Great post, Mecha. I dig the weird Coffin Joe films too... strange and atmospheric. The second one is my favorite... I am
so glad to see someone else who doesn't worship the ground Lynch walks on. While he's been involved in some cool projects, I have never thought of him as a good
director (he showed a lot of promise on his early short films but never really explored any of the stop motion or painting-on-film stuff he did with those -- guess he wanted to be taken "seriously")
. But I do highly reccomend The Straight Story, of course, if nothing else. He's alright in small doses, but I've always thought of him as more of a gateway director, like for people first starting to get into somewhat surreal movies and whatnot... and, yeah, Re: the guy I was talking about, he is the most insane person ever -- he has cheated on his wife with 38 different girls, too. Haha. Seriously. 38 girls in 5 years. Derek knows who I'm talking about (though we're not going to name any names here), as we've talked about him extensively. I plan on making a movie about him, actually, people will think I have a great imagination, but this guy is unbelievable...
Anyway, here's what I watched...
Robocop 1-3!
Haha! Hadn't seen any of these in probably 10 years. I'd seriously give 1 and an 8, 2 a 7, and 3... 4, perhaps, if I'm being really nice. Too bad, since part was made by the Night of the Creeps/Monster Squad guy, and it seems to have kiled his career pretty much.
But 1 and 2 really do hold up, after all these years. They both have weird, often mean spirited tones, which makes the success of the films somewhat confounding. I think a lot of people just observed them as Terminator type films when they came out, even though the first Robocop is obviously a metaphor for the life of Jesus Christ... um, anyway, I like the darkness of the first 1, and the thing just never lets up, its in constant motion; like the sudden Ed-209 battle and shit, out of nowhere. No one was expecting that. The interesting thing about Ed-209 is that he's in 55 shots in the final film, which is actually a really small number, but I have a good feeling those 55 shots took the longest to film of any scene in the movie. As someone who has made plenty of stop motion stuff, I gotta say that the shots in this are of the highest calibre -- especially for 1987 -- and it still holds up today, quite well.. I bet no one realized that the Ed-209 and Robocop fighting in a lot of shots were
puppets! Honest-to-God puppets!
But yeah, I was surprised by the real human drama of Robocop, and all the parodies (the 6000 SUX car commercial) and stuff are hilarious. It
wasn't a mindless action flick, though the action was topnotch. You just flat-out don't see films like that nowadays, and, hey, you never will again, since people woul rather watch remakes and AWFUL sequels (Indiana Jones and the Skullfuck or whatever).
Robocop 2 feels a little off, of course, It has most of the dreary atmosphere of the original, with a bit more action pieces (though not as much VIOLENCE -- nothing like Murphy getting shot in the first one). The big controversy, perhaps, is that a kid gets killed in it! The main villian, the drug lord guy, is a bit silly. It's interesting how they tried to make part of the movie more mainstream, in a way, but probably killed their chances with the 14-year-old kid dealing drugs and getting killed. Entertaining film, not deep at all, and obviously running out of steam.. There are
so many idiotic plot points, which reduces the satirical nature of the first one, which is essentially a dark comedy and genuinely disturbing at times, into just another action film. It's not as good as you remember, but not as bad as people pretend it is either. I do wonder one thing.. how come a bomb (that causes a HUGE explosion) doesn't even leave a dent on Robocop, but a few machine gun bullets blows his whole hand off?
As for 3, it's bad. No Peter Weller -- the fuck?! Oh, wait, he was the only smart one involved. I see. Haha. He was apparently working on Naked Lunch at the time (which I've seen 7 times and still find overrated and hard to sit through).
Anyway, silly stupid garbage film. "My FRIENDS call me Murphy. YOU call me Robocop." ... Jesus. Oh well, at least Nancy Allen probably got a lot of money (she being one of the most underrated actresses ever -- and forever being burned in my memory for starring in so many DePalma classics like Blow Out and Dressed to Kill) Robocop 3 might be worth a look, for those who want to see how a movie that is clearly intended to be extremely serious, somehow ended up being the most hilarious.