Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,
Speaker 1: and today we are going to rerun our episode on
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven's RoboCop. Yes, the ultraviolent sci fi action
Speaker 1: classic that is as deeply satirical as it is gratuitously violent.
Speaker 1: Originally published twelve one, twenty three. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are going
Speaker 3: to be featuring a movie that I feel like is
Speaker 3: kind of a foundational text for my adult appreciation of cinema.
Speaker 3: It is the nineteen eighty seven sci fi action satire
Speaker 3: robo Cop, directed by Paul Verhoven. Rob I'm so excited
Speaker 3: we're talking about RoboCop today. Did you come up? I
Speaker 3: think I knew you came up with this topic because
Speaker 3: you recently visited some of the original locations featured in
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was on a family trip to Dallas over
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving break. We'd never been before. We went there primarily
Speaker 1: to go to Mao Wolf and then to check out
Speaker 1: various things in the city, museums and you know, restaurants
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And I had honestly kind of forgotten about
Speaker 1: the RoboCop connection until we were there driving around, and
Speaker 1: then I look out the window and I see the
Speaker 1: Dallas City Hall, and then I remember, this is the
Speaker 1: RoboCop building. This is OCP headquarters, or at least the
Speaker 1: lower portion of it. They did a matte painting on
Speaker 1: top of that to make it into this enormous skyscraper
Speaker 1: that reaches up to the heavens. And yeah, and then
Speaker 1: was just generally impressed by the architecture in Dallas. And
Speaker 1: then once I got back, you know, we started looking
Speaker 1: at RoboCop again and was reminded, like just how present
Speaker 1: Dallas is in the background standing in for futuristic Detroit.
Speaker 3: Right, So RoboCop is not actually set in Dallas. It's
Speaker 3: set in near future Detroit at the time the movie
Speaker 3: was made. But some of the architectural landmarks in Dallas
Speaker 3: really communicate the feeling that they were going for in
Speaker 3: the world of RoboCop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's unmistakable even if you're not from Dallas.
Speaker 1: Like there's a car chase earlier in early in the
Speaker 1: film where you see Reunion Tower in the background, which
Speaker 1: is very identifiable structure. It's this concrete pillar, you know,
Speaker 1: jutting up into the sky, and there's a sphere up there.
Speaker 1: It's not a perfect sphere, but you know, observation and
Speaker 1: restaurant deck and my family actually went up there. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun, has pretty pretty cool history, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these buildings though, but yeah, it's there in
Speaker 1: the background. Anybody who knows anything about Dallas, or even
Speaker 1: seen the opening to the TV series Dallas, would have
Speaker 1: been able to recognize that this is not Detroit. This
Speaker 1: is Staus but you know, nice stand in lots of neat,
Speaker 1: futuristic looking architecture.
Speaker 3: So when did you first see RoboCop.
Speaker 1: I saw it, like I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: of my generation saw it way too young. I think
Speaker 1: it was playing at a friend's house or kind of
Speaker 1: like friends of the family at their house, and I
Speaker 1: ended up watching part of it. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: plenty there to bring in a young mind, to captivate
Speaker 1: a young mind. You know, a robot fighting crime, firing
Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy guns. But then you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a notoriously violent film. It's got some really
Speaker 1: grotesque moments in it, which we'll discuss. It was not
Speaker 1: appropriate viewing at this at whatever age I was, but
Speaker 1: you know, I still loved it, grew to love it,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of people have this experience.
Speaker 1: Someone I was talking to in the last couple of
Speaker 1: years said that their mom had rented this for them
Speaker 1: at the store when they were young. They were just like, oh,
Speaker 1: they need a film RoboCop. This looks fun. They didn't
Speaker 1: like look at it closely enough to realize it was
Speaker 1: rated R, and then you know, the violence just washes over.
Speaker 3: Them, and probably a lot of the commentary sort of
Speaker 3: went over their heads at that age too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, all that ends up sticking with you
Speaker 1: probably is like the cool robot stuff, and there is
Speaker 1: some really cool robot stuff in this film, the violence
Speaker 1: and probably the profanity.
Speaker 3: So I did a little digging to figure out when
Speaker 3: I first saw RoboCop, and I was able to peg
Speaker 3: it to a year based on a rather a greasy marker,
Speaker 3: so I knew that, and this is also a very
Speaker 3: RoboCop sounding reason to be able to know when I
Speaker 3: saw this. So I first saw it right around the
Speaker 3: debut of The Windy's menu item the Baconator, which would
Speaker 3: place this event in the year two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: so you know it's two thousand and seven. I was
Speaker 3: I don't know how old I was. I was like
Speaker 3: twenty or so. I was hanging out with some friends
Speaker 3: and somehow it came up in Converse station that first
Speaker 3: of all, I had never seen RoboCop, and second, I
Speaker 3: had not yet had one of the new Bacon Eators,
Speaker 3: and they were like, okay, we've got to fix both.
Speaker 3: So we went to Windy's and then we watched this movie.
Speaker 3: And sorry to the Wendy's fans out there, the bacon Eator,
Speaker 3: at least this one at this time, was not good.
Speaker 3: And I'm not trying to be a food snob. I
Speaker 3: totally admit I can enjoy a greasy fast food sandwich.
Speaker 3: But whatever I got that day was just not right.
Speaker 3: It seemed like it had about eight slices of American
Speaker 3: cheese and like thirty strips of bacon on it. Just
Speaker 3: too much, too much bacon and cheese. Maybe those things
Speaker 3: are different now, I don't know. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: RoboCop was amazing, and this memory I think sticks with
Speaker 3: me because the bacon eator I had that day came
Speaker 3: to seem like something that you would see an advertisement
Speaker 3: for in RoboCop. It's like an in universe RoboCop food item.
Speaker 3: It's something e Meal would be eating while he's like
Speaker 3: pointing a gun at you and asking if you you
Speaker 3: think you're smarter than a bullet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, It's kind of the six thousand Sux of Burgers.
Speaker 1: It sounds like.
Speaker 3: It'll be hilarious if a Windy's ad runs on this episode.
Speaker 3: By the way, So I was struck by how different
Speaker 3: this movie was than I had always assumed because I'd
Speaker 3: never seen RoboCop, but I was aware of it as
Speaker 3: one of these eighties action movies, and I received it
Speaker 3: the way it had been I think, generally culturally metabolized,
Speaker 3: which was totally missing the point of it, shelving it
Speaker 3: alongside these other gory, r rated eighties action movies, maybe
Speaker 3: on the level of Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's how
Speaker 3: I thought of what RoboCop was.
Speaker 1: And I think it can leave that kind of impression
Speaker 1: in memory if you're far removed from especially in early
Speaker 1: viewing of the film. I mean, the violence is so
Speaker 1: violent that it kind of sticks with you, and you
Speaker 1: might forget some of the other stuff. Like I was
Speaker 1: talking to my wife about this when I was about
Speaker 1: to rewatch it. She was very, very supporting of me
Speaker 1: watching RoboCop, but did not want to watch it, and
Speaker 1: I had to remind her say, oh no, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of satire in it. There's more to it than
Speaker 1: just the violence. Though the violence is there, and it's
Speaker 1: sticking with you for a reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, And at the risk of sounding like
Speaker 3: a sucker, I think RoboCop has a quite genuine soul
Speaker 3: and humanity to it, and amid everything else it is,
Speaker 3: it is a hyper violent action movie, that's true. It
Speaker 3: is a hair raising depiction of a world in the
Speaker 3: hands of a moral egomaniacs. It is also a sort
Speaker 3: of light light sci fi speculation about cybernetics. It is
Speaker 3: definitely a hilarious fun house mirror to American culture. Amid
Speaker 3: all those things, it's about the struggle to keep hold
Speaker 3: of one's own humanity in a situation where there is
Speaker 3: enormous pressure from every direction trying to transform you into
Speaker 3: a soulless mash. So a lot of retrospective appreciation of
Speaker 3: RoboCop mentions the satirical aspects of it. So I think
Speaker 3: you absolutely could look at RoboCop as a satirical vision
Speaker 3: of a dystopian near future from the time that it
Speaker 3: was made, which you know, so the mid to late
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. And I think one of the main political
Speaker 3: thrusts of the commentary in the movie is if you
Speaker 3: ever heard people say, I wish the country could be
Speaker 3: run like a business. The situational premise of RoboCop is
Speaker 3: to say, Okay, let's see what that would be like.
Speaker 3: So it depicts a kind of privatization nightmare where everything
Speaker 3: that used to be thought of as a public interest
Speaker 3: in a public good is sold off to corporations to
Speaker 3: be run for profit. And though that seems to be
Speaker 3: happening in pretty much all domains in the world of
Speaker 3: the film, RoboCop especially focuses on the police department in
Speaker 3: the city of Detroit, which has been bought out by
Speaker 3: a corporation called Omni Consumer Products or OCP, and OCP
Speaker 3: seems to be using it primarily in a couple of ways.
Speaker 3: You get the sense they're looking at it as a
Speaker 3: cost cutting center, so maybe they're taking the money for
Speaker 3: the contract and then just cutting costs down to the
Speaker 3: bone without regard for how this affects people, and then
Speaker 3: keeping the difference. But they're also using it as a
Speaker 3: playground to test out prototypes of new hardware that is
Speaker 3: eventually destined for military use and thus big Pentagon contracts.
Speaker 3: And the plot of RoboCop essentially arises as a conflict
Speaker 3: between two rival OCP executives. You got Dick Jones and
Speaker 3: Bob Morton who are squabbling to get their respective lethal
Speaker 3: robot projects online at the police department so they can
Speaker 3: eventually step them up, scale them up, and secure defense dollars.
Speaker 3: So the things that are happening in the movie are
Speaker 3: happening because of what's going on at the corporate board level.
Speaker 3: These characters squabbling to get their own pros online and
Speaker 3: make bank off of that. And meanwhile, the main good
Speaker 3: characters are essentially just street level cops who are unknown
Speaker 3: and unimportant to these power players, but whose fates are
Speaker 3: controlled thereby.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're just struggling trying to do
Speaker 1: their job. Also, you know, there's talk of unionization. There
Speaker 1: are all these other additional elements that are in play
Speaker 1: kind of at the street level, but OCP is not
Speaker 1: at street level. They're they're they're halfway to heaven in
Speaker 1: their enormous skyscraper, and yeah, that's where that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of the plotting and a lot of and ultimately
Speaker 1: a lot of the action goes down.
Speaker 3: That's right. So I thought RoboCop was great when I
Speaker 3: first watched it. I've seen it several times over the
Speaker 3: year since then. I've long had an appreciation of it,
Speaker 3: but most recently, when I watched it just this week,
Speaker 3: I sort of think it's better than ever. And one
Speaker 3: thing that struck me on the most recent viewing is that,
Speaker 3: in a way, I think the sort of police criminal
Speaker 3: justice themes are less essential to the spirit of the
Speaker 3: movie then a lot of people would think, and certainly
Speaker 3: than I once thought. So, Like, the characters are cops
Speaker 3: and some of the villains are career criminals, but they
Speaker 3: could be in any line of work of what used
Speaker 3: to be public service sector jobs, and the spirit of
Speaker 3: the movie would be similar, though I guess it would
Speaker 3: be a lot less high octane if this was about
Speaker 3: like librarians whose branch is bought out by OCP and
Speaker 3: they want to replace all the books with advertisements for
Speaker 3: the new six thousand SUX. But I think the deepest idea,
Speaker 3: like what's at the heart of this movie is that
Speaker 3: it's about people who are doing a job, whatever that
Speaker 3: job is, where their bosses do not see them as
Speaker 3: human beings. They are treated like inanimate tools or machines
Speaker 3: just to be used to their maximum value, exhausted and discarded.
