disc rating:
companies: British Screen Productions
year: 1990
runtime: 93′
country: United Kingdom
director: Richard Stanley
cast: Dylan McDermott, Stacey Travis,
John Lynch, William Hootkins
writers: Steve Macmanus, Kevin O’Neill,
Richard Stanley, Michael Fallon,
and Michael Apostolina
cinematographer: Steven Chivers
disc company: Severin Films
release date: October 13, 2009
retail price: $34.95
disc details: Region A / Dual Layer
feature: 1080p HD
audio: Dolby Digital English [2.0 + 5.1]
subtitles: none
reviewed from a screener provided
by Severin Films LLC.
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Plot: In the future, a dismantled military robot reconstructs itself in the apartment of a metal sculptor and goes on a murderous rampage.
I’d not seen Hardware before the screener arrived on my proverbial doorstep, though I do remember seeing the unattractive video box art in my days as a video rental clerk. It never struck me as anything terribly worth seeing, and certainly didn’t see many rentals in my year or so there. Besides, I was too busy filling my head with things like The Deadly Spawn (titles that had captured my youthful imagination by cover alone but which I had been forbidden from viewing, and rightly so, as a child) to bother with something I’d otherwise never heard of. It’s a pity, really, that I didn’t come around to Hardware sooner, but no matter – this stylish and undeniably weird little industrial slasher was worth the wait.
Set in the dystopian near-future, the film concerns scrounger Mo (McDermott) and his sometimes girlfriend Jill (Travis). When the opportunity to buy something truly unique – disembodied robot parts – comes along courtesy of a mysterious stranger, Mo jumps at it, thinking the parts would make a great Christmas present for his scrap-sculpting girlfriend. While Jill sleeps the head of the robot, belonging to a dysfunctional combat android, comes back to life and constructs a body for itself out of the odds and ends it finds around her apartment. From there on out it’s a battle for survival, with the robot killing anyone it can get its claws (or whirring phallic drillbit) into.
