What age would you show ‘your kids’ Robocop?

Was dead easy to con my mother into renting stuff I shouldn't be watching form the video shop when I was a kid. I think I would have been 12 or 13 when I saw Robocop, looked it up and it was released in 87 so only a year or two after it came out. Didn't they take almost that long to get to video back then or do I have a typically distorted view of time?
 
I saw aliens, and loads of horror movies when I was about 8, probably had them on in the room w hen I was younger but I wasn;t interested.

I had much older siblings


Everyone in my area had watched the running man, aliens, commando, the terminator and all the other classics at a young age.

Rambo even had story cassettes for kids, I remember my mum buying me one, to go with my roald dahl collection of audio books.

didn't most these films have action figures aimed at kids too.

So I'm sure almost everyone watched them.


can you even buy army men these days? kids loved to play army men...

it's not the same at that age as it is to an adult, all the good stuff from the 80s would probably be banned now..

making bows and arrows, catapults, spud guns, devil bangers, cap guns.
did you even need to be 16 to buy a pellet gun? I remember a few of us had them around 13/14, one even had like a pump action shotgun that fired pellets

I remember buying some nun chuks when I was about 14 from a martial arts store, the guy was a bit weary of selling them, but youth violence with weapons wasn't really a thing back then.


I bet modern kids don;t even know what knock a door run is, people have too easy a life these days
 
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Greebo said:
no No no. My dad took me and my brother to see jaws when I was 8. Had nightmares for weeks, i wouldnt go into the sea on holiday for years. Way way too young to have seen Jaws. The classifications for films were way too generous back then IMO.
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Jaws psychologically scarred me life - sharks and a fear of open water. Great movie, but i wouldn't let a young kid watch it.

i was big into my horror as a kid and i remember one Xmas i got a horror video. Must have been some bargain bin video as it was an italian soft porn with a horror theme - i didn't mind :)
 
Gore never bothered me. It was that scene from ET where the gub’ment come into the house with space suits that terrified me for years. My kids watched ET aged 9 & 7 and neither even registered that scene.

They’re a couple of years older now. I think I’d let them watch Robocop. Their mother would rather wait until they are in their 30s.
 
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Going to the video shop and renting 18’s when you couldn’t see over the counter was a rights of passage.

Films that ****** me up and not ones that’s I loved???

Goulies…… would **** outside and when I had take a number two I made someone stand outside the door for months!!!!!

And IT……………..
 
Funnily enough I was just contemplating showing my kids robocop this summer!
My kids are 12 & 14. The 12 has always been more sensitive, and was much more likely to be disturbed by films (I had to remove him from the cinema a few times) , so I have had to be more careful with him.
In the last 12 months we have watched alien/aliens, terminator & predator. Robocop might be next. Fortunately for them I can't remember anything disturbing about the film.
I am less concerned by language, violence and blood and guts, and more concerned by sex, sexual violence and for my 12yr old I would be concerned by films with too severe a sense of peril.
 
EdwardTeach said:
Funnily enough I was just contemplating showing my kids robocop this summer!
My kids are 12 & 14. The 12 has always been more sensitive, and was much more likely to be disturbed by films (I had to remove him from the cinema a few times) , so I have had to be more careful with him.
In the last 12 months we have watched alien/aliens, terminator & predator. Robocop might be next. Fortunately for them I can't remember anything disturbing about the film.
I am less concerned by language, violence and blood and guts, and more concerned by sex, sexual violence and for my 12yr old I would be concerned by films with too severe a sense of peril.
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I'd say it is quite an adult themed film, especially for a sensitive 12 year old.
 
I don't remember many films that left me feeling a bit off and affected by them, but as it happens, RoboCop was one of them. I was off school ill and watched it. I would say I was about 10. The scene when they kill Murphy is quite traumatic to be fair. Seeing the way they revel in causing that much pain to someone.

Terminator 2 I saw when I was also about 10. Loved it. Didn't affect me.

The exorcist did affect me around the same age. Accidentally stumbled upon it late one night.
 
Testing my memory here, but feels like 12 for robocop... I seem to remember 2 had a lot of drug stuff

Me though..

Terminator 2 first school so 7 or 8 I reckon
seen Batman Returns on vhs rent relese

I was massively and still am hugely into horror, so made my parents life a misery.
Can I watch Alien, no, Critters? no, etc etc

I feel like I watched Aliens around 9.