Speaker 3: And this metaphor is literalized in the case of RoboCop himself,
Speaker 3: and his redemption is in read discovering and reasserting that
Speaker 3: he is a human being, not just a mechanism to
Speaker 3: be used for profit by somebody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, his rediscovery of his humanity, that he is
Speaker 1: a human and not a product. Yeah, I very much
Speaker 1: agree with just the how good the movie is. Like basically,
Speaker 1: RoboCop shouldn't be this good as I rewatch it in
Speaker 1: my mid forties here, you know, because it's a film
Speaker 1: that again terrified and enthralled me when I was at
Speaker 1: a way too early age, entertained me later on, you know,
Speaker 1: as a solid, you know, kind of dystopian action movie
Speaker 1: with some laughs thrown in. But yeah, it absolutely delivers satirically,
Speaker 1: It delivers with the action, and you know, it delivers emotionally,
Speaker 1: like when the film really gets into its its own
Speaker 1: emotional depth, I felt like those moments still hit pretty hard,
Speaker 1: or I mean actually hit harder than they ever had
Speaker 1: because you know, I, for instance, Murphy's son in the
Speaker 1: film is about the age of my own, so it's
Speaker 1: that resonated in a way that he just wasn't going
Speaker 1: to resonate with me when I was a kid. And then,
Speaker 1: of course all of this on top of the expected
Speaker 1: nostalgia rush of watching a film like this that for
Speaker 1: better or where she grew up with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, So I see all that, and at the
Speaker 3: same time, I accept RoboCop is probably not for everybody.
Speaker 3: This is, to be clear, a hard R rated, hyper
Speaker 3: violent film, So you've got to be in the I
Speaker 3: don't know, in the right headspace to accept it. But
Speaker 3: if it is on a wavelength that is amenable to you,
Speaker 3: I think it is excellent.
Speaker 1: All right, Joe, what's your elevator pitch for RoboCop?
Speaker 3: Then Omni Consumer Products has bought out the contract for
Speaker 3: Old Detroit and wants to replace its human police force
Speaker 3: with one of a selection of different gun wielding robots.
Speaker 3: Beat Cop Alex Murphy is killed on the job, and
Speaker 3: his body parts, including the remains of his damaged brain,
Speaker 3: are used as scaffolding for one of these projects X.
Speaker 3: A cyborg called RoboCop. Is he simply a tool now
Speaker 3: controlled in full by his corporate masters or is there
Speaker 3: still a human being inside who can act of his
Speaker 3: own free will?
Speaker 1: All right, let's listen to that Trailorati Old Detroit has
Speaker 1: a cancer. Cancer is crime. We need a self sufficient
Speaker 1: law enforcement robot. How long will it take?
Speaker 3: We can go to prototype within ninety days. Where are
Speaker 3: you from? Stroud?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Hell.
Speaker 3: Alive.
Speaker 1: You're coming with me. You're gonna be a bad mothers.
Speaker 3: Yes, man, this guy's really good machine. Robo cop? What
Speaker 3: is he?
Speaker 1: He's a cyborg?
Speaker 3: You idiot? All hero?
Speaker 1: What are your prime directors protect to innocent? Let the
Speaker 1: woman go or there will be trouble.
Speaker 3: Hold the law.
Speaker 1: You are under arrest.
Speaker 3: Justice gets an upgrade looking for me, your great RoboCop.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your cooperation. Good night. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to go out and watch RoboCop before
Speaker 1: proceeding with the rest of the episode, go for it.
Speaker 1: It's widely available as a physical or digital release. Joe,
Speaker 1: you watched it on the older Criterion Collection DVD, which
Speaker 1: I understand it's pretty awesome. I watched it on the
Speaker 1: Aero Blu ray which I ran from Videodrome, which I
Speaker 1: really loved. Both are loaded with extras.
Speaker 3: I think I got to upgrade my disc because my
Speaker 3: old DVD now is playing in a rectangle inside my
Speaker 3: TV screen. But nevertheless, yeah, it was a great rewatch.
Speaker 1: All right. Let's get into the people involved in this production,
Speaker 1: starting at the top with the director. Paul Verhooven born
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, Dutch director, best known internationally for his
Speaker 1: string of major Hollywood genre films of the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: This is our first Rehoven film. He started out in
Speaker 1: Dutch cinema and his first full length feature was the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one comedy Business Is Business, followed by seventy
Speaker 1: three's Turkish Delight. That's his first collaboration with fellow Dutchman
Speaker 1: Rutger Howard in his film debut. This was an erotic
Speaker 1: drama and the film was a critical success and received
Speaker 1: a Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four Oscars. He did three additional Dutch films with Howard
Speaker 1: and a nineteen eighty three thriller called The Fourth Man
Speaker 1: with the Jerome Krabby, another Dutch actor of note that
Speaker 1: he had frequently worked with, that went on to international success.
Speaker 1: After this, he transitioned to Hollywood with the Rudger Howard
Speaker 1: heilmed nineteen eighty five medieval action adventure film Flesh and
Speaker 1: Blood or It's actually the title often looks like flesh plus.
Speaker 3: Blood equals what.
Speaker 1: Cinema I guess. And then then comes RoboCop, which was
Speaker 1: a big enough hit, though at the time criticized for
Speaker 1: his violence, certainly that He went on to direct Total
Speaker 1: Recall in nineteen ninety, Basic Instinct in ninety two, Showgirls
Speaker 1: in ninety five, Starship Troopers in ninety seven, and Hollow
Speaker 1: Man in two thousand, which was apparently an unsatisfying film Forhoven.
Speaker 1: It seems in interviews where he's like, well, this was
Speaker 1: the first movie that I made that looking at it,
Speaker 1: someone else could have made it. You know. He didn't
Speaker 1: feel like his touch was there. So after this he
Speaker 1: moved back to Dutch cinema with a string of pictures
Speaker 1: that lean more historical in theme less sci fi and
Speaker 1: so forth. But I believe he is set to return
Speaker 1: to American cinema with a project called Young Sinner, which
Speaker 1: is currently in development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, regarding his other big Hollywood movies, it is a
Speaker 3: weird string of films, though you can totally see the
Speaker 3: as different as they are the creative threads that run
Speaker 3: through them, and I would say the thing that they
Speaker 3: all have in common is excess. He was a filmmaker
Speaker 3: who was into depicting depicting a kind of carnal excess
Speaker 3: in terms of sex and violence, but usually to make
Speaker 3: a point of some kind. Whether he was successful or
Speaker 3: not in all of these endeavors, that's questionable.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 3: I think I would single out Starship Troopers in ninety
Speaker 3: seven and as another movie that I think at the
Speaker 3: time a lot of people really did not get it,
Speaker 3: kind of like what happened with RoboCop. A lot of
Speaker 3: people saw it as a kind of excessive, mindless, hyper
Speaker 3: violent sci fi action movie that in retrospect a lot
Speaker 3: of critics have looked back and said, this is actually
Speaker 3: a quite sharp satire and works much better than we
Speaker 3: originally realized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I still need to go back and rewatch it,
Speaker 1: because I watched it when I was when it first
Speaker 1: came out. I just didn't pick up on all the satire,
Speaker 1: and so the fascist themes in there that are there intentionally,
Speaker 1: that are being satirized just ended up sitting with me
Speaker 1: in a very weird way. I was like, I really
Speaker 1: don't like the humans in this, and of course I
Speaker 1: don't think you're supposed to like the humans at least
Speaker 1: by the end of the film, so I need to
Speaker 1: revisit it at some point. Now. Rahuvein was apparently I've
Speaker 1: read slow to accept the RoboCop project, apparently because he
Speaker 1: didn't really understand the satire at first. And I think
Speaker 1: it's been said that his wife likes like like set
Speaker 1: him down, was like, no, no, no, see this is what
Speaker 1: it's don't you see what it's doing here? And then
Speaker 1: he was like, Okay, yeah, I see now. And I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of that has to do with the excess,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like he seems like a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: you know, who is about pushing for the excessive violence
Speaker 1: and or sexuality more the violence in this film, but
Speaker 1: also pushing the satire, like making sure that everything's ramped
Speaker 1: up enough that you can't miss it, that even at
Speaker 1: least subconsciously, it's going to needle your brain and make
Speaker 1: you realize something's not right here, or something's being said.
Speaker 1: There's some additional way I'm supposed to interpret this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, like I said, I mean, I think, especially
Speaker 3: in the case of Starship Troopers, it seems like a
Speaker 3: lot of people did miss it at the time and
Speaker 3: only got it years later looking back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the writers on this we have. We have
Speaker 1: two writers. There's Edward Neumeyer, American screenwriter, producer, and director.
Speaker 1: This was his first big hit alongside Michael Minor, who
Speaker 1: will get to in a second. He went on to
Speaker 1: work on Starship Troopers, Starship Troopers two, and Starship Troopers three,
Speaker 1: which he directed. He also co scripted Anaconda's The Hunt
Speaker 1: for the Blood Orchid in two thousand and four, and
Speaker 1: he's actually the writer of the upcoming Young Center project
Speaker 1: that I referenced earlier.
Speaker 3: I have not seen the Starship Troopers sequels, but ooh boy,
Speaker 3: that just sounds like I don't know, reaching into a
Speaker 3: snake hole in the woods. I don't know if that
Speaker 3: was Maybe maybe they're great.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen him now. As for Michael Minor, also
Speaker 1: director and screenwriter of various projects, this was his first
Speaker 1: big hit as well, which you followed up with with
Speaker 1: script work on nineteen eighty nine's Deadly Weapon, which he
Speaker 1: also directed lawnmower Man two, and also Anaconda's The Hunt
Speaker 1: for the Blood Orchid. He also directed nineteen ninety nine's
Speaker 1: The Book of Stars, which looks like I got some
Speaker 1: good reviews. I think it's more of a drama. In
Speaker 1: his career, he directed a number of music videos for
Speaker 1: the rock band Y and T.
Speaker 3: I don't think I know them.
Speaker 1: I was not familiar. Look like some sort of a
Speaker 1: rock band or metal band, but I just don't know. Now.
Speaker 1: Our star of this is, of course, Peter Weller, playing
Speaker 1: essentially a dual role Alex Murphy and then the RoboCop
Speaker 1: that Murphy becomes, and then Robocop's attempts to reconnect with
Speaker 1: the Alex Murphy he once was. Weller was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven American actor and director who's acting work
Speaker 1: goes back to the early seventies and he's still active today.
Speaker 1: We previously discussed him in more depth in our episode
Speaker 1: on panoscos Monto's The Viewing.
