FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

RoboCop (1987, USA)

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Cast: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Kurtwood Smith, Ronny Cox
Running Time: 102 mins.

Paul Verhoeven’s hyper violent RoboCop is a near perfect classic. In the crime ridden futuristic Detroit, police officer Alex Murphy is brutally executed by a gang of maniacal criminals (a tough scene to watch still). He is then resurrected by the corporation that owns the police (OCP) and turned into the cyborg law enforcer RoboCop. At first, he functions mostly as a hyper effective machine, but then his memory starts coming back to him with a venguence and he goes after the criminals that murdered him as well as the corrupt boss of OCP that is in league with them. Besides pure entertainment and lots of humor, Verhoeven’s Hollywood debut offers a dark, cynical view on the future and smart social commentary on consumerism (‘how about the 6000 SUX!!’), capitalism and the human as flesh machine. Ultimately, the movie is about identity as RoboCop remembers he is not just a product but “Murphy”.