- "And except that the Lord had shortened those days, NO FLESH SHOULD (SHALL) BE SAVED (SPARED), but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days" - Mark 13:20 (KJV)
In writer-director Richard Stanley's 1990 debut feature "Hardware," an MTV-inspired post-apocalyptic, post-punk/post-industrial sci-fi/horror cult classic, if there's one thing that the audience is persistently reminded of, it's that NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED (and by extension, no expense shall be spared, either, since the film makes full use of its extremely limited $1.5 million production budget and "Mad Max"-/"Blade Runner"-inspired production design).
"Hardware" is a film that I was introduced to by my late mother sometime in the late '90s; my mom had a taste for cheap, low-budget science fiction and horror "B"-movies and I guess that same trait was passed on to me. I watched "Hardware" today for the first time since I first saw it back in the late '90s as a teenager, and this IS a criminally underrated cult classic.
Borrowing equally from "Alien" (1979) and "The Terminator" (1984) and relying heavily on a music video-inspired visual aesthetic (Stanley got his start directing music videos), "Hardware" is set in the then-futuristic 21st century after a global nuclear conflict has left the planet environmentally ravaged (it gets 110 degrees even in the shade) and irradiated, over-populated, and with many people crowded into decrepit crime-ridden slums in the few major cities that are still left standing.
The government is also experimenting with eugenics as a means of controlling the out-of-control human population, which adds a moral conscience to the picture that's also quite unexpected and should be a surprise to more thoughtful viewers. In the midst of it, scavengers venture out into the desert scraping up whatever they can to sell to unscrupulously amoral dealers and traders to make a meager living. The Nomad (Carl McCoy) stumbles upon the remains of the M. A. R. K. 13, a military robot that was discontinued by the Department of Defense, and he then sells it to Moses "Mo" Baxter (Dylan McDermott), a fellow scavenger and former space Marine. Mo intends to give the skull of the M. A. R. K. 13 to his metal-sculptor girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis) as a Christmas present.
But the pair learn all too late that the M. A. R. K. 13 - brought to life brilliantly by Image Animation - has not been totally deactivated, since the machine is heavily armored, can tap into and take control of any power supply that's available, and is fully capable of self-repair. This latter trait is especially relevant because the robot quietly rebuilds itself at night while Jill is asleep - using the metal junk lying around her living room as spare parts - and it soon goes on a murderous rampage in her heavily fortified apartment, while Mo desperately tries to reach her and stop the machine.
And even murderous robots aren't the only thing Mo and Jill have to deal with, either, since there is a subplot involving Lincoln Wineburg, Jr. (the late William Hootkins), a voyeuristic neighbor who likes to watch the couple have sex and who is dealt with quite gruesomely by the M. A. R. K. 13 in the film's climax. (In discussing this aspect of the picture, approximately 36 seconds of sex scenes and extreme violence & gore had to be removed from the picture to secure an "R" rating from its original "X" rating.)
The comparisons to past sci-fi classics like "Alien" and "The Terminator" are not unfounded when discussing "Hardware"; the fact that the skull of the M. A. R. K. 13 DOES in fact resemble the skull of The Terminator endoskeleton gives some legitimacy to those arguments, and Stanley takes his time in building up the characters and story in the first half before letting us have it with ultra-gory special effects and action in the second half. (Worth noting is that Fleetway Comics successfully sued the film production because Stanley's screenplay plagiarized the 1980 "2000 AD" short comic strip "SHOK!" by Stephen MacManus and Kevin O'Neill.)
But what really separates "Hardware" from "The Terminator" in terms of thematic subtext is its depiction of a dying human populace that seems to have passively accepted its fate, where sex is still dangerous (though instead of condoms, Geiger counters are employed) and people turn to legalized marijuana as a means of temporarily escaping the despair of their daily existence. ("The Terminator," of course, was about saving humanity and averting the apocalypse.)
Richard Stanley employs a lot of what he learned from directing music videos and gives "Hardware" a grungy, albeit slick low-budget production - with some nice quick-cut editing and cinematography - of a trashed future world that looks and feels appropriately grungy and lived-in (a la, "Star Wars" and "Alien"). And a full-length feature written and directed by a former music video director will not be entirely devoid of some nice background noise, either - most prominent is the synthesizer score by Simon Boswell, and the recurring 1984 theme "The Order Of Death" by Public Image, Ltd. (which I honestly cannot stop listening to on YouTube), along with cameo appearances by Iggy Pop, the late Lemmy Kilmister (of Motorhead), cuts by Ministry, and "The Nomad" Carl McCoy is the lead singer of the British goth rock band Fields of the Nephilim.
"Hardware" is a fully realized post-apocalyptic vision of a living hell on Earth, despite its budget limitations.
I'm quite thankful that my late mom introduced me to this movie.
7/10.