Speaker 3: As we go on to discuss Weller in this role,
Speaker 3: a point of comparison that I think is maybe worth
Speaker 3: making is to the actors who play Batman, where there's
Speaker 3: a dual role where there's like, you know, you have
Speaker 3: your face revealed in one sense as Bruce Wayne, but
Speaker 3: then also for part of the movie, you are just
Speaker 3: a mouth and chin.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, luckily Peter Weller has a very
Speaker 1: handsome mouth and chin, very expressive. I think the other
Speaker 1: interesting thing that that was surely intentional is that, especially
Speaker 1: at the time, he was a very gaunt actor, you know,
Speaker 1: a very thin man, which you know, you need a
Speaker 1: skeleton to go at the in the middle of all
Speaker 1: of that gear that he ends up wearing in the
Speaker 1: RoboCop suit. So I think that that probably was a
Speaker 1: huge factor as well. You need somebody that can literally
Speaker 1: be the skeleton of this thing. Now. As Murphy, I
Speaker 1: you know, he's basically just a likable good cop that
Speaker 1: we don't really get to know all that much. We
Speaker 1: learn more about him through RoboCop as he tries to
Speaker 1: reconnect with his past, and this results in various moments
Speaker 1: where RoboCop the cyborg is trying to connect with the
Speaker 1: remnants of his own humanity, you know, and his memories
Speaker 1: of his family, and I think Weller does a really
Speaker 1: great job in those moments, like they I kind of
Speaker 1: weld some tears up in those moments myself, and and
Speaker 1: and then also just as in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: the action scenes, I think it's a very nice physical performance.
Speaker 1: So there are certainly times where the robot movements look silly,
Speaker 1: you know, walking around as RoboCop, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: they're supposed to, but there are also some great flourishes
Speaker 1: that really bring this metallic hulk to life. I think
Speaker 1: about the way that he positions his hands when he's
Speaker 1: firing that enormous pistol of his I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is something that actually makes sense in the use
Speaker 1: of a pistol, but it looks really good when RoboCop
Speaker 1: does it.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a strange kind of ballet to the way
Speaker 3: that he moves, Like he doesn't just raise his arm
Speaker 3: to shoot his RoboCop gun, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Rob there are some shots where he can almost kind
Speaker 3: of like he raises both arms, like he raises his
Speaker 3: other arm as a kind of counterbalance. Is that what
Speaker 3: you're talking about?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it does feel very mechanical like this, like
Speaker 1: his upper torso is the turret of a tank, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also so I see, Yeah, it is mechanical
Speaker 3: and it almost looks like he's doing a counterweight or counterbalance,
Speaker 3: but it all so kind of looks like a dance,
Speaker 3: like it like ballet or something where the arms both
Speaker 3: go out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If they had not done those things, I think
Speaker 1: RoboCop the character would have been a lot more just
Speaker 1: visually unappealing. So I was noticing a lot of that
Speaker 1: and rewatching the film. Now. Weller came back to play
Speaker 1: RoboCop again in the sequel RoboCop two, but by RoboCop three,
Speaker 1: he was played by a different actor, Robert John Burke
Speaker 1: of best known probably for Thinner and Dust Devil. I'm
Speaker 1: to understand that Weller was unavailable because he was filming
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's Naked Lunch at that point.
Speaker 3: You know, I've never so RoboCop two is interesting. It
Speaker 3: I think it is quite good, but it's very different
Speaker 3: than the first RoboCop and has a different kind of mindset.
Speaker 3: RoboCop three I've never seen, but it's on paper seems
Speaker 3: like it could be hilarious, so I kind of want
Speaker 3: to get into it.
Speaker 1: It has a great cast, and it's and it's interesting
Speaker 1: too in that by three they're like, you know, kids
Speaker 1: love RoboCop, let's maybe let's make one that's not rated R.
Speaker 1: And so that's what they did. But yeah, I've never
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but I would like to love
Speaker 1: RoboCup too. It really ups the ante, especially on the
Speaker 1: stop motion violence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so three has. What I know about it is
Speaker 3: that I think it has rocket ninjas and it is no,
Speaker 3: its reputation is quite terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it has Stephen Root in it. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of got to apply to Stephen Root rule. How
Speaker 1: bad could it be if Stephen Root isn't it. I
Speaker 1: should also note that Weller has returned to voice RoboCop
Speaker 1: in recent years. I believe they put the character into
Speaker 1: one of the Mortal Kombat games. And there's a new
Speaker 1: RoboCop video game that I am not technologically equipped to play,
Speaker 1: but I've read some interesting things about it. Sounds like
Speaker 1: it does an interesting job of sort of drawing from
Speaker 1: all three films to create a like a fourth narrative
Speaker 1: that you can play through. I don't know that the
Speaker 1: satire is there. So if you've played this new RoboCop
Speaker 1: game right in and tell us what you think, all right.
Speaker 1: The next actor of note is Nancy Allen, playing the cop.
Speaker 1: Anne Lewis born nineteen fifty American actress who kicked off
Speaker 1: her film career in nineteen seventy three is the last detail.
Speaker 1: She followed this up with supporting roles in a string
Speaker 1: of horror movies, including seventy six Is Carrie, then a
Speaker 1: string of roles in films of the films of Brian
Speaker 1: de Palma, seventy nine's Home Movies, nineteen eighties, Dressed to
Speaker 1: Kill and eighty one's Blowout. After RoboCop, she appeared in
Speaker 1: both robo sequels. She was in Poltergeist three in eighty eight,
Speaker 1: she was in nineteen ninety eight s Out of Sight,
Speaker 1: She was in Children of the Corn six six six,
Speaker 1: Isaac's Return in nineteen ninety nine, and her last acting
Speaker 1: credit was in two thousand and eight, So it sounds
Speaker 1: like maybe she sort of quietly retired from cinema.
Speaker 3: Is Children of the Corn six six six, the six
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty six movie in that series.
Speaker 1: It might be I feel like there are that many
Speaker 1: of them. I've attempted to look. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen one I love Stephen King's original short story.
Speaker 1: It's very creepy, but it's hard to figure out where
Speaker 1: to even contemplate. Beginning with the Children of the Corn movies.
Speaker 3: Why would it take Isaac that long to return, I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 1: I think maybe he was out for a movie or two.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I really really love Nancy Allen as Lewis
Speaker 3: and RoboCop. Maybe my all time favorite buddy cop partner
Speaker 3: in a buddy cop movie. So the movie shows kind
Speaker 3: of multiple ways that the police characters react to the
Speaker 3: pressures that they're under in this plot. You know, some
Speaker 3: of the cops in the movie just become unthinking functionaries
Speaker 3: of OCP, Like they just keep their heads down, do
Speaker 3: what the boss says. They don't ask questions, even when
Speaker 3: they are essentially ordered to assassinate RoboCop later in the movie.
Speaker 3: Others are showing how emotional crises, like there's one guy
Speaker 3: who just always in every scene seems to be freaking out.
Speaker 3: Lewis is an interesting like she she keeps cool under pressure,
Speaker 3: and she thinks for herself and she uses compassion. She's
Speaker 3: the one who's able to understand what's going on to
Speaker 3: see that RoboCop is actually Murphy when she gets in
Speaker 3: his face and says, it's you Murphy. Yeah, and to
Speaker 3: see that there's some part of him that is still human,
Speaker 3: and to save his life when Dick Jones is trying
Speaker 3: to have him destroyed in the in the third act
Speaker 3: or second or third, I don't know, later on in
Speaker 3: the movie. And I think Nancy Allen does a great
Speaker 3: job with this role. She's she's tough, down to earth,
Speaker 3: plays it smart human. I really like her in this role.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she's really the heart and soul of this
Speaker 1: movie in many ways, in a very real sense and
Speaker 1: an intentional sense, you know. And she's and it's also
Speaker 1: great that she's she's not written as a love interest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, she's a capable action hero in her own
Speaker 1: right in an action movie, but her compassion is really
Speaker 1: her main strength. And that's and without her, if you
Speaker 1: take her character out of this, you don't get any
Speaker 1: kind of a positive resolution for the characters in the setting.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: I think a lesser movie would have tried to have
Speaker 3: some kind of romantic relationship between the two and it
Speaker 3: just that's not what this relationship is about. And I'm
Speaker 3: glad they didn't go that direction.
Speaker 1: I watched a featurette on the Arrow Blu Ray where
Speaker 1: they're interviewing her about this role, and Nancy Allen does
Speaker 1: point out it's very interesting how she ended up getting
Speaker 1: the part, and you know, the sort of callback experience
Speaker 1: and so forth. But she said she showed up in
Speaker 1: Dallas and they were like, how about a shorter haircut,
Speaker 1: and because she had longer hair, and she's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: goes out gets her haircut, and then she's like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I got my haircut way too short. I've
Speaker 1: got a terrible haircut for this movie. I don't think
Speaker 1: it looks terrible, but it is very short. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about that. Looking at the character, I
Speaker 1: think it ultimately works really well for the character. But
Speaker 1: at the time I think she was a little horrified.
Speaker 1: She was like, I think I've gone too far.
Speaker 3: I think this was the first movie I saw Nancy
Speaker 3: Allen in, so I just think of this as her
Speaker 3: natural haircuts. When I see her in other stuff with
Speaker 3: longer hair, I'm like, oh, here she has long hair.
Speaker 1: Now, all right, let's get into some of the corporate
Speaker 1: characters here. We'll also come back to a few cops.
Speaker 1: This is. We've talked about this actor before, but Dan
Speaker 1: o'hurlehey plays the Old Man.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, the villain from Halloween three shows up as
Speaker 3: a I don't know, is he a villain? And yeah,
Speaker 3: he's a sort of unwitting villain in this movie. You
Speaker 3: don't see him. He's not as direct of a schemer
Speaker 3: as some of the other corporate villains. He's more just
Speaker 3: kind of like sitting there presiding over all of the
Speaker 3: wickedness that goes on, mostly oblivious to it.
Speaker 1: I you know, going into this, and perhaps the character
Speaker 1: changes a bit in the sequels, I don't remember. I've
Speaker 1: probably seen Rebel Coop two more than I've seen any
Speaker 1: of them, so maybe he's more of a villain in too.
Speaker 1: But in this one, I feel like he is essentially
Speaker 1: God or perhaps Zeus. You know, he's The corporate meeting
Speaker 1: rooms of OCP are in a place where skyscrapers touch
Speaker 1: the heavens, and his appearance at a meeting is spoken
Speaker 1: of in terms of a holy visitation, and we never
Speaker 1: hear his name. He's just the old Man. It really
Speaker 1: does feel like he actually comes down for these meetings
Speaker 1: from heaven or from Mount Olympus, carrying with him the
Speaker 1: aloofness and distance of a divine father who wants the
Speaker 1: best for his creations. He wants to create Delta City.
Speaker 1: Remember he's the idea man. All this robot cop stuff
Speaker 1: is just in service to this grand dream that is
Speaker 1: going to make the world better at least for some people.
Speaker 1: He wants to fix his creation, but he doesn't really
Speaker 1: understand mortal existence all that.
Speaker 3: Well, you're right, and I think the comparison does Zeus
Speaker 3: is apt because in some ways he is kind of
Speaker 3: an arbidure of justice or a moral authority in some way,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't really seem to have much understanding of
Speaker 3: morality at all. It's like he he's like an a
Speaker 3: moral arbiter of justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So it's an interesting role to look at again,
Speaker 1: thinking of it's easy to go in and think about
Speaker 1: his role in Halloween three, you know, where he is
Speaker 1: this evil corporate guy, and we also talked about him
Speaker 1: in the last Starfighter episode we did. He plays he
Speaker 1: plays a good guy in that he's covered in alien makeup.
Speaker 3: In this I guess I would say he is functionally
Speaker 3: a bad guy in terms of the effects of his behavior,
Speaker 3: but he doesn't have bad guy energy on screen. He's
Speaker 3: just sort of like an oblivious god who's bumbling around
Speaker 3: destroying people without really realizing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and ultimately he's not a power to be overcome
Speaker 1: by our heroes, but to be appealed to. So we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that when we talk about the climax. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Dan O'Hurley great actor of stage and screen. He lived
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen through two thousand and five. Ah, but then
Speaker 1: we are true villain. Are one of our true villains
Speaker 1: on the corporate end of things, here is the character
Speaker 1: Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox.
