Hardware (film)

Hardware is a 1990 British science fiction horror film starring Dylan McDermott and Stacey Travis. The film, which was written and directed by Richard Stanley (in his feature directorial debut), also features cameos from Carl McCoy, Iggy Pop and Lemmy. Due to its success in the US and since its release, it has become a cult film. The film is about a self-repairing robot that goes on a rampage in an apartment in a post-apocalyptic slum.
== Plot ==
The film begins with an unnamed Nomad roaming the desert, cutting some barbed wire and finding parts of a half-buried robot, proceeding to unearth parts of the robot. At the same time, Moses Baxter (known as "Hard Mo") and Shades are arriving into town to meet up with Alvy, a junk dealer. While Alvy steps away to grab his glasses, the Nomad from earlier steps in and drops a bag of junk, asking for Alvy. Shades checks the bag, and Mo pays the nomad for his junk, with the Nomad proceeding to leave. Mo leaves a hand with Alvy and takes the rest with him to Jill's apartment.
The next morning, Jill gets an entry request at her door, and when she checks it, nobody is there. She calls up Vernon, who runs the building, about it and he tells her that there's nothing to worry about. Mo and Shades make their way to Jill's apartment, commenting on how much worse things have gotten since they were there last, and the water taxi driver (a cameo by the late Lemmy of the group Motorhead) agrees. They make it to Jill's apartment, and Mo brings her her gift, the junk robot, and Shades leaves as they make out.
After they shower together, they proceed to make love in bed, with the Mark 13's head slowly working its way to coming to life. Meanwhile, a neighbor by the name of Lincoln from a ways away spies on the two of them making love with a long range camera. Simultaneously, Alvy begins looking into the hand he was left with, finding out that it is a military robot by the name of "M.A.R.K. 13". Jill then wakes up and begins working on her project, painting the MARK 13's head at the center of it. 
After a discussion, Mo gets a call from Alvy, telling Mo that it is important. Mo leaves Jill to sleep without leaving a note that he was going out, and makes his way to Alvy's shop. At the same time, Lincoln makes a call to Jill and pretends to be Mo, saying increasingly obscene things, only to her disgust. As Mo finds out Alvy is dead, he plays back the recording Alvy left, the MARK 13 proceeds put itself back together in Jill's apartment. He calls, but only finds out that the robot answers and then proceeds to destroy the phone. Mo then calls Shades, but Shades is heavily under the influence of drugs and is completely incoherent.
Mo quickly makes his way back to Jill's apartment as the MARK 13 proceeds to attempt to kill her. Lincoln sees the robot on his camera and proceeds to go over to Jill's apartment. Jill lets him in, and the door ends up locking behind him. Jill demands that he opens the door after he states that he works on security systems, and while he's in there, he dawdles around and tells her that he'll unlock the front door, only to open the blinds and then be immediately killed by the MARK 13. The MARK 13 then proceeds to chase after Jill, and Jill hides in the fridge as an attempt to keep the robot from trying to kill her. 
Right as the MARK 13 is about to get her, Mo and Shades show up and bang on the door, getting the robot's attention and allowing Jill to almost escape. The MARK 13 catches on and attempts to kill her again, but she lights her kitchen on fire, thinking the MARK 13 is finally dead. The door opens, and Mo and Shades show up with Vernon and Chief, with Mo telling Jill to get down and they proceed to load the MARK 13 with as much gunfire as they can, sending it backwards and out a window. 
Mo attempts to calm Jill down, but the MARK 13 comes back to life and drags Jill out a window and onto a powerline. The powerline is then cut, throwing Jill into the apartment below, and sending everyone except for Mo downstairs to check on her. Mo fights off the MARK 13, but is too late, as the MARK 13 injects him with the cytotoxin that killed Alvy and he slowly loses consciousness while hallucinating. Jill makes it back in to see Mo's last moments, with the MARK 13 tapping into Jill's security system to sap more power out of it, causing the door to her apartment to rapidly open and close. 
As he tries to tell her the MARK 13's weakness, Chief is split in half by the malfunctioning hydraulics of the door and Vernon is killed by the MARK 13. Jill attempts to communicate with the MARK 13, but to no avail. As Jill leads the MARK 13 into the bathroom and fights it off with a wooden bat, Shades jumps into the apartment and shoots the MARK 13 as Jill turns on the water and kills the MARK 13 for good.
The next morning, Angry Bob tells everyone that the MARK 13 has been approved by the government and will be mass manufactured as the Nomad heads out into the desert again.
== Cast ==
* Dylan McDermott as Moses "Hard Mo" Baxter
* Stacey Travis as Jill
* John Lynch as Shades
* Iggy Pop as Angry Bob
* Carl McCoy as Nomad
* William Hootkins as Lincoln Wineberg, Jr.
* Mark Northover as Alvy
* Paul McKenzie as Vernon
* Lemmy as Water Taxi Driver
* Oscar James as Chief
== 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 and creators, Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill. Other influences include Soylent Green, Damnation Alley, 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 in order to shoot a documentary. He started pre-production of Hardware almost immediately after leaving Afghanistan. The opening scene was shot in Morocco, and the rest of the film was shot in east London. The film was originally more specifically British, but Miramax 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 regime of South Africa. 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. It was later remastered and re-released on Blu-ray by Ronin Flix.
== Reception ==
Rotten Tomatoes shows that the film received positive reviews from 50% of 12 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 and The Terminator. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly 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 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 of The New York Times described it as a future midnight movie and wrote, "Watching Hardware is like being trapped inside a video game that talks dirty." Richard Harrington of The Washington Post 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. 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 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 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, 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, 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 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".
Category:1990 films
Category:Sci-Fi Films
Category:Horror films