before. You know, this is another situation where we can't list all the classics that he was involved in, but his creations have come to life in such films as some of the Star Wars movies. Nineteen eighty six is Howard the Duck as a notable stop motion monster at the end eighteen eighty eights Willow both RoboCop sequels, Jurassic Park in ninety three, Starship Troopers, and of course his own project, which was
made over many years. I haven't seen it yet, but finally released in twenty twenty one, Mad God.
Really good stop motion in this film.
And we'll come back to talk a little bit more about ED two nine later on and just how incredibly looks. But finally, the music here is by Basil Polodorus, who lived nineteen forty five through two thousand and six American composer, best known in film for his work with John Millius, who he met at USC studying filmmaking and composing. He also worked several times with Paul Verhooven. He worked with Millius as early as nineteen seventy on a student film
and then later on seventy eight's Big Wednesday. Nineteen eighty two's Conan the Barbarian. Of course, that in my opinion, is his master work, like that is such an incredible and just perfect score for that movie. But he also worked with Milius on Red Dawn from eighty four, Farewell to the King in eighty nine, and Flight of the
Intruder in ninety one. With Verhooven, he worked with him for the first time on Plus Blood from eighty five, followed this up with RoboCop and Starship Troopers in ninety seven. Other scores of note include Renee Cardona Junior's Tintorera from nineteen seventy four, The Shark Movie or a Shark Movie,
we should say the Shark Movie in any respect. Also the Michael Crichton scripted Extreme Close Up in seventy three, The Blue Lagoon in nineteen eighty, Cherry two thousand and nineteen eighty eight in the nineteen eighty nine mini series A Lonesome Dove. So for this movie, you know, solid, catchy and sweeping score. I think a highly effective score. It has the right bombosity for RoboCop.
Yeah. I love the RoboCop theme. I think it's perfect for the film, and it sonically evokes exactly the feeling of the world and the plot like it sounds like a doomed attempt at heroism in a bleak world ruled by bad men. Yeah, all right, you want to talk a bit about the plot, Yeah, let's dive right in now. This is one of those where I think it does not make sense to do a full scene by scene recap of the movie, but rather in this case, we're going to discuss a bit about the broad outline and
some themes and highlights from the movie. One thing we've got to talk about is are the media segments in RoboCop. RoboCop repeatedly breaks the action with news reports, commercials, and clips of TV shows from in universe, as if we were characters in the world of RoboCop watching the same TV they do.
Yeah, and these are extended sequences. I'd forgotten just how long they are, Like you're watching RoboCop world television for minutes on end, including right at the top of the film, and it does a great job of positioning you within the world of the movie, of course, giving you a little back for what's going on elsewhere in the world, what's going on in culture and media, but at the same time, in some ways counterbalancing the violence that we see on screen, but also driving home the satire and
like keeping satire on your radar as you are interacting with the gritty details of the plot.
There's a way that like when you see the news reports in the media segments sort of just lightly gloss over what sound like actually horrific events that sort of makes you see the events of the violent events of the plot differently.
Yes, yeah, but.
Anyways, Yeah, but a big part of what they do, especially the beginning of the film is just world setting, you know, establishing what kind of world is this taking place in? And I would say the news segments from the world of RoboCop depict a kind of hyper Reaganite near future. So there is an idea that there's escalation of the Cold War, massive military build up, a lot of focus on weapons technology, and a supply side free for all where everything is run by for profit corporations
and cash is king. And the first thing we see in the movie after like a sweep over the city and the title is a news segment, and so to set the scene of this world, it mentions before there's a segment about how the remaining enclave of the apartheid government in South Africa has unveiled their possession of a French made neutron bomb and has announced their willingness to use it against the people to protect white minority rule.
There is another report from the new quote star Wars Orbiting peace Platform, and this appears to be a play on the so called Star Wars Missile Defense initiative, except in the movie the quote peace platform seems to be just some kind of like general orbital weapons system which
they call a peace platform. And then in a later news segment in the movie, we find out that it quote accidentally fired a laser barrage at Santa Barbara, California during attack and that kills hundreds of people, including two former presidents who are not named. And then the anchors just say the nation mourns for Santa Barbara, and then they move on to something else.
