Flashback Friday: Hardware

Writer's Note: This review was originally published on Facebook on June 3rd, 2015. 

 I knew I was going to like this when my name immediately came up, lol. It starts off with a Bible verse- Mark 13- which later also turns out to be the name brand of the robot gone amok. Fun fact: according to the interesting doc on the making of the flick, it was an arbitrary choice, aside from the "unlucky" properties of the number, but star Dylan McDermott looked up the verse in the Bible and saw the phrase: "No flesh shall be spared" and told director Richard Stanley and it made it into the film. Pretty cool coincidence! 

               

Anyway, how can you not like a film in which Iggy Pop plays a DJ named Angry Bob who plays his own music, then Lemmy from Motorhead crops up as a taxi boat driver who does the same? Factor in a kick-ass ginger as the Final Girl-type and some cool faux robotics and wonderfully gratuitous gore, plus a stylish sex scene set to Public Image Limited's "This is What You Want, This is What You Get" (indeed) and I was all in. Oh, and there was a scene where said ginger creates freaky mechanical sculptures set to Ministry's "Stigmata" as well, as concert footage of GWAR played. Pretty sweet all around.  

              

The leading lady, Stacey Travis, like Emma Stone with "Superbad," was a blonde who the filmmakers thought would be better suited as a redhead for the character, so she did the deed for the sake of getting the part. Stanley fought for her, but lost a lot of control in the process, resulting in most of the rest of the casting/final cut being out of his hands, though the version I saw was his unedited cut.  

Travis also crops up in "Phantasm 2," "Earth Girls are Easy," "Ghost World," and more recently, "Easy A" with, you guessed it, Emma Stone. She's still quite attractive, though I do like her better as a redhead. That's probably just me, as I feel the same about Stone. Really, I just like redheads, TBH. What are you gonna do?    

Bonus-wise, the short film that inspired this one, "Incidents in an Expanding Universe" is included, and would actually function well as a prequel to this movie for those who haven't seen it, and explains a lot about the origins of the characters and why Travis' character is mad at McDermott when he arrives.   

Both this and another short that is included snag music from Kubrick's "The Shining," with another doing the same with music from the "Cat People" remake. I'm surprised that made the DVD, as they don't appear to have paid for the rights to either.  

 

The third short is bizarre and more recent and features more gratuitous ginger nudity- not that I was complaining, mind you. Ditto the deleted scenes. I didn't listen to the commentary, as the doc on the film was pretty thorough. No McDermott to be found in the doc, but most everyone else involved is included, including Lemmy, whose interview is priceless. 

 
It's not a perfect movie, and a little slow at first, but the score (by Argento collaborator Simon Boswell, who's on the doc as well) and soundtrack are great, the visuals are brilliant, and the effects are suitably grisly and cool for such a low budget flick. I wish Stanley had done more feature films over the years- he's the real deal. (Be sure and check out the Director's Cut of his follow-up, "Dust Devil,", also available on DVD, which is also well-worth a watch.) 

 

Anyway, if you think you'd like this, you probably will. Even if you don't normally like sci-fi, you might want to give it a whirl, as it essentially plays like a slasher film with a robot killer, anyway, rather than straight sci-fi, which is probably why it was initially dismissed as a "Terminator" rip-off. It's better than that. In fact, I loved it, and not just because of the "Mark" thing! (Though that certainly didn't hurt!)