Speaker 3: Dick Jones is one of my all time favorite movie villains.
Speaker 3: I love him, and I love all the corporate villains
Speaker 3: in this movie, but Dick Jones is great and Ronnie
Speaker 3: Cox in this role. Ronnie Cox was simply born to
Speaker 3: play business creeps in Paul Verhoven films. One of my
Speaker 3: other favorites is his role as Coohagan, the villain who
Speaker 3: runs the for profit in Mars Colony in Total Recall.
Speaker 3: And this is a spoiler for Total Recall though if
Speaker 3: you don't want it spoiled, closeure ears for a second.
Speaker 3: But in that movie, if you'll recall he wants to
Speaker 3: prevent the use of an alien device that will make
Speaker 3: the atmosphere of Mars breathable because he wants to protect
Speaker 3: his racket selling oxygen to the Mars colonists.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, what a scoundrel. Though it's interesting. I was
Speaker 1: digging into it and this movie is you know, you
Speaker 1: now think of Ronnie Cox, you think of characters like Jones,
Speaker 1: but apparently he was playing somewhat against type on this one.
Speaker 1: He'd been mostly known for playing pleasant, white collar type characters.
Speaker 1: He made his screen debut in nineteen seventy two John
Speaker 1: Borman thriller Deliverance. We see him playing the guitar, and
Speaker 1: he's actually playing the guitar in that dueling banjo scene
Speaker 1: because he's also a singer songwriter.
Speaker 3: He is the character in Deliverance who has like the
Speaker 3: strongest moral compass. The others are are more like ruthless
Speaker 3: and practical. And he's like, no, we've got to go
Speaker 3: to the authorities and explain what happened and admit what
Speaker 3: we did and all that, and you know, Bert Reynolds
Speaker 3: has to argue with him and say, no, we got
Speaker 3: to cover it up, which again, yes, I guess seems
Speaker 3: against type to me because I was more familiar with
Speaker 3: him playing characters like Dick Jones. But yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: you could look at it the other way around as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The same year, seventy two, he also pops up
Speaker 1: in The Mind Snatchers, a sci fi film that has
Speaker 1: a cast that includes Christopher Walken, Joss Ackland, and Tom Aldridge.
Speaker 1: So some interesting names in there. I've never seen it.
Speaker 1: A fair amount of TV work followed, but he popped
Speaker 1: up in seventy nine Is the Onion Field, eighty two
Speaker 1: is The Beast within eighty four's Beverly Hills Cop, it's sequel,
Speaker 1: and then he did RoboCop. Subsequent credits include not only
Speaker 1: Total Recall, but the nineteen ninety Captain America film, the
Speaker 1: TV series Cop Rock Star Trek the Next Generation, and
Speaker 1: I don't remember this, but apparently has an uncredited role
Speaker 1: in Deep Blue Sea.
Speaker 3: Is he basically playing Dick Jones in that, like he's
Speaker 3: a corporate silver lord? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's kind of like post RoboCop. That's one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons you're thinking about casting him. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, and you know, basically probably printed money there
Speaker 1: for a while.
Speaker 3: You can imagine the deep Blue Sea is just in
Speaker 3: the RoboCop universe, like they're making smart sharks. That just
Speaker 3: seems like another thing OCP would do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I said his birthday. He was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen thirty eight, and he's still out there.
Speaker 1: I think he still performs as a musician as a musician,
Speaker 1: and I think he may still be active as an actor.
Speaker 1: I don't recall off han Ah. But we have another
Speaker 1: corporate character to talk about here, the character Bob Morton
Speaker 1: played by Miguel Ferrer, who lived nineteen fifty five through
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen American actor and son of Jose Ferrer and
Speaker 1: Rosemary Clooney, which of course made him George Clooney's cousin.
Speaker 1: George Clooney apparently showed up with him to a lot
Speaker 1: of these auditions back in the day they were oh
Speaker 1: living together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what if a young George Clooney had been in
Speaker 3: RoboCop Farrer.
Speaker 1: He had a real knack for playing scoundrels. Started off
Speaker 1: in early eighties television and some forgettable films. Pops up
Speaker 1: as a first officer in Star Trek three. After Robocopy
Speaker 1: appeared in nineteen eighty nine's Deep Star six, one of
Speaker 1: the many underwater horror films of eighty nine.
Speaker 3: I think he undergoes a harrowing, explosive decompression in that film.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's probably right. He was in nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: The Guardian, ninety two's Twin Peaks, fire Walk with Me
Speaker 1: ninety four is The Stand the mini series this did
Speaker 1: three episodes of Tales from the Crypt. I think that's commendable.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure who else did that many. He was
Speaker 1: also in ninety six is Project Alf ninety seven is
Speaker 1: the Night Flyer Mulan. In nineteen ninety eight he did
Speaker 1: the voice of the main villain. He was in two
Speaker 1: Thousands Traffic, and he pops up in Iron Man three
Speaker 1: and twenty thirteen. He did a lot of voice work
Speaker 1: late in his career, and appeared in the twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: Twin Peaks revival.
Speaker 3: Miguel Ferrer is also great in this movie. Like I said,
Speaker 3: I love all the corporate villains. He's a perfect foil
Speaker 3: to Dick Jones. So Ronnie Cox is older, colder, more calculating,
Speaker 3: and Miguel Ferrera's character Bob Morton is a young hotshot
Speaker 3: who thinks he's the next big thing, and they play
Speaker 3: off of each other well, but they're like both so detestable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like Morton comes off as more likable in
Speaker 1: some regards, but it's because he's less directly awful and
Speaker 1: also doesn't resort to direct murder though is the all
Speaker 1: is very culpable for human deaths. So it's like they
Speaker 1: are both horrible, but they're different shades and degrees of
Speaker 1: the same awfulness. Yeah, Morton's this ambitious, coked up business
Speaker 1: bro who's definitely going to high five you in the
Speaker 1: men's room, but you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: he's totally going to sign off on civilian or police
Speaker 1: deaths if it lets him advance up the corporate ladder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are two corporate characters, one more villainous than the other.
Speaker 1: Both of them both I think you could think of
Speaker 1: his villains, but they're essentially both lawful evil to a
Speaker 1: certain degree. We also have to have a little chaotic
Speaker 1: evil in this, and that's where we have the character
Speaker 1: Clarence Bodiker played by kurtwood Smith.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This raises another interesting theme of RoboCop, which is
Speaker 3: it depicts a world of an alliance between sort of
Speaker 3: big capital and big crime, like the criminal bosses and
Speaker 3: the corporate bosses essentially are working together against everybody else.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, other antagonists than the film though, or
Speaker 1: very much part of the corporate machine. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like they're to large degrees they can just be like,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to climb up the corporate ladder here,
Speaker 1: I'm just doing what i have to do. I am
Speaker 1: part of this company. I'm part of OCP. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Clarence bodiker Is is very much all of the criminal
Speaker 1: world and is just evil. Just doesn't seem to love
Speaker 1: anything in life. It's just full of hate and violence.
Speaker 1: Even his cronies are not safe.
Speaker 3: He does seem to genuinely love crime like he loves
Speaker 3: his work.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Now. Kurtwood Smith born nineteen forty three is
Speaker 1: an American actor of stage, screen, and TV that may
Speaker 1: be best known to many for his role as the
Speaker 1: dad on That seventies show, but this was his big
Speaker 1: breakout film role. And this was another case where, according
Speaker 1: to some of the extras I was looking at, you know,
Speaker 1: was very much against against type. This is not a
Speaker 1: guy who'd done a bunch of villain roles. They were
Speaker 1: thinking about other sort of established villainous actors like Michael Ironside,
Speaker 1: but they ended up liking kurtwood Smith, apparently because Verhoven
Speaker 1: liked how he kind of looked like Heinrich Himmler in
Speaker 1: The Little Glasses. He liked the idea of this being
Speaker 1: like a more of a cerebral villain to be the
Speaker 1: to be the adversary of RoboCop, who obviously nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: gonna best RoboCop physically, no human is anyway, as we'll see,
Speaker 1: So you need somebody who's more scheming, someone who's more
Speaker 1: of a hyena.
Speaker 3: I can see how this movie would have been again
Speaker 3: diminished if it had gone in a different direction, if you
Speaker 3: had the standard boxy, tough guy in the heavy role.
Speaker 3: Not to diss Michael Ironside, I mean, I love Michael Ironside,
Speaker 3: but the casting of a slightly nerdy looking but still
Speaker 3: imposing actor like Smith here is really inspired for this role,
Speaker 3: and it makes the character as memorable as he is
Speaker 3: instead of just another violent Hinchman. The Himmler image does
Speaker 3: come through. There seems to be something not just brutal
Speaker 3: but kind of transcendentally evil about the Bodicker we got,
Speaker 3: and it's also there in his name. He's not like
Speaker 3: you know, Biff Drago, He's Clarence Bodiker.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great performance. He's just so so nasty,
Speaker 1: so sadistic, and like the scene where he's eventually apprehended
Speaker 1: by RoboCop, roughed up and brought in and he's like spitting,
Speaker 1: he spits blood onto the police desk. Just just a
Speaker 1: wonderful performance. He followed up RoboCop with Roles in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, Rambo three, Dead Poet Society in eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Star Trek The Undiscovered Country, ninety two's Fortress, ninety three's
Speaker 1: Boxing Helena, and ninety five's Under Siege Too Dark Territory,
Speaker 1: plus lots more.
Speaker 3: Under Siege, Too Dark Territory. That's a movie with hacking
Speaker 3: in it. Yes, if you ever seen it, it's about hacking,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: Getting back into the cop characters a bit. We have
Speaker 1: Robert Dukey in this playing Sergeant re With nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: four through two thousand and eight, another mainstay of all
Speaker 1: three RoboCop movies. His acting credits go all the way
Speaker 1: back to the original Outer limits. In the sixties, he
Speaker 1: worked a lot in TV and film. He did one
Speaker 1: of the voices on the nineteen sixties Harlem Globe Trotter's cartoon,
Speaker 1: and he had a memorable turn as the villain in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy three black exploitation film Coffee, which starred
Speaker 1: Pam Greer. He acted in three Robert Altman movies, seventy
Speaker 1: five's Nashville, seventy six is Buffalo Bill and the Indians,
Speaker 1: or Setting Bull's History Lesson and nineteen ninety three shortcuts.
Speaker 3: In this he plays the police sergeant who is putting
Speaker 3: up with impossible pressures imposed by OCP as they've come
Speaker 3: in and taken over.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a pretty standard role, but a notable actor,
Speaker 1: all right. Getting back into the criminal world. Here we
Speaker 1: have Ray Wise playing Leon Nash. This is one of
Speaker 1: the criminal henchmen to Botiker. Born nineteen forty seven. Wise
Speaker 1: is probably best known for his role of Leland Palmer
Speaker 1: and Twin Peaks, but he also played the doom Doctor
Speaker 1: Alex Holland and Wes Craven's Swamp Thing from nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Other credits include eighty two's Cat People Cheevers Creepers two
Speaker 1: from two thousand and three, X Men First Class from
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, and Wrong Cops from twenty thirteen. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of these actors, he was apparently going in a
Speaker 1: somewhat different direction here, a little bit against type in
Speaker 1: the casting of this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he also has a kind of weird energy as
Speaker 3: a henchman that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We also have to mention we mentioned Emil already.
