Best of Severin Films: ‘Hardware’ A Surprisingly Effective and Bizarre Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Thriller

You Can’t Stop Progress.

Hardware

Directed by Richard Stanley

In a post-apocalyptic future somewhere in a radioactive desert, terminally ill Moses Baxter (Dylan McDermott) has just returned from scavenging for whatever waste he may find that could be of use to him either back home or for sale. Along his journey he discovers some robotic parts from some unknown android which he brings to his dope-smoking sculptor girlfriend Julie (Stacey Travis) as a Christmas present. She incorporates it into her latest piece, but neither of them is aware that the hardware is actually a robot programmed to kill humans. After settling in and reconnecting following his long absence, their reunion is cut short when the robot awakens, reassembles itself and resumes its original purpose as a government-sponsored population control droid.

Despite few similarities, Hardware was dismissed by most as a rip-off of The Terminator. In fact, the film was heavily inspired by a 2000 AD comic called SHOK! Walter’s Robo-Tale. So much so that after being accused of plagiarism and forced into legal action, a notice was added to later versions crediting the strip’s creators, Steve MacManus and Kevin O’Neill. To comic fans, 2000 AD (a British weekly comic which also produced Judge Dredd) is a godsend and to sci-fi fans growing up in the 90s, Hardware was a hidden gem that found an audience on VHS.

Richard Stanley’s surprisingly effective and bizarre post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller has rightfully earned a cult following through the years. The low-budget indie horror has its roots in earlier robot-terror flicks such as Saturn 3 and Demon Seed but takes it a tad further with elements of the spaghetti western, 80′s slashers, and even ’70s exploitation cinema. Wavering between operatic terror and slapstick comedy and then back, the bag of influences results in a film which in many ways stays surprisingly original.

Stanley displays a sure directorial hand, stretching his shoestring budget to extraordinary lengths, and achieving maximum effect through light smatterings of violence and pointed social and biblical commentary. Hardware is a movie about man and machine and the increasing difficulty in telling the two apart. It’s a thinking man’s sci-fi film that demands you to do more than just respond to every burst of violence.

Taking the viewer into a hopeless, crime-ridden future covered in blood-red skies, radiation poisoning and desert wastelands, Stanley’s retro-futuristic set design is superbly claustrophobic. The film takes its visual and thematic cues from Blade Runner and The Terminator with its doped up society, continuous Big Brother surveillance and population control effects, while the red and blue color schemes reflect more on the giallo films of the 70′s by directors like Sergio Martino. It’s a gritty high fashion cyberpunk thriller with the American flag painted on its killer android and its protagonist dressed in a duster with an artificial hand to cock back his shotgun. Every single frame of Hardware has been crafted down to the tiniest detail and Stanley doesn’t spare a drop of discomfort in making depravity his muse. Despite being restricted by financial realities, Hardware still remains one of the most stylized science fiction film films of all time. It earns its place as a hallucinatory and violent film utilizing highly imaginative practical effects juxtaposed against excerpts from Pasolini’s Salo. Stanley does some interesting work with the killer android and some rapid fire editing, cutting away at just the right moments, and keeping the monster off screen at times.

Composer Simon Boswell does an admirable job establishing a grim mood with his synth-n-slide guitar solos and avoiding the usual B-movie themes. The film has also earned a reputation for its relationship to industrial and metal music, featuring music from Iggy Pop, Motörhead, Ministry and Public Image Limited and guest starring Lemmy (of Motörhead) as a taxi driver, Carl McCoy (of Fields of the Nephilim) as a zone tripper, and Iggy Pop as Angry Bob, a radio personality.

Taking the tired killer android/man vs. machine concept and twisting it into something far more dynamic and meaningful than viewers might be accustomed to, Richard Stanley delivers an action-packed, thought provoking and quite disturbing thrill ride that continues to astound to this very day. Not to be missed!

Ricky D

The totally Uncut, Uncensored version can now be found on DVD and Blu-Ray For the first time ever over at Severin Films.

Disk Details:

Colour / 1.85:1 / 16×9 / 93 mins / Not Rated

Reg 0 (ALL) (NTSC) / BD50

English Dolby Surround 2.0 / English Dolby Surround 5.1

Aka: M.A.R.K. 13   Extras:

Audio Commentary with Director Richard Stanley

No Flesh Shall Be Spared – Exclusive Documentary Featuring All New Interviews with Cast and Crew (60 mins)

Incidents In An Expanding Universe – Early Super 8 version of HARDWARE (45 mins)

The Sea of Perdition – 2006 Richard Stanley Short Film (9 Mins)

Rites of Passage – Early Richard Stanley Short Film (10 mins)

Richard Stanley on HARDWARE 2 (8 mins)

Deleted, extended and behind-the-scenes footage (23 mins)

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