Cinema Suicide

I got wise to this movie through Entertainment Tonight back in 1990, if you can believe that. The word, according to them, was that this movie was coming out unrated because it was so extremely violent. That’s about all I needed to hear to sell me on it. Why ET was running a bit on Hardware is beyond me. This was before Dylan McDermott was a big deal, there were no stars to speak of, it’s quite violent, it’s a British production, probably played in less than 200 theaters in the states and is considered by many to be a total piece of shit. I disagree about the piece of shit opinion but then again, I like a lot of awful god damn movies.

I’ve been in love with the crusty, low budget post-nuke movies since I saw Defcon 4 way back in the day. It’s a completely absurd notion that anyone could survive a global nuclear war and even more absurd that the wastelands would be such an exciting place where lone-wolf heroes race down ruined highways against leather clad biker gangs, scavenging for gas but thank god the movies don’t bother with statistics and reality. Hardware isn’t really that kind of movie, though. By thew mid-80’s, the Road Warrior rip-off industry had squeezed every last drop of blood from that dead horse but this movie qualifies in a lot of ways. There were a few stragglers, though and this is one of them It’s also helpful that it incorporated a lot of cyberpunk elements and had a righteous soundtrack that featured Ministry and Motorhead.

The third world war has left most of the planet a desert. What survivors there are live in crowded, medieval cities. We begin with a scavenger (played by Carl McCoy, singer for the goth rock act, Fields of the Nephilim) in the desert, recovering the parts of a destroyed robot. He brings them back to the city and sells them to a metal/electronics reseller who then sells them Moses (Dyland McDermott), a soldier on leave in the city. Moses brings them back to his metal sculptor girlfriend, Jill, who then incorporates the parts into a complicated sculpture. Mo is called back to war and while he’s gone, the robot head comes to life and begins to rebuild itself with parts lying around the house. The now rebuilt and fully functional robot starts raising hell around Jill’s apartment making every opportunity to kill her. Alvy, the junk dealer that sold the parts to Moses does a little research and discovers that the robot head was, in fact, a part of a military killing machine codenamed Mark 13 (taken from the Gospel of Mark that has a part which reads “no flesh shall be spared”) and quickly gets in touch with Mo. In a panic, Moses, rushes back to the city, hoping to reach Jill in time. Meanwhile, Mark 13 has devastated her apartment and killed Jill’s perverted, stalker neighbor. Finally, Moses, his acid-head friend Shades and the neighborhood watch descend on Jill’s apartment for the final, bloody confrontation that you’ve been waiting for.

Plotwise, Hardware is a fucking mess. The set up is interesting but at no point are you, the viewer, able to get your head around a concept like “killer robot chases woman around her apartment for 90 minutes”. It’s not terribly believable and becomes a little tedious shortly after it begins. Hardware has some saving graces, though.

Director Richard Stanley has a great visual style. It’s clear from the get-go that he didn’t have a lot of money to make the movie and he does a lot with what he had to work with. What the movie lacks in story, it makes up for in style evident in the sex scene. Set to the Public Image Limited song, The Order of Death, we watch Jill and Moses knock boots through a thermal imaging camera from the perspective of the peeping tom across the way. When you make the connection that your perspective is his perspective, the scene takes on a much more sinister tone. It doesn’t help that the POV occasionally cuts to close ups of Link (the perv) narrating his fantasy as the action commences. It may be sleazy, but it’s one of the crowning achievements of the movie. As a matter of fact, the entire movie takes a few minutes of the run time here and there to lay some quasi art-house style on you. As Mark 13 begins to rebuild itself, we’re treated to a video montage of the machine doing its thing while Stigmata by Ministry rolls. Intercut into the scene is various distorted video imagery including live cuts of Gwar quite surprising since they were still a very minor name in metal at the time. Mark 13 also has an interesting way of killing its victims, which I’ll touch on in a bit. The visual effects during those death scenes take many liberties with what you’re used to seeing in a violent Alien-inspired sci fi movie.

Mark 13 is probably featured more in the movie than any other character and for good reason. The robot design is quite cool even though it tends to look a little like Johnny 5 at times and moves like a marionette. It’s red, white and blue flag painted skull is the most startling and cool feature of the whole affair. Hidden inside this head is a needle used to kill at close range by injecting a neurotoxin, like LSD, that lulls the victim quietly into death giving them a dazzling light show and fish-eye lens vision before they crap out completely. During the finale, we get a good look at what it is like to die by this machine’s hand and it is one of the most unexpectedly stylish moments of the movie. The machine’s ultimate undoing and it’s removal from the battlefield was a faulty insulation system which makes it susceptible to moisture and humidity. This wouldn’t be a problem, normally, since most of the world is arid deserts but with the announcement of this flaw, you can see where the movie is going to end.

It’s certainly flawed but not a total loss by any means. It wins a lot of cool points for a sweet metal/punk/industrial soundtrack and cameos from Motorhead’s Lemmy as a cab driver (who pops in Eat The Rich by his band) and the voice of Iggy Pop as Angry Bob, the radio DJ only heard in a couple of spots throughout. References to Hunter Thompson are dropped as Shades trips balls and tells Moses that “my heart feels like an alligator”, a line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Cool comic fans will probably also like to know that this story is plagiarized (now an official adaptation) of a story called Shok from the seminal British anthology comic 2000 AD and is a marginal part of the Judge Dredd world.

Certainly not a cult classic, Hardware is a capable but sadly overlooked cyberpunk action movie with a ton of style to get by, a bad ass robot and some nasty, nasty violence. Richard Stanley would later go on to direct the vastly superior Dust Devil and hone his style even further. For b-movie fans looking for something low-budget and post-nuke but without the Mad Max exploitation would do themselves a favor by looking this one up, if you can find it. I’m still unsure if this movie has been issued on DVD in the states but there are Region 2 DVDs in circulation under the title Mark 13 if you had the sweet foresight to buy a region free player.

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