HARDWARE
A review in the public domain
by The Phantom
(baumgart@esquire.dpw.com)
The Phantom has always thought of bad films as diseases. In order to survive them, one must either immunize oneself beforehand or find an antidote afterwards.
This week, the Phantom plans to do both, as the film to which he was just subjected was so indescribably bad, so laughably awful, so unrelentingly stupid, that neither immunization nor antidote alone will suffice. Fortunately for his sanity, he rented THE GODFATHER earlier this week, so he went into HARDWARE knowing that no matter how bad it was, he would still be able to walk out of the auditorium with fond memories of an excellent film -- even if it wasn't the film he had just seen.
Though he didn't think that such precautions would be necessary with the subject of this review. Believing that good previews, good commercials, and what seemed to be raves from Wes Craven, Clive Barker and Fangoria magazine (prominently displayed in the full-page New York Times ad for the film) portended a good new horror film, he didn't think twice about recommending it to two of his like-minded friends. After all, while he would never assume that there was anyone else who would enjoy watching, say, THE FIRST POWER with him, here was a film that might even be in the same class as HELLRAISER or perhaps ALIEN. Surely, even if it wasn't quite up to that level, it would at the very least be entertaining, or gory, or something.
Well, no. Instead, the Phantom found that even the aura of THE GODFATHER couldn't save him; instead, he'll have to find an antidote this evening in order to rid his system of the poisonously bad trash he had just seen. One obvious antidote to HARDWARE is ALIEN, one of the dozen films that HARDWARE either pays homage to or rips off, depending on how charitable one wants to be. Another possible antidote would be THE ROAD WARRIOR, or HELLRAISER, or DEMON SEED, for there are bits and pieces of all of these films scattered throughout the post-apocalyptic, cinematic wasteland that is HARDWARE.
HARDWARE is a recipe film, which is a little different than a high-concept film. To make a recipe film, you first line up all your ingredients, which in this case would be ALIEN, DEMON SEED, THE ROAD WARRIOR, MAX HEADROOM, and HELLRAISER. Then you add a half cup of one, 20 minutes of another, a few tablespoons of this and a pinch -- just a pinch, mind you -- of imagination. Stir thoroughly, until the ingredients mix just well enough to avoid litigation; you don't want the lawyers to see whole chunks of, say, ALIEN, floating about in your stew. The result? Something that's saleable and marketable, but which leaves its diners wondering what it was that got them to try even a spoonful, let alone consume all 90 minutes of it.
Since the Phantom is having a sale on similes this week, let's try one more. HARDWARE is a camel of a film. Like THE FIRST POWER, it becomes obvious after only 10 or 15 minutes that the film was not so much imagined or created, but constructed and packaged. The Phantom made the mistake in his last review of wondering whether horror films were returning to their roots, whether films like THE EXORCIST III marked the return of the intelligent horror film and an end to the mind-numbing kill-by-the-numbers sequel-fests and poorly plotted and scripted turkeys that have plagued horror phans for years now. But HARDWARE is as unlike THE EXORCIST III as it *is* like THE FIRST POWER. It is a film that proves that for every talented British horror writer and filmmaker like Clive Barker, there must be at least as many untalented hacks who are capable only of the poorest sort of plagiarism. Or worse, are capable only of producing something like HARDWARE.
Now that he's gotten that out of his system, the Phantom will attempt to explain HARDWARE's lame-brained plot. There is no way to spoil a film like HARDWARE, as that implies that there might be surprises to be given away, or unique plot twists or special effects that might be ruined should audiences find out about them before seeing the film. Too, the Phantom would like to think that anyone who sees HARDWARE after reading his review must be a bit of a masochist, so perhaps such a person would enjoy having the film's few plot twists revealed so that he or she may be as fully miserable as possible while watching it.
As the film began, the Phantom suffered a brief TOTAL RECALL flashback, for the film seemed to be set on Verhoeven's Mars, sans the fake looking Martian colony and the shoddy optical printing. But that bit of prescience should have alerted the Phantom to the horrors yet to unfold -- he should have heeded his sixth sense and ducked into DARKMAN next door. Instead, he stayed to find out what this new twist on THE ROAD WARRIOR might be like and found to his dismay that it was no twist at all -- it was more like a cut-rate wholesale transplantation of about 15 minutes of that fine film. We see the lone man walking through a desert; we see the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world around him; we see the remains of civilization going about their miserable and dirty business; we even see the curious mixing of the old and the very new that was strikingly original when we first saw it in BRAZIL and MAX HEADROOM some years ago, but which by now is little more than another science fiction cliche.
