Hardware (1990)
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A scavenger finds a mangled robot skull in the desert and sells it as scrap, not knowing it still contains a government kill program waiting for a power source.
That skull ends up as a Christmas gift in HARDWARE (1990), given by a soldier named Mo to his sculptor girlfriend Jill, who welds junk into art in her apartment. She wires the head into one of her pieces. It starts rebuilding itself from the scrap in her studio, feeding off the building's power, and turns her home into a locked-room slaughterhouse.
Richard Stanley wrote and directed it, shooting fast and cheap in London and using the confined apartment set to make the film feel like it is closing in on the audience along with Jill. His script borrowed heavily from SHOK!, a 2000 AD comic strip by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill, and the comic's creators only got their credit after a legal challenge.
The cast is a strange mix of character actors and music world cameos: Dylan McDermott, Stacey Travis, John Lynch, and William Hootkins carry the story, while Iggy Pop voices a shock-jock DJ, Lemmy Kilmister turns up as a water taxi driver, and Fields of the Nephilim frontman Carl McCoy plays the scavenger.
It arrived in the wake of RoboCop and The Terminator, but stripped the machine-killer story down to one woman trapped with a thing that will not stop repairing itself to finish the job.
Physical media
About the film
You can't stop progress.
- Directed by
- Richard Stanley
- Runtime
- 94 minutes
- Released
- September 14, 1990
- Certification
- R
- Country
- United Kingdom, United States of America
- Starring
- Dylan McDermott, Stacey Travis, John Lynch, William Hootkins, Carl McCoy
More credits
- Genres
- Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller
- Language
- English
- Origin
- US, GB
- Studios
- Palace Pictures, British Screen Productions, Wicked Films, British Satellite Broadcasting
- Written by
- Richard Stanley
- Produced by
- Stephen Woolley, Ray Corbett, Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Trix Worrell, JoAnne Sellar, Paul Trijbits, Nik Powell, Elizabeth Karlsen
- Cinematography
- Steven Chivers
- Music
- Simon Boswell
- Also starring
- Iggy Pop, Mark Northover, Paul McKenzie, Oscar James, Lemmy Kilmister
- Budget
- $1,500,000
- Box office
- $5,728,953
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Films scored for your taste
hardware rose to the top of b-horror at the time, but i never saw it, didn’t realise it was tromeo and juliet meets event horizon-level cool.
Carl McCoy’s character is referred to as a Zone Tripper, much cooler name than scavenger
Saw it in theaters in 90. Looks even more amazing on blue ray now
Great little cult classic featuring some of the worst acting ever from the guy who played Shades .
The story was originally written by Steve MacManus and illustrated by the great Kevin O’Neil, titled SHOK and appeared in the 1981 Judge Dredd Annual.
• The comic’s publisher, Fleetway Comics, publishers of 2000 A.D., successfully sued the makers of the 1990 film Hardware for plagiarism.
• The Credits: Following the settlement, later releases of the film were updated to credit Steve MacManus, Kevin O’Neill, and publisher Fleetway Publications.
Always enjoyed this movie. I think it might have been a poor dubbed vhs I got was my first viewing…lol. So grainy. Proper dvd and bluray in subsequent years made it killer (excuse the pun)
Sounds like Tetsuo
I got to see this in the theater. I wish more movies like this would make it onto the big screen.
‘The script borrowed heavily from….’ more like a frame by frame, scene by scene direct copy! I’m not surprised they were sued, can’t believe they actually thought they’d get away with it. If you ever get the opportunity to hear the soundtrack, some amazing tunes, my first exposure to Al Jourgensen’s ‘Ministry’ (Stigmata)!
Spencer Locker Stigmata playing with shots of early Gwar live
Matthew Malleus yeah, that never made much sense after i recognised it!
Huh, I guess Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles paid a homage to that with their killer robot losing his head but finally getting reunited with it.
Robot was about as threatening as a vacuum cleaner.
Edward Rogers The creepy pervert neighbor was more scary.
GWAR makes an appearance in this movie.
Eric Gambitx But the video is playing to Ministry Stigmata from what I recall. Loved this movie.
I actually spent money for this pile of shit on DVD. I rifled it in the trash after about 45 minutes and buried it with a broomstick so my neighbors wouldn’t see it. It’s not even worth the joke of ordering your copy of Terminator from Temu. The worst playing of parts I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t use “acting” on purpose.
Stanley had the weirdest career.
William Bussone He still does… just wrote and starred (as the villain) in Blood and Honey 3, and wrote / directed Steel Donkeys which has Cynthia Rothrock trying to save her son from a demon resurrected at a rock festival!
A truly excellent film.
I saw it before it was released at the Scala cinema in London. An acquaintance of mine used to write a fanzine and occasionally hosted shows of unusual or banned stuff that could only be shown to members.
I think it is a fantastic film and love the cameos. McCoy is perfect.
Underrated movie. Stanley’s latest film, The Color Out of Space is very good as well.
We all walk the wibbly wobbly walk!
I just caught this recently, was pleasantly surprised with how much they did with so little. It also ends up being very Fallout-coded, probably drawing from a lot of the same contemporary references the game devs would pull from as well.
Awesome soundtrack.
I showed this as a projectionist. Pretty cool movie.
It’s horrible.
I love it.
What is it?
Absolute garbage.
Catastrophic.
I thoroughly enjoy movies in the SAME category such as Stephen Norington’s Death Machine and Lifeforce for that matter, but I place this crapfest right alongside Moontrap and Split Second (I know the latter is a fan favorite, but I just CAN’T dig it). Let’s not forget that Stanley was SUCCESSFULLY sued by British anthology 2000 AD for this movie.
Just tried watching it a year ago, sat through the WHOLE thing AND even watched Richard’s miserable Dust Devil movie (not to mentioned made it through 20 minutes of Color Out of Space and gave up once Theresa (Joely Richardson) started feeding herself like a dog, then STOPPED the film) and could not stand it. I’ll have a BETTER shot with Kathy Ireland’s Alien from L.A. flick for that matter.
Absolute crap.
And in the SAME category, I now have the S#!tshow known as Blade Runner 2099 to look forward to… 😬 🫤 😐
Overrated, Stanley’s Dust Devil was far superior, got it on Bluray somewhere in my collection
Darren Vickers How many killer androids are in Dust Devil though?
Darren Vickers I liked Dust Devil too
I saw this the other day, its great.
Fangoria went all in on this film. I think they helped fund it, maybe? I went to the movies to see it when it came out. I remember not really liking it that much, I wonder how I’d feel now.
LOVE this movie!!!
Actually a very cool movie! ANd I didn’t think about being a Christmas movie!