PART MAN PART MACHINE ALL COP

Forty years ago, a script about a cyborg copper was treated like toxic waste by most film studios and directors alike. However, thanks to a visionary Dutch helmer, an inspired cast, and assorted effects geniuses, RoboCop eventually defied the odds to become a smash. Roger Crow looks back on a bulletproof classic… Forty years ago, a script about a cyborg copper was treated like toxic waste by most film studios and directors alike. However, thanks to a visionary Dutch helmer, an inspired cast, and assorted effects geniuses, RoboCop eventually defied the odds to become a smash. Roger Crow looks back on a bulletproof classic…

Paul Verhoeven with Miguel Ferrer and doing some last minute DIY on RoboCop;

Setting up the effects for Murphy’s gruesome death;

conferring with Peter Weller and RoboCop at a supermarket crime scene

Paul Verhoeven’s formative years had been spent in a wartorn The Hague, growing up in a time when body parts lined the Netherlands’ streets. Little wonder he had a skewed view of the world.

In 1965, Paul was doing his mandatory time in the Dutch forces; he made a propaganda documentary about the marines, which paved the way for his break into

TV, and eventually movies. Art house hits such as Spetters, and Soldier of Orange tickled the fancy of film critics and cineastes, but blockbusters they were not.

By the mid-1980s Verhoeven helmed Flesh+Blood, an English language historical epic from the Orion stable with regular collaborator Rutger Hauer. (It was so repellent to the now muchmissed Michael Parkinson, he walked out of the cinema while reviewing for the BBC’s Film ‘85 show).

As the Dutch political scene was turning more left wing, Paul toyed with the idea of moving to Hollywood and making a mainstream movie, but “didn’t have the guts to do it”. Like so many film makers, he knocked back the “absolutely ridiculous” RoboCop script. But his wife Martine suggested he give it another look, not least because of the scene where Murphy gets his hand blown off.