But what we don't see is anything even remotely connected with the rest of the film, with the exception of an old, junked robot that the lone man finds buried in the desert. This robot is the star of the second half of the film, but as it is found only minutes into the first half, the director spends the remaining 43 minutes in the post-apocalyptic city and surrounding areas. A travelogue it is not, and neither George Miller nor Mel Gibson have anything to fear.
We meet the protagonist. We meet his girlfriend. The action shifts to the girlfriend's apartment, where she works as an artist who assembles junk -- mostly scrap metal -- as sculpture. The protagonist brings the robot's head to the girlfriend as a Christmas present, and she duly incorporates it into her art. But soon it turns out that the robot was a Mark 13 military robot, a droid whose prime directive is to kill people and who has an amazingly strong survival instinct. Uh oh. The Phantom got good and worried at this point, and began to keep his eyes peeled for the sudden appearance of Spring-Loaded Cats, blue fog, pods, and little crab-like things that attach themselves to people's faces. Alas, all he found was fog, some of it blue, and some of it clouding whatever limited intelligence and originality the film had so far displayed.
Shortly after revealing the robot's origins in a scene reminiscent of THE EVIL DEAD, the robot begins to assemble itself (much like Frank did in the attic in HELLRAISER), incorporating lots of scary-looking hardware like buzz saws, drills, and anything else that was handy. And as this happens, the film just as quickly reassembles *itself*, shifting none too nimbly from ROAD WARRIOR mode to ALIEN mode. It was at this point that the Phantom put his hands to his ears so that he wouldn't have to listen to the sounds of breaking glass as logic and sensibility jumped out the window. He did, however, hear their screams as they plummeted to certain deaths.
Now that the robot has assembled itself, well, it must be time to kill people? Well, no. Of course, one would think that a military robot, programmed to kill, having rebuilt itself out of cables and aluminum siding and can openers and whatever else happened to be lying around, and having been left alone in an apartment with a defenseless girl would do the only logical thing -- kill her. But of course that couldn't happen, as both logic and sensibility were by then being rushed to the hospital where doctors would labor fruitlessly over them for another 40 minutes.
Instead we are treated to an extremely bad homage to the 1977 horror classic DEMON SEED. The robot stalks the girl -- very slowly and looking very much like five poorly-skilled and underpaid technicians were operating it -- and threatens her repeatedly with a drill bit that looks quite a lot like ... well, the Phantom is sure you get the picture.
It does kill someone, of course, and eventually other people show up and try to kill it. In between, the apartment's lights flash on and off, circuits short-circuit endlessly, hidden strobe lights are employed, and the audience is entertained with simulations of the robot's vision that were taken from the same kitchen cupboard that holds PREDATOR and WOLFEN.
Finally, the film winds down and in its last 15 minutes stirs in a few tablespoons each of the endings to BLADE RUNNER, ALIEN, and THE WIZARD OF OZ. Really. There's also a nice reverse homage to WAIT UNTIL DARK along the way, but that one brief scene is the only glimmer of intelligence in a film that is otherwise as intellectually arid as the post-apocalyptic wasteland in which it is set.
It has been a long time since the Phantom was so disappointed with a film, so misled by its advertising, and so saddened by the terrible waste of not just one or two, but dozens of the good ideas, clever and suspenseful scenes, and special effects that have until now brightened and enlivened the horror genre. There is quite literally no reason to see this film, even on video. In his review of THE EXORCIST III, the Phantom remarked that it was even worth $7.50, the extortionate price of a movie ticket in New York City. Well phans, HARDWARE isn't even worth a 99-cent special at Blockbusters. It is redeemed only because it makes nearly every other horror film look good in comparison, and because it reminds everyone who sees it of the dozens of excellent horror films from which it labors so hard to steal.
: The Phantom
: baumgart@esquire.dpw.com
: {cmcl2,uunet}!esquire!baumgart
.
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