1987 Robocop Behind The Scenes PT 2 / Dead Or Alive, You're Coming With Me

I will have to admit that I have yet to make it to the cinema to check out the remake of this movie. Part of me is still living in the past and loving the fond nostalgic moments brought on by the stop-motion special effects and the cheesy miming  from the original and yet, another part of me wants to see the improvements of technology and their impact on one of my favourite classic movies.If there is an improvement to be made, perhaps the original movie worked so well because of its time? Released during an age where the people needed heroes with bad ass one-liners while they distributed brutal retribution on the bad guys. 

I guess I will just need to stop procrastinating about it and go find out for myself. In the meantime I will discuss the special effects of the original and a little about the support actress Nancy Allen (who played officer Anne Lewis, Robo's partner)

At the time of casting Nancy Allen had beautifully long blonde curls and was very much a screen beauty having not long come off the set of Carrie. When Paul Verhoeven saw her he immediately told her to cut the locks, giving her a more hardened appearance for the feminine role. At the time, strong female characters were big in Hollywood with Sigourney Weaver playing the lead in 'Alien' were a horrifying xenomorph wipes out the crew of her ship and she has to deal with the murdering menace own her own - which she does with ease.

Linda Hamilton had also made the transition from coffee shop sweetheart-fugitive-hunted by an unstoppable cyborg in the 'Terminator' eventually hardening up to give her awesome finishing line  "You're terminated f$cker"

Both images were from their respected sequel movies but, I thought they both looked pretty bad ass, don't you think?

Needless to say, Nancy had to really pull out the stops to match the beat down feminine heroics of the other movies. A task she performed brilliantly with her bubble gum, chewing kick-ass (literally with her karate kicks) performance coupled with a brilliant line late on in the movie - right after she had been badly wounded! but she still managing to crawl to the assault rail gun and save the day. 

"Murphy.. I'm a mess" classic!

Robocop Behind The Scenes PT 1 / Dead Or Alive, You're Coming With Me

With the remake soon to be released, I was so excited that I grabbed my crayons and began yet another 'behind the scenes' blog post on the classic SCI-FI classic 'Robocop.' 

The Original release was back in 1987 and was met with mixed reviews, mostly due to the barbaric, fascist state of decay the world had become. Starting off with a news report, director Paul Verhoeven was quickly able to set the scene, depicting the world on the tipping point of nuclear war.  The news report continues with a story of a cop being gunned down and fighting for his life-the reporter cheering him on like a sports fan supporting one of his idols. Needless to say, the lack of empathy was evident in his "good luck Frank" comment followed by the dashing quick flex of his fist.

Produced by Orion studios, Robocop was following in the footsteps of another movie produced by the same company which was called 'Terminator' where a sophisticated and unstoppable robot was sent back through time to eliminate the poor unsuspecting Sarah Connor. The Terminator was written as more of a horror movie, a genre that wouldn't suit the writers of our would be 'knight in shining armour' Robocop (literally).

Although undoubtedly the two movies would be linked and compared, there could be no question that their differences outnumbered their similarities, with the main divide being (believe it or not) that Robocop was more 'human' than the Terminator, an aspect that is highlighted further as the movie goes on.

Paul Verhoeven (pictured above) was a Dutch director with a religious background who really wanted to implement a piece of that into the movie as he toyed with the brutal death of Officer Murphy followed by the resurrection into Robocop - perhaps he was trying to be artistic but he was quoted as saying "you can't appreciate the resurrection unless the death was brutal, much like Jesus so I wanted to make his execution scene as horrific as possible, killing off the hero barely 25 mins into the movie"

The scene he is of course referring to is when Murphy is shot, possibly over 30 times at close range not to mention having his hand blown off to start the tortuous parade. Now I've never been shot before let alone absorbed that volume of punishment but I would tend to argue that Jesus perhaps suffered a lot more for a lot longer - but I guess myself and Paul can agree to disagree. 

The Robocop suit was designed around a Japanese Manga comic style design where they wanted to simple slit eye lens across the helmet and part of the face uncovered. I remember thinking during the movie "Why don't they just shoot him in the face" particularly in the car park scene where he, once again, is the subject of a firing squad... the poor guy can't catch a break

To be fair to the continuity team, Robocop does in fact cover his face when taking the shots so I'll pipe down and wind my neck in.Casting for the role of Robocop was difficult as the suit was restricted to a certain size. Originally they had wanted to cast Michael Ironside but found he would be too tall for the role.

Eventually they settled on Peter Weller who they found would be small enough to fill the role. When I watched back the movie recently I was amazed at just how skinny he is. Don't get me wrong when you watch the movies from the 80's they all tended to be slimmer but jeez, Peter is tiny. I am pretty sure I could press him above my head. Feel free to promote the Press Peter campaign...we could start a hash tag trend there.

