Hardware [VHS]

Hardware [VHS]
by Richard Stanley

Hardware [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Dylan McDermott, Iggy Pop, John Lynch, Stacey Travis, William Hootkins
Director: Richard Stanley
Writer: Richard Stanley
Producer: Bob Weinstein
Producer: Elizabeth Karlsen
Writer: Kevin O'Neill
Writer: Michael Apostolina
Writer: Michael Fallon
Writer: Steve MacManus
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 93 minutes
Release Date: 1993-01-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Hbo Home Video
Studio: Hbo Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Hardware [VHS]

Movie Review: New Release for this DVD in 2009
Summary: 5 Stars

Apparently there is going to be a new release on DVD of this movie sometime between June and September 2009. It will be a director's Cut and will be loaded with extras. And the picture quality should be 100 times better than the old DVD which some reviewers have compared to a bad VHS copy.

Movie Review: Starts off with such a bang, then falls off a cliff.
Summary: 2 Stars

Hardware (Richard Stanley, 1990)

After being surprisingly impressed with Dust Devil and a couple of Richard Stanley's recent documentaries, I finally went back to the movie that started it all, the surprise smash hit Hardware. And I have to say that Dust Devil must have shot my expectations through the roof, because what a disappointment this movie is. Everyplace Dust Devil sparks with originality and outright creepiness, Hardware just sits there limp and cliched. Do you remember (lord, I hope you don't) a godawful Jean-Claude Van Damme flick that came out right around the same time called "I" Come in Peace? So many things about this movie reminded me of that, not least the disappointment at how a pretty nifty science fiction conceit just got pounded into the dust. (In my defense, at the time, Van Damme was not as much a film-world joke as he is today.) And you know what the worst part is? The first ten minutes set us up for the best science fiction movie ever.

Picture it: Earth, sometime in the post-apocalypse future. The city is entertained by a manic radio DJ named Angry Bob, played by Iggy Pop. As we open, a guy in a gas mask is wandering through a desert of red sand in the film's most beautifully-shot sequence. We cut to two guys, Moses Baxter (Dylan McDermott--yes, Dylan McDermott in a science fiction movie!) and his trusty sidekick Shades (In the Name of the Father's John Lynch), an entrepreneurial type who, as we first see them, is trying to convince Baxter that the insane risk they'd be taking in travelling to the now bombed out city of New York would be well worth the rewards they could reap by bringing back such things as kitchen appliances. Yes, folks, the world after a nuclear war is a beautiful thing. Moses and Shades are on their way to the local pawnshop to see Alvy (Mack the Knife's Mark Northover in one of his few screen appearances), a guy who deals in, shall we say, less than legal stuff scavenged form the wastes. Baxter gives him a sack of stuff and he heads into the back to price it. That's when the nomad from the first scene appears, now sans gas mask. He looks kind of familiar, but it's after Baxter addresses him and he speaks that it hits you. It's Carl McCoy! Carl McCoy, the leader of the best band in the universe, Fields of the Nephilim, in his only screen appearance! He and Baxter haggle over a piece McCoy (credited only as the Nomad) picked up in the Glass Flats, which seems to have been some sort of old manufacturing area; the head of a robot. Baxter buys it from the Nomad for fifty credits (which, it seems, is a small fortune in this economy; Baxter gets ten from Alvy for his entire bag) as a Christmas present for his girlfriend, Jill (Stacey Travis, recently of The Great Buck Howard), a sculptor. The Nomad leaves just as Alvy gets back, and the scene is over, as we've set up the movie. And then... the Nomad is gone. We never see him again. Nor Alvy. In fact, most of the rest of the film takes place in Jill's apartment. You see, the robot head was the prototype of a very unstable, and very dangerous, weapon called the M.A.R.K.13, which is capable of both repairing itself and utilizing other materials to power itself. So when Jill welds it into a sculpture...

