ROBOCOP (1987)

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

In the future things are all fucked up.  Crime is through the roof, corporations have taken over everything, cats and dogs are definitely not living together, mass hysteria.  So, in order to gets things back under control (and therefore make themselves a lot of money), the Omni Consumer Products corporation (who own the Detroit Police Department and want to fully privatize Detroit into a manufactured municipality called "Delta City") comes up with the brilliant idea of taking a recently murdered cop, wiping his memories and turning him into a crime fighting zombie/robot.

That works out well for a day.  The new "RoboCop" goes around (in the high point of the film) kicking criminal ass (and even shooting one guy in the dick!!!), but then his memories start to resurface and things go south.  At the same time, there's a power struggle among the OCP executives that spills over into violence on the streets, since one of the biggest criminal kingpins in town is protected and funded by one of the scumbags on the OCP board.

For an 80's action flick, ROBOCOP is entertaining enough.  The violence leans more towards being gratuitous in a black comedy/social commentary sort of way, than it does in being a straight-forward action movie.  I'm sure there's some kind of social message in there somewhere (probably about how giant corporations are bad, m'kay?), but I really don't care.  I'm just here to be entertained.

Solid acting by a strong cast, good pace that lags some in the middle, a Metallica poster, some dude buying that for a dollar, portion of a song by a Ministry side-project (P.T.P), RoboCop getting kicked in the RoboNards, a David Lee Roth poster, a few hyperquick tits that weren't even worth taking screenshots of, some blood, a cocaine bottling machine that looked like it was dumping 40% of the coke onto the floor, a poster for the Cure, bitches leaving, explosions.

Worth a watch, but I'd really love to see an extremely dark and ultraviolent remake with less troubled memories and more killing the fuck out of bad guys.

Part 2 - RoboCop 2 (1990)
Part 3 - RoboCop 3 (1993)
Remake - RoboCop (2014)

OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN (1983)

NYC banking executive Peter Weller's family goes on vacation without him.  Why did the writers even give him a family, since they serve no purpose to the story, I don't know, but anyway, they go on vacation while he stays behind to focus on a project for work.  Things go well for one day, then (kinda like Catherine Deneuve in REPULSION) he starts hearing odd noises and seeing stuff.  Is it real or is it his imagination?  Could it be a ghost, a wookalar or maybe...a giant rat!?

Real rat or not, Peter goes so bonkers looking for this thing that it doesn't even make sense!  Broken water pipes, holes in the walls, holes in the ceiling, wrecked furniture...he'd almost be better off just letting the rat live!  Or even better yet: act like a normal human being, hire an exterminator, tell your employer you're going to be out for a few days to deal with some personal issues and problem solved.  Instead, he half-ass tries to get an exterminator (and fails) then loses his mind fighting the rat himself.  People at work, (rightfully?) believe that he's cracked under the pressure of the project and maybe he has.  The story is so illogical that, by the end of the film, I was seriously doubting the rat even existed.

OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN is best looked at as a dark comedy.  My favorite part of the movie was Peter's kid.  He's such an obnoxious fuck that during a dream sequence, he's still a little shit!

Double-feature with MOUSEHUNT or maybe even HOME ALONE.