And I mean it's implied that that's Ronald Reagan. Yeah, we see Ronald Reagan's body there on the ground. So the satire is at times pretty grim.
But then it cuts straight from these like horrific reports to commercials, and the commercials are for things. One is for the Family Heart Center, which is a clinic focusing on heart transplants with new mechanical artificial hearts. But the doctor in the commercial at first he's like, you know, oh, it's time for a heart transplant, and then he transitions into sounding like he's pitching a customer on jet skis. He's like the series seven sports Heart by Jensen Yamaha, you pick the.
Heart, which I guess also positions where we are in, like the cybernetic world.
Yeah. Then there is an ad for a family board game called New Coom, a game that looks kind of like Battleship, except it's for four players and it seems like the way you win the game is if you were the first player to use nuclear weapons. The tagline of the game is get them before they get you, graam grim. Then there are adds for a car. This car has a big footprint in the movie. It is called the six thousand SUX, So that's kind of low hanging fruit joke, but you know, I wouldn't change it.
This is apparently the hottest new car in the world now. It is extremely ugly. It gets eight miles per gallon, but it's new, it's huge. You've got to have one. The commercial makes the point that the car is bigger than Godzilla.
Yeah, we have this nice commercial that has the stop motion monster in it, like very much in the Harry Housen style. Obviously, created by Phil Tippett here, which is a nice nod to those movies that are in a very large way and inspiration for the creation of N two nine.
But then also we see the TV TV shows. The most popular TV show in the world of RoboCop, which we see multiple times, involves a man with glasses and a mustache ogling women in bikinis and then turning directly to the camera to utter his beloved catchphrase I'd buy that for a dollar. So, according to an article that I turned up, though it is not mentioned in the movie, the name of this TV sitcom is It's not my
problem exclamation point and it's interesting. So the show is portrayed as just insipid trash, but multiple times we see characters watching this show, such as there's one moment where this sadistic murderer Emil is watching the show on a TV through a shop window, and I think he's like sitting in his car watching it, drinking a liquor bottle or something. He seems to find it marvelously entertaining, and then he ends up breaking the glass in the window so he can turn the TV up louder and laugh
along with the laugh track. So something's interesting about the way RoboCop depicts this world of cruel, sadistic men who kill without a thought and then in their downtime are sedated and entertained by mindless, repetitive sitcoms that just seem to be looping the same scene and catchphrase over and over.
Yeah. Yeah, that a Neil scene especially is interesting, you know, because they intentionally took time to show you his enjoyment of this show, that this bottom of the barrel misogynistic comedy that seems to be everybody's favorite. And I guess it also I'd buy that for a dollar like it just it also kind of ties into the overall capitalist, corporate world of RoboCop. Everything can be bought for a dollar, right.
It's almost like a mantra delivering the hidden message that my trust and allegiance is cheap, Just give me the cash.
Yeah, all right, Well let's talk more about the setting here.
Yeah, so the media segments are used to establish a lot about the broader world. The specific setting of the movie is the city of Detroit in Michigan, where it seems the situation is there's some overlap with reality that the city was a thriving metropolis, but it has suffered a lot because a lot of the industry that used to be based there has moved offshore or shuttered in
some way. So the film is just full of abandoned, empty factory buildings that continually visually communicate this theme of just like the loss of former prosperity and so forth. So huge portions of the city have been left out of work, impoverished and desperate, and the city is essentially on the brink of collapse. So the job of running the local police department has been outsourced to OCP Omni Consumer Products. But OCP has set its sites higher than
just running the police. Essentially, they have a plan to demolish the existing Detroit and replace it with a new, completely privately owned settlement called Delta City, where they will run everything. So in a way, you can see how it is in OCP's interest for things in Detroit to get as bad as they possibly can be so that they can buy up all the property cheap and privatize all the local government.
