ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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__________ RoboCop (1987) - Theatrical Trailer


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Robocop was director Paul Verhoeven's satiric contribution to the cyborg concept in sci-fi. In some indeterminate near future of Detroit, crime is worse than ever (a prevalent theme in eighties sci-fi, like Escape From New York).

The responsibility of law enforcement, including the actual police force, has been handed over to a corporation. After the test failure of a robotic enforcer, an ambitious young executive (Miguel Ferrer) develops the cyborg option — they just wait for the next cop casualty (played by Peter Weller) and transform him into the mostly-machine policeman, a police-borg.

The cyborg is a great success in the next few days, but his memory — supposedly wiped clean — begins to resurface.

This has its roots in Blade Runner, but it's a reversal of the premise. Writer Ed Neumeier got the idea from the earlier film, in which a human cop was chasing after androids or robots. In this one, Neumeier switched it to a robot or cyborg chasing after human criminals.



Verhoeven makes sure that we understand that much of this is not to be taken seriously. Besides the absurd commercials (which Verhoeven would return to in Starship Troopers), there's an early scene in which a young executive is accidentally and violently killed in a mishap, right there in the corporate offices. Afterwards, everyone behaves as if this is a weekly occurrence, just "life in the big city."

The drawbacks of corporatism are sharply drawn, to dark comic effect — everyone has become very callous in this near-future, almost inhumanly so. It offers an ironic counterpoint to the surfacing humanity of the cyborg.

Dan O'Herlihy plays the elder head of the corporation, while Ronny Cox (back soon in a similar role in Verhoeven's Total Recall) is the over-the-top devious President & no.2 of same. The darkness also extends to the brutal violence - some of this set new standards in cinematic violence, such as the gundown of Weller. The gang of crooks, led by the unusual bespectacled Kurtwood Smith, are extremely sadistic, but there's also something clownish about them.



Some of this betrays its low budget. You might notice a lackluster set design in some scenes during a 2nd viewing, but usually this moves along at such a rapid fire clip, so you won't pay attention to such detail.

There are also questionable plot turns; why would Weller and his partner (played by Nancy Allen) not wait for back-up when going to confront the much larger-numbered gang?

Allen's character is actually responsible for what happens to Weller due to her ineptness, but there's no sense of guilt later — it's a truly callous world.

Weller and Allen would return in the sequel a couple of years later, as would O'Herlihy. Verhoeven would not. There was a short TV series in 1994 and a remake arrived in 2014.

____________ ROBOCOP - Drug Factory Raid


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Robo-Trivia: Robocop has three prime directives, which seem like a direct steal from Asimov's famous 3 Laws of Robotics —
>>>>>>>>> Robocop's are programed to (1) Serve the public trust, (2) Protect the innocent, (3) Uphold the law.

BoG's Score: 8.5 out of 10



BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Phantom]

Robocop (1987)

Multi-level science fiction that takes place in a future Detroit where a corporation named OCP controls everything in the city, including the police. Crime in the city is at catastrophic levels, the rank and file police officers are on the verge of striking and OCP VP Dick Jones thinks he has the answer in a huge killing machine called ED 209 which will clear a large swath of Detroit and make way for a massive rebuilding project that will make the company zillions.



Peter Weller plays Murphy who has been dumped into the high crime precinct in the midst of the job dispute. Weller’s ambition in life was music and his favorite performer was Miles Davis. After getting a B.A. in Theatre and a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he left his native state of Texas to study with legendary acting coach Uta Hagen. He was also a member of the celebrated Actor’s Studio, under the aegis of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasburg. After a string of successes on stage, he made his movie debut in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979). Despite a long and prolific career (he is still working), Weller has not achieved first class stardom in feature films. Most of his work has been in the television medium.



Murphy’s new partner is Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) who has just taken out a violent thug that none of the male officers seem able to control. Allen was the daughter of a police lieutenant from Yonkers, NY. She had trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts. A high profile actress of the 1980’s, she made her first film appearance with Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973) and was with Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976), after which she married director Brian DePalma. Her last film appearance was in My Apocalypse (2008) before retiring to spend her time with family and friends.



