HARDWARE (2009)

[indianasmith]

Remember back in the 1980's, when just about every month there was a new, low-budget, post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland movie out for rent on VHS?  Some true classics like MAD MAX, some cheese-fests like PARASITE, and a great many in between?

HARDWARE is a true throwback to that golden era, and one of the best post-apocalyptic films I have ever seen.  And . . . get this . . . . not ONE BIT OF CGI!!! Just good old fashioned robotics and marionette work to make the Mark 13 the scariest android since TERMINATOR.

A quick synopsis of the plot . . . a desert scrounger, out in "The Zone" (a scorching desert wasteland apparently created by a combination of global warming and nuclear war) finds the scattered parts of a destroyed android, and takes it into the local junk dealer to sell.  The junk dealer is out of the shop, but a Space Marine named Moe, home on shore leave, buys the parts from him.  He then sells some of its parts to the junkman (played by a dwarf), but Moe takes the "head" and some other parts of the robot to his girlfriend Jill, who is a sculptor and junk artist.  She places the head at the center of a work that she is creating, then she and Moe do the obligatory horizontal tango, not noticing tha the android head is coming to life - or at lest, scary lights are firing up in its photo-receptor units (which look amazingly like eye sockets).

That's right, the Mark 13 (apparently named for the Bible passage that contained Jesus' famous discourse on the end times) is a highly intelligent, violently hostile, self-repairing robot that is programmed to reassemble itself and then kill everything in sight.  The dwarf junk dealer finds out enough about the Mark 13 that he calls Moe in the middle of the night to warn him (and to try and collect the reward for returning the Mark 13 to the military).  But the single "hand" unit at the junkshop comes back to life and kills him before Moe gets there - meanwhile, the other "hand" is busily reconnecting the torso and head together, as well as assimilating various sculpting tools of Jill's into its structure to make up for missing componenets.

Will Jill survive the android's return to functionality?  Will the creepy neighbor who spied on her and Moe practicing babymaking help her or take advantage of her plight?  Will Moe's buddy Shades sober up enough to go rescue Jill? Will the Chinese family downstairs figure out what is causing all the noise in Jill's apartment? Will the Mark 13 destroy every human in the city? Will the annoying guy on the radio actually play something that resembles music at some point?


It's a genuine thriller with lots of twists and turns before you get to the end, and a very fun ride along the way.  You sci-fi, post-apocalyptic junkes OWE it to yourselves to see this movie!!

[Neville]

"Hardware 2009"? Has it been remade? I love the original, the plot is ho-hum, but it's certainly unique in its trippy-ness and artistic approach.

[Jack]

I used to watch that movie (the 1990 version) back in my pot smoking days, I think that's kind of the audience it's intended for    Very trippy.  The DJ is Iggy Pop, frontman for the punk rock band the Stooges.  And the taxi (or was it a boat?) driver is Lemmy, the singer / bass player for Motorhead.

[indianasmith]

Maybe  I was wrong on the date . .  . it was a recent DVD release, so I assumed it was a new movie.  That's what I get for being too lazy to go check IMDB.

[Psycho Circus]

Yep, the 1990 film. No remake so far, thank Satan!

I've just bought this on DVD and am awaiting its delivery any day now. It's a great film, very underappreciated and was the first ever film based off of 200AD, a few years before Hollywood came along and made a mockery of Judge Dredd.