EDITOR’S NOTE: RoboCop is one of my all-time most loved films. I’m so excited to have the Arrow UHD! This originally was on the site on January 12, 2020 and has been updated for the new release.

RoboCop was written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, inspired by a poster for the Blade Runner. Neumeier asked a friend what the film was about and was told, “It’s about a cop hunting robots.”

Neumeier was stranded at an airport with a high-ranking film exec and was able to sell him on the project, which took half a decade or more to reach the screen. The first draft, in 1981, was about a robot cop who slowly became human. That script got rejected.

In 1984, Neumeier and Miner met. Miner had been working on a script that he called SuperCop, about a police officer who has been seriously injured and becomes a donor for an experiment to create a cybernetic police officer.

Paul Verhoeven had already made his first American movie, Flesh & Blood, in 1985. The first time he read the script, he threw it away. His wife saved it from the garbage and told him it could be so much more. Other directors who showed interest included Repo Man director Alex Cox and Kenneth Johnson, creator of the television series V.

From https://www.toplessrobot.com/2015/03/the_top_ten_stealth_comic_book_movies.php/romspaceknightcomicsrobocopmoviescenes-jpg-11

The character of RoboCop itself was inspired by — let’s try and not say directly lifted from —  British comic book hero Judge Dredd, as well as the Japanese series Space Sheriff Gavan and the Marvel Comics toy-based superhero Rom the Spaceknight, whose comic shows up throughout the film.

UPDATE: Shout out to Ed Piskor, who reminded me just how much this movie is influenced by Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!

Honestly, this film is a great mix of individuals who all needed to come together to create something that could only exist by the combination of their strengths. In anyone else’s hands other than Verhoeven, it could have been just an action film. With any other actor other than Peter Weller playing the lead, it wouldn’t have the drama that it evokes. With any other artists than Rob Bottin, The Chiodo Brothers, Craig Hayes and Phil Tippett, the look of the film would be basic.

Its a perfect action movie, though one that’s also an indictment on fascism and the growing disparity between the rich and the lower castes in the United States. In fact, much like Starship Troopers, it’s satire is often lost on some audiences, who believe that it has to be absolutely serious.

RoboCop was rated X eleven different times. That’s how brutal the original versions were. Keep that in mind — the movie remains one of the most anarchic of 1987 and hell, I couldn’t see half this stuff being shown in a movie in 2020.

Detroit is worse in the future than it was in the past, if that’s possible. The cops want to strike. Omni Consumer Products (OCP) runs Detroit’s police department in exchange for letting the company rebuild run-down sections of the city into a high-end utopia. Now, they want to replace flesh and blood cops with robotic peace operatives, like ED-209, which ends up killing nearly everyone in the board room in his initial test.

That’s when the RoboCop plan comes in. It’s going to take a real cop’s brain and put it in a near-indestructible body to protect the city. That cop ends up being Alex Murphy (Weller), who gets killed on pretty much his first few days on the job by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang, leaving his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) alone again.

Soon, Murphy’s brains have been retrofitted into a sleek mechanical shell ready to dispense justice by any means necessary, including shooting muggers right in the meat. Before long, he’s recovered his humanity and realizes that OCP, the company that saved him, may have more in common with the criminals that he busts than the public he’s programmed to protect.

It’s a pretty basic tale, enlivened by the way and style in which it is told. Plus, you get some great actors — beyond Weller, Allen and Smith, who are all at the top of their game here. There’s Dan O’Herlihy as the OCP chairman known as only “The Old Man;” Miguel Ferrer as Bob Morton, the exec who gets RoboCop funded before Boddicker offs him during a coke binge (perhaps the most quoted scene in the film); and a gang of baddies that include Ray Wise (Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks), Paul McCrane (Guard Trout from The Shawshank Redemption) and Jesse Goins (Up the Creek). And wow, as always, Ronny Cox plays the best of bad guys, here as OCP exec Dick Jones.

Perhaps the best parts of this movie are the video screens and fake commercials that break it all up. Leeza Gibbons and Mario Machado appear as anchorpeople who take us through the news of the day, allowing for fast exposition and recaps. This technique feels right out of Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. Plus, the “I’d but that for a dollar” guy is perfect.

In 2013, Neumeier reflected on the fact that his script was quite prophetic, saying “We are now living in the world that I was proposing in RoboCop…how big corporations will take care of us and…how they won’t.”

For what it’s worth, Verhoeven and Bottin fought throughout the production over harsh light revealing too much of the makeup on screen. Once Verhoeven won the argument, the two didn’t speak until the premiere, where they were so impressed by how the film turned out that they forgave one another. Despite vowing to never again work with the director, Bottin worked on the very next film Verhoeven made, Total Recall.