Yeah yeah, but at the same time they need a little bit of muscle, and also they are, as we're tiled at one point, they basically are the military, so they're working on all of these various military projects as well.
Right, And so amidst this backdrop, we see the OCP Headquarters, which is this strange looking building that has a kind of inverted triangle architecture near the bottom, but then it just goes straight up from there, and so it's very weird looking skyscraper architecture. But it does seem on theme somehow because it's like all of this concrete that like comes down to a point near where it meets the ground. So it's the idea of like this corporation just like
crushing the people on the ground. Yeah.
Yeah, Again, the bottom part of this is Dallas City Hall, but by creating this mate painting of it rising the rest of the way up into the sky, it's like it's stabbing into the earth, like it's a sword come down from the heavens. And we eventually see multiple shots at different points in the film of people ascending or descending in elevators and some sort of you know, vast atriums of this building, and these are also created with
matte paintings. And in the extras on the Arrow Blu Ray, they mentioned that Forbidden Planet was one of the influences here and creating this kind of vast interior space.
I never would have made that connection, but that's really good. Yeah. But anyway, Okay, so we're here at OCP headquarters. We coming in this corporate board meeting, which is a great scene. We've got OCP Vice President Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox. He is showing off his plan to move on to the next stage in their control of the Detroit Police Force. He wants to essentially replace the remaining human police force with a violent police robot called ED two o nine.
He brings ED two O nine out for a demonstration that turns horrific robot. I don't know if you want to describe this scene. It's it's an iconic scene from the film, maybe the most remembered part of all of RoboCop.
Yeah, I mean, for starters, it has we have to mention that that ED to nine And if you don't know what ED to nine looks, to nine looks like, do do yourself a favor and find an image surger or video clip because it does not look like a policeman, looks like a weapons platform is.
And that's not what a humanoid and shape.
Yeah, it's just a weapons platform that they're clearly eyeing for a larger military market. It was not created expressly with police work in mind. It is a frightening, uh bestial machine.
So Dick Jones is setting up the demonstration. He gets one of the one of his colleagues from the boardroom here to uh to point a gun at ED two oh nine for the demonstration. And there's a little detail. A lot of people notice that he hands a gun to this guy. He's like, all right, let's see if we can make him do his job. And so the other guy points the gun at Dick Jones, and ED two o nine does not react to this, like of like people threatening each other. But then Dick Jones is like, no, no,
pointed at ED two oh nine. And so then when he when he threatens the hardware, then ED two o nine comes online and like points his turrets at him and says, you drop the weapon. You have twenty seconds to comply. So the guy he said, you know he is goaged on by Dick Jones. He says, better do as you're told. So the guy drops the weapon, and then ED two o nine says, you now have fifteen seconds to comply it clearly has not registered the loss
of the weapon. So in a horrifically violent turn of events, the robot malfunk and then ends up just liquefying this guy. It shoots him like hundreds of times.
Yeah, just notorious graphic scene, and some cuts of the film have the extended goification of this this poor dimmed individual. But yeah, and it's a frantic affair. He's trying to like, hi, you know, run to for cover, and they're pushing him back in the way because no one else wants to get shot and caught the crossfire. And yeah, and then finally an utter failure of the program here.
So the old Man looks at Dick Jones and says, I'm very disappointed in you, Dick, and Dick Jones says, sure, it's only a glitch, like completely unconcerned with you know, the threat this would pose to people. Is just kind of like, ah, yeah, we'll figure it out, don't worry about it. But this does seem like a pretty catastrophic failure to the old Man. And right there next to him, waiting in the wings is Bob Morton played by Miguel Ferrer,
who steps in with his rival project. He's like, clearly ed two O nine is not ready for prime time. We've got something ready to go, the RoboCop program, and he tells the old man about it. It's ready to go as Plan B. All they need is a donor, and he thinks they should have one pretty soon. What does that mean, We're about to find out.
