Catalogue classic

As ‘the Future of Law Enforcement’ makes his bow on 4K Blu-ray, Anton Van Beek explores the impact of director Paul Verhoeven’s satirical science-fiction masterpiece…

- Anton Van Beek

RoboCop ✠Ultra HD Blu-ray, Arrow Video

'THE FIRST THING I thought was, RoboCop? That's a terrible title. They'll change that,' says actress Nancy Allen of her first encounter with what would become one of the defining sci-fi-action movies of the 1980s. Still, her reaction could have been a lot worse. 'I thought the script was terrible… I put it aside after 20 pages or so,' recalls director Paul Verhoeven.

Holidaying in the Côte d'Azur at the time, Verhoeven may have given the script short shrift (the number of pages he actually read varies with each retelling), but thankfully his wife Martine had a very different reaction. Having read the RoboCop script on the beach while her husband went for a long swim, Martine confronted the filmmaker on his return. 'When I came back she said, You should really read this again. Whether or not Martine gave her husband 20 seconds to comply to her request isn't recorded anywhere, but comply he did.

Subversive sci-fi

Arriving in cinemas in the Summer of 1987, RoboCop wasn't exactly an unexpected success (industry insiders had already tipped it as a sleeper hit), but nobody really imagined it to pack such a punch in terms of onscreen violence and social commentary. Even in a year where Beverly Hills Cop II would end up as the number one film in the US (taking over $153m), joined by the likes of Lethal Weapon ($65.2m) and Predator ($59.7m),