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Hardware
[Severin]
1990; color
Directed by Richard Stanley
Starring: Dylan McDermott, Stacey Travis, John Lynch
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Hardware is a post-apocalyptic tale set sometime in the near-future in a city that may or may not be LA. Things start off bleak, with a guy wandering through a desert wasteland, pausing to gather whatever junk catches his eye. He spots something sticking out of the sand and uncovers a very Terminator-looking metal skull. He grabs it, and the robotic hand lying next to it, and moves on. Next we jump to two guys, Moe and Shades, trying to sell their scavenged wares to a junk dealer who looks like a morbidly obese version of the dwarf in The Sinful Dwarf. As they're bargaining with him, the guy from the desert strolls in and unloads his sack of stuff, including said skull and hand. While the dwarf is in the other room, Moe makes him an offer on the skull and pockets it. The dwarf keeps the hand and Moe and Shades go on their way. Moe is just back from 'the war,' and plans on giving the object to his girlfriend, Jill, as a present. She's some sort of conceptual artist whose work involves metal and welding but still ends up looking like a big pile of junk. He gives her the skull, which she loves, and the two have a romantic reunion, giving us the film's obligatory sex / topless scene. Unbeknownst to them, their body heat triggers something in the 'brain' of the skull and it's infrared eyes light up and watch them fool around. In the morning, the dwarf calls Moe and tells him to get back over to the junkyard fast, with the skull; he heads over but leaves the skull behind. Turns out that, after some digging, the dwarf's learned the skull and hand are part of a prototype android designed for population control. Not only that, but it's method of control is it's an unstoppable killing machine that can rebuild itself from any available power source and spare metal parts lying around - in this case Jill's apartment / studio. As soon as Moe finds this out, he realizes some real bad shit's about to go down and speeds back to Jill's place to save her. By the time he (and Shades) arrive, the droid has already rebuilt itself from various parts of Jill's sculptures and is trying furiously to kill her. The entire back half of the movie is basically Jill being terrorized while Moe, Shades and two security guards from her building try to get in her apartment and save her. A good amount of late-'80s / early '90s gore ensues and, eventually, Jill has a very samurai-like showdown with a very predictable ending. The movie is mostly a yawner; the three best things in it are the voice of Iggy Pop as radio DJ Angry Bob, who serves as a Greek chorus of sorts; Lemmy as a taxi driver who's big line is 'You guys like music? You're gonna love this!' and then he plays a tape of Ace Of Spades; and an early GWAR video shown on Jill's TV as she's welding. (During which they, for some unknown reason, dub in a Ministry song.) Recommended for fans of mid-budget sci-fi only.
—the Kommandant
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