Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 classic is an unquestionable pillar of the film industry. Few movies have ever stomped so freely between genres and tones like RoboCop does. Picking up a bevy of blood on its mechanical boots along the way. You won’t find many, if any, films in history that can simultaneously sell toys like hotcakes, critique corporate greed, and feature a bad guy getting shot in the junk. Even the B-movie moments feel like spectacle, fueled by a brazen disrespect for the status quo, we just can’t get enough of. Kinda sounds like we’re talking about a punk rock horror movie. In some ways… we are. RoboCop’s journey has been documented six ways from Sunday. Including the impressively in-depth, four-hour-and-then-some 2023 documentary RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop. Today, we’re going to look at the classic under a bloodier lens. And answer the question: does Robo really want an Oreo? The life, death, resurrection, and horror of What Happened to RoboCop?
When aspiring writers Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner were knee-deep in developing RoboCop, most of their inspiration came from other sci-fi properties with horror undertones like Judge Dredd and Blade Runner. But when it came to the choice to brutally kill off their main character early in the film, Neumeier found inspiration in another place: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Specifically, the infamous shower murder of Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane.
The pair sold their script in 1985 to Orion Pictures, who then courted director Paul Verhoeven to helm the project. Verhoeven, like many others, took one look at the title and first page and said, “No thanks.” Who could blame them? Today, the words “RoboCop” are synonymous with “badass”. Back then, it probably sounded like the ’80s version of someone bringing you a board game movie script. Thankfully, his wife talked him into giving it another try, and he fell in love with the idea of a man losing everything and returning home to memories and loss.
With Verhoeven on board, the role of the titular character could’ve gone to anyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Tom Berenger. But for multiple reasons, one of them being his chin (according to Verhoeven), actor Peter Weller landed the gig. He’d later be fired by Verhoeven as the two were at odds with each other, and the director planned to bring in Lance Henriksen. The suit, though, was made to fit Weller, and they ultimately were forced to figure it out. That same suit that had helped to keep Weller in his legendary role was also a curse. The actor found himself losing around three pounds a day from sweating inside it in the Dallas, Texas heat.
Though the production had its sweaty, all American hero, it still needed a vile, putrid son of a bitch for him to face off against. Actor Kurtwood Smith might be remembered today as the lovable grump, Red Forman, from That ’70s Show. But in 1987, he played one of the most ruthless psychos cinema had ever seen. Clarence Boddicker throws his own henchman out of the back of a van (Can you fly, Bobby?), spits blood on police desks and weirdly uses his tongue to de-pin grenades. He revels in the pain and suffering of others with no shame. Even before the first news break finishes, he’s already been credited with the deaths of 31 police officers and God knows how many civilians. Actor Ray Wise, who we’d later see in Jeepers Creepers 2, among a litany of other great performances, would be hired to play Clarence’s right-hand man, Leon.
Over on the corporate scum side, there’s Ronny Cox as Dick Jones. You’d never know it watching Dick move throughout the offices of OCP like a snake on office carpet and treating the men’s bathroom like something out of American Psycho, but Cox had built a career on playing wholesome characters. He relished the chance to play a masculine bad guy. And by god, he’s a great Dick. Jones. The late, great Miguel Ferrer also had a wonderful time playing the punchable and unfiltered Bob Morton, describing the experience as the best summer of his life.
Things kick off with a moment that perfectly illustrates how unhinged and violent the film we are about to witness truly is. It’s a classic case of a corporate douchebag in the wrong place at the wrong time. ED-209 malfunctions and shoots the living sh*t out of OCP Executive Mr. Kinney in front of a board room of his peers, turning him into a human Gusher’s fruit snack right before their eyes.
To achieve this ultra gnarly moment, Actor Kevin Page was strapped with 200 blood-filled squibs that he explained felt like “being punched” with every detonation. Something he had to suffer twice, as Paul Verhoeven wasn’t happy with the original take and called for a reshoot. The real horror though, was that no one in that room gave a damn. But as Bob Morton said: “That’s life in the big city.”*
While Kinney’s death was over the top and silly, the next one will accentuate the horror of RoboCop in a completely different way. Bright-eyed cop Alex Murphy has just been transferred from a nice police station into the absolute hellscape that is Metro West precinct. Murphy quickly wins us over with his clear enthusiasm and poise. Even though it’s obvious he’s entered a total sh*t show of epic proportions, he makes fast friends with his new partner, Lewis (played by Nancy Allen), and gets to work with a smile on his face. We learn he’s the kind of dad who practices cool tricks with his gun because his son saw it on T.J. Lazer and thought it was cool.
Then the bad guys blow him apart right in front of us.
To bring this emotionally devastating moment to life, the crew set up shop in an abandoned auto plant in Long Beach, California. The special effects team featured legends like Rob Bottin and Phil Tippett, as well as others, who had worked on everything from The Thing to Empire Strikes Back. To pull off the carnage, they used prosthetics packed with blood that exploded via compressed air, seemingly similar to what Christopher Nelson would later do for Michael Myers’ shotgun finger explosion in 2018’s Halloween. The prosthetic hand was designed so they could reset and reuse it between takes, and the arm was fitted with a monofilament wire to sell the effect of it being blown off.For the final headshot, they created a highly detailed replica of Weller’s head, operated by four puppeteers, complete with sweat and blood. A charge was fitted into a fiberglass skull, covered in baked foam latex and loaded with a blood squib. To sync the timing perfectly, they simply rigged a literal wire between the gun’s trigger and the charge. When the trigger was pulled, the squib would explode simultaneously. And you know the rest.
