Bullet Points: Hardware (1990)

Some movies sneak up on you. I had no idea what to expect from Hardware. Most times, I’ll pull up the trailer or read the headline of a couple reviews on IMDb just to see if it’s worth my time. The brief synopsis on HULU was enough for me here. Sometimes, it’s better to watch a movie with no expectations….

Synopsis: The head of a cyborg reactivates, rebuilds itself, and goes on a violent rampage in a space marine’s girlfriend’s apartment.

• The Scavenger: The movie opens with a lone scavenger searching through some junk in the desert. The movie takes place in the year 2000, but it’s a future where a nuclear war has devastated the nation and turned it into a shell of its former self. There isn’t much water to speak of and folks are scrapping and selling whatever they can find. This particular scavenger comes across a few parts to a machine and sells them to Dylan McDermott’s Moses. What a gift this thing will make…

• Cool Apartment: Stacey Travis plays our main character, Jill. While the camera mostly follows her around during the movie one might argue that her massive apartment is a character all to itself. She has her art pieces all over the place and the lighting and moodiness of the environment really add to the horror of what is about to happen.
• Jill and Moses: Jill (Stacey Travis) is a metal worker and artist. She welcomes home her old flame Moses (played by Dylan McDermott) from his most recent tour with some space Marine outfit. Mo has a fake robotic looking hand but otherwise is as normal as you can be in this post-nuclear war America. Jill and Moses have some issues between them. Jill never leaves her apartment and Mo is never home so their relationship is far from healthy.

• Hello Neighbor: Veteran actor William Hootkins ( he played the portly pilot in Star Wars Episode IV!) plays Jill’s neighbor Lincoln. It’s only important because we get a brief glimpse into the life of “Link” as he straight-up pervs out on Jill by watching her and Mo through the window with his telescope. Not only is he a hardcore creeper, but he also calls over to Jill’s apartment and says horribly graphic things to her. Link certainly makes an impact in his short amount of screen time but it’s nothing compared to what happens when he goes over to Jill’s place to “rescue” her.

• Mark-13: By the time that Jill and Moses have a little time to reconnect, Mo is already out the door and Jill is waking up alone again. Her loneliness stops mattering when the robotic parts reconfigure themselves into a new type of killing machine and attack Jill lying in her bed. The machine has a few methods; a buzz saw, a weird penis-shaped drill, some toxin-laced needles, and sharp pointy things that are bound to do something bad. The machine looks way cooler after Jill gives it an American flag paintjob on its head. I wish the lighting in the movie gave us some better images of the thing but there is an awful lot of darkness in this movie.

• Send in the Cavalry: Jill fights the machine off as best she can. In fact, she does a damn good job of not getting killed and when Moses and his pals finally show up we’re treated to some more killing and destruction. The film had to go through some cuts to get it down to and ‘R’ rating but my version still had an awful lot of gore. Jill earns some mad street cred by swinging a Louisville slugger around like she’s a young Albert Pujols. The finale gets a little trippy at times but it never skips out on the violence.

The Verdict: Not knowing what I was getting into with Hardware, I was pleasantly surprised. I really dig the tone of the movie with its Heavy Metal music and musical cameos and such. Going with gratuitous violence never hurts either when you’re trying to bring a killing machine to the screens. Stacey Travis was pretty damn badass. If this movie had been a bigger hit with a  sequel or two, we might be mentioning her when we talk about the great female action heroes in film. Dylan McDermott doesn’t do much, to be honest. He’s not really the heroic soldier that I thought he would be. Either way, Travis rules, the sex scene was great, and there is just enough carnage to keep me entertained.