Speaker 1: This is one of the other violent members of the gang.
Speaker 1: Has more of a anarchist vibe to him. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got the punk haircut and so forth. He is
Speaker 1: also a spoiler alert, he's the guy who gets melted
Speaker 1: by toxic waste.
Speaker 3: The extent to which RoboCop is a melt movie is
Speaker 3: non zero. There is a melting scene, and Emil is
Speaker 3: the poor soul who melts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Played by Paul mccrane born nineteen sixty one. He
Speaker 1: made a big splash, you know, unintended because he does
Speaker 1: splash in this movie. But he made a big splash
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty's Fame, and he was also a lot
Speaker 1: later a long time cast member on Er. He doesn't
Speaker 1: melt in either of those films, but he did follow
Speaker 1: up RoboCop with nineteen eighty eight's The Blob, So maybe
Speaker 1: he hadn't had quite enough melting yet at this point
Speaker 1: in his career. I did see in some of the
Speaker 1: exits they were like, oh, he was really down for
Speaker 1: all this makeup. He was down for this melt scene.
Speaker 3: So he both melts and splashes in the same role.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird rewatching this film knowing how horrible this
Speaker 1: character's fate is, and even as we'd shown how horrible
Speaker 1: this character is, like he is not a nice guy,
Speaker 1: but his fate is so disgusting that you can't help
Speaker 1: but feel a little bad for him and see him
Speaker 1: at least as some sort of a tragic character. You
Speaker 1: want to be like, oh, dude, you're making all these
Speaker 1: terrible choices in life, and we know where they are
Speaker 1: leading you.
Speaker 3: Well, his friends are like Bodiker in the gang, and
Speaker 3: they don't It just shows how unloyal they are to
Speaker 3: each other when the way they react to him, like
Speaker 3: he's melting and he runs up on ray Wise, and
Speaker 3: ray Wise is he goes like help be and ray
Speaker 3: Wise is just like, don't touch me.
Speaker 1: Man. Yeah. Now, going back into the corporate world in
Speaker 1: the midst of all of these villains and all it's
Speaker 1: easy to miss some of how great some of these
Speaker 1: other small performances are. Like, you have this character, Donald Johnson,
Speaker 1: who's this kind of I guess a corporate o CP
Speaker 1: yes man and also just sort of a business goblin.
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's he's always there in these scenes.
Speaker 1: He's never the the he's never the you know, the
Speaker 1: central point of the scene. But he's he's there. He's
Speaker 1: attending all these business meetings and he's he makes every
Speaker 1: scene better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he smiles a lot. He just brings a real
Speaker 3: positive energy to these board meetings where robots murder his colleagues.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and he's largely unfazed by it. He's like business,
Speaker 1: business has got to keep moving.
Speaker 3: Looks like we hit a snag, but yeah we'll uh well,
Speaker 3: we'll do better next time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This character is played by fel Milton Perry born
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. He was also in nineteen seventy three's
Speaker 1: Magnum Force. He did a lot of TV, played a
Speaker 1: lot of detectives, and with a cast member on the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty series The Greatest American Hero.
Speaker 3: Now. RoboCop has a lot of great special effects and
Speaker 3: one notably terrible but in a lovable way special effects.
Speaker 3: So I feel like we got to talk about the
Speaker 3: effects a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as always, we can't mention everybody like this
Speaker 1: especially is a film where you had a whole crew
Speaker 1: of very talented artists in different fields and we can't
Speaker 1: possibly cover them all. So we're just going to cover
Speaker 1: I think like three main names that should be mentioned. First,
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned the melting and the makeup involved there.
Speaker 1: Rob Botein has special makeup effects creded on this. Born
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, a true cinematic gore master. I think
Speaker 1: this is the first film we've looked at on Weird
Speaker 1: House that has directly involved him. His makeup credits include
Speaker 1: So Many Great Things, Squirm from seventy six, The Original
Speaker 1: Star Wars from seventy seven, The Howling from eighty one,
Speaker 1: John Carpenter's The Thing from eighty two, Legend from eighty five,
Speaker 1: Total Recall from nineteen ninety. He also did creature designs
Speaker 1: on nineteen eighties Humanoids from the Deep, That's a Fishman Movie,
Speaker 1: ninety seven's Mimic in nineteen ninety eight's Deep Rising.
Speaker 3: His work on the thing is especially iconic.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, this is just a master of
Speaker 1: practical makeup effects. You know, these are things that you
Speaker 1: got to throw him into the same conversation with names
Speaker 1: like screaming Mad George. You know, just an absolute master.
Speaker 1: He doesn't seem to have worked much in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century at all, though, at least in terms of
Speaker 1: being credited on things. And I have to realize, I
Speaker 1: don't know, we always stress this, but it's my understanding
Speaker 1: that sometimes affects people's names don't actually make it into
Speaker 1: the final credits on things. So I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: he's working in other capacities behind the scenes, but according
Speaker 1: to you know, like the databases outside of a working
Speaker 1: on an episode of Game of Thrones, yea, his his
Speaker 1: his work in recent decades has been sparse.
Speaker 3: Do we do we know or just assume that Beteen
Speaker 3: is largely responsible for the emial melting scene.
Speaker 1: I didn't double check it. It's probably there's so many
Speaker 1: extras the ARO release, I didn't get to watch them all,
Speaker 1: but I assume he had to be have played a
Speaker 1: pivotal role in that. It's just too disgusting looking.
Speaker 3: Okay, but another main effect. So there are a lot
Speaker 3: of great special makeup effects in the movie. Also, there
Speaker 3: are interesting makeup effects clearly involved in realizing the the
Speaker 3: unmasked RoboCop effect when he takes his visor off and
Speaker 3: you can see Peter Weller's face jutting out of this
Speaker 3: robot exoskeleton. I'm sure that took a lot of effects
Speaker 3: work to make it look as good as it does.
Speaker 3: But there is another big thing in the movie, which
Speaker 3: is the rival project to the RoboCop project ED two nine,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite aspects of RoboCop, which is achieved
Speaker 3: largely with the help of stop motion effects that look
Speaker 3: great and are some of the funniest special effects I
Speaker 3: can think of seeing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is such a great creation. ED two o
Speaker 1: nine sometimes referred to in the credits as ED two thousand,
Speaker 1: so I guess maybe at some point in production they
Speaker 1: called him D two thousand. I don't know. ED two
Speaker 1: o nine is better Eed two o nine, if you will.
Speaker 1: But Craig Hayes is credited as ads creator and designer
Speaker 1: and also designer and constructor of the large prop for
Speaker 1: ED two nine, So when we see ED two o
Speaker 1: nine in the film, he's either standing there as a
Speaker 1: physical practical robot that's I think actually made out of
Speaker 1: out of wood and other materials, you know, and he
Speaker 1: doesn't move around much like just basically the top half
Speaker 1: rotates to point guns at you that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But and then the rest of the time, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: he's a stop motion effect. But Hayes was involved in
Speaker 1: designing it apparently, you know, looked to various things like
Speaker 1: looked at trains a little bit and and other mechanical
Speaker 1: vehicles and robots to sort of design it, but also
Speaker 1: looked at the Orca that the head of ED Tone
Speaker 1: two nine is apparently partially based on the Orca.
Speaker 3: I can see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Hayes did visual effects work on other notable
Speaker 1: films that he worked on Jurassic Park as part of
Speaker 1: Tippet Studio. He also worked on Hollowman, Blade two and
Speaker 1: two thousand and three is the Matrix Revolutions. Now I
Speaker 1: mentioned Tippett Studio. Yes, Phil Tippett is the is credited
Speaker 1: as the creator of the ED two nine sequences, more
Speaker 1: specifically the stop motion sequences. If you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: Phil Tippet born nineteen fifty one, he is one of
Speaker 1: if not the best known living masters of stop motion
Speaker 1: and monster special Effet. Somehow, this is our first Tippet film,
Speaker 1: I believe on Weird House Cinema. We've mentioned him in
Speaker 1: passing you know, connections on other films, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we've talked about him in depth before. You know.
Speaker 1: This is another situation where we can't list all the
Speaker 1: classics that he was involved in, but his creations have
Speaker 1: come to life in such films as some of the
Speaker 1: Star Wars movies. Nineteen eighty six is Howard the Duck
Speaker 1: as a notable stop motion monster at the end nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight Willow both RoboCop sequels, Jurassic Park in ninety three,
Speaker 1: Starship Troopers, and of course his own project, which was
Speaker 1: made over many years. I haven't seen it yet, but
Speaker 1: finally released in twenty twenty one, Mad God.
Speaker 3: Really good stop motion in this film.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about ED two nine later on and just how incredibly looks.
Speaker 1: But finally, the music here is by Basil Polodorus, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty five through two thousand and six, American composer,
Speaker 1: best known in film for his work with John Millius,
Speaker 1: who he met at USC studying filmmaking and composing. He
Speaker 1: also worked several times with Paul Verhooven. He worked with
Speaker 1: Millius as early as nineteen seventy on a student film
Speaker 1: and then later on seventy eight's Big Wednesday nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two's Conan the Barbarian of course, that, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is his master work, like that is such an incredible
Speaker 1: and just perfect score for that movie. But he also
Speaker 1: worked with Millius on Red Dawn from eighty four, Farewell
Speaker 1: to the King in eighty nine, in Flight of the
Speaker 1: Intruder in ninety one. With Verhoven, he worked with him
Speaker 1: for the first time on Plus Blood from eighty five,
Speaker 1: followed this up with RoboCop and Starship Troopers in ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Other scores of note include Renee Cardona Junior's Tinterera from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, The Shark Movie or a Shark Movie,
Speaker 1: we should say the Shark Movie in any respect, also
Speaker 1: the Michael Crichton scripted Extreme Close Up in seventy three,
Speaker 1: The Blue Lagoon in nineteen eighty, Cherry two thousand and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. In the nineteen eighty nine mini series
Speaker 1: a lonesome dove. So for this movie, you know, solid
Speaker 1: catchy and sweeping score. I think a highly effective score.
Speaker 1: You know, it has the right bombosity for RoboCop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love the RoboCop theme. I think it's perfect
Speaker 3: for the film, and it sonically evokes exactly the feeling
Speaker 3: of the world and the plot, like it sounds like
Speaker 3: a doomed attempt at heroism in a bleak world ruled
Speaker 3: by bad men. Yeah, all right, you want to talk
Speaker 3: a bit about the plot. Yeah, let's let's dive right
Speaker 3: in now. This is one of those where I think
Speaker 3: it does not make sense to do a full scene
Speaker 3: by scene recap of the movie, but rather in this case,
Speaker 3: we're going to discuss a bit about the broad outline
Speaker 3: and some themes and highlights from the movie. One thing
Speaker 3: we've got to talk about is the are the media
Speaker 3: segments in RoboCop. RoboCop repeatedly breaks the action with news reports, commercials,
Speaker 3: and clips of TV shows from in universe, as if
Speaker 3: we were characters in the world of RoboCop watching the
Speaker 3: same TV they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are extended sequences. I'd forgotten just how
Speaker 1: long they are, Like you're watching RoboCop world television for
Speaker 1: minutes on end, including right at the top of the film,
Speaker 1: and it does a great job of positioning you within
Speaker 1: the world of the movie, of course, giving you a
Speaker 1: little backdrop for what's going on elsewhere in the world,
Speaker 1: what's going on in culture and media, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, in some ways counterbalancing the violence that we
Speaker 1: see on screen, but also driving home the satire and
Speaker 1: like keeping satire on your radar as you are interacting
Speaker 1: with the gritty details of the plot.