My favorite story about the film is that when he was in full costume, Weller would remain in character between takes, only responding to Verhoeven’s instructions when properly addressed as “Robo.” Verhoeven never took this seriously and refused to do so after just a few weeks. That’s second only to the fact that the producers paid President Richard Nixon $25,000 to promote the VHS release of RoboCop.

Arrow Video’s new UHD steel book release of RoboCop is packed with so many features. It starts with a 4K restoration of the film from the original camera negative by MGM, transferred in 2013 and approved by director Paul Verhoeven. There’s also the Director’s Cut and Theatrical Cut of the film on two 4K UHD Blu-ray discs with Dolby Vision. And you also get a 44-page limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Omar Ahmed, Christopher Griffiths and Henry Blyth.

The director’s cut disk has archive commentary by director Paul Verhoeven, executive producer Jon Davison and co-writer Ed Neumeier (originally recorded for the Theatrical Cut and re-edited in 2014 for the Director’s Cut). Plus, you get two new commentary tracks, one by film historian Paul M. Sammon and the other by fans Christopher Griffiths, Gary Smart and Eastwood Allen.

Like all Arrow releases, this set is packed with documentaries, like The Future of Law Enforcement: Creating RoboCop, a newly filmed interview with co-writer Michael Miner and RoboTalk, a newly filmed conversation between co-writer Ed Neumeier and filmmakers David Birke (writer of Elle) and Nick McCarthy (director of Orion Pictures’ The Prodigy), as well as interviews with Nancy Allen — in which she glowingly refers to the town we live in with a very profanity-laced comment that made me laught out loud, casting director Julie Selzer and second unit director Mark Goldblatt. Plus, there’s also a tribute to composer Basil Poledouris featuring film music experts Jeff Bond, Lukas Kendall, Daniel Schweiger and Robert Townson, a tour of Julien Dumont’s collection of original props and memorabilia, three archive features from the 2007 release and a 2012 Q&A with the cast and crew. Plus there’s even more — four deleted scenes, trailers, TV spots, Director’s Cut production footage and raw dailies, and even an Easter Egg!

Is there more? Yes, this is Arrow! There’s an edited-for-television version of the film, featuring alternate dubs, takes and edits of several scenes, a compilation of these alternate scenes and a split-screen comparison of the Theatrical and Director’s Cuts.

You can get this from MVD.

This movie sure had some changes before it got to the screen. Bonzo was going to be a real ape* before Deep Roy was cast, while Big Bad Joe Hopkins was going to be played by Bud Spencer — on the 1986 Cannon reel of upcoming films this was called Ben, Bonzo and Big Bad Joe — and Menahem Golan — who wrote the script, based on the Kofiko books by Tamar Bornstein-Lazar — and Sam Firstenberg were going to direct until Boaz Davidson was picked.

What emerges is pure Cannon.

Benjamin (David Menden-Hall, who if he annoyed you in Over the Top is ready to destroy your mind and play with it) is on an adventure with his guardian Joe (Dom DeLuise) and friend Mozambo (Jimmie Walker) in Africa. Specifically Momba-Zomba Land.

There, he meets Bonzo, a talking monkey who can not only fly a plane, but can practically fly — or if we follow the old TSR Marvel Super Hero rules, he’s like The Hulk who has Class 5000  Hyper-Leaping — and the whole story is about Herbert Lom as a cop stealing the monkey and putting him in a circus and that never works out whether it’s King Kong or Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Or Going Bananas.

A lot of people debate, “What’s your favorite Cannon movie?”

No one has picked this one.

*Clyde the Organgatan from Every Which Way but Loose and Any Which Way You Can has a meeting at Menahem Golan’s office and there was an attempt to sign him as a Cannon actor, if you can believe that. When it fell through, Golan introduced Deep Roy to Davidson and said, “Meet your new monkey!” This story seems like it isn’t true, but it’s Cannon, so it probably is.

Also, according to Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, Golan asked a publicist of Clyde, “Would you fuck this monkey?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally wrote about this on March 6, 2020. Now it’s back for Cannon Month.

John Norman is a professor of philosophy and the creator of the Gor series of books, which are basically male-dominated bondage science fiction fantasies that also feature critiques of modern society and the exploration of philosophical themes from a Nietzschean view. And you thought incels were a brand new thing, huh?

The series began in 1966 with Tarnsman of Gor — which this movie is based on — and was put on hold when DAW refused to publish the twenty-fifth installment, Magicians of Gor in 1988. The series returned in 2001 with Witness of Gor. There’s also an entire subculture called Gorean flourishes online, as you can only imagine that it would.