Yeah, it may not be here. Maybe it's a little later that we learned that. Yeah, not only are they eyeing donors, but they are making sure that prime police candidates are being reassigned to dangerous zones so that they're going to be more likely to encounter some sort of fatal injury that would deliver their body straight to the RoboCop program.
Yeah, they do. They do like a physical and they're like, okay, Peter Weller, he would be a good candidate to go in the RoboCop suit. So we're going to send him after Clarence Bodiker and deny him back up. Yeah, So here we meet our hero Alex Murphy and Peter Weller. After OCP transfers him to a new Metro division, he gets paired with his new partner Lewis. That's Nancy Allen. They get to know each other. They have some nice friendly banter, but early on, maybe it's his first day
at the new division, not exactly clear. They respond to a bank robbery in progress and it's Clarence Botiker's gang and Botaker is just the nastiest, meanest criminal on earth. While Murphy and Lewis are chasing them, there's this one part where you see Botiker, just like the gang has
no friendship or loyalty even to each other. One of the gang is injured during the shootout when they're in a chase, and Bodaker just like grabs him and goes can you fly Bobby and throws him out of the van into the police car, which briefly delays them, and eventually Murphy and Lewis pursue the gang all the way to an abandoned foundry, and while attempting to make an arrest, again no backup is available. As usual, Murphy is caught and then brutally executed by the gang an awful, horrifically
violent scene. His body is recovered taken to a hospital, but he can't be revived. He is dead.
Yeah, I think shotgun dismemberment is worth mentioning in terms of Murphy's death because you know, because it's like it's that extreme, like like it's another example of the violence just ratcheted up to an unbelow to a degree where it almost takes some of the punch out of it because it becomes an obvious Hollywood gore fest. I don't know, everyone's mileage is going to vary on this sort of thing.
Now, next we get a really interesting sequence in the movie, which is we have Murphy's death, but from here we start seeing something from some point of view through a kind of grainy almost computer or CRT image. We see these views of scientists messing with somebody from their point of view, like drilling around on their head and adjusting his vision. So we're seeing robocops point of view, and
this is the project run by Bob Morton. Rob do you anything you want to identify about these scenes where we're like watching Murphy's physical remains become become able to see as they are becomingcop.
I mean, it's almost like he's being he is being born again, you know, it's like early memories, childhood memories almost that's some sort of sense. As he's watching the scientists work on him, as he's eventually seeing you know, there's like an office party, a Christmas party or something that's underway, and they're interacting with him a little bit. But also there are bits of dialogue though on the other hand that far from discussing him as a child.
I think Morton in particular is like he's dead now we can do whatever we want with him. Like he's no longer a human, he is a product.
Yeah, he signed the rights to his remains away. That was part of his contract to be a cop, and we can do whatever we want with them. He's not him anymore. Yeah. Also in these scenes, we learn about robocops three prime directives. They say, you know, he's guided by the directives to serve the public trust, to protect the innocent, and uphold the law. And then there is a fourth directive that is not spelled out. It just says it's classified, but it does flash on the screen.
They say nothing about that out loud. It's just something that RoboCop sees on his own heads up display.
Yeah, this will become important later on.
So after this RoboCop is unveiled, they put him out on the beat and there are just a bunch of scenes of RoboCop out on patrol, intervening when crimes are in progress. We see him stop an armed robbery at a convenience store. He intervenes when two men are attacking a woman in an abandoned lot. He resolves a hostage
situation at city hall. And in all of these scenes, RoboCop is shown to be in some ways highly effective, in other ways not like he is successful at stopping the crimes, but he does so via the application of brutal violence in every case, and he is shown to be cold and mechanical in his relations to victims.
Yeah, we see the media segments of him being celebrated, but also, yeah, at the same time, he's not really doing the ideal version of police work here. He's just like a blunt instrument that reaches through walls to have criminals and so forth.