Speaker 3: There's a way that like when you see the news
Speaker 3: reports in the media segments sort of just lightly gloss
Speaker 3: over what sound like actually horrific events that sort of
Speaker 3: makes you see the event of the violent events of
Speaker 3: the plot differently.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but anyways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a big part of what they do, especially
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the film is just world setting,
Speaker 3: you know, establishing what kind of world is this taking
Speaker 3: place in? And I would say the news segments from
Speaker 3: the world of RoboCop depict a kind of hyper Reaganite
Speaker 3: near future. So there is an idea that there's escalation
Speaker 3: of the Cold War, massive military build up, a lot
Speaker 3: of focus on weapons technology, and a supply side free
Speaker 3: for all where everything is run by for profit corporations
Speaker 3: and cash is king. And the first thing we see
Speaker 3: in the movie after like a sweep over the city
Speaker 3: and the title is a news segment, and so to
Speaker 3: set the scene of this world, it mentions before there's
Speaker 3: a segment about how the remaining enclave of the apartheid
Speaker 3: government in South Africa has unveiled their possession of a
Speaker 3: French made neutron bomb and has announced their willingness to
Speaker 3: use it against the people to protect white minority rule.
Speaker 3: There is another report from the new quote star Wars
Speaker 3: Orbiting peace Platform, and this appears to be a play
Speaker 3: on the so called Star Wars missile defense initiative, except
Speaker 3: in the movie the quote peace platform seems to be
Speaker 3: just some kind of like general orbital weapons system which
Speaker 3: they call a peace platform. And then in a later
Speaker 3: news segment in the movie, we find out that it
Speaker 3: quote accidentally fired a laser barrage at Santa Barbara, California
Speaker 3: during a test, and that kills hundreds of people, including
Speaker 3: two former presidents who are not named. And then the
Speaker 3: anchors just say the nation mourns for Santa Barbara, and
Speaker 3: then they move on to something else.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's implied that that's Ronald Reagan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we see Ronald Reagan's body there on the ground. So
Speaker 1: the satire is at times pretty grim.
Speaker 3: But then it cuts straight from these horrific reports to commercials,
Speaker 3: and the commercials are for things. One is for the
Speaker 3: Family Heart Center, which is a clinic folk using on
Speaker 3: heart transplants with new mechanical artificial hearts. But the doctor
Speaker 3: in the commercial, at first he's like, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: it's time for a heart transplant, and then he transitions
Speaker 3: into sounding like he's pitching a customer on jet skis.
Speaker 3: He's like the series seven sports Heart by Jensen Yamaha,
Speaker 3: you pick the.
Speaker 1: Heart, which I guess also positions where we are in,
Speaker 1: like the cybernetic world.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then there is an ad for a family board
Speaker 3: game called New Coom, a game that looks kind of
Speaker 3: like Battleship, except it's for four players, and it seems
Speaker 3: like the way you win the game is if you
Speaker 3: are the first player to use nuclear weapons. The tagline
Speaker 3: of the game is get them before they get you, Graham, Graham.
Speaker 3: Then there are ads for a car. This car has
Speaker 3: a big footprint in the movie. It is called the
Speaker 3: six thousand SUX. So that's kind of low hanging fruit joke,
Speaker 3: but you know, I wouldn't change it. This is apparently
Speaker 3: the hottest new car in the world now. It is
Speaker 3: extremely ugly, it gets eight miles per gallon, but it's new,
Speaker 3: it's huge. You've got to have one. The commercial makes
Speaker 3: the point that the car is bigger than Godzilla.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have this nice commercial that has the stop
Speaker 1: motion monster in it, like very much in the Harry
Speaker 1: Housen style obviously created by Phil Tippett here, which is
Speaker 1: a nice nod to those movies that are in a
Speaker 1: very large way and inspiration for the creation of N
Speaker 1: two nine.
Speaker 3: But then also we see the TV content TV shows.
Speaker 3: The most popular TV show in the world of RoboCop,
Speaker 3: which we see multiple times, involves a man with glasses
Speaker 3: and a mustache ogling women in bikinis and then turning
Speaker 3: directly to the camera to utter his beloved catchphrase I'd
Speaker 3: buy that for a dollar. So, according to an article
Speaker 3: that I turned up, though it is not mentioned in
Speaker 3: the movie, the name of this TV sitcom is It's
Speaker 3: not my problem exclamation point and it's interesting. So the
Speaker 3: show is portrayed as just uh, insipid trash, But multiple
Speaker 3: times we see characters watching this show, such as there's
Speaker 3: one moment where this sadistic murderer Emil is watching the
Speaker 3: show on a TV through a shop window and he's
Speaker 3: I think he's like sitting in his car watching it,
Speaker 3: drinking a liquor bottle or something. He seems to find
Speaker 3: it marvelously entertaining, and then he ends up breaking the
Speaker 3: glass in the window so he can turn the TV
Speaker 3: up louder and laugh along with the laugh track. So
Speaker 3: something's interesting about the way RoboCop depicts this world of cruel,
Speaker 3: sadistic men who kill without a thought and then in
Speaker 3: their downtime are sedated and entertained by mindless, repetitive sitcoms
Speaker 3: that just seem to be looping the same scene and
Speaker 3: catchphrase over and over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that and Neil scene especially is interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: because they intentionally took time to show you his enjoyment
Speaker 1: of this show, that that this this bttom of the
Speaker 1: barrel misogynistic comedy that seems to be everybody's favorite, and
Speaker 1: I guess it also I'd buy that for a dollar
Speaker 1: like it just it also kind of ties into the
Speaker 1: overall capitalist, corporate world of RoboCop. Everything can be bought
Speaker 1: for a dollar, right.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a mantra delivering the hidden message that
Speaker 3: my trust and allegiance is cheap. Just give me the cash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well let's talk more about the setting here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the media segments are used to establish a
Speaker 3: lot about the broader world. The specific setting of the
Speaker 3: movie is the city of Detroit in Michigan, where it
Speaker 3: seems the situation is there's some overlap with reality that
Speaker 3: the city was a thriving metropolis, but it has suffered
Speaker 3: a lot because a lot of the industry that used
Speaker 3: to be based there has moved offshore or shuttered in
Speaker 3: some way. So the film is just full of abandoned,
Speaker 3: empty factory buildings that continually visually communicate this theme of
Speaker 3: just like the loss of former prosperity and so forth.
Speaker 3: So huge portions of the city have been left out
Speaker 3: of work, impoverished, and desperate, and the city is essentially
Speaker 3: on the brink of collapse. So the job of running
Speaker 3: the local police department has been outsourced to OCP Omni
Speaker 3: Consumer Products. But OCP has set its sites higher than
Speaker 3: just running the police. Essentially, they have a plan to
Speaker 3: demolish the existing Detroit and replace it with a new,
Speaker 3: completely privately owned settlement called Delta City, where they will
Speaker 3: run everything. So in a way, you can see how
Speaker 3: it is in OCP's interest for things in Detroit to
Speaker 3: get as bad as they possibly can be so that
Speaker 3: they can buy up all the property cheap and privatize
Speaker 3: all the local government.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but at the same time they need a
Speaker 1: little bit of muscle. And also they are, as we're
Speaker 1: told at one point, they basically are the military, so
Speaker 1: they're working on all of these various military projects.
Speaker 3: As well, right, And so amidst this backdrop, we see
Speaker 3: the OCP headquarters, which is this strange looking building that
Speaker 3: has a kind of inverted triangle architecture near the bottom,
Speaker 3: but then it just goes straight up from there, and
Speaker 3: so it's a very weird looking skyscraper architecture. But it
Speaker 3: does seem on theme somehow because it's like all of
Speaker 3: this concrete that comes down to a point near where
Speaker 3: it meets the ground. So it's the idea of like
Speaker 3: this corporation just like crushing the people on the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Again, the bottom part of this is Dallas
Speaker 1: City Hall, but by creating this map painting of it
Speaker 1: rising the rest of the way up into the sky.
Speaker 1: It's like it's stabbing into the earth, like it's a
Speaker 1: sword come down from the heavens. And we eventually see
Speaker 1: multiple shots at different points in the film of people
Speaker 1: ascending or descending elevators and some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: vast atriums of this building. And these are also created
Speaker 1: with Matt paintings. And in the extras on the Arrow
Speaker 1: Blu Ray they mentioned that Forbidden Planet was one of
Speaker 1: the influences here in creating this kind of vast interior space.
Speaker 3: I never would have made that connection, but that's really good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway, Okay, so here at OCP headquarters, we come
Speaker 3: in this corporate board meeting, which is a great scene.
Speaker 3: We've got OCP Vice President Dick Jones played by Ronnie Cox.
Speaker 3: He is showing off his plan to move on to
Speaker 3: the next stage in their control of the Detroit Police Force.
Speaker 3: He wants to essentially replace the remaining human police force
Speaker 3: with a violent police robot called ED two nine. He
Speaker 3: brings ED two O nine out for a demonstration that
Speaker 3: turns horrific robot. I don't know if you want to
Speaker 3: describe this scene. It's it's an iconic scene from the film,
Speaker 3: maybe the most remembered part of all of RoboCop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean for starters, it has we have to
Speaker 1: mention that that ed to A nine And if you
Speaker 1: don't know what ed to nine looks, two nine looks
Speaker 1: like do do do yourself a favor and find an
Speaker 1: image surch or or video clip because it does not
Speaker 1: look like a policeman, looks like a weapons platform is
Speaker 1: and that is not what an illinoid and ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a weapons platform that they're clearly eyeing for
Speaker 1: a larger military market. It was not created expressly with
Speaker 1: police work in mind. It is a frightening bestial machine.
Speaker 3: So Dick Jones is setting up the demonstration. He gets
Speaker 3: one of the one of his colleagues from the boardroom
Speaker 3: here to uh to point a gun at ED two
Speaker 3: o nine for the demonstration. And there's a little detail.
Speaker 3: A lot of people notice that he hands a gun
Speaker 3: to this guy. He's like, all right, let's see if
Speaker 3: we can make him do his job. And so the
Speaker 3: other guy points the gun at Dick Jones and ED
Speaker 3: two o nine does not react to this like of
Speaker 3: like people threatening each other, but then Dick Jones is like, no, no,
Speaker 3: pointed at ED two o nine. And so then when
Speaker 3: he when he threatens the herd, where then ED two
Speaker 3: o nine comes online and like points his turrets at
Speaker 3: him and says, you drop the weapon. You have twenty
Speaker 3: seconds to comply. So the guy he said, you know,
Speaker 3: he is goaged on by Dick Jones. He says, better
Speaker 3: do as you're told. So the guy drops the weapon,
Speaker 3: and then ED two o nine says, you now have
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds to comply. It clearly has not registered the
Speaker 3: loss of the weapon. So in a horrifically violent turn
Speaker 3: of events, the robot malfunctions and then ends up just
Speaker 3: liquefying this guy. It shoots him like hundreds of times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just notoriously graphic scene, and some cuts of the
Speaker 1: film have the extended goification of this this poor dimmed individual.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and it's a frantic affair. He's trying to,
Speaker 1: like hi, run to for cover, and they're pushing him
Speaker 1: back in the way because no one else wants to
Speaker 1: get shot and caught the crossfire. And yeah, and then
Speaker 1: finally an utter failure of the program here, So.
