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''Hardware'' is a 1990 British
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, ap ...
starring
Dylan McDermott Dylan McDermott (born Mark Anthony McDermott; October 26, 1961) is an American actor. He is known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the legal drama series ''The Practice'', which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best ...
and
Stacey Travis Stacey Elaine Travis (born August 29, 1964) is an American actress. She has appeared in films '' Hardware'' (1990), '' The Super'' (1991), '' Only the Strong'' (1993), ''Traffic'' (2000), ''Bandits'' (2001) and '' Intolerable Cruelty'' (2003). ...
. The film, which was written and directed by Richard Stanley (in his feature directorial debut), also features cameos from Carl McCoy,
Iggy Pop James Newell Osterberg Jr. (born April 21, 1947), known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter and actor. Called the " Godfather of Punk", he was the vocalist and lyricist of proto-punk band The Stooges, who w ...
and
Lemmy Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), better known as Lemmy Kilmister or simply Lemmy, was an English musician. He was the founder, lead singer, bassist and primary songwriter of the rock band Motörhead, of which he wa ...
. Since its release, it has become a
cult film A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage i ...
. The film is about a self-repairing robot that goes on a rampage in a
post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...
slum. Fleetway Comics successfully sued the film-makers over the screenplay because it plagiarised a short story entitled "SHOK!" that appeared in 1980 in the '' Judge Dredd Annual 1981'', a spin-off publication of the popular British weekly anthology comic '' 2000 AD''.


Plot

A nomad scavenger treks through an irradiated wasteland and discovers a buried robot. He collects the pieces and takes them to junk dealer Alvy, who is talking with 'Hard Mo' Baxter, a former soldier, and Mo's friend Shades. When Alvy steps away, Mo buys the robot parts from the nomad and sells all but the head to Alvy. Intrigued by the technology, Alvy begins to research its background. Mo and Shades visit Jill, Mo's reclusive girlfriend, and, after an initially distant welcome where Jill checks them with a Geiger counter, Mo presents the robot head as a Christmas gift. Jill, a metal sculptor, eagerly accepts the head. After Shades leaves, they have loud, passionate sex, while being unknowingly watched by their foul-mouthed, perverted, voyeuristic neighbour Lincoln Weinberg via telescope. Later, Mo and Jill argue about a government sterilization plan and the morality of having children. Jill works the robot head into a sculpture, and Mo says that he likes the work, but he does not understand what it represents. Frustrated, Jill says it represents nothing and resents Mo's suggestion that she make more commercial art to sell. They are interrupted by Alvy, who urges Mo to return to the shop, as he has important news about the robot, which he says is a M.A.R.K. 13. Before he leaves, Mo checks his Bible, where he finds the phrase "No flesh shall be spared" under Mark 13:20, and he becomes suspicious that the robot is part of a government plot for human genocide to address the planet's severe overpopulation crisis. Mo finds Alvy dead of a cytotoxin and evidence that the robot is an experimental combat model capable of self-repair; Alvy's notes also indicate a defect, a weakness to humidity. Worried, Mo contacts Shades and asks him to check on Jill, but Shades is in the middle of a drug trip and barely coherent. Back at the apartment, the robot has reassembled itself using pieces of Jill's metal sculptures and recharged by draining her apartment's power network. It attempts to kill Jill, but she traps it in a room after the apartment's doors lock. Lincoln sees the robot close the blinds while trying to peep on Jill, and, after he briefly manages to open the apartment door, makes crude sexual advances towards her, and offers to override the emergency lock that traps them in her apartment. Lincoln dismisses her warnings of a killer robot, and, when he attempts to open Jill's blinds so that he can more easily peep on her, the M.A.R.K. 13 brutally kills him. Jill flees into her kitchen, where she reasons that her refrigerator will hide her from the robot's infrared vision. She damages the robot before Mo, Shades, and the apartment's security team arrive and open fire on it, apparently destroying it. As Jill and Mo embrace, the M.A.R.K. 13 drags her out a window, and she crashes into her neighbour's apartment. Jill races back upstairs to help Mo, who is alone with the M.A.R.K. 13. Overconfident, Mo engages the robot in battle, and it injects him with the same toxin that killed Alvy. Mo experiences euphoria and a series of hallucinations as he dies. After Jill re-enters her apartment, the M.A.R.K. 13 sets her apartment doors to rapidly open and close; the security team die when they attempt to enter, and Shades is trapped outside. Jill hacks into the M.A.R.K. 13's CPU and unsuccessfully attempts to communicate with it; however, she discovers the robot's weakness and lures the M.A.R.K. 13 into the bathroom. Shades, who has managed to quickly jump through the doors, gives her time to turn on the shower. The M.A.R.K. 13 short circuits and is finally deactivated. The next morning, a radio broadcast announces that the M.A.R.K. 13 has been approved by the government, and it will be mass manufactured.