Allen’s bubble gum comment over a tiff about who is going to drive the car.



The formidable ED 209, Dick Jones’s project that will clear crime from the city and provide a lucrative military contract worth millions.



Where there’s smoke there used to be a lot of bullets. During a test of ED 209, the machine blows away a volunteer, putting the project in doubt for the board chairman, known only as The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy). The man’s body lies on a desk at left while his co-workers react in horror. After the barrage of fire power from the robot, it’s amazing there is enough of a body to view.



“Dick, I’m very disappointed in you.” An understatement if there ever was one.



Opportunist and all around snake Morton (Miguel Ferrer) steps in to offer his own replacement project which, he assures The Old Man, can be up and running within a month. The chastised Jones can only glare in suppressed murderous rage. Ferrer was the son of multi-talented Broadway and screen legend Jose Ferrer and wife, Rosemary Clooney (which made him a cousin of George Clooney). Miguel never rose to the level of his famous father during a career that spanned from 1981 to his death in 2017. Although he worked in an era in which character actors flourished, his unusual, homely features may have prevented him from gaining the mainstream audience that made Hackman and De Niro major stars.



On their first assignment together, Lewis turns out to be dangerously incompetent. In arresting a felon, she makes three mistakes at the onset.

First: she makes herself known as the man is relieving himself instead of waiting for him to finish. This allows him to gain time and consider his options.

Second: she stands too close to him, which puts him in striking distance.

Third: she allows her concentration to wander (you can guess); a completely unprofessional moment for someone who is facing a dangerous criminal.

So, she shouldn’t be surprised when the man belts her off her feet and throws her off the platform.



Murphy is ambushed after first getting the drop on the criminal gang. He is surprised to see the arrival of Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith), leader of the gang. Smith is familiar to Star Trek fans, having played three different characters over the run of the series. He originally auditioned for the role of Dick Jones. However, after seeing his performance as the volatile murderer, we can be thankful he was given this part. Smith does excellent work, investing the character with a black sense of humor that adds a dimension to what could otherwise have been a stock-psycho killer. The actor is quoted as saying, “I love playing villains. When you’re a bad guy, you get to do many nasty things. It’s a lot of fun.”



In an earlier scene, while being pursued by Murphy and Lewis, he gets rid of a henchman who has just been shot. “Can you fly, Bobby?” he asks, prior to throwing him out of the back of the truck. It is probably the most remembered line in the movie.



Murphy is assassinated by the gang in a scene so brutal it is difficult to watch. It calls up a similar moment in The Godfather where Sonny is drilled on the freeway. The onslaught is so fierce it is impossible for him to have survived, especially after Boddicker steps up to deliver a coup de grace to the head. He is taken to the hospital where doctors futilely attempt to save him while his dying brain calls up visions of his murder intermingled with memories of his wife and son.



Murphy’s body is turned over to Morton who orders his scientists to savagely cut away what can’t be useful to them and replace the parts with metal, effectively turning Murphy into a cyborg with a set of internal commands that echo Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.



What we see, and Morton doesn’t, is that a fourth directive has been added. Someone has been tampering with his project without his knowledge.



The Robocop costume. I’m not sure what they used in the construction; possibly light plastic. Even so, it must have been a bulky and totally uncomfortable ordeal for Weller who, after being locked into the outfit, was stuck for the day. Boris Karloff once opined that when he was made up in his full Mummy costume by Jack Pierce, they neglected to add a fly. Hopefully, it was discussed with Weller prior to shooting.



On his first mission Murphy encounters an attempted rape. This shot is not typical of Jost Vacano’s camera work or Paul Verhoeven’s direction. Robocop moves ahead at such a breakneck pace, there is almost no time for such artfully stylized images.





The careful destruction/reconstruction of Murphy’s mind into that of Robocop begins to break down when he experiences visions of his murder juxtaposed with memories of his family.