At this point, the movie becomes a standard survival-horror flick with science fiction elements. And, really, it's not bad for a standard survival-horror flick with science fiction elements, but the first ten minutes of this film are so well-done that the final eighty being standard is bound to cause a major disappointment. I mean, everything about that scene is perfectly done, and it's the things Stanley did in that scene that he managed to pull off for the whole movie in Dust Devil. The cinematography is stunning, and when the movie shifts to constant interior scenes, it goes away almost entirely. Simon Boswell's music is great (when Iggy Pop isn't spinning old Iggy records, of course), and it does stay great throughout, but it's got that whole wide-open-spaces feel to it that works so well for blasted-out deserts, and not so well for cramped spaces. Two great actors used for a single scene? There are other cameos like this sprinkled throughout, most notably Motorhead vocalist Lemmy Kilmister as a taxi driver (who, of course, blasts Motorhead). The banter between Baxter and Alvy is quick and funny, which obviously isn't the kind of script you keep going with when you get into survival-horror mode. Etc.

If you don't mind the full price of a rental just to see the first ten minutes of a movie, by all means rent it. Or if you like survival-horror flicks and you've seen everything you've got a dozen times, you'll also find a lot to enjoy here. It's obviously a must for Fields of the Nephilim (or Iggy Pop) fans. Everyone else, if you catch it on late-night cable, watch it, but don't go out of your way. **

Movie Review: Beware "Uncut Red Edition" DVD
Summary: 4 Stars

This is a GREAT film, borrowing from BLADE RUNNER, THE TERMINATOR, MAD MAX, and slasher films -- but with its own unique story and style. Beautiful cinematography, wonderful soundtrack (with both classical opera and industrial/punk rock scores).

I won't relate the story, as other reviewers have done so. BUT if you're buying the "Uncut Red Edition," there are some issues you should be aware of.

* This "Eurocult" DVD claims it's uncut, "unlike American DVD and VHS editions." Not true. Yes, this Uncut Red Edition may be uncut, but it contained no scenes that I hadn't seen in my American tape edition. Maybe some tapes were cut, but not all.

* More importantly, this DVD is FULL SCREEN. I'd hoped to see HARDWARE's beautiful cinematography in its wide screen glory, but it was not to be.

Why go to the trouble of releasing an "uncut" edition -- then sell if full screen? Maybe because ...

* This DVD looks to be STRUCK FROM A TAPE. Some colors are faded, as from an old tape. But the real giveaway is that there are occasional black glitches, like video dropouts.

Yes, that's right. This Eurocult "Uncut Red Edition" looks to be struck from an old, full screen videotape.

I'm still glad I got the DVD (though pricey at $20). I wish someone would release an "uncut" digitally remastered wide screen edition of this great film.

This is a five-star film, but I'm deducting one star for the crappy DVD.

Movie Review: Robot mayhem
Summary: 3 Stars

Hardware is a British/American low budget SF horror film that has some good production values considering the shoestring it was made on but has too many rough edges to make it cut art house appeal but may have some cult grains. When Hardware arrived it received good reviews noting that this was a young film maker on the rise. Probably the main reason to watch this is because of the career of Richard Stanley who made the very interesting Dust Devil after this one. There is also the notoriety this film generated when it landed the director in a lawsuit with 2000 AD comic producers because of the story.

Hardware is a post-apocalyptic SF horror about a robot which assembles itself in a woman's apartment and tries to kill her and the occupants. The build up is very slow and most of the film takes place either in the desert or in the apartment. Some of the special effects are pretty gruesome. There isn't much of a story here and it is often boring in parts but these are the types of films that independent film makers need and should get their hands on. It is far from a bad first effort.

Movie Review: hardware the movie ??
Summary: 1 Stars

horrible video, loved the movie on vhs was hoping the DVD would be better,looked like bootleg theatre copy

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Summary of Hardware [VHS]

It's Christmas in the tech noir slum of the post-apocalyptic future, and scrap-metal sculptor Stacey Travis gets a present she'll never forget. Scavenger boyfriend Dylan McDermott returns from the wastelands with the insectoid robot head of a killing machine. In no time it whirs to life and builds itself a gizmo-laden body out of handy appliances to continue its single-minded destruction of the human race, one warm body at a time. Director Richard Stanley, something of a scavenger himself, plunders everything from The Terminator, Blade Runner, and The Road Warriorto Short Circuit (the spidery construct resembles a demonic Number 5) for his violent flesh-vs.-metal survival thriller. Shot in sun-blasted orange and sweltering red, it's a triumph of style, set design, and grunge aesthetics over story, driven by a pounding techno score by Simon Boswell and punctuated by splattering gore. --Sean Axmaker

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