Hardware Reviews

[Highly rated reviewer]

Visually Stunning cult Classic

This film is dripping with cool,its got cameo's from Lemmy and Carl McCoy and its narrated by Mr iggy Pop no less!

Set in a post apocalyptic future with a close humid and hopeless enviroment as a backdrop, a desert scavenger brings in some scrap to a junk dealer,a sculptor,a very hot sexy sculptor actually buys the scrap then all hell breaks loose as the scrap turns out to be a top secret abandoned army prototype killing machine.

Oh yes and theres a fair bit of carnage and bloodshed as a result.

Utter Cr*p

I love sci-fi and I love 2000AD!

But this was very poor.

Awful acting, awful direction, awful effects and a ridiculous killer robot design.

I wish I had taken a 90 minute dump instead.

Enough said.

hardware

absolute pish ; switched it off after 25 mins; utter drivel.

Dreadful

Truly awful, i gave this film 31 mins of my time before i switched it off, not something ive done before..

[Highly rated reviewer]

Tube to Kensington High St

i took my 2 best mates to see this when it came out at the cinema, we had to go to a cinema in kensington to see it as it didn't have a widespread release. they both hated it. it was a nice hot summer day as well. i remember it has tony carpenter from eastenders in it, thankfully without the naff leather beret. oh and lemmy can't act, even when he only has 3 lines to make convincing. the acid trip is great though, a flash of indulgence straight out of 2001: a space odyessy.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Rubbish!

A dreadful low low budget sci-fi flick without much hope.

Hardware came across as a cash-in attempt to combine aspects of Mad Max and The Terminator and failed miserably.

Best forgotten in the mists of time.

90 minutes of my life gone that I will never have back!

Felt I had to write a review just incase, like me, you listened to the 'highly rated' review of this movie.

I've seen better looking robots at a car boot sale and better acting in a school nativity play.

Avoid at all costs!

[Highly rated reviewer]

"No flesh shall be spared."

One of those films I was beginning to despair of ever appearing in the DVD format Hardware was originally released in 1990 and is a stylish sci-fi/horror film with an interesting back story .The film is based on a “2000 AD “comic story called “SHOK! Walter's Robo-Tale.”The original theatrical release did not mention the comic book despite heavily plagiarizing its storyline. Following legal action a caveat was added to later versions and the strip's creators, Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill, now get full writers' credit along with the original writer and director Richard Stanley.

Stanley himself has a fascinating history going on to make the flawed Dust Devil before being fired as the director of the remake of The Island of Dr Moreau which given that it turned out to be a Harryhausen sized turkey may not have been a bad thing. However his behaviour post sacking ( sneaking back onto the set in a Dogman mask and trying to sabotage it ) seems to have stymied his directorial career ( In the mid-90s his adaptation of Robert E. Howard's 'Solomon Kane' was optioned by Ed Pressman who wanted to set it up with Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role. The whole thing was effectively terminated by the 'Moreau' debacle.)

A great pity as Hardware made on a tiny budget( $1.5 million ) is a terrific little film with a great central idea. Given the memorable tagline that “In the 21st century there will be a new endangered species...man.” the plot has Nomad ( played by Carl from the band Fields Of The Nephilim ) discovering a robot head in the radioactive desert .He sells it on to scrap merchant Alvy (Mark Northover ) and it catches the eye of soldier Moses ( Dylan McDermott ) who gives it as a present to his girlfriend Jill ( Stacey Travis) who uses it for her metal art project .

But Alvy discovers that the robot heads comes from a prototype military droid called the Mk 13( Its name is a reference to the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Bible, part of which reads 'no flesh shall be spared') and is able to reconstruct itself from any bits of machinery or bits of scrap and will then become a lethal killing machine ..literally.

So before you can shout Robot wars the Mk13 is activated and re-building itself with rather worrying haste and Jill is trapped in the apartment with it though she is also under voyeuristic observation by her sexually perverse neighbour Vernon (Paul McKenzie in a notably repellent cameo) who maybe can offer her a life line .

The film is very effectively rendered building the tension nicely until the action kicks in .Stanley makes proficient use of light and sound and the special effects( by Image Animation who also worked on “Hellraiser and Highlander ) are more than sufficient .The acting is variable but good enough and there are notable cameo’s for Iggy Pop( pretty good he is too ) as shock D.J. Angry Bob-”Nature never colours like this “ referring to nuclear fallout - and Lemmy( rubbish ) as a water taxi driver .

It’s good to know the DVD will have plenty of extras with a commentary from Stanley , deleted scenes and a documentary “Voices Of The Moon “ ( a 1990 documentary made by Stanley on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan ) and even conceptual insert cards.

The films assertion that the machines we build may ultimately be the death of us is hardly original but the narratives final revelation that the Mk13 is due for mass production is just the sort of thing that probably would happen .As long as human beings want to kill each other for whatever reason homicidal droids are on the agenda. As one of the characters says “Machines don't understand sacrifice - neither do morons.”

[Highly rated reviewer]

What was the death toll?

I won't tell you but a baby can count that high.The cyborg wasn't particularly any thing to write home about and it seemed it spent the entire film trying to kill this woman.This machine is so advanced it can only see heat so it would be useless in the dessert where everything is heat and it will be bumping into fridge freezers alot.Watchable but nothing more.My review wasn't too long was it?I try not to get off the point.

Awful

Terminator rip off, terrible acting. Don't bother.