Lewis recognizes her old partner when Robocop twirls his weapon after using it on the firing range. Murphy had done the same trick with his weapon. Encountering him in the corridor, she mentions his name, which triggers his determination to tie all his returning memories together into a cohesive narrative. He uses the police library to find his old address and seek out his family, only to discover that they are gone. In a haunting scene, he wanders his old empty house, images of the family flaring up and almost immediately fading away into the present reality. Of course, actually finding them again in his condition would have been an excruciating disaster.





Murphy stumbles onto one of Boddicker’s henchmen (Paul McCrane) robbing a gas station. McCrane instantly recognizes the man they thought they had killed and blurts out enough of a statement to convict himself of murder and tie him to the Boddicker gang.





Dick Jones, who has been using Boddicker’s organization as his version of Murder Inc., dispatches the assassin to Morton’s home. Had Morton shown even a trace of humor, we might dredge up a modicum of sympathy for him. He had none. So, as the one bad guy in the movie audiences most wanted to see blown to hell, they get their wish.



Murphy invades the cocaine processing plant where Boddicker is doing business. He is backlit in a fog of white powder.





Boddicker incriminates Jones. When Murphy arrives to arrest him, the reason behind Directive 4 becomes clear. Jones has secretly placed a restriction on the cyborg, forbidding it to arrest any member of OCS. Murphy is incapacitated by the directive like Superman collapsing in a kryptonite moment.



Jones sends ED 209 to destroy Murphy. Unable to negotiate the stairs, it ends up in a metallic pile at the bottom of the landing, shrieking like a Banshee in a blender



As a last resort, Jones enlists the police to finish off Murphy. After enduring a withering hail of firepower, he is rescued by Lewis and spirited to an empty factory where he can repair himself.



“You may not like what you are going to see,” he warns her, then proceeds to remove his headgear.



As Lewis reaches out in sympathy, he speaks of his lost family: “I can feel them, but I can’t remember them.” Despite the rapid pace of the movie, Verhoeven finds moments to remind us that the hardcore characters are vulnerable human beings.



Cyborg cuisine. “Will you have the red or the white wine with that, sir?”



The most gruesome image in the movie. In pursuit of Murphy henchman McCrane runs his truck into a tank of toxic waste.





Once again Lewis proves inept. She chases Boddicker until his car overturns, then gets out of her vehicle without first drawing her weapon. Boddicker shoots her, which makes being decked and thrown off a platform seem like a walk in the park. Lewis is a sweet kid but let’s face it, if you want someone to watch your back, look up Lennie Briscoe.



“Murphy, I’m a mess.”



Murphy has his own problems, buried under a ton of steel scrap with Boddicker slamming at him with an iron pipe. Still, he’s optimistic about her chances: “Don’t worry. They can fix you. They can fix anything.”

An interesting idea for a series: Lewis is rebuilt and as Mr. and Mrs. Robocop they raise a family of cyborg children with a family pet…cyborg Lassie. Nick and Nora Charles for the 21st Century, fighting crime while getting blotto on baby food and martinis.







After dispatching Boddicker, Murphy only needs to tie up the final loose end with Dick Jones. This shot doesn’t look a whole lot better in the movie.

Director Verhoeven drives Robocop like a nuclear powered freight train and Basil Poledouris contributes an energetic score with a main theme that sounds like a military march for cyborgs.

Robocop was released at an exciting time for science fiction fans and holds its own among the best of the 1980’s, including, Aliens, The Fly, the Star Wars and Star Trek sequels and the Back to the Future trilogy.
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What Is Essential Is Invisible

[The Spike]

They'll fix you. They fix everything.

On his first day out on the streets of Detroit, Officer Murphy is brutally killed by known thug leader, Clarence Boddicker. Scientists at OCP are able to use what remains of Murphy's body and build a new heavily armed cyborg police officer, one that could rid the streets of crime forever.

Paul Verhoeven has been called many things in his career, bonkers, challenging and visionary, here with his first perceived block buster American feature, he showcases all of those things. Robocop on the page (and with its title) looked like your average run of the mill sci-fi shoot them up, with its basic premise not exactly oozing originality either. But Verhoeven had screenwriter's Edward Neumeier & Michael Miner in his corner, and they came up with a superior script to fully realise his vision. That Robocop is a satirical critique of totalitarianism and corporate corruption is now a given. Yet it wasn't at first evident to the summer block buster crowd, but Robocop has stood up well to critical re-examinations and the depth digging that so many have afforded it.