There's one part where I think they're asking, like there's like school children clearly being terrified by RoboCop during some kind of outreach program, and they're like, do you have any message for the children, And he says, stay out of trouble. But all of this builds up to a realization Lewis Murphy's old partner sees through the machine mask. She sees that it's Murphy underneath, noticing little ticks, little
sayings and movements that mirror things Murphy did. One giveaway is that Murphy was practicing this kind of, you know, a cowboy gun holster move that was from a TV show that his son liked called TJ Laser, And then she sees RoboCop do the same move, so she realizes who it is. She's like, that's Murphy in there, and she goes up to him. At one point she like approaches him in a hallway and says, Murphy, it's you,
and this causes a crisis. RoboCop is not supposed to have a personality or any mimas Bob Morton again, he explains that, like, it's just physical scaffolding. They just need some brain tissue. Murphy no longer exists, it's just brain tissue owned by OCP. That's not a person, it's a machine. But nevertheless, RoboCop begins to malfunction by having memories and dreams and glitches, and this leads up to a scene where he visits his former home that he shared with
his family, which is now empty and for sale. There's like a robotic salesman who starts talking when he comes in the door, like, oh, this could be your new dream home. And I think some critics at the time might have sneered at these sequences of him, you know, this machine with these strange, robotic motions, trying to reclaim his past life and remember what it was. They might have seen that as ridiculous. But I found this stuff quite moving. To each their own, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, this is one of the segments that really hit me in the fields. I liked it. I thought it worked.
Also some in here. There's a scene where Dick Jones sends Clarence Bodiker, who works for him by the way, to Bob Morton's house to kill him. He's just like, Okay, I'm done with Morton.
Yeah yeah, Like Morton really didn't know what he was messing with it. Clearly didn't really think that Dick Jones would send a goon to his house to murder him in cold blood, and that's exactly what happens.
Then there's an interesting middle section of the movie in which RoboCop, in this process of rediscovering that he might have been a person at one point and who that person was, he starts to systematically solve Murphy's own murder. So he like encounters Emil, one of Clarence Bodeker's gang in the middle of like robbing a gas station, and he encounters him, and from him he traces him to other members of Botacker's gang and eventually to Botaker himself.
And when he captures Bodeker claims that he can't be arrested because he has a protection agreement. He works for Dick Jones, and Dick Jones runs the police.
Yeah, this whole solving Zone murder series of sequences is great. Like there's the scene where he goes to the nightclub to collect Ray Wise's character. Yeah, that one's a lot of fun. Yeah, it builds nicely until he's yeah, he's already found Bottiker, that this is where there's a He roughs him up quite a bit and drags a bloody, snarling Boticker into police headquarters.
But so now he has evidence that Dick Jones is behind it all, So he tries to go up the chain to arrest Dick Jones and it doesn't work out so well. He walks into the office Ronnie Cox is sitting there, and Ronnie Cox like holds out his hands. He says, sounds pretty serious. You better arrest me. But
RoboCop is somehow unable to act. He something is preventing him, and here we see the activation of Directive four, his secret guiding principle, which is that he cannot against the interests of OCP, so he cannot will himself to arrest one of its officers.
Oh yeah, And then this is where Dick Jones, with villainous charm, brings out ED two o nine. He's like, I going to introduce you to a friend of mine. Boardroom doors open and outcomes this glorious stop motion creation. ED two o nine is here to finish off RoboCop.
So yeah, for a bit, there's this fight, the struggle where RoboCop is sort of immobilized. It's these two killer robots versus each other, but one of them still has a shred of humanity inside it and it manages to barely escape ED two o nine. And then there is a detail in this fight that I've always loved since the first time I saw the movie. What how is ED two o nine defeated in this confrontation by stars. ED two o nine gets to the stairwell and RoboCop
runs down it and ED to O nine. Clearly, this is a contingency that the designers of ED two O nine had never thought of. And it is unable to navigate going down a staircase and ends up turned on its back and unable to get up. And it's hilarious. It feels so right, and it's the best possible conclusion to this fight.