Like someone said, there were kids toys for loads of this stuff, so a lot had seen it.

All kids are different, our youngest (5) would watch Jurassic park happily, our 7 year old would not sleep for a week.
Had to leave a few animations with him at the cinema.

The youngest loves halloween and halloween themed things, oldest leaves the room at that Halloween Shrek thing......
 
jaybee said:
The exorcist did affect me around the same age. Accidentally stumbled upon it late one night.
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Exorcist was a good one, watched with mates on VHS re-release at my birthday party, absolutely hilarious as a group.
So I took it to Scotland on our annual summer holiday....
Watched it by myself... in a cottage, everyone else at the pub, no street lighting. Terrifying, its the subliminal stuff that gets you as well.

Only other film that I would say disturbed me as a youngster is one of my favourites.. The Thing... I was younger than 10 and the chest scene got me.
 
Yeah two was more drug orientated, 1 just had the bit where Clarence kills Mortimer and hes in that gaff with two strippers doing coke that I recall.

Troll absolutely freaked me out when I was a kid. I was petrified. Watched it since and its laughably bad.

State of this. Im ashamed.
www.youtube.com

Troll (1986) Official Trailer

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EdwardTeach said:
I can't remember anything disturbing about the film.
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when they kill alex murphy at the start it's pretty brutal tbh.

they shoot his limbs off and constantly make fun of him.

kids probably aren't used to seeing adults being so horrible, that might upset them more than the kinda cartoony violence.



What was the movie with the 3 sea shells, kids probably would enjoy that
 
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arknor said:
What was the movie with the 3 sea shells, kids probably would enjoy that
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Demolition Man, set in the late 2020s I think, and it's pretty damn accurate about real life in the 2020s! E.g. veganism, smoking ban, censorship, people getting hurt by hurty words, and incredibly cheesy music on the car radio :p
 
CaptainRAVE said:
I was way too young to watch Alien, Terminator, The Thing, Event Horizon.
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I watched The Thing when I was about 10, one of our neighbours had recorded it using his 10 foot motorised dish from an unencrypted satellite to give an idea of how long ago that was (he worked in the industry iirc installing them for businesses or something).
It gave me nightmares for a while.

I think I was about the same age for my first watch of Jaws and the head in the boat scene ended up with me leaving the room.
 
arknor said:
when they kill alex murphy at the start it's pretty brutal tbh.

they shoot his limbs off and constantly make fun of him.

kids probably aren't used to seeing adults being so horrible, that might upset them more than the kinda cartoony violence.



What was the movie with the 3 sea shells, kids probably would enjoy that
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I have said this in another thread before, but when I watched Robocop for decades afterwards I had a definite hatred of the actor who played Clarence Bodiker in this, Curtwood Smith I believe is his name. It didn't matter what TV or film it was, I simply could not separate Clarence Bodiker from him. The depraved violence he gets up to in Robocop just logged in my brain as the actual actor doing it. I think it was just the extreme violence and the practical gore special effects of that era. And it's not as if I was to young to watch it then. He's alright now though, I can let it dive now.
 
Bubo said:
I have said this in another thread before, but when I watched Robocop for decades afterwards I had a definite hatred of the actor who played Clarence Bodiker in this, Curtwood Smith I believe is his name. It didn't matter what TV or film it was, I simply could not separate Clarence Bodiker from him. The depraved violence he gets up to in Robocop just logged in my brain as the actual actor doing it. I think it was just the extreme violence and the practical gore special effects of that era. And it's not as if I was to young to watch it then. He's alright now though, I can let it dive now.
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I agreed with the director Paul Verhoeven when he said the violence HAD to be so over the top that it was almost cartoony, which would stop the violence from being be taken too seriously, yet when the film was cut for release the cuts removed that OTT cartooniness and left it as a much more stark and brutal film, which wasn't his intention. He blamed the cuts happening solely down to the censors believing that US audiences would not understand the idea that you weren't supposed to see this as brutal, but more like Tom and Jerry smashing each other up instead which would have made it less "traumatising" to watch he believed.

He also had the same issue with Starship Troopers but, instead of the violence, it was the OTT Fascist undertones that were missed by US audiences.
 
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