If you compare this original classic to the limp, flaccid remake of earlier this year, it really does show that blood and violence in films has retreated from the mainstream. In an age of endless superhero films, violent movies with a social message, like Paul Verhoevens original 1987 blockbuster, are clearly of a bygone era. Detroit is a crime-ridden mess. People are regularly dying on the streets and crime boss Clarence Boddicker has killed 31 cops. The only people that can save the public are the wonderfully moral suits at the Omni Consumer Products Corporation with their high-tech robots such as ED-209 and through their top-secret Robocop programme. From here, we meet Alex Murphy, a veteran officer transferred to the Metro West Precinct. Unfortunately, on his first day he runs into Boddicker and his gang and, after one of the most upsetting torture murders of the eighties, Murphy is left for dead. Luckily for him, he is the perfect candidate for the Robocop programme and, several months later, he re-emerges, memory wiped and takes to the streets to eradicate crime. This is a very, very violent film but with Verhoeven firing on all cylinders, the violence is meant as a comment on both a crime-ridden city and corrupt corporations. From the brilliant TV adverts (Nukem! You crossed my line of death!) to the corporate videos of ED-209 in the war-field, the film focuses on how violent society has become so, when Robocop comes along to deal out justice, it feels like he is the natural progression. Its only when Robocop begins to remember hes Murphy that we begin to see the effects of this blood and violence. Similar to many films on this list, a lot of the key scenes are violent. From the murder of Murphy to the failed ED-209 presentation to the takedown on Boddickers gang (with added toxic waste) its hard to forget the bloodshed. Robocop is a true classic of the genre and one, as the recent remake proves, we might never get again.