Yeah, yeah, it hits all the right notes and in a sense, like it does get into this again sort of light sci fi about cybernetics and robotics. The idea that ED two nine is a military application that is
clearly clearly was not designed for police work. It was not designed to interact in a human world, and an important part of police work is interacting in a human world that involves obviously things like stairs, as well as other nuances like being able to tell the difference between a perpetrator who is an active threat and someone who has already surrendered and so forth.
Yeah, and so I think that I think part of the vision of ED two nine is that it is a very dangerous, lethal robot, but in many ways it is poorly designed. So it's like it is designed to appeal to the people who award defense contracts more than to like actually be good at its job.
Right, But again great great finish to this initial combat between RoboCop and ED two and nine.
But at this point, so RoboCop is he's able to get down the stairs. But at this point the OCP controlled police Force arrives and they have been ordered to destroy RoboCop and so they try, but Lewis saves him. She comes to the rescue. She takes him off to the abandoned foundry we saw earlier and helps him rediscover
who he is. And this sequence his mask comes off, like he removes the bolts and takes off his visor and reveals that Murphy's face is still underneath there to some extent, his brain still is Murphy's brain, though it's different and there I don't know. There's like a really tender scene where she helps him recalibrate his aim and it just kind of gives him encouragement. He doesn't know what he is, but whatever he is, she's there to help. Yeah.
Yeah, this I really liked this part. Also, the part where after the mask has come off and he has to be left alone, you know, it's it's it's a tender moment. That is, it's well acted by it by both actors involved here, and you know, I totally totally buy into it, and it made me tear up just a little bit.
Meanwhile, Dick Jones hooks Bodiker's gang up with some kind of military grade weapons that they are going to need to destroy RoboCop. Jones of course wants RoboCop dead for two reasons. First of all, RoboCop has evidence against Jones and his memory banks, and he doesn't want to be implicated. But the second thing is, of course, if RoboCop is eliminated, that'll put ED two o nine, that that project back front and center. Yeah.
Yeah, he's promising to have an ED two o nine like on every street corner. So there are already a lot of these in stories just ready to roll out into the city in force.
So Botaker and the gang now armed with these, with this heavy artillery, they come to hunt down RoboCop at the foundry. But there and this leads to a bunch of great action scenes there, like a car chase, and there are these shootouts and all that together, RoboCop and Lewis managed to defeat Bodiker and his gang This is the sequence that includes Emil getting doused with toxic waste
and eventually melting. So it's incredibly gory action scenes. We've said that a million times now, but like you be warned, this is an incredibly bloody, violent movie. But as action scenes they work pretty great. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen my shriff Gorfest and I've seen this film before obviously, but yeah, when I was rewatching the Emeeal melting sequence, it's just like I had a just like a grimace fixed into my face for like a good solid five minutes because it's so grim and it's so gross, and it seems to go on forever until he's finally hit by a car by a Boticker's car and just explodes in a splash of slime.
It's awful. Yeah. So after all this, RoboCop goes to arrest Jones because you know OCP is behind it all, working on Dick Jones's orders. So RoboCop comes into a board meeting and he turns the old man against him by playing a tape of Dick Jones admitting the murder of Bob Morton. Now you know, OCP may not be very sensitive to the harm they caused to regular people, but this is the murder of one of these corporate guys themselves, and I think they're unsettled by that. So
so now Dick Jones actually feels afraid. He tries to take the old man hostage to flee the scene. And here there's an interesting conflict because RoboCop is still bound by Directive four, so he cannot act against OCP. He can't act against Jones. But then he he essentially hints to the old man what the problem is, and the old man then announces that Jones is fired from his position. So RoboCop immediately shoots him out of the skyscraper window.
So that's an interesting And then there is a special effect. Well, the special effects generally in this movie are fantastic. There is a famously bad one as Jones falls out of the window and it looks like he has really long arms for some reason.