So with the script he wanted in place, Verhoeven utilised his memories from childhood, where his Netherlands home was taken over by a stomping German army, and added in the destruction factor, with no amount of technical expertise as well. Verhoeven paints an unhinged portrait of this Detroit (actual location shoot was parts of Texas), with skew whiff angles and bizarre twists lining the picture, the special effects even today looking tremendous. Robocop is extremely violent, especially in the directors cut that's now widely available, but even during the most wincing scenes, it stays brisk and sparky, and on his side is that his characters are as inhuman as the title protagonist is!. Thus the fusion of berserker sci-fi and human realism sits easy with the viewer, with the result serving notice to what a fine director Verhoeven can be.

Peter Weller dons the Robo suit (enduring agony for weeks on end apparently) and does what is required, and Nancy Allen kicks buttocks as Murphy's partner, Anne Lewis. But it's with the unsavoury characters that Robocop gains its acting kudos. Ronny Cox, Miguel Ferrer and a wickedly vile Kurtwood Smith dominate proceedings, helped immeasurably by the nature of the script. Verhoeven is thought to be a hard character on set, demanding much from all involved, even driving the normally amiable Weller to thoughts of violence against his director. But few, if any of those involved in Robocop can now say the final result wasn't worth it, because between them they made a genre classic. 9/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Phantom]

The movie occasionally cuts away from the main action to fill us in on other world news, including a malfunctioning laser launched from a satellite that wipes out a score of people, all sedately reported by a couple of vacuous news commentators.







Two of the satirical commercials inserted between scenes of mayhem.
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What Is Essential Is Invisible

[The Spike]

[Krel]

RoboCop was originally suppose to move quickly, with snake-like movements. Peter Weller trained for weeks with a Mime to get the movements down. Then they got the costume!

They probably used a cooling vest, that cools by circulating cold, or cool water through the vest. They can be made small, and the cold water can be easily replaced when warm.

RoboCop's pistol was a Beretta 93R, which is a semiautomatic/burst fire pistol that can fire 3 rounds with one squeeze of the trigger.

The people that moved into the house where the death of Morton by high-tech hand grenade occurred, got a shock when they found a box of grenades in a closet. It took a visit from the Police and Bomb Squad to clear up the situation.

I wonder who got to keep the grenades.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ It was discovered that when in full RoboCop costume, Peter Weller could not fit properly into the police car as he was too bulky. That's why most shots of him show him exiting the car or preparing to get into it.

For shots where he actually needed to be in the car, he only wore the top part of the costume and sat in his underwear. However, to maintain the illusion that RoboCop wears the entire suit while inside a car, most shots show his robotic feet exiting the car first.

Note from me: I'm not sure I believe the part below.

"For shots where he actually needed to be in the car, he only wore the top part of the costume and sat in his underwear."

I suspect he did in fact have pants on . . .

~ The RoboCop suit was so hot and heavy that Peter Weller was losing 3 lbs a day from water loss. Eventually, an air conditioner was installed in the suit.

Note from me: This is probably a slight exaggeration. In addition to a fan, an "air conditioner" would require an actual cooling unit, like the compressor on an house AC unit. All that would be heavy and require a lot of power.

I suspect that what they actually installed was a small fan that circulated the air inside the suit.

~ The screenplay had been offered to (and been rejected by) virtually every big director in Hollywood before Paul Verhoeven got hold of it. He threw it away after reading the first pages, convinced it was just a dumb action movie.

However, his wife read it all the way through and convinced him that the story was layered with many satirical and allegorical elements, after which Verhoeven finally decided to direct the film.

Note from me: The "takeaway" here is that (a) Paul's wife is an intelligent lady, and (b) Paul respects her opinions.

~ Nancy Allen first arrived on set when Paul Verhoeven was shooting the deliberately cheesy sitcom "It's Not My Problem" which appears on television screens throughout the film. Allen was initially horrified to think that she had signed on to make a film with an incompetent director.

Note from me: A funny story! It sounds like a situation in sitcom as well.

~ In Sacramento, California, a robbery suspect fled into a darkened movie theatre to escape pursuing police. He became so engrossed in the movie playing on screen (RoboCop), that he failed to notice that police had evacuated all other patrons from the theatre. When the lights flipped on, the stunned man was taken into custody.

Note from me: Another funny story! Except that I don't see how the robber could sit there and fail to notice the cops telling the folks all around him to please get up and go to the lobby.

I suppose it would work if there only twenty people in the whole theater, none of whom sat close to robber. But otherwise this sounds bogus.

~ Peter Weller said one of his favorite memories of his film career was filming the drug bust sequence. While filming the sequence, Weller was listening to Peter Gabriel's song "Red Rain" on his Walkman inside the RoboCop helmet as he exchanged gunfire with various bad guys.

Note from me: I;m beginning to detect a pattern here. This story also sounds mighty fishy. For example:

~ How did Peter hear the director say "action" if the music was already playing on his headphones?

~ How did he press the play button on a Walkman hidden inside his suit?

~ How did he hear the director say "cut" when the shot was over?

~ How did he hear the music with all the noise created by his gun and those of the "various bad guys" he was "exchanging gunfire" with?

Just to be fair about all this, here's the song Peter was allegedly listening to during that thunderous gun battle.

__________________ Peter Gabriel - Red Rain


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Frankly I think this would be my first choice for a musical selection during a colossal shootout!

Trust me, guys . . . this will knock your Robo-Socks off!

______________ 1812 Overture Finale Excerpt


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~ Paul Verhoeven and Rob Bottin clashed repeatedly before and during production over the design and make-up of the RoboCop character.

What they argued most about was the scene where Murphy takes off his helmet. Bottin wanted the scene to be filmed in a darkened area, fearing that harsh light would reveal too much of the make-up effects. Verhoeven wanted the scene to be filmed as brightly as possible, citing that director of photography Jost Vacano would be able to light it properly without revealing anything.

Verhoeven got his way and Bottin refused to talk to him any further for the remainder of production.

However, at the premiere, both men were so impressed with how the scene had turned out, that they instantly forgave each other. Bottin, who had even vowed to never again work with Verhoeven, happily accepted the offer to work on Verhoeven's next project, Total Recall (1990).

Note from me: Oh my . . . happy endings always make me cry!

~ In the hostage scene, as RoboCop is walking toward the room where the former councilman is holding the mayor hostage, the infrared heat vision mode was actually executed using fluorescent body paint on the (nude) actors and a black light.

Paul Verhoeven says that he thought this technique would be cheaper than getting an actual infrared spectrometer camera.

Note from me: Clever idea! Just make your actors strip naked and then paint 'em head-to-toe — and you save a bundle by not getting a pricey camera!

~ The Desert Eagle Magnum that is in the OCP Board Room was originally intended to be RoboCop's gun. There is even existing behind-the-scene photos and footage of Peter Weller practicing with the Desert Eagle.

However, when they gave Weller the gun, they noticed that even the bulky Desert Eagle was too small in the hands of RoboCop. So, the film's armory supervisor, Randy E. Moore, brought in a Berretta Automatic Pistol, to which a compensator and decorative dressing was added to increase the size of the gun.

Note from me: Thus disproving the bogus claim that "Size doesn't matter!"

~ The shootout at the cocaine factory was not originally intended to be so fast-paced. The automatic guns used in the scene kept malfunctioning during filming.

Most camera shots did not provide more than three seconds of usable footage, because most guns were usually jammed by that time. This necessitated quick cuts during editing, which proved to be advantageous for the scene.

Note from me: Consider this comment in relation to one which claimed Peter Weller was secretly listening to a tape of rock music during shootouts with bad guys.

"Most camera shots did not provide more than three seconds of usable footage."

I rest my case . . .
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)