Cast

*
Dylan McDermott Dylan McDermott (born Mark Anthony McDermott; October 26, 1961) is an American actor. He is known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the legal drama series ''The Practice'', which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best ...
as Moses "Hard Mo" Baxter *
Stacey Travis Stacey Elaine Travis (born August 29, 1964) is an American actress. She has appeared in films '' Hardware'' (1990), '' The Super'' (1991), '' Only the Strong'' (1993), ''Traffic'' (2000), ''Bandits'' (2001) and '' Intolerable Cruelty'' (2003). ...
as Jill * John Lynch as Shades *
Iggy Pop James Newell Osterberg Jr. (born April 21, 1947), known professionally as Iggy Pop, is an American singer, musician, songwriter and actor. Called the " Godfather of Punk", he was the vocalist and lyricist of proto-punk band The Stooges, who w ...
as Angry Bob * Carl McCoy as Nomad *
William Hootkins William Michael "Hoot"Austin Mutti-MewseObituary: William Hootkins ''The Guardian'', November 14, 2005, accessed December 13, 2012. Hootkins (July 5, 1948 – October 23, 2005) was an American actor, best known for supporting roles in Hollywood b ...
as Lincoln Wineberg, Jr. * Mark Northover as Alvy * Paul McKenzie as Vernon *
Lemmy Ian Fraser Kilmister (24 December 1945 – 28 December 2015), better known as Lemmy Kilmister or simply Lemmy, was an English musician. He was the founder, lead singer, bassist and primary songwriter of the rock band Motörhead, of which he wa ...
as Water Taxi Driver


Production

The film's script was similar to a short '' 2000 AD'' comic strip called "SHOK!" which had been published in 1980. Fleetway Comics brought a successful lawsuit that the film plagiarized the comic strip and so a notice was added to later releases, giving credits to the strip's publisher,
Fleetway Publications Fleetway Publications was a magazine publishing company based in London. It was founded in 1959 when the Mirror Group acquired the Amalgamated Press, then based at Fleetway House, Farringdon Street, London. It was one of the companies that mer ...
and creators, Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill. Other influences include '' Soylent Green'', ''
Damnation Alley ''Damnation Alley'' is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Roger Zelazny, based on a novella published in 1967. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1977. Plot introduction The story opens in a post-apocalyptic Southern ...
'', and the works of Philip K. Dick. Writer-director Richard Stanley had previously made a post-apocalyptic short film when he was a teenager, and ''Hardware'' grew out of that film and responses he got from other, unproduced scripts. By the late 1980s, Stanley had accompanied a guerrilla Muslim faction in the
Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Soviet ...
in order to shoot a documentary. He started pre-production of ''Hardware'' almost immediately after leaving Afghanistan. The opening scene was shot in
Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to A ...
, and the rest of the film was shot in east London. The film was originally more specifically British, but
Miramax Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California. It was initially a lea ...
insisted on American leads. Stanley then added a multinational cast to muddy the setting. Stanley wanted to emphasize themes of fascism and passive acceptance of authoritarianism, as he had recently come from the
apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
regime of
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
. Stanley says that the robot does not know that it is committing evil, and it only obeys its programming, which could be likened to a spiritual quest. Psychic TV was an inspiration for the exaggerated television broadcasts.


Release

''Hardware'' was originally rated "X" by the MPAA for its gore. It was later cut to avoid the stigma of a rating associated with pornography.


Box office

In the United States, the film debuted at number six. It grossed $2,381,285 in its opening weekend and had a total domestic gross of $5,728,953 in 695 theaters. In the UK the film made £313,038.


Home media

Due to its unexpected success, the film was caught up in continual legal issues that prevented its release on DVD for many years. ''Hardware'' was released on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 22 June 2009. It was released on Region free DVD and Blu-ray Disc on 13 October 2009 by Severin Films.


Reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
shows that the film received positive reviews from 46% of 13 surveyed critics; the average rating was 5.7/10. On its original release, ''Hardware'' received mixed reviews from critics, who cited it as derivative of ''
Alien Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...
'' and ''
The Terminator ''The Terminator'' is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cyborg assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor ( Linda Hamilton), wh ...
''.
Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...
of ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...
'' rated the film D+ and called it unoriginal, "as if someone had remade ''Alien'' with the monster played by a rusty erector set." '' Variety'' wrote, "A cacophonic, nightmarish variation on the postapocalyptic cautionary genre, ''Hardware'' has the makings of a punk cult film." Michael Wilmington of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
'' called it a shallow splatter film whose exaggerated bleakness elevates it above the typical techno-thriller. Hardware has the "inherent blemishes of the techno-thriller genre", its bringing life in post-industrialism to the level of drones, and exaggerated high-tech bloodbaths.
Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' described it as a future
midnight movie The term midnight movie is rooted in the practice that emerged in the 1950s of local television stations around the United States airing low-budget genre films as late-night programming, often with a host delivering ironic asides. As a cinemati ...
and wrote, "Watching ''Hardware'' is like being trapped inside a video game that talks dirty." Richard Harrington of ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' called it "an MTV movie, a mad rush of hyperkinetic style and futuristic imagery with little concern for plot (much less substance)." Despite mixed reviews during original release, ''Hardware'' managed to become a
cult film A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage i ...
. Ian Berriman of '' SFX'' wrote, "It's one of those lovingly crafted movies where ingenuity and enthusiasm overcome the budgetary limitations." Matt Serafini of
Dread Central Dread Central is an American website founded in 2006 that is dedicated to horror news, interviews, and reviews. It covers horror films, comics, novels, and toys. Dread Central has won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Website ...
rated it 4/5 stars and wrote, "''Hardware'' isn't ''quite'' the masterpiece that some its most ardent fans have claimed, but it's an excellent piece of low-budget filmmaking from an era when low-budget wasn't synonymous with camcorder crap."
Bloody Disgusting Bloody Disgusting is an American multi-media company, which began as a horror genre-focused news site/website specializing in information services that covered various horror medias, including: film, television, video games, comics, and music. T ...
rated it 3.5/5 stars and called it "an austere and trippy film" with a narrative that is "a disjointed mess"; however, the film's excesses make it a cult film. Todd Brown of Twitch Film called it "essentially a lower budget, more intentionally punk take on ''The Terminator''" that has an "undeniable ... sense of style". At
DVD Verdict DVD Verdict was a judicial-themed website for DVD reviews. The site was founded in 1999. The editor-in-chief was Michael Stailey, who owned the website between 2004 and 2016, and the site employed a large editorial staff of critics, whose revie ...
, Daryl Loomis called it slow-paced but stylistic and atmospheric, and Gordon Sullivan called it "a hallucinatory and violent film" that has an overly detailed, slow-paced beginning. Writing for
DVD Talk DVD Talk is a home video news and review website launched in 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman. History Kleinman founded the site in January 1999 in Beaverton, Oregon. Besides news and reviews, it features information on hidden DVD features known as ...
, Kurt Dahlke rated it 3/5 stars and called it a "forgotten gem" that "is overwhelmed by style and gore", and Brian Orndorf called it "an art-house, sci-fi gorefest" that is moody and atmospheric without buckling under its own weight. Michael Gingold of ''
Fangoria ''Fangoria'' is an internationally distributed American horror film fan magazine, in publication since 1979. It is published four times a year by Fangoria Publishing, LLC and is edited by Phil Nobile Jr. The magazine was originally released ...
'' rated it 3/4 stars and wrote, "If the ingredients of HARDWARE are familiar, Stanley cooks them to a boil with a relentless pace and imagery that makes his future a tactile place".


References


Further reading

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External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hardware (Film) 1990 films 1990 horror films 1990 independent films British science fiction horror films American science fiction horror films Cyberpunk films American dystopian films Films based on 2000 AD (comics) Films based on British comics British independent films American post-apocalyptic films American robot films Films scored by Simon Boswell Films set in the future Sterilization in fiction 1990s science fiction horror films American independent films Films directed by Richard Stanley (director) Films involved in plagiarism controversies Films with screenplays by Richard Stanley (director) Films shot in London Films shot in Morocco British post-apocalyptic films 1990s dystopian films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films 1990s British films