So yeah. Somehow, this got made. And so did a sequel, Outlaw of Gor.

Professor of physics Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini, Demons, Opera) is pretty much a loser with the ladies until he gets a magical ring that sends him to the world of Gor. Think Den from Heavy Metal and you have the picture.

He also comes into conflict with Oliver Reed, playing the priest-king known as Sarm, who is looking for the Home Stone to create more paths to Earth. Our hero accidentally kills Sarm’s son before he’s knocked out and left for the buzzards. Luckily, he’s saved by Talena (Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1986 Rebecca Ferratti, who is also in Cheerleader Camp and Embrace of the Vampire), the barbarian princess of Ko-ro-ba.

Of course, while Cabot strikes out at home, he somehow scores with this vision of womanhood because on Gor, men are the rulers. But he’s still a moron and activates the Home Stone, sending him home to, one assumes, spill his seed, hack the carrot and sail the seas of mayonnaise all by himself.

Gor at least has some great character actors like Jack Palance, Paul Smith (Bluto from Popeye and the landscaper in Pieces) and a young Arnold Vosloo.

Norman almost didn’t get the movie made, as his publisher wanted nothing to do with it. He told the fanzine The Gorean Voice, “Ballantine Books refused to do movie tie-ins to either film; they failed even to answer my letters. My attorney finessed his way around Ballantine’s rights department and contacted the legal department at Random House. The movies were made by going over the heads of the censors.”

It was produced by Harry Alan Towers (who you may remember ran a vice ring that implicated the United Nations, JFK, Peter Lawford and several others when he wasn’t producing Jess Franco movies) and action film impresario Avi Lerner. Direction was provided by Fritz Kiersch, who also brought us Children of the Corn and Tuff Turf.

If you ever played lots of D&D and wondered why the popular girls liked jerks and figured, “I’m going to treat them badly, too!” Good news. You are the target audience for this movie.

You can listen to The Cannon Canon episode about Gor here.

Director Reinhard Schwabenitzky’s 1988’s Summertime Blues: Lemon Popsicle VIII is not director Yaky Yosha’s 1984 movie Summertime Blues, but wow, they’re really close. 50s soundtrack? Goofball jokes? Lots of sex? Yes, Lemon Popsicle movies have somewhat dominated my life over Cannon Month, so I often wonder if they have caused me to lose what’s left of my mind after a month of Jess Franco and now this.

But hey! It’s summer and Hughie (Zachi Noy), Benzi (Yftach Katzur) and Bobby (Jonathan Sagall) want to start their own bar, but they need money. The landlord, however, has a daughter named Polly (Elfi Eschke) who is the kind of girl the boys would never be interested in and yet her affection could cause them to get the party place of their dirtiest dreams, which inevitably include Sibylle Rauch. Are you surprised?

This movie exists in limbo. I’ve finally figured it out, as everyone is in the place between Heaven and Hell, a timeless void where 1950s cars exist alongside mentions of Kennedy and John Travolta.

I only have one of these movies left. I will not be sad when I finish it.

If you wonder, am I watching Dangerously Close, I understand. In a moment of meta deja vu (meta vu?) director and writer John Stockwell can be seen being seen by police protagonist  Sheffield Hauser (David Neidorf), who is watching that movie. And Stockwell co-wrote that one with Scott Fields, who came back for this movie.

Weird, right?

This school is also like some kind of pre-21 Jump Street, as Sgt. Irwin Lee (Barry Corbin) and Tanille Laroux (Jennifer Jason Leigh) are also working undercover to stop the drugs in the classrooms.

I was pretty happy to see Kathleen Willhoite in this. While she doesn’t deploy the stellar vocabulary that she used in Murphy’s Law, she doesn’t make Hauser’s life easy at the police station. There’s also a soundtrack by Albert Lee and Todd Rundgren, so Under Cover has that going for it.

I did learn that cocaine is also called booger juice from this movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally wrote about this movie during Death Wish week on November 7, 2018. This article has been updated and added to since then.

Where do you go after the utter lunacy that is Death Wish 3? Well, you replace Michael Winner with J. Lee Thompson, who was the director for The Guns of Navarone, the original Cape Fear, the slashtastic Happy Birthday to Me and The Reincarnation of Peter Proud amongst many other films. He’d already worked with Bronson on 10 to Midnight, Murphy’s Law and The Evil That Men Do and would also direct Bronson in Messenger of Death and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects after this movie wrapped. In fact, counting St. Ives, The White Buffalo and Caboblanco, they’d work on seven movies together.

