Thursday, April 12, 2007

Robocop Returns

Robocop is even better than you remember it, trust me. This one genuinely undervalued film. Same goes for Starship Troopers. Of all of Verhoeven's work, these are two most ridiculously underappreciated. Edward Neumeier's angry, hilarious scripts are a good part of the reason why they succeed so much - just indeed as Joe the Hungarian Bear's scripts were the central reason for Basic Instinct and Showgirls to turn out so dreadfully.

You'll get another chance for Robo reappraisal soon enough, it seems. Twentieth Century Fox seem to be working on a new DVD of the film, for the UK at least. No idea of the full spec so far but some features from previous releases - the 1987 featurettes, Phil Tippet providing commentary on storyboards - remain while others do not - MGM's Flesh and Steel documentary appears to be gone, for example.

The 'making-of' doc this time around is called Creating a Legend. It runs about twenty minutes and features Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Verhoeven and all the usual suspects.

I'm hoping there's more to this release to make it really worth the new purchase. As soon as I find out anymore, I'll let you know. A low price point and pristine transfer would be a good start, however.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Robocop is, indeed, a cracking film and one that is not well treated by its title. It would be nice if, on this release, they reinstated the cut scenes they added on the previous UK edition - but this time do it properly and match up, (as on the Criterion unrated US immport), the sound and music tracks - not just cut them short!

Anonymous said...

My highschool speech teacher was in this film. She is the nurse in the scene where the officer throws Robocop the keys to his car. She is staring with her mouth open at Robocop. LOL.
This was made in the Dallas,TX area. The buildings in the backdrop, during the car chase before Peter Weller is Robocop, is Dallas. Reunion tower is quite well displayed. It was pretty big back then, some of it made in Las Colinas studios in Irving, Texas, my home town.

Mark Kardwell said...

Seeing this as a kid on the big screen was a real thrill. I'd sneaked in, a little bit below the certified age, and my cuzz Geoff and I laughed like drains for the length of the movie. We got funny looks from the rest of the audience who seemed unaware it was a comedy, like when the minion hit the windscreen of the car and goes SPLASH! into a pink smear on the windscreen (presumably one of the cut scenes - I've never seen it in any of the TV airings).