Speaker 3: The old man looks at Dick Jones, it says, I'm
Speaker 3: very disappointed and you, Dick, and Dick Jones says, sure,
Speaker 3: it's only a glitch, like completely unconcerned with the threat
Speaker 3: this would pose to people. Is just kind of like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we'll figure it out, don't worry about it. But this
Speaker 3: does seem like a pretty catastrophic failure to the old Man.
Speaker 3: And right there next to him, waiting in the wings
Speaker 3: is Bob Morton played by Miguel Ferrer, who steps in
Speaker 3: with his rival project. He's like, clearly ed two nine
Speaker 3: is not ready for prime time. We've got something ready
Speaker 3: to go, the RoboCop program, And he tells the old
Speaker 3: Man about it. It's ready to go as Plan B.
Speaker 3: All they need is a donor, and he thinks they
Speaker 3: should have one pretty soon. What does that mean, We're
Speaker 3: about to find.
Speaker 1: Out, Yeah, it may not be here. Maybe it's a
Speaker 1: little later that we learned that, Yeah, not only are
Speaker 1: they eyeing donors, but they are making sure that prime
Speaker 1: police candidates are being reassigned to dangerous zones so that
Speaker 1: they're going to be more likely to encounter some sort
Speaker 1: of fatal injury that would deliver their bodies.
Speaker 3: The RoboCop program, Yeah, they do they do like a
Speaker 3: physical and they're like, okay, Peter Weller, he would be
Speaker 3: a good candidate to go in the RoboCop suit, So
Speaker 3: we're gonna send him after Clarence Bodiker and deny him
Speaker 3: back up. Yeah, So here we meet our hero Alex
Speaker 3: Murphy and Peter Weller. After OCP transfers him to a
Speaker 3: new Metro division, he gets paired with his new partner Lewis.
Speaker 3: That's Nancy Allen. They get to know each other. They
Speaker 3: have some nice friendly banter, but early on maybe it's
Speaker 3: his first day at the new division, not exactly clear.
Speaker 3: They respond to a bank robbery in progress and it's
Speaker 3: Clarence Bodiker's gang and Botaker is just the nastiest, meanest
Speaker 3: criminal on earth. While Murphy and Lewis are chasing them,
Speaker 3: there's this one part where you see Bodiker just like
Speaker 3: the gang, has no friendship or loyalty even to each
Speaker 3: other of their One of the gang is injured during
Speaker 3: the shootout when they're in a chase, and Bodiker just
Speaker 3: like grabs him and goes can you fly Bobby and
Speaker 3: throws him out of the van into the police car,
Speaker 3: which briefly delay them and eventually Murphy and Lewis pursue
Speaker 3: the gang all the way to an abandoned foundry, and
Speaker 3: while attempting to make an arrest, again no backup is available.
Speaker 3: As usual, Murphy is caught and then brutally executed by
Speaker 3: the gang, an awful, horrifically violent scene. His body is
Speaker 3: recovered taken to a hospital, but he can't be revived.
Speaker 3: He is dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think shotgun dismemberment is worth mentioning in terms
Speaker 1: of Murphy's death because, you know, because it's like, it's
Speaker 1: that extreme like that. It's another example of the violence
Speaker 1: just ratcheted up to an unbelow to a degree where
Speaker 1: it almost takes some of the punch out of it
Speaker 1: because it becomes an obvious Hollywood gore fest. I don't know,
Speaker 1: everyone's mileage is going to vary on this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Now, next, we get a really interesting sequence in the movie,
Speaker 3: which is we have Murphy's death, but from here we
Speaker 3: start seeing something from some point of view through a
Speaker 3: kind of grain any almost computer or CRT image. We
Speaker 3: see these views of scientists messing with somebody from their
Speaker 3: point of view, like drilling around on their head and
Speaker 3: adjusting his vision. So we're seeing Robocop's point of view,
Speaker 3: and this is the project run by Bob Morton. Rob
Speaker 3: do you anything you want to identify about these scenes
Speaker 3: where we're like watching Murphy's physical remains become become able
Speaker 3: to see as they are becoming RoboCop.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like he's being he is being
Speaker 1: born again. You know, it's like early memories, childhood memories almost.
Speaker 1: That's some sort of sense as he's watching the scientists
Speaker 1: work on him, as he's eventually seeing you know, there's
Speaker 1: like an office party, a Christmas party or something that's underway,
Speaker 1: and they're interacting with him a little bit. But also
Speaker 1: there are bits of dialogue though on the other hand
Speaker 1: that far from discussing him as a child. I think
Speaker 1: Morton in particular is like he's dead now. We can
Speaker 1: do whatever we want with him, Like he's no longer
Speaker 1: a human. He is a product.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he signed the rights to his remains away. That
Speaker 3: was part of his contract to be a cop, and
Speaker 3: we can do whatever we want with them. He's not
Speaker 3: him anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also in these scenes, we learn about robocops three prime directives.
Speaker 3: They say, you know, he's guided by the directives to
Speaker 3: serve the public trust, to protect the innocent, and uphold
Speaker 3: the law. And then there is a fourth directive that
Speaker 3: is not spelled out. It just says it's classified, but
Speaker 3: it does flash on the screen. They say nothing about
Speaker 3: that out loud. It's just something that RoboCop sees on
Speaker 3: his own heads up display.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this will become important later on.
Speaker 3: So after this RoboCop is unveiled, they put him out
Speaker 3: on the beat, and there are just a bunch of
Speaker 3: scenes of RoboCop out on patrol, intervening when crimes are
Speaker 3: in progress. We see him stop an armed robbery at
Speaker 3: a convenience store, he intervenes when two men are attacking
Speaker 3: a woman in an abandoned lot, He resolves a hostage
Speaker 3: situation at city hall. And in all of these scenes,
Speaker 3: RoboCop is shown to be in some ways highly effective
Speaker 3: in other ways not like he is successful at stopping
Speaker 3: the crimes, but he does so via the application of
Speaker 3: brutal violence in every case, and he has shown to
Speaker 3: be cold and mechanical in his relations to victims.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we see the media segments of him being celebrated,
Speaker 1: but also, yeah, at the same time, he's not really
Speaker 1: doing the ideal version of police work here. He's just
Speaker 1: like a blunt instrument that reaches through walls to grab
Speaker 1: criminals and so forth.
Speaker 3: There's one part where I think they're asking, like there's
Speaker 3: like school children clearly being terrified by RoboCop during some
Speaker 3: kind of outreach program, and they're like, do you have
Speaker 3: any message for the children, and he says, stay out
Speaker 3: of trouble. But all of this builds up to a realization. Lewis,
Speaker 3: Murphy's old partner, sees through the machine mask. She sees
Speaker 3: that it's Murphy underneath, noticing little ticks, little sayings and
Speaker 3: movements that mirror things Murphy did. One giveaway is that
Speaker 3: Murphy was practicing this kind of, you know, a cowboy
Speaker 3: gun holster move that was from a TV show that
Speaker 3: his son liked, called TJ Laser, And then she sees
Speaker 3: RoboCop do the same move, so she realizes who it is.
Speaker 3: She's like, that's Murphy in there, and she goes up
Speaker 3: to him. At one point she like approaches him in
Speaker 3: a hallway and says, Murphy, it's you, and this causes
Speaker 3: a crisis. RoboCop is not supposed to have a personality
Speaker 3: or any memories. Bob Morton again. He explains that like,
Speaker 3: it's just physical scaffolding. They just need some brain tissue.
Speaker 3: Murphy no longer exists, it's just brain tissue owned by OCP.
Speaker 3: That's not a person, it's a machine. But nevertheless, RoboCop
Speaker 3: begins to malfunction by having memories and dreams and glitches,
Speaker 3: and this leads up to a scene where he visits
Speaker 3: his former home that he shared with his family, which
Speaker 3: is now empty and for sale. There's like a robotic
Speaker 3: salesman who starts talking when he comes in the door, like, oh,
Speaker 3: this could be your new dream home. And I think
Speaker 3: some critics at the time might have sneered at these
Speaker 3: sequences of him, you know, this machine with these strange
Speaker 3: robotic motions, trying to reclaim his past life and remember
Speaker 3: what it was. They might have seen that as ridiculous.
Speaker 3: But I found this stuff quite moving.
Speaker 1: To each their own, I guess, yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: one of the segments that really hit me in the fields.
Speaker 1: I liked it. I thought it worked.
Speaker 3: Also, somewhere in here there's a scene where Dick Jones
Speaker 3: sends Clarence Bodiker, who works for him by the way
Speaker 3: to Bob Morton's house to kill him. He's just like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm done with Morton.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like Morton really didn't know what he was
Speaker 1: messing with it clearly didn't really think that Dick Jones
Speaker 1: would send a goon to his house to murder him
Speaker 1: in cold blood, and that's exactly what happens.
Speaker 3: Then there's an interesting middle section of the movie in
Speaker 3: which RoboCop, in this process of redis discovering that he
Speaker 3: might have been a person at one point and who
Speaker 3: that person was. He starts to systematically solve Murphy's own murder.
Speaker 3: So he like encounters Emil, one of Clarence Bodaker's gang
Speaker 3: in the middle of like robbing a gas station, and
Speaker 3: he encounters him, and from him he traces him to
Speaker 3: other members of Botacker's gang and eventually to Botaker himself.
Speaker 3: And when he when he captures Bodiker, Bodeker claims that
Speaker 3: he can't be arrested because he has a protection agreement
Speaker 3: he works for Dick Jones, and Dick Jones runs the police.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this whole solving Zone murder series of sequences is great.
Speaker 1: Like there's a scene where he goes to the nightclub
Speaker 1: to collect Ray Wise's character Yeah, that one's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah. It builds nicely until he's yeah, he's
Speaker 1: already found Botaker that Bodika. This is where there's a
Speaker 1: He roughs him up quite a bit and drags a bloody,
Speaker 1: snarling Boticker into police headquarters.
Speaker 3: But so now he has evidence that Dick Jones is
Speaker 3: behind it all. So he tries to go up the
Speaker 3: chain to arrest Dick Jones and it doesn't work out
Speaker 3: so well. He walks into the office Ronnie Cox is
Speaker 3: sitting there, and Ronnie Cox like holds out his hands.
Speaker 3: He says, sounds pretty serious, you better arrest me. But
Speaker 3: RoboCop is somehow unable to act. Something is preventing him,
Speaker 3: and here we see the activation of Directive four, his
Speaker 3: secret guiding principle, which is that he cannot act against
Speaker 3: the interests of OCP, so he cannot will himself to
Speaker 3: arrest one of its officers.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and then this is where Dick Jones, with
Speaker 1: villainous charm, brings out ED two O nine. He's like,
Speaker 1: I going to introduce you to a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: Boardroom doors open and out comes this glorious stop motion creation.
Speaker 1: ED two O nine is here to finish off RoboCop.
Speaker 3: So yeah, for a bit, there's this fight, the struggle
Speaker 3: where RoboCop is sort of immobilized. It's these two killer
Speaker 3: robots versus each other, but one of them still has
Speaker 3: a shred of humanity inside it and it manages to
Speaker 3: barely escape ED two O nine. And then there is
Speaker 3: a detail in this fight that I've always loved since
Speaker 3: the first time I saw the movie. What how is
Speaker 3: ED to O nine defeated In this confrontation by stairs?