So with the cast set they were ready to film right?

WRONG! Prior to filming, Peter had taken lessons from a miming coach to play the role of Robocop, all of which he had practised WITHOUT the suit on. On the first day of filming it took 11 hours..Yes ELEVEN hours to get all the adjustments right before he could walk out on set. It was not until he took his first few steps that he realised the suit restricted him in a very big way, delaying the start of filming by at least another week while he had to familiarise himself to the new outfit.

If you want a laugh, watch the movie over again, paying particular attention to the scene when he first confronts the executive at OCP, it's hilarious watching him jerk and spasm as his core programming refuses to allow him to complete his arrest.

So while you are all away seeking new thrills and giggles at our knight in shining armour's expense, ill get started on part two where I will discuss some of the special effects used to complete the key scenes in the movie.



If It Bleeds We Can Kill It / Part 3 Behind The Scenes Look At The Predator

So at last we get to the special effects and, in a movie like Predator how could we forget them.Between the main character disappearing before our very eyes, Carl Weathers having his arm blown off and the infamous 'razor break' scene coupled with, of course, the amazing multi-vision sight of the Predator.

Let us start with the 'Dylan losing his arm' scene where Carl Weather’s character decides to take 
on the Predator while wielding two MP5 machine guns. Fans that can recall the VHS version will find this scene slightly hilarious. To be fair I hadn't personally noticed the wardrobe malfunction until I saw it on one of those movie mistake sights. Since then however, I couldn't take my eyes off it-finding it so damn obvious!

 

  

The mistake I am referring to was evident when he turned, screaming(as he had just been shot with a blazing hot bolt of plasma),  and as his arm fell from his side, its tattered fleshy remains continued to fire the gun in an epic slow motion, bullet stuttering scene of violence-it was. Only when you looked more closely and realised that his severed arm was in fact tucked behind his back and a carefully placed prop took the fall. By the time DVD version came out, this part had been edited, but I thought I'd put a picture in for comedy value. Classic misdirection.

For the most part, the Predator spent the movie ‘cloaked’ appearing as nothing more than a smudged blur as the technology of its armour bent the light around it. The special FX team on Predator achieved this through use of a red suited predator (the normal use of a green suit/background wouldn't have created any contrast against the jungle so red was employed)They then later used computer aided graphics to add in the blurred image over the top of the red suit to give the impression that light was passing through its cloaked form.

 

The heat seeking vision of the predator was achieved by amalgamating different spectrum's into one. Firstly, the heat of the jungle was intense and therefore the standard heat vision cameras would not have been able to decipher the body heat from the jungle itself. So by taking two cameras, one switched to opposite colour schemes to pick out the heat in blues, and then the other camera to work as standard red and oranges, they were then able to amalgamate the two images so that when played back the actors heat signatures became clearer against the blue background of the jungle. Thus creating the hunters ability to pick out its targets through the dense jungle canopy.

Throughout the movie there were many stunts performed with props and a lot of well timed explosives. The scene for example, when ‘Blaine’ falls with a hole burst in his chest and Mack picks up the mini-gun and starts dismantling the jungle with thousands of rounds of angry bullets fired in vengeance. The scene had to be well constructed, with explosives placed in the trees and logs, all timed to go off at precise moments to give the effect that the carnage was being wrought with the weapons fire which, in all honesty, would not level the jungle in the manner it did. According to the movie, all you need is a Gatling Gun, grenade launcher, M16 Assault Rifle and some MP5 machine guns and one can completely level the jungle of all trees and life for fifty yards. Gotta love movie thinking!

Lastly we get to the Mack razor scene, the one effect that still makes me cringe to this day. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how he never tore a larger piece of his cheek off in the process, that is of course had the razor been real.

The movie has him neurotically shaving his smooth skin over and over as he lies in wait of the Predator. Losing focus, he begins to press even harder against his face until eventually the razor snaps against his cheek and leaves a thin line of blood in its wake. Apart from being a good advertisement for Bic, I have yet to see anyone do this in a movie since. The scene did however, remind  me of an incident I had myself when I bought twenty razors from the pound shop. Yes you guessed it, they cost me a pound, 5p a razor. Although this scene is very similar to what happened when I tried to use them!

For this scene to work, the razor prop was drilled up through the handle allowing a thin tube filled with the fake(I hope it was fake blood but for this blog lets just say they used hamster blood-really spark an outrage here)

By removing the blade it allowed him to shave over and over and then, when pressed, the blood left the top of the razor onto his face. With respect to Bill Duke, he did indeed snap that against his skin with unpredictable outcomes. I am not sure how many razors they went through for that part but in the interests of safety

DONT TRY THIS AT HOME!