Yeah, this is a stop motion effect. They use a stop motion model of Dick Jones, which I mean, basically, I guess you have to think about about stop motion a lot with this film, Like stop motion is here and used in this film not so much because it is loving and well crafted and is like an art form all its own. It was the best way of delivering this particular effect at the time. And so with even with Dick Jones falling out the window, like what
are your choices? You either don't show it, or you use like a Dick Jones lying on a blue mat and do like a green scaring kind of a thing where he's like, ah, you know, like Mortal Kombat two falling into the pit, which can also look pretty bad. Or you go for a stop motion, and in this case it didn't quite work, like they were trying to create something that was too lifelike. But I wouldn't change it. Yeah, I wouldn't change it. Still admired.
I love the long arms that it gives me a tickle every time.
This was a time period too, where like that sort of shot I feel like happened a lot. You had a lot of bad guys falling to their death, Like didn't the Joker go down the same way? Maybe a slightly more convincing effect. I don't recall, Yeah, falling off skyscrapers. They'll do it well anyway.
So after this, the old man says, he says something like nice shooting son. What's your name? And RoboCop does not say RoboCop. He says Murphy. And that's the end of the film. And it's an interesting ending because Murphy has somewhat reclaimed his humanity, like he has acted against the direct interests of his one of his bosses in this case, so he has somewhat done the right thing despite what he's being told to do by the by
the organization that controls him. He has to some degree recovered part of himself in that like he you know, he remembers his family, he remembers his life. Even though he's not fully the Murphy he was, he realizes some part of him is Murphy, but he's still not completely free. And I think that makes the ending more interesting and bittersweet than if he just had like a total victory
over the bad guys. He's still not fully free because he's not able to remove directive for he just has to, like outsmart it, find a way around it by getting the old man to fire Dick Jones so he can act.
But again, thinking of Dick Jones as kind of a God or Zeus figure, it's like he has he has scaled at the top of Mount Olympus once more and I guess we also have a satanic figure literally falling from the from the heights here. But but then the old Man has to acknowledge him, and in asking him his name, there is kind of like a power there. It's like like, this is your chance to reclaim some portion of humanity that we took from you, and he does reclaim at least part of it.
Yeah, but like we said, it's not a complete victory, you know, It's not like OCP is completely defeated and the world has changed for the better. I mean, it's a small, limited victory, but at least it is that in this otherwise bleak and horrible world.
Yeah, I mean, there's so many great little moments, like the final showdown with Botaker, of course, where he stabs him in the neck, which apparently they wanted to do something grizzlier, and this was this was thing, the less grizzly version, you know. And I guess you don't actually see him stab him in the neck. You just see, like way too blood splashed under Robocop's chest and then you see Bodeker stumbling away with blood gushing out of
his neck. Still incredibly violent, but I'd forgotten that you don't actually see it going into his neck.
The spike that he uses to kill Botaker there is not actually meant to be a weapon. It is the jack that he uses to interface with the police computer.
Yeah, and when he busts it out again to load the incriminating evidence, it's still bloody with Bodiker's blood. But but but shortly after that, there's that scene where Lewis is all is shot up and you know, they've they've defeated the bad guys there, and this is at the industrial site, and RoboCop says to her, it's like, don't worry,
they'll fix you up. They always do, or something to those effects, which they fix everything, they fix everything, which which ties into this feeling of yeah, the sort of the partial victory, like the powers that these are still very much in charge and are very much the deciders of life and death and resurrection, but some monoicum of victory, some some shred of humanity has been reclaimed.
So that's RoboCop. Would you buy that for a dollar?
Yes, I would. I would buy it for thirty plus dollars whatever the going rate for the Blu Ray is, you know, or you know, rent it digitally or physically for somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five dollars. Well worth it, well worth the time.
Okay, that's all I've got.
All Right, We're going to gohea and close out this episode. I think we have one more episode before our Christmas selection, so you know, keep your eyes open to see what we're going to be covering. You can follow the films that we cover on Weird House Cinema by going to letterbox dot com. That's L E T T E R B O x D dot com. Our user name there is weird House, and we have a nice list of all the movies we've covered so far and sometimes a sneak peek at what's coming up at least in the
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