Hardware

I originally saw this in the theater back in the day and have been a fan ever since. I ordered a dvd steelbook years ago, but the they canceled the steelbook and made a regular release. Unfortunately the dvd was defective and I had to return it. When I saw this 4K for preorder I couldn’t type fast enough. This is a great release, probably the best it’s going to look. It has some decent extras, about what you’d expect for an older film. It’s unfortunate the director hit some hard times, and wasn’t able to make more films. If you’re a fan this is a must buy.

Great cyberpunk movie. The 4K restoration is jaw dropping! This is the best the film is going to look and sound. Great Job Umbrella! Thank you, Amazon for having this to purchase!

Honestly, if they had more money, this movie would have been just another over-budget flop. However, this tight-budget production crucible, makes it a gem of a time capsule of it’s time.Historically the late-80’s to early-90’s is now know as the “cyberpunk era” of Silicon Valley. The movie’s music, costume, big-and-in-a-room-corner computers and over all wanna-be Film Noir "Blade Runner feel" brings back my memories of the clubs, parties and heavy metal girls of that time. Fond memories of the "hard new edge" technologies I worked on in warehouse lofts in San Francisco, down the peninsula, along the valley of spare offices in Industrial Parks of Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Bandley Drive in Cupertino and closed storefronts of downtown San Jose started to feel like the prototypes were right in front of me running code written that day with the rework solder on the printed circuit boards still cooling down.Heavy Metal was still king in the clubs and personal computers were hitting mainstream. Many consider the “Golden Age of Cyberpunk” starting with the release of William Gibson’s Neuromancer series (why there was no movie deal is a Greek tragedy) and slowing burning out with the release of Billy Idol’s Cyberpunk album and the Hackers movie. To many, it ended with the dot-com boom as web pages reached parity with Usenet group activity.It was a time when the first wearable and mobile systems came on the market from the decades ahead of it’s time Newton to countless startups that came and went. The first Virtual Reality systems came to market as a novelty giving the public a taste of cyberspace. Watching this movie in the now matured mobile technology and finally ambulatory wearable systems market