It’s Movie Villain Monday and today’s movie villain was suggested in the comments on my Facebook page.
It’s Clarence Boddicker from the brilliant 1987 action/sci-fi, RoboCop!
Who is Clarence Boddicker?
Clarence Boddicker (played menacingly by Kurtwood Smith) is the central antagonist in the much loved 80s movie.
He’s a vile, foul mouthed, violent and cowardly career criminal, and the leader of a band of similarly characteristic scumbags.
Story:
Boddicker and his gang are inadvertently responsible for the creation of RoboCop (by the megacorporation OCP) after “murdering” first day on the job cop, Alex Murphy (Peter Weller).
Upon being declared legally dead, Murphy is chosen as the subject of a new project - to create a cyborg police officer: RoboCop, the future of law enforcement.
Trivia:
Kurtwood Smith does such a good job of this character that no matter what I see him in since RoboCop I still think of him as Clarence Boddicker. He almost didn’t play the role though.
He originally auditioned for the part of Dick Jones and after being cast in the film, didn’t find out till later that he’d be playing Boddicker instead.
Up until RoboCop, Smith had mainly played “nice guy” or “father figure” roles. He was also known for playing more intellectual characters.
Director Paul Verhoeven outfitted the character with rimless glasses to make him look smarter and therefore make him appear more of a threat. He also thought that when wearing the glasses Smith resembled Heinrich Himmler and that’s the main reason he chose him for the character of Clarence Boddicker over Dick Jones.
In my opinion one of the biggest problems with the 2014 remake was that it was missing this character.
A good hero needs a good villain and although the original RoboCop essentially has two, Kurtwood Smith’s portrayal of Boddicker is one of the things that makes the movie so good!
“See I got this problem. Cops don’t like me so I don’t like cops”
Who should I feature next week? 🤔
Let me know in the comments.👇