According to Neumeier, the scene where Murphy is shot to death by Boddicker and his gang saddled the film with an X-rating ... multiple times. After all, it's a scene where the main character is gruesomely blown to pieces:

"The interesting thing about this film is that we got an X-rating eight times and finally we had to cut a scene which I didn't even think looked particularly good. That was when Robocopwhile still fully humangets 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. That scene actually scared the s*** out of my wife last time we watched it."

As an avid lover of the original film, I definitely see why the scene had to be recut it features the film's hero being brutally murdered by a group of sociopaths. Even knowing that Murphy will be reconstructed as a cyborg doesn't ease the horror I feel seeing him scream in pain and beg for his life. But as depicted in the final cut, it adds even more weight to the scene where Murphy visits his old house and gets hit with a flood of memories from his old life; his wife and child, his humanity all of it was stolen from him by Boddicker and his thugs, making his eventual vengeance all the sweeter.

See the rest here:

The RoboCop Scene That Had To Be Cut To Avoid An X-Rating - /Film