The Cottage The Cottage
Feb
23
2006

Richard Stanley’s Hardware Review

Posted by Todd Brown at 1:57am.

Posted in Film & DVD Reviews , Cult, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, USA & Canada.

hardware.jpg

This review based on a DVD provided by the lovely folk at Diabolik.

With its post apocalyptic setting, robot gone mad, extreme gore and a cast that includes Iggy Pop – well, his voice, anyway – and Lemmy from Motorhead, it is easy to consider Richard Stanley’s Hardware to be essentially a lower budget, more intentionally punk take on The Terminator. This is essentially correct, though Stanley’s film would be a Terminator set in a world where the humans are hell-bent on destroying themselves and their planet and the robotic killing machines are just on the verge of turning on their creators and supposed masters.

Dylan McDermott – yes, the guy from The Practice has done a surprising amount of b grade genre film – stars as Moses, a former trooper who has turned to scavenging for scrap in the radiation blasted deserts that make up most of the surface of the planet thanks to an ongoing nuclear holocaust. After a long stint away he is returning to visit his girlfriend Jill and he brings along a gift, the shattered remains of an unknown robot for her to use in her scrap metal industrial sculptures. His robotic gift is enough to get Moses through Jill’s door and back into her bed – much to the delight of Jill’s voyeuristic neighbor – but things go horribly wrong when it turns out that Mo’s robotic find is actually an experimental battle robot, one capable of self repair and not nearly as dead as it appeared on first look. Equipped with whirring saw blades, poison needles and an apparent grudge against humanity it isn’t long before the robotic menace is carving a bloody swath through Jill’s sealed apartment.

Hardware is clearly a low budget affair but Stanley uses his limited assets well. The broader devastation is established through the use of color filters and available deserts and partially demolished buildings as sets. When he moves indoors Stanley limits the action to Jill’s apartment and the immediate environment, choosing to focus his resources to create a richly designed, completely convincing microcosm of the world at large rather than spreading himself thinly over a larger environment and being less convincing. Though the body count is low there are several truly gruesome moments pulled of with an undeniable, and undeniably revolting, sense of style.

Beyond some moments that stretch disbelief a little two far the weak point of the film, unfortunately is McDermott. The man has since proven his chops in The Practice but he always seems slightly out of place in genre pictures or in anti hero roles, that is again the case here and Stanley would have done well to reverse the casting of McDermott and supporting actor John Lynch, who excels at the kind of weary resignation the role of Moses demands. But, as any fan will tell you, the real star of this sort of film is not the human characters but the creature, in this case the robot, which is a nice piece of practical film making, an actual built-in-the-real-world metallic menace, a fact that unavoidably limits what Stanley can do with his villain but one that is a refreshing reminder of the tactile sense films lost when the industry started focusing so heavily on digital effects.

This DVD edition, while not spectacular, certainly does the job. The film is presented full frame with the English soundtrack and an optional German dub. All special features are German only. While Hardware doesn’t command classic status it certainly deserves the cult tag and is worth a look, particularly for fans of post-apocalyptic sci-fi.

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Reader Comments

  1. Kurt 02/23/2006 @ 4:17am

    Wow! Haven’t caught this film since its original VHS release. I remember liking it quite a bit at the time though.

  2. Caterpillar 02/23/2006 @ 5:31am

    This DVD is utter garbage! The film is pan & scan and looks no better than the VHS tape it was obviously mastered from. Ironically, there has been a gorgeous uncut widescreen print on German television a few months back on the MGM channel. Go figure.

  3. collin a 02/23/2006 @ 6:23am

    Huge fan of Richard Stanley. I wish this would receive a decent release somewhere. Miramax had it at one point in time, I think - and it was scheduled to be released at least once in the US on DVD a year or two ago - but it never arrived.

    Stanley’s case as a filmmaker really frustrates me. He’s well-regarded by fans, filmmakers, and critics; his projects are ambitious in nature and generally very original - yet his efforts over the past decade seem to have either a) been non-starting or b) aren’t available (I’d kill to see his two recent documentaries, as well as VOICE OF THE MOON). I’m excited for Nacho Cerda’s BLOODLINE in large part because of Stanley’s involvment with the film’s script.

    Here’s hoping some of Stanley’s long-rumored projects - THE VIY remake, his adaptation of THE GREAT GOD PAN, etc. - either come to fruition or lead to something new.

  4. Todd 02/23/2006 @ 8:43am

    It’s definitely a Miramax property. Ol’ Bob and Harv are both credited as producers.

    And, yeah, like I say in the review, the DVD isn’t great but, for the time being at least, it’s the only option I’m aware of to see the film. Maybe this’ll get a decent R1 release when Disney clears out the Miramax vault, but I’m not really banking on it ...

  5. Isao K 02/23/2006 @ 9:20am

    This is what you want, this is what you get.

    This is what you want, this is what you get.

    This is what you want, this is what you get.

  6. Swarez 02/23/2006 @ 1:25pm

    I loved this film when I first saw it many moons ago. I’ve been dying to see a decent release of it.

    If it’s shown on German television in widescreen and uncut why isn’t it copied and put online? Or better yet...why the fuuuuck isn’t this out on DVD?

  7. Emperor 02/25/2006 @ 11:20am

    I’ve got this and the similar German Dust Devil release and they are the best that’s currently available.

    Thank God then that things (finally) seem to be moving as Fangoria report an extended release of Dust Devil with 3 of his documentaries thrown in as extras (I am looking forward to his one on Haitain vodou - The White Darkness. Also in will be The Secret Glory and Voice of the Moon):

    http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5663

    Fingers crossed this means that thngs are turning a corner and we’ll see a decent Hardware release too
    -----

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