Cast:
Dylan McDermott (Moses "Hard Mo" Baxter), Stacey Travis (Jill), John Lynch (Shades), Iggy Pop (Angry Bob), Carl McCoy (Nomad / Zone Tripper), William Hootkins (Lincoln Wineberg Jr), with Mark Northover (Alvy), Paul McKenzie (Vernon), and Lemmy (Water Taxi Driver) Directed by Richard Stanley.
Review:
I suppose it was eventually time to encounter a Richard Stanley movie, so why not go with his first one? Born in South Africa in the era of what he called a "police state", he was interested in filmmaking from a young age and studied at Cape Town Film School. When he was a teenager in school, he made a short film called "Incidents in an Expanding Universe" that was set in a dystopia that provided some steps into what became Hardware. He moved to London in his twenties and did work directing music videos before traveling to Afghanistan to document the Soviet-Afghan War (specifically by joining a guerrilla Muslim faction) that saw him see plenty of danger for him and his camera man. With Hardware, it came out of the process of wanting to actually get one of his scripts made that happened to take comments into account for what people "wanted", which namely ranged from a chainsaw to a fire stunt that saw him apparently write it in a week (he later stated that he was in a "pretty hellacious frame of mind at the time"). The film was shot in an abandoned place called the Roundhouse in east London (with the opening in Morocco) and ultimately found a place of distribution with Miramax. Even with cuts made to dance around an X rating, the movie was a mild hit (on its reported budget of over $1 million) and Stanley directed three further features over the next few decades, most notably with Color Out of Space (2019). Stanley kept busy, of course, writing various unproduced screenplays (one of which apparently being "Hardware II") along with directing a documentary on the life and times of Otto Rahn.
Red skies, bills involving clean breaks with procreation, and a world seen and heard through a screen, it's a future not all that distant from what we wish to tell ourselves, as if "stupid, sadistic, and suicidal" actually could be a mantra. Is it a familiar type of "cyberpunk"? Maybe. Is it a familiar type of slasher? Probably. Is it still my kind of movie to at least give credit to? Oh you bet. Around the time of release, Fleetway Comics sued the filmmakers for plagiarism because of perceived similarities between the film and "SHOK!", a 1981 short story (as written by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill) that had appeared in a spin-off publication of 2000 AD; as with Hardware, both happen to involve the remains of a droid from a devastated zone getting into the hands into a sculptress that re-assembles and traps her in her place (one goes for body heat, one is weak to moisture). Whether having inspiration from Soylent Green, the novel Damnation Alley, or with Saturn 3, I had plenty of interest in actually seeing the movie because of the dreary charm that comes through in a world where there just isn't anything to really latch onto for hope besides just aiming to drive out the noise. It's the illusion that there even is a fight worth having when a killer robot is just going to grind you away (in packaged fascism) that is probably more fit now in our rusty times. McDermott and Travis have their own differing way of interacting with the world of sludge that sees them engage in, well, passion (as seen by a delightfully disgusting Hootkins) before it gives way to a monster flick. I think I enjoy it more within its latter half of the 94 minute runtime when it gets to the cruel showcase of mayhem, ranging from a pervert viewing a real bug-eyed presence to a solution drenched in moisture and actual futility. As a whole, Hardware is bleak, unsettling, familiar, and the kind of movie fit for all times in the decayed corners of a world going down the tubes.
Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
Welcome to Halloween: The Week After - Crazy Eights. All the way to November 7, we will be clearing the road with horror movies that I couldn't quite get to in October and hopefully have some fun with it. But first, let's take a tiny detour in curiosity with the next movie:
Bordello of Blood
