Hardware (1990/Severin Blu-ray + DVD)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C+ Film: C
Imagine someone taking Alien, Blade Runner, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Saturn 3,
the original Terminator and mixing
them up into a film with some limited ambition and a Writer/Director who does
not know what he is doing and you get something as wacky as Richard Stanley’s Hardware (1990), a film with a strange
history that was not a big hit and was also tangled up for years in legal
issues. It is one of those films that
became a curio as a result of that and the promotion at the time that many felt
was corny, but few saw the film.
Now, Severin has issued it on Blu-ray and DVD for all to
see again and in some ways, the film is charming in its pre-digital effects,
pre-Internet, pre-cell phone view of a dark future, but it is good at being
dirty throughout. Dylan McDermott is a
hard working seeker of items he can sell and haggle with to survive like
everyone else. One day, he buys an
assortment of pieces that turn out to include the makings of a deadly M.A.R.K.
13 robot the military never produced for having a built-in defect. Taking it to his artist girlfriend (Stacey
Travis) who makes it part of another work, it will soon come to life to kill.
In the meantime, they are having sex and being watched
(this even imitates some of the XXX hardcore sex films of the time) so most
people in this world are desperate and with all that, something will go wrong
soon.
Unfortunately, the robot is laughable (though I like the
twist that it injects the victim with drugs before killing them), there is some
suspense without any pay-offs and Iggy Pop plays an unseen DJ (in reference to
Walter Hill’s The Warriors perhaps)
that is amusing, but that does not help the film either. For McDermott, this is comparatively edgy and
he likely had hopes of a genre career, but the film is all over the place. However, it is such a pastiche of a wreck;
everyone should see it at least once, no matter how bad because it at least
tries to work despite the odds against it.
The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is a
little better than the anamorphically enhanced DVD version, but not by much
because this is a film that is dirty, is meant to look dirty and the Blu-ray
reveals flaws the DVD hides. However,
the better moments of definition on the Blu-ray are the reason to see it that
way over the DVD, if only marginally. As
for the sound, both have the same Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 Stereo with
Pro Logic surround mixes that could be had from the old Dolby analog A-type
theatrical sound the film as released in and the low budget of the sound also
shows.
Extras in both formats include Deleted & Extended
Scenes, feature length audio commentary by Stanley, Stanley on the sequel that
never happened in Hardware 2, 2006
Stanley short Sea Of Perdition, early Stanley short Rites Of Passage, No
Flesh Shall Be Sparred documentary on the making and history of the film and
the early Super 8mm film version of Hardware
entitled Incidents In An Expanding Universe. It is no THX-1138,
but is worth seeing after you watch the feature version.
- Nicholas Sheffo
