Hardware

It takes a while to tune in to Richard Stanley's strange frequency. His distinctive and heavily stylized vision of a post-apocalyptic future, with the beating heart of cyberpunk and dark red filters is very impressive. However, the movie suffers from a rather slow pace, and it is not entirely clear for some time which direction the movie is actually headed in. However, we are snapped out of this impression by the rather frantic breakneck over-the-top finale, in which there is no shortage of gore and electronic components. Plus, there are cameo appearances from Lemmy and Iggy Pop, psychedelically tinged dream scenes and a great soundtrack. This is quite a strange movie, which is not really very easy to evaluate objectively, so maybe I will get a little carried away with the rating. Stanley's feeling for creating atmosphere certainly cannot be denied. (12/09/2019)

A cynical and very brutal variation on Terminator for those who consider Terminator to be a children's bedtime story. After Sarah Connor comes another heroine who must face off against a dangerous robot. After she starts making a statue of it in her apartment from its broken parts found in the desert, thinking it was a harmless maintenance robot, the machine reactivates itself and tries to attack the heroine with its iron penis. In reality, it is a military robot designed to sterilise women in an overpopulated world. We won't go into any psychoanalysis here and let's get straight to the rating. Hardware rips off a number of well-known sci-fi classics (from Blade Runner to Alien), but there are a few unorthodox elements. While most post-apocalyptic films take place mostly outdoors, here we spend most of our time in a claustrophobically small apartment. Still, thanks to the eye-catching production design and cinematography (as well as the handsome lead actress), the film is a stunning visual treat. The production designers managed to get creative with a small budget and made impressive sets out of just old junk. Music video director Richard Stanley does a decent job with atmosphere, and with the help of background sounds, he manages to give the feeling that there is a vast living world outside. However, he can't break free from his music video roots and the feature length runtime is too long for him. As a result, the film feels like an unnecessarily drawn-out short (the robot is defeated and repeatedly revived) and, like the central robot, is pieced together from various elements into a somewhat disparate whole. The result, in short, is what I would describe as a “gothic cyberpunk MTV art giallo on acid” – an interesting but chaotic pastiche. The action scenes are often jumbled together from video clips without much coherence. The robot is well-designed and looks quite scary in the gloomily lit apartment, but moves too slowly and clumsily to be dangerous. Still, the distinctive visuals make this cult film an unforgettable experience. After a second viewing (on Blu-ray, where you can properly enjoy its extremely saturated colors), I even liked it a bit more than the first time. And who knows, maybe the third time I'll discover its hidden genius. (20/10/2016)

My journey through this film - from utter boredom and confusion to great satisfaction. For the first half you don't understand what the film is trying to tell you, where it is going, you just notice at the very beginning a pretty nice production design, Iggy Pop's voice as a radio DJ and Lemmy Kilminster in a small role of a taxi driver playing his Mötorhead hit “Ace of Spades”. With an hour and a quarter to go, you know the plot won't leave one apartment for the rest of the film and you wonder what else they're going to fill it with, given the simple premise. And then, with the robot attack, a geyser of visual creativity, visual personality and some pretty snarky gore is unleashed. There's a bit of Terminator, a lot of Tetsuo, a bit of Blade Runner, and gut-busting gore that would put Fulci to shame. Very, very unexpected indeed, how the film radically switches gears and goes from being a moribund B-movie to a visually distinctive piece that mixes genres in an original way. (24/02/2024)