The Man Movie Encyclopedia: Robocop

Well, it’s Old Detroit, and it’s a bad scene, brother. Cops are dying left & right, and crime not only pays, it has a pension. OCP is a company that basically owns the cops, and has been trying to create robotic cop that they can take to the streets, and make piles of cash off of. Dick Jones, the VP of the company, has a pet project known as ED-209. One of the burliest motherfuckers ever. He has twin .50 caliber machine guns, and stands about 15 feet tall. He’s brought in to give a demonstration of a simple disarming procedure. However, there’s a bit of a glitch, and the guy who volunteered to help demo ED209 gets blown to absolute SHIT. It’s incredible, and one of the more shocking scenes of Robocop. Not just because of the over-the-top violence, because of the sheer noise, and atmosphere. The people saw this guy get torn to shreds, and really don’t care. Dick Jones himself says what happened is a “glitch”. So, it’s back to the drawing board.

Back on the streets, The Old Detroit police squad has a new guy, Murphy. He’s teamed up with a bad-ass chick named Lewis, and they’re off, baby. Now, they come across Clarence Boddicker & his gang. The same gang that’s been killing cops & doing all sorts of evil stuff for quite a while now. They call for back-up. But back-up isn’t coming. So, what are two cops to do against the most evil gang in Old Detroit? That’s right, baby, split up and take’em on by themselves! I mean, this has to end well, right?

First thing, Lewis is distracted by a dude’s hangdang and gets knocked off a ledge. Then Murphy rushes into a room to get the drop on two dudes. What happens next, is entirely his fault. The rest of the gang pops out from the shadows, and proceed to introduce us to the worst death scene in the history of film. He gets his hand blown off, then the rest of his arm blown off, then he gets about 4-5 shotguns unloaded on him from about 8 feet away. He’s wearing body armor, so it’s just making this all that much worse. It’s absolutely brutal. Clarence puts a bullet in his head, and the gang goes on their marry way.

Murphy is rushed to the hospital, where he’s pronounced dead. They ask him then if he wants to be turned into a bad-ass cyborg, and if he doesn’t want to be, give them a sign. They give him a 5 second window to give them a sign, and when no sign is shown, BAM, baby, he’s Robocop. Straight out the gate he’s beating the hell out of robbers, and shooting rapists in the dick. How fucking awesome is that? It’s one of the all time greatest scenes in movie history. Robo approaches them with the classic line “Your move, creep”, which I will name my first son, and after they threaten to kill the woman, Robo aims between her legs and puts a few rounds into the guy’s hangdang. Bloody marvelous. One thing I love about Robo, and further showing he’s a real man, is that he has a smaller ammo clip than most, and even though his gun is semi-auto, he never seems to have to reload. Reloading is for motherfuckers who get pedicures.

Robocop’s former partner, Lewis, realizes that Robo is in fact Murphy, and tries to get him to come around. That, coupled with him having memories of what happened to him, cause him to finally realize just who he is, and what happened. He decides to take what happened to him personally, so he hunts down Boddicker & the gang. It’s at this point the film really picks up, and we’re straight action from here on out. Gas stations exploding, massive shoot-outs at a drug warehouse, and Robo hitting up a disco.

At the said drug warehouse, Robo gets a hold of Clarence and gets a full confession from him about working for Dick Jones, and basically working outside the law. Robo heads to OCP in order to arrest Dick, but we find out that he has a secret Prime Directive; he can’t arrest any member of OCP. To do so will cause him to start shutting down. While all of this is happening, Robo meets ED-209 and promptly gets his ass-kicked. Fleeing the scene, he’s met by an army of cops who have been told to put him down. They shower him with bullets until his partner, Lewis, comes to his rescue.  Although put in jail, due to his connections, Boddicker is out in no time. He heads to Jones’ office, and gets order to destroy Robo. All of his cohorts are set free from jail, and given military-grade assault cannons.

The films third act takes place where it all started, the abandoned warehouse where Murphy was ripped to shit. It’s a pretty sweet ordeal, because Boddicker & his buddies have cannons and a rockin’ mail truck. They try their luck, but Robocop moves at the speed of areyoufuckingkiddingme?MPH, and they just can’t catch’em. One of the coolest scenes you’ll ever see, is when Emil crashes into a vat of toxic waste, and it basically starts to melt him. Clarence puts him out of his misery by smashing him with a car, and turning him into stew. Awesome stuff. He soon has his final meeting with Robo, and learns that he isn’t being arrested. At that moment, Clarence’s remaining friend drops a ton of steel on top of Robo, immobilizing him. Lewis, who’d been shot a bunch by Clarence, finally takes a minute from crying like a punk to blow up the area where Clarence’s buddy was. At this moment, Boddicker grabs a giant, sharp piece of steel and starts being Robo with it before stabbing him, causing Murphy to scream in pain. You know at that moment, Robo had to think “MotherFUCKERS. Did they HAVE to program me to feel pain? Are they fucking SERIOUS with this? I don’t get a Robodick, but I get to feel pain?”. It’s at this moment, super-pissed, he whips out his info-spike and shoves it into Boddicker’s neck, which then drenches Robo in dark-red blood as it spurts out in jets and Clarence dies in a pool of rusty dirty-water.

Back at OCP, Robo has his final meeting with ED-209, blowing it apart with the same canon that Boddicker’s gang was given. He heads up stairs and shows the entire boardroom what Clarence had told him about Dick Jones. Well, he promptly tries to quit, but the old-man fires him, allowing Robo to riddle him with bullets and send him crashing through the window and splattering on the street below. No unemployment for you, suck it!

Man Movie Encyclopedia Tally:
1-Liners: None
Guys Beat Up: 3
Guys Killed: 25
Swear Words: 74
Boobs: 2
Explosions: 19
Slow-Motion Scenes: 14
Car Chases: 3
Chases on Foot: 2
Broken Bones: None
Fight at a Motel? No
Guy Get Girl? No
Guy Smoke Cigarettes? No

Man-Facts:
The suit was quite the piece. At one point it had an air conditioner/fan installed because Peter Weller was losing up to 3lbs a day from sweating so much.

The hospital team that tried to save Murphy was an actual trauma team. Apparently a good portion of their dialogue was just ad-libbed, since they knew the lingo.

Peter Weller actually turned down King Kong Lives to film this. I’m sure in retrospect he wishes he’d done KKL.

Box-Office Business:
Created for $13 million dollars, and distributed by Orion Pictures, Robocop was released on July 17^th, 1987, in 1,580 theaters. It came in at #1, for a weekend total of $8,008,721.

In total, in the US, Robo brought in a cool $53,424,681

C’mon Bennet, Let’s Party:
What I love about Robocop, is that it’s one of the most violent films of all time, and it was marketed towards kids. I got an ED-209 for Easter, and I had a rockin’ Robocop figure with cap-gun firing sounds. I mean, how the hell did that happen? This is probably as adult as you can get with a movie without involving hardcore porn. Needless to say, but worth saying, Robocop is the absolute best when it comes to sci-fi action. Peter Weller is awesome as Robocop, with the pitch perfect voice that I emulate to this day. Kurtwood Smith, while known to the younger generation as Red Foreman, will forever be Clarence Boddicker. The violence was over the top and gruesome, partnered with a great score & special effects as the perfect accoutrements. A film so awesome, that truly no sequel could measure up.

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~ by Caliber Winfield on November 20, 2013.