The city of Old Detroit is besieged by crime. Omni Consumer Products (OCP) is looking to get the contract to police the city. They are demonstrating their latest police enforcement weapon, an armed robot called an Enforcement Droid-209 or ED-209 for short. At a meeting with the Chairman, known in OCP as The Old Man (Dan O’Herlihy), Senior Vice President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) has the techs bring in the droid. Jones asks one of his lackeys, Kinney (Kevin Page) to participate in the demonstration. Kinney points a gun at ED-209. The droid activates and orders Kinney to put down his weapon. The robot gives him twenty seconds to comply. Kinney throws down the gun. ED-209 responds, “You have fifteen seconds to comply”. Everyone panics. At the end of the countdown ED-209 fires his machine gun weaponry and cuts Kinney to ribbons. There seems to be a glitch in ED-209.
Junior exec Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) jumps in to tell the Old Man about his project RoboCop. The Old Man gives him the OK to go forward with his prototype. Morton needs a volunteer to proceed. Officer Alex Murphy has just transferred to the Metro West precinct in Old Detroit. He is paired with veteran officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen). On their first call they are in pursuit of a gang run by a vicious sociopath named Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Clarence and his gang corner Murphy in a warehouse. After having fun riddling him with bullets Clarence shoots him in the head. Although clinically dead Murphy is taken to the OCP company and is used to create RoboCop, a titanium android with a Kevlar covering. Morton has his volunteer.
RoboCop is released to the city streets to fight crime. Without memory he is a machine but a vestige of what he was is still in his brain. Lewis sees the robot twirl his gun, western movie style, before putting it back in his holster. She’s seen that maneuver before. She realizes that this machine was once Officer Alex Murphy. While being down for maintenance RoboCop experiences a dream. He leaves headquarters on his own and runs into Lewis who tells him he is Murphy. RoboCop then goes on patrol and runs into one of Clarence’s gang members, Emil Antonoswky (Paul McCrane). All these little incidences, the dream, running into Lewis and then seeing Emil trigger memories. RoboCop goes to headquarters and accesses the computer. He calls up the records of Clarence and his gang members and himself. RoboCop is remembering.
While RoboCop is fighting crime for OCP a certain high level officer is creating his own crime wave. And because of certain hardwiring in his system RoboCop is powerless to stop it. Jones has now declared RoboCop public enemy number one and sends an ED-209, Clarence and his gang as well as the entire precinct to destroy him before he finds out what is really going on at OCP.
“RoboCop” was released in 1987 and was directed by Paul Verhoeven. It is a science fiction action film. The film was nominated for three Oscars, including Best Sound, Best Sound Editing, and Best Film Editing. It won the Best Sound Editing Oscar. There is a lot of gross in the movie and it managed to come just short of getting an “X” rating. Even though there’s a lot of gross it’s a lot of fun.
The Enforcement Droid, ED-209's voice is that of producer Jon Davison, its growls are of a jaguar, and when it falls down the stairs and lands upside down the squeals it makes are of a pig. Its body was based on the design of a Bell helicopter.
Rob Bottin and his team, Phil Tippett, Stephan Dupuis, Bart Mixon and Craig Davies, along with others created the special effects for the film. Construction of the RoboCop suit took almost 10 months. A body cast of Peter Weller and 6-foot clay models were used to design and construct the suit. The organic food paste that RoboCop eats was actually made up of parsnip, tomato purée and crushed Butterfinger bars. The Melting Man sequence where bad guy Emil falls into the tank of toxic waste was also created by Bottin. It’s reminiscent of the special effects he did for John Carpenter’s “The Thing” 1982.
The doctors trying to save Murphy’s life were a real hospital trauma team. They adlibbed most of their dialogue. The scientists in the film are named after U.S. Presidents and the cops after serial killers.
Former President Richard Nixon was hired to promote the home video release. He was paid $25,000 which he donated to the American Boys Club. Kurtwood Smith's wife, Joan Pirkle, played Dick Jones' secretary, Barbara. Smith, as Clarence, flirts with her before his meeting with Jones.
Verhoeven created several fake commercials for the film. One of them was for the Nuk’em board game. I’m still trying to find out where to get one of them.