Richard Stanley’s trippy post-apocalyptic future-noir is a Terminator-laced cocktail that blends Mad Max and Blade Runner, injects it with a junkie’s dose of 2000 AD, and then lights the whole thing on fire.
Set in a scorched, irradiated wasteland where civilization is reduced to scavengers and squatters, Hardware not only flirts with cyberpunk, it grinds up against it with wild E-fuelled abandon – it’s a talky, sweaty, space-invading horror flick that likes to indulge. Here, a scrapped M.A.R.K. 13 military droid gets a second shot at life after being unwittingly gifted to an artist (Stacey Travis) by her scavenger boyfriend (Dylan McDermott). Yeah, you guessed it, things don’t end well. What you get is a slow acid burn that devolves into a relentless, bloody game of cat and mouse as the machine reboots itself and starts tearing through flesh with all the efficiency you’d expect from any self-repairing government-funded murder program.
Stanley bathes every frame in neon reds and burnt-out oranges, creating a world that chockes on its own toxic atmosphere. The radio crackles with Iggy Pop’s expository ramblings about the end of the world, Lemmy (but you can call him God) drops in as a wasteland cabbie, and the soundtrack pulses with the industrial grind of Ministry, Motörhead, PIL, and Simon Boswell’s steely synth chords. If this is what you want, this is what you get.
It’s grimy. It’s brutal. It’s on a budget. But it’s one of the most unapologetically stylish pieces of post-apocalyptic cinema to emerge from the VHS era. I get that it’s not for every taste, but like any good piece of dystopian fiction, it’s less about the killer robot effects and more about the world that manufactured it. And its aftermath. Afterall, the M.A.R.K. 13 doesn’t just kill – it recycles you. -Pop
Hardware (1990) arrived in theaters 35 years ago today!