Horror in the 90s: 'Hardware'

Hardware (1990)

Directed by Richard Stanley

Written by Steve McManus, Richard Stanley, Kevin O'Neill

Starring Dylan McDermott, Stacy Travis, John Lynch

Release Date September 14th, 1990

Box Office $5.1 million

You know your career is not going well when someone makes a documentary about your being fired. Richard Stanley became infamous in 1995-96 when his first major studio directing job went worse than you can imagine. The behind the scenes documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr. Moreau, is an all timer in terms of epic film boondoggles. Stanley went over budget, fought with executives, lost the star of his film 2 days into filming, was forced to watch as Mother Nature destroyed his multi-million dollar sets, endured working with both Marlon Brando AND Val Kilmer, and then was fired during filming.

Then, taking a bad situation and making it even crazier, a distressed and lunatic Stanley, snuck back onto the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, made up like one of the movie monster extras, and was able to appear in several scenes as a background player. No joke, the fired director can be seen writhing and shrieking with his fellow freaks in a couple scenes in the final cut of The Island of Dr. Moreau. It's the kind of story that goes down in Hollywood lore and it all really happened to the young director who was making his major studio debut.

The epic mishap of The Island of Dr. Moreau will be the lead in Richard Stanley's obituary one day. And, perhaps, somewhere near the bottom of the article, there will be a mention for the rather ingenious, low budget sci-fi horror movie that brought him to the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau, 1990's Hardware. This hybrid of horror, steampunk, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi has moments of genuine brilliance that are just as often undercut by an edit performed by studio executives aiming for a more commercially viable runtime. What should have been a more than 2 hour movie is thus cut to a mere 96 minutes. Lost is the artful change of one scene to the next, and any semblance of logical changes in tone from one scene to the next.

Hardware is a movie that is sort of about how advancements in technology have begun to dehumanize us, reprogram us, and convince us to give up more of our freedom for a sense of security. Through the story of Mo (Dylan McDermott), a scavenger, and his girlfriend, an artist named Jill (Stacy Travis), we get a glimpse of the modern condition of the world, one where scrappers can thrive if they are willing to risk their lives and artists, like Jill, struggle to get by despite creating transcendent works of art, things that belong in museums that no longer exist.

Hardware is caught in a post-apocalyptic moment where millions are dead in the relatively recent past, but some of humanity hasn't given up hope for the art and beauty of the world. Those people like Jill are the subject of this movie and how their desire for the culture of the past clashes with a violent and vile future continuing to unfold in new and more terrifying ways. Stanley's film bridges this gap beautifully with Stacy's deep longing for the world before the apocalypse, and Mo's more pragmatic but also romantic ability to live in the current moment, even discussing having children. I'm inferring a lot of this from Jill and Mo's dialogue which is far more surface level than I am letting you believe.

Meanwhile, exposition news tells us more about the corrupt government and a pirate radio D.J, voiced by Iggy Pop, tells us about the incredible advancements in war technology. One such advancement is the so-called Mach 13, a new style cyborg killer. Though promised as a device to kill enemies, the Mach 13 had to be disassembled and buried in the desert to stop it from killing many, many people deemed to be threats. That's where the Mach 13 is found by a scrapper named Nomad who takes the pieces of the cyborg to scrap. Nomad bumps into Mo and sells the Cyborg head to Mo who tries to flip it for a profit. Failing that, and losing money in the deal, Mo takes the head home where he gifts it to Jill to use in her latest art project.

The actual plot of the movie gets into gear as the Mach 13 head in Jill's apartment takes pieces from Jill's art and Mo's scrap, to rebuild itself. The gears and motors begin to turn as Mo and Jill bask in their post-sexual glow and Mo proves he can sleep through just about anything as Jill pulls the robot skull off of the wall, paints it with the American flag, and places it in one of her art exhibits. Using scrap pieces and discarded trash, the Mach 13 rebuilds itself in terrifying fashion and sets about killing people.

In a confounding element that is never explained, a gross neighbor of Jill's has hacked into this robot head and begins to use it to spy on her in the nude. It's super gross but it's also fitting of the overall fetid atmosphere that Richard Stanley intended for Hardware. That said, the movie never explains how he knew that this head was in Jill's apartment or how he knew how to hack it. He had no way of even knowing that Jill had the head. I'm certain the explanation for this is in the part of the movie that Miramax cut up to the film down to a more commercially viable length and that truly stinks. The lack of care in the edit is really harmful to what could be true cult horror classic.

The biggest appeal of Hardware is the look and texture of the movie. Hardware had an incredibly low budget. Thus, Richard Stanley relied heavily on a veteran crew to help come up with visuals that would give a sense of the scale of this post-apocalyptic nightmare while not breaking the bank. That is how we get a super creepy and effective opening scene in which a scavenger, known as Nomad (Carl McCoy) scours a desert bathed in red light that looks toxic. In reality, he's a guy walking in a desert wearing an unusual, steampunk inspired get up. But put together, with the red filter, eerie music, and the sight of a metal hand grasping out of the sand, make for a very effective series of creepy, tone setting visuals.

I also must praise the gore of Hardware. Once the killer robot reassembles itself using parts from Mo's scraps and Jill's scrap inspired art, it goes on a bloody killing spree involving a chainsaw hand attachment and a terrifying pair of hypodermic fangs that still have a toxic bite to them. The look of this robot creature is capped with a coat of paint on the robot skull that has become the lasting image of Hardware, an American flag that ends up going up in flames as our lead couple battles the killer robot. That's symbolic of something for sure, though the movie isn't quite sophisticated enough to stick the landing on deep, meaningful themes.

The appeal of Hardware is the inventive gore, the willingness to go gross or go home. The film crafts violent deaths on a shoestring budget that are as impressive and scary as any big time horror release that came after it. Richard Stanley and his team had very little to work with and made the most of it, even cutting a man in half with a door in an impressively gory fashion. Another death involves a chainsaw blade to the gut and, of course, those two hypodermic fangs need a payoff and they get one.

Hardware has its flaws but much of those are in the edit which cut far too close to the bones of this movie. In particular, the death of Mo's friend and junk dealer who buys what Mo scavenges. This man's death is intercut with action in Jill's apartment. The scene is so clumsily cut together that you cannot tell whether you are in Jill's apartment or in the junk shop. When the scene culminates in a death it takes far too long to realize which character is dead and how they died because the scene has been stripped down to almost nothing in terms of visual context.

To this day, director Richard Stanley is an enigma. Was he a brash young auteur or a madman who impressed the right people until his madness consumed him? It's probably a mix of both. It's clear from the Lost Soul documentary that Stanley was deeply troubled but it is also clear from Hardware and some of the remaining elements of The Island of Dr. Moreau, that Stanley has a dynamic mind and a knack for crafting memorable visual elements. Because of the interference of studios and movie stars, we will likely never know the extent of Richard Stanley's genius or madness. All we are left with are the scraps of Hardware that show a very talented and potentially brilliant director who burned brightly, quickly and fell from the sky.

This review of Hardware and the brief career of director Richard Stanley is a serialized piece from my book project, Horror in the 90s. The book is an exhaustive history and analysis of the horror genre in the years from 1990 to 1999. It's a pivotal decade where horror found respectability in movies such as Misery and Silence of the Lambs while also seeming to be fading into obscurity in terms of box office power until a scrappy little movie called Scream came along.. I am almost entirely through the horror movies of 1990 but I cannot finish the book without your help. Support Horror in the 90s by making a monthly pledge here on Vocal or you can leave a one-tip here on Vocal. You can also find me on my Ko-Fi account if you want to be sure that most of the funds are going toward me writing the book. Thanks!