Paul Kersey hasn’t learned anything from the last three movies. He has a new girlfriend, Karen Sheldon (Kay Lenz, The Initiation of Sarah, House) with a teenage daughter named Erica (Dana Barron, the original Audrey from National Lampoon’s Vacation) that you shouldn’t get to know all that well. That’s because — surprise! — she overdoses thanks to her boyfriend and her getting into crack cocaine and doing it an arcade. If you’re shocked that a Death Wish movie would prey upon the worst fears of America’s middle class, then you may have watched the last three films too.

Paul loved that girl like his own daughter, probably because she wanted to be an architect like him and also possibly because he hasn’t yet learned that the moment that he says something like that, tragedy is right around the corner. Honestly, the main message of the Death Wish films is that God hates Paul Kersey, will not allow him to die and will wait until he finds happiness again before visiting upon him great suffering, only for the cycle to repeat.

The night she died, Paul saw Erica smoke a joint with her boyfriend and was already suspecting the young dude, so he follows him back to the arcade the next night. That boyfriend confronts Jojo and Jesse (Tim Russ, Commander Tuvok himself!), two of the dealers who sold them the crack cocaine, and threatens to go to the police. This being a Death Wish film, they kill him pretty much in public. That murder unlocks the ability for Paul to start killing again, so he shoots Jojo and launches his body on to the top of bumper cars, where he’s electrocuted. No one dies in a Death Wish movie without a flourish.

Meanwhile, Paul gets a call from tabloid publisher Nathan White (John P. Ryan from It’s Alive), who knows that he’s the vigilante. His daughter had also become addicted to drugs and died, so he knows what Paul is going through. The storyline becomes pretty much like The Punisher’s first mini-series where The Trust paid for him to wipe out crime, as White funds Paul’s one man war against drugs while his girlfriend starts writing an expose on the two rival gangs in town.

To cut down the budget in this movie, when Paul and Nathan meet in the movie theater, that’s Cannon’s screening room.

One of those gangs is led by Ed Zacharias (Perry Lopez, Creature from the Black Lagoon) and the other is commanded by Jack and Tony Romero. Two LAPD officers, Sid Reiner and Phil Nozaki are also on the case, trying to figure out who killed the drug dealers at the arcade.

This is the first Death Wish film where Paul feels more like an urban James Bond than a fed up war vet. Trust me, he gets even more gadgets in the next one. Here, he uses his skills as a master of disguise — he has none — to dress as a waiter and serve a party at Zacharias’ house. The birthday cake is…man, let me just show you the birthday cake.

After witnessing the drug lord kill one of his guys who stole some cocaine, he’s ordered to help carry out the body. Soon, he’s killing all of that drug dealer’s men, including three guys in an Italian restaurant with a bomb shaped like a wine bottle. Look for a really young Danny Trejo in this scene!

After all that mayhem, Paul also starts wiping out the Romero gang one by one, including breaking onto a drug front and blowing it up with a bomb. Yet Nozaki ends up being on the take for Zacharias and tries to kill our hero and you know how well that works out. Now Paul looks like a cop killer, too.

In the stuntman piece de resistance of this one, the two drug lords are lured into an oil field shootout where Paul kills Zacharius with a high-powered rifle, instigating the fireworks. Nathan comes out to congratulate Paul, but sets him up with a car bomb. It turns out that the Nathan that Paul has met is a third drug lord (!) who set him up to take out all the competition. Then, two fake cops arrest Paul and take him downtown, but they’re really just trying to kill our hero. Again, you know how well that works.

The film ends with Detective Reiner searching for Paul out of revenge for his partner’s murder, the third drug lord kidnapping Paul’s woman and everything coming together in a parking lot and a roller rink where Paul uses an M16 with an equipped M203 grenade launcher to unleash holy hell.

Only the drug lord survives, holding Karen. She tried to escape and gets shot numerous times with a MAC 10 submachine gun. He tries to kill Paul but he’s out of bullets. Paul may be, but he still has a grenade, which he uses to blow the villain up real good.

The film closes with Reiner coming and ordering Paul to surrender and threatening to kill him if he walks away. “Do whatever you have to,” says the old gunfighter as he walks into the sunset.

For all the mayhem and madness throughout this film — keep in mind our hero just used an explosive device to decimate another bad guy just seconds before — this is a poignant ending. But of course, Paul — whether he wanted to use the new last name Kimble he came up with in this film or Kersey — would be back one more time.

Bronson made $4 million for this movie and in my opinion, he should have asked for more.