The special effects are rad, but the moment is both emotionally and visually horrific. It’s not just the gore. It’s the dehumanization of our leading character, who hasn’t even reached the halfway point of his suffering.
Even after being turned into Swiss cheese worse than Jason Voorhees in the opening of Jason Goes to Hell, Murphy’s still clinging to the last frayed thread of life. We see him airlifted to a hospital, experiencing everything through his POV. Harsh hospital lights. Flashes of the family he’ll never see again, mixed with the twisted faces of his killers while they laugh at his pain. His body is mangled, and we watch as the doctors try to bring him back with electric shocks before announcing his time of death. Doing so with the empathy of a McDonald’s employee informing you that the ice cream machine is down again.
After a moment of darkness, Murphy is then brought back. Not by loving hands or medical professionals trying to save a life. By cold, tech-heads hammering away on his remains like he’s an Xbox 360 flashing the red ring of death on Christmas morning. They casually talk about amputating his other arm for aesthetic reasons as if he were a goddamn Rock Em’ Sock Em’ Robot. The story of his resurrection is told mostly through Murphy’s vision, and it’s intentionally invasive. Everyone is uncomfortably close to his face; that drunk lady kisses his eye hole; you just know Bob Morton’s breath smells like that of a dead hooker. Oh, and let’s not forget the disgusting-looking baby food paste he has pumped into him to survive. It’s physical, psychological, medical, and existential horror all wrapped up in one.
But despite Murphy’s brutal death and cold resurrection, the real horror comes later when he begins to realize what he is. After a brief spree of shooting bad guys in the d*ck and punching corrupt politicians through windows (all of which had to be a blast), RoboCop is brought down to earth when he experiences something of a nightmare, forced to relive his own death in his mind.
He storms out and visits his old, now-abandoned home, where he is overwhelmed by fragmented memories of his wife and son that he can’t quite understand. As he later explains to Lewis, “I can feel them… but I can’t remember them.” That’s a terrifying concept. The fear of losing your mind, Jacob’s Ladder-style, being one of the scariest things imaginable. But this is a fresh Hell. Feeling the loss of loved ones you can’t remember while 99% of your body is also missing is a mind f*ck of Cronenberg proportions. All this before Murphy reveals what’s left of his human body when he removes his visor, telling Lewis, “You may not like what you’re going to see”, unveiling his surgically altered, deeply unsettling face.
All this traumatic horror aside, there’s some fun call backs to the genre as well. Pay close attention to the scene when RoboCop finally becomes fully operational and marches through the police station with the other officers chasing after him. Between the music and the aura, it’s straight out of a John Carpenter film. It’s also awesome experiencing Robo unleash revenge on all of the scum who wronged him, ending with a showdown at another industrial hell hole. One slice of revenge cake stands out in particular: the eradication of Paul McCrane’s Emil character. Aside from his facial hair placement being a horror film all in itself, Emil’s death might be the gnarliest moment of all. As he attempts to hit RoboCop with a vehicle, Robo hits the B-button spin move instead, and Emil crashes his van into a toxic waste container. Emil then emerges as a melting mutant with hot dog fingers.
To pull this off, Rob Bottin’s FX team gave McCrane layers of a foam-latex headpiece and gloves to make him look like marshmallow sauce in mid-meltdown. They then replicated the prosthetics on a dummy, hit it with another car, and splattered raw chicken, soup, and gravy all over the set to complete the goo explosion. It’s gross in all the best ways. The MPAA, of course, hated it. They wanted the scene cut, along with many others. Orion refused, however, saying the scene achieved the most laughs of any other during test screenings. Turns out, audiences were always more than happy to see a laughing boy turned into a cake left out in the rain.
Clarence’s final stand was supposed to have more of a horror-driven aspect to it as well, with Verhoeven wanting RoboCop to stab Boddicker in the eye to finish him off. But even they knew the MPAA would likely protest. Instead, RoboCop gives him the middle finger through the throat. The scene was edited in such a way that it doesn’t actually show the penetration but rather the action and after-effect of the throat stabbing.
While Verhoeven found a childlike glee and humor in all of the films’ nastiness, the MPAA didn’t agree. RoboCop was slapped with the dreaded X rating at least eight times for the very awesome reasons we’ve been celebrating today and more. The director argued that the violence was so over-the-top, it became comical, even saying the X-rated cut made his kids laugh. But we’re talking about the MPAA. If they were a human being, they’d be Jeremy Piven’s fun sucking “cheese” character from Old School.
RoboCop would eventually achieve its R-rated and be unleashed unto the world, raking in around $54 million against its $13 million dollar budget. It was also released during the dawn of home video, where a RoboCop VHS would cost you a whopping $89.98 to purchase for home viewing. And don’t forget the toy sales that were so strong they led to the studio effectively tanking their own franchise two films later by trying to market it towards children.
Regardless, to this day, RoboCop and all the bloodshed incorporated with his big screen debut are now cemented in pop culture legacy as a household name we still can’t get enough of. Robo-finger-sword-things crossed that the upcoming Amazon Prime TV series gets away from the PG-13 nonsense and gives us back the true R-rated and sometimes horrific DNA of our favorite tin can. And that is What happened to RoboCop.
A couple of the previous episodes of What Happened to This Horror Movie? can be seen below. To see more, head over to our JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