Speaker 3: ED two O nine gets to the stairwell and RoboCop
Speaker 3: runs down it and ED to O nine clearly this
Speaker 3: is a contingency that the designers of ED two O
Speaker 3: nine had never thought of, and it is unable to
Speaker 3: navigate going down a staircase and ends up turned on
Speaker 3: its back and unable to get up. And it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: It feels so right, and it's the best possible conclusion
Speaker 3: to this fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it hits all the right notes, and in
Speaker 1: a sense like it does get into this again sort
Speaker 1: of light sci fi about cybernetics and robotics. The idea
Speaker 1: that ED two nine is a military application that is
Speaker 1: clearly clearly was not designed for police work. It was
Speaker 1: not designed to interact in a human world, and an
Speaker 1: important part of police work is interacting in a human world.
Speaker 1: That involves obviously things like stairs, as well as other
Speaker 1: nuances like being able to tell the difference between a
Speaker 1: perpetrator who is an active threat and someone who has
Speaker 1: already surrendered and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I think that I think part of
Speaker 3: the vision of ED two nine is that it is
Speaker 3: a very dangerous lethal robot, but in many ways it
Speaker 3: is poorly designed. So it's like it is designed to
Speaker 3: appeal to the people who award defense contracts more than
Speaker 3: to like actually be good at its job.
Speaker 1: Right. But again, great great finish to this initial combat
Speaker 1: between RoboCop and ED two to nine.
Speaker 3: But at this point, so RoboCop is he's able to
Speaker 3: get down the stairs. But at this point the OCP
Speaker 3: controlled police Force arrives and they have been ordered to
Speaker 3: destroy RoboCop, and so they try, but Lewis saves him.
Speaker 3: She comes to the rescue. She takes him off to
Speaker 3: the abandoned foundry we saw earlier and helps him rediscover
Speaker 3: who he is. And this sequence, his mask comes off,
Speaker 3: like he removes the bolts and takes off his visor
Speaker 3: and reveals that Murphy's face is still underneath there to
Speaker 3: some extent. His brain still is Murphy's brain, though it's
Speaker 3: different and there, I don't know. There's like a really
Speaker 3: tender scene where she helps him recalibrate his aim and
Speaker 3: it just kind of gives him encouragement. He doesn't know
Speaker 3: what he is, but whatever he is, she's there to help.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I really liked this part. Also, the part
Speaker 1: where after the mask has come off and he has
Speaker 1: to be left alone. You know, it's it's a tender moment.
Speaker 1: That is, it's well acted by both actors involved here,
Speaker 1: and you know, I totally totally buy into it, and
Speaker 1: it made me tear up just a little bit.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Dick Jones hooks Bodiker's gang up with some kind
Speaker 3: of military grade weapons that they are going to need
Speaker 3: to destroy RoboCop. Jones of course wants RoboCop dead for
Speaker 3: two reasons. First of all, RoboCop has evidence against Jones
Speaker 3: and his memory banks, and he doesn't want to be implicated.
Speaker 3: But the second thing is, of course, if RoboCop is eliminated,
Speaker 3: that'll put ed to nine that project back front and center.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's promising to have an ED two o nine,
Speaker 1: like on every street corner. So there are already a
Speaker 1: lot of these in stories just ready to roll out
Speaker 1: into the city in force.
Speaker 3: So Botaker and the gang now armed with these, with
Speaker 3: this heavy artillery, they come to hunt down RoboCop at
Speaker 3: the foundry. But there and this leads to a bunch
Speaker 3: of great action scenes. There's like a car chase and
Speaker 3: there are these shootouts and all that together RoboCop and
Speaker 3: Lewis managed to defeat Bodiker and his gang. This is
Speaker 3: the sequence that includes Emil getting doused with toxic waste
Speaker 3: and eventually melting. So it's incredibly gory action scenes. We've
Speaker 3: said that a million times now, but like you be warned,
Speaker 3: this is an incredibly bloody, violent movie. But as action scenes,
Speaker 3: they work pretty great.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I've seen my shareff Gorfest and
Speaker 1: I've seen this film before obviously, but yeah, when I
Speaker 1: was rewatching the emeal melting sequence, it's just like like
Speaker 1: I had a just like a grimace fixed into my
Speaker 1: face for like a good solid five minutes because it's
Speaker 1: so grim and it's so gross, and it seems to
Speaker 1: go on forever until he's finally hit by a car
Speaker 1: by a boticker's car and just explodes in a splash
Speaker 1: of slime. It's awful.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So after all this, RoboCop goes to arrest Dick
Speaker 3: Jones because you know OCP is behind it all, working
Speaker 3: on Dick Jones's orders. So RoboCop comes into a board
Speaker 3: meeting and he turns the old Man against him by
Speaker 3: playing a tape of Dick Jones admitting the murder of
Speaker 3: Bob Morton. Now you know, OCP may not be very
Speaker 3: sensitive to the harm they caused to regular people, but
Speaker 3: this is the murder of one of these corporate guys themselves,
Speaker 3: and I think they're unsettled by that. So so now
Speaker 3: Dick Jones actually feels afraid. He tries to take the
Speaker 3: old Man hostage to flee the scene. And here there's
Speaker 3: an interesting conflict because RoboCop is still bound by Directive four,
Speaker 3: so he cannot act against OCP. He can't act against Jones.
Speaker 3: But then he he essentially hints to the old Man
Speaker 3: what the problem is, and the old Man then announces
Speaker 3: that Jones is fired from his position. So RoboCop immediately
Speaker 3: shoots him out of the skyscraper window. So that's an
Speaker 3: interesting twist, and then there is a special effect. Well,
Speaker 3: the special effects generally in this movie are fantastic. There
Speaker 3: is a famously bad one as Jones falls out of
Speaker 3: the window and it looks like he has really long
Speaker 3: arms for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a stop motion effect. They use a
Speaker 1: stop motion model of Dick Jones, which I mean basically,
Speaker 1: I guess you have to think about about stop motion
Speaker 1: a lot with this film, Like stop motion is here
Speaker 1: and used in this film, not so much because it
Speaker 1: is loving and well Craft did and is like an
Speaker 1: art form all its own. It was the best way
Speaker 1: of delivering this particular effect at the time. And so
Speaker 1: with Dick, even with Dick Jones falling out the window,
Speaker 1: like what are your choices? You either don't show it,
Speaker 1: or you use like a Dick Jones lying on a
Speaker 1: blue mat and do like a green scaring kind of
Speaker 1: a thing where he's like, ah, you know, like Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat too falling into the pit, which can also look
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Or you go first stop motion, and in
Speaker 1: this case it didn't quite work, like they were trying
Speaker 1: to create something that was too lifelike. But I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change it. Yeah, I wouldn't change it still admired.
Speaker 3: I love the long arms that it gives me a
Speaker 3: tickle every time.
Speaker 1: This was a time period too where like that sort
Speaker 1: of shot, I feel like happened a lot. You had
Speaker 1: a lot of bad guys falling to their death, Like
Speaker 1: didn't the Joker go down the same way? Maybe a
Speaker 1: slightly more convincing effect. I don't recall, yeah, falling off skyscrapers.
Speaker 1: They'll do it well anyway.
Speaker 3: So after this, the old man says, he says something
Speaker 3: like nice shooting, son. What's your name? And RoboCop does
Speaker 3: not say RoboCop. He says Murphy. And that's the end
Speaker 3: of the film. And it's an interesting ending because Murphy
Speaker 3: has somewhat reclaimed his humanity, Like he has acted against
Speaker 3: the direct interests of his one of his bosses in
Speaker 3: this case, so he has somewhat done the right thing
Speaker 3: despite what he's being told to do by the by
Speaker 3: the organization that controls him. He has to some degree
Speaker 3: recovered part of himself in that like he you know,
Speaker 3: he remembers his family, he remembers his life. Even though
Speaker 3: he's not fully the Murphy he was, he realizes some
Speaker 3: part of him is Murphy, but he's still not completely free,
Speaker 3: and I think that makes the ending more interesting and
Speaker 3: bittersweet than if he just had like a total victory
Speaker 3: over the bad guys. He's still not fully free because
Speaker 3: he's not able to remove direc he just has to,
Speaker 3: like outsmart it, find a way around it by getting
Speaker 3: the old Man to fire Dick Jones so he can act.
Speaker 1: But again, thinking of Dick Jones as kind of a
Speaker 1: god or Zeus figure, it's like he has he has
Speaker 1: scaled at the top of Mount Olympus once more, and
Speaker 1: I guess we also have a Satanic figure literally falling
Speaker 1: from the heights here. But then the old Man has
Speaker 1: to acknowledge him, and in asking him his name, there
Speaker 1: is kind of like a power there. It's like like,
Speaker 1: this is your chance to reclaim some portion of humanity
Speaker 1: that we took from you. And he does reclaim at
Speaker 1: least part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like we said, it's not a complete victory,
Speaker 3: you know, It's not like OCP is completely defeated and
Speaker 3: the world has changed for the better. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: a small, limited victory, but at least it is that
Speaker 3: in this otherwise bleak and horrible world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's so many great little moments, like
Speaker 1: the final showdown with Bodiker, of course, where he stabs
Speaker 1: him in the neck, which apparently they wanted to do
Speaker 1: something grizzlier, and this was the this was thing, the
Speaker 1: less grizzly version, you know. And I guess you don't
Speaker 1: actually see him stab him in the neck. You just see,
Speaker 1: like way too his blood splashed unto Robocop's chest and
Speaker 1: then you see Bodiker stumbling away with blood gushing out
Speaker 1: of his Neck's still incredibly violent, but I'd forgotten that
Speaker 1: you don't actually see it going into his neck.
Speaker 3: The spike that he uses to kill Bodiker there is
Speaker 3: not actually meant to be a weapon. It is the
Speaker 3: jack that he uses to interface with the police computer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when he busts it out again to load
Speaker 1: the incriminating evidence, it's still bloody with Botaker's blood. But
Speaker 1: shortly after that there's that scene where Lewis is all
Speaker 1: is shot up and you know they've they've defeated the
Speaker 1: bad guys there, and this is at the industrial site
Speaker 1: and RoboCop says to her it's like, don't worry, they'll
Speaker 1: fix you up. They always do, or something to those.
Speaker 3: Effects which they fix everything.
Speaker 1: They fix everything, which which ties into this feeling of yeah,
Speaker 1: the sort of the the partial victory, like the powers
Speaker 1: that the are still very much in charge and are
Speaker 1: very much the deciders of life and death and resurrection,
Speaker 1: but some monicum of victory, some some shred of humanity
Speaker 1: has been reclaimed.
Speaker 3: So that's RoboCop. Would you buy that for a dollar?
Speaker 1: Yes, I would. I would buy it for thirty plus
Speaker 1: dollars whatever the going rate for the Blu Ray is,
Speaker 1: you know, or you know, rent it digitally or physically
Speaker 1: for somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five dollars.
Speaker 1: Well worth it, well worth the time.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's all I've got.
Speaker 1: All Right, We're going to go ahead and close out
Speaker 1: this episode. I think we have one more episode before
Speaker 1: our Christmas selection, so you know, keep your eyes open
Speaker 1: to see what we're going to be covering. You can
Speaker 1: follow the films that we cover on Weird House Cinema
Speaker 1: by going to letterbox dot com. That's l E T
Speaker 1: T E R b o x D dot com. Our
Speaker 1: username there is weird House, and we have a nice
Speaker 1: list of all the movies we've covered so far and
Speaker 1: sometimes a sneak peek at what's coming up at least
Speaker 1: in the week to follow. We're primarily a science podcast here,
Speaker 1: it's Stuff to Blow Your Mind with core episodes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film film
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Speaker 1: so that's another place where you can get a little
Speaker 1: taste of the movie we're talking about each week.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
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