Hardware

Severin Films

Blu Ray and DVD

Hardware is a superbly strange, quirky and complex science fiction from the late Eighties by director Richard Stanley. It has had a chequered history on video and DVD and the release from Severin is nothing short of a revelation. Stanley’s work is highly textured placing a strong emphasis on colour, shadows, light and dark and only a very high quality reproduction will do it justice and at last it has received the release it truly deserves. A film with influences ranging from Blade Runner to Mad Max, Terminator to Predator, it is a certainly an unusual cinematic experience. With impressive cinematography and a superb score including everything from classical music to electro, hard rock to metal it has an immense presence and style. It is quite clear that Stanley’s background in music video production has had an influence on the look of the film; he has been able to create quite an astonishing work on a very moderate budget which communicates so much via no verbal clues, mood and environment.

The future is a bleak place, the earth has been devastated by nuclear war and the sky is a constant mix of pollution and dust, stained red, the environment has been ruined by toxic waste and radiation and the temperature reaches 110 degrees in the shade. It is hard to make a living and scavengers wander the wastelands looking for scrap to sell for small amounts of cash. Mo (short of Moses) makes a deal with a wandering scavenger for a robot head and handpiece which he tries to sell on for a profit. When he cannot get what he paid he takes the head to his girlfriend Jill, a sculptor as a Christmas present and leaves the handpiece with the second-hand dealer.

Mo and Jill have a complex relationship; Mo has lost in hand in an accident and struggles to survive. Jill has been scarred by the loss of a child and rails against the government and the world around her by making strange scrap metal sculptures which reflect her inner turmoil. Into the mix is a pervert neighbour who regularly watches and stalks Jill leaving sexually explicit messages and generally being a nuisance.

As Jill takes the head and uses it as a centre piece of her new creation, she does not realize the risk she is taking. It is actually part of the Mark 13 robot, a self repairing bot created for use in dangerous situations where it will kill anything it perceives to be alive. It is equipped with self developing intelligence, a self repair function, a toxic chemical mix with injection facilities and infra red, soon it has tapped into her power supply and using the metal scraps on hand, from chainsaws and drills to blades, creates a body for itself and is on the warpath. It is a very cyberpunk sort of robot created from all-sorts of odds and ends and it is this “dirty” approach to technology which makes the film so successful.

This is a dark and dirty look at the future; everything is filthy, broken, disease ridden and rotten. Buildings are collapsing, everyone is ill and there is a constant feel of paranoia and dread. The mood is extenuated by Stanley’s innovative cinematography which creates a constantly suspenseful mood; he mixes news broadcasts, all sorts of music and violence and gore to create quite a unique horror science fiction amalgam.

The combination of colour filters and a carefully chosen score creates a real evocation of the environment, from the windy deserts with their blood red skies matched with electro sounds to the mechanical gnashing of Mark 14 matched with hard rock and heavy metal tunes.

Stanley also explores all manner of strange religious imagery from Mo (Moses) Jill’s partner to the robot being called Mark 13. Shades, Mo’s mate, worships the Buddhist god Yamantaka and there is an abundance of apocalyptic and “end of the world” iconography. When Mo is injected by Mark 13 with a toxin, the violence psychedelic trip which occurs with Mark 13 as a sort of end of the world evil Saviour is quite literally mind boggling.

There are lots of interesting themes explored in Hardware from the destructive effect of mankind on the environment to eugenics. One question addressed is whether the government should limit birth (including the use of sterilization) to control the mutations caused by nuclear war and radioactive fallout. This is a bleak world where the populace is so concerned with their own survival that they have not seen how fascistic the government has become and are kept docile with extreme sex and violence on television.

A recurring song used throughout the film is “this is what you get/this is what you want” and suggests that mankind’s destructive urges are being visited back on them in the form of Mark 13. This is reiterated at the conclusion of the film when the bot goes into full production. Whether Mark 13 is the revenge of God or the embodiment of mankind’s suicidal urges is a matter for debate, Stanley seems to have used the robot as an image as a complex metaphor for a range of themes including uncontrolled mechanization, mankind’s self destructiveness, the innate violence of religion and the dangers of fascism (at times the robot’s head seems to resonate with imager of the death-head of the Third Reich)

The extras on both the Blu Ray and double DVD are marvellous. There is an informative and fascinating commentary. No Flesh Shall Be Spared, a specially made for Severin doco featuring interviews with cast and crew, it is extremely comprehensive and comes it at around 50 minutes. There is a fascinating interview with Stanley on Hardware 2 and some rare every Stanley films including Incidents In An Expanding Universe, an early Super 8 Version of Hardware, The Sea of Perdition and Rites of Passage. There are also various deleted and extra scenes and some trailers.

This really is the definitive version of this highly significant science fiction classic, superbly restored, packed with extras and fully uncensored and uncut.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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