X rating

While ‘RoboCop’ leaned heavily on over-the-top violence for its comedy, some people didn’t find. It funny at all.

After watching the first cut of the flick, The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) labelled the movie “excessively violent”, and gave it an X rating - the highest rating possible to be given to pictures.

As the moviemakers went back-and-fourth with the MPAA - with the organisation giving the flick an X rating a further seven times - they finally relented and stamped the film with a more lenient R rating once the studio had cut out some of the violence.

Paul recalled: “Finally, we had to cut a scene which I didn't even think looked particularly good.

“That was when RoboCop - while still fully human - gets his arm blown off in the steel mill. It was done with a wire yanking the arm away as the arm gets shot at, and I thought it looked terribly corny, but it was the scene that scaled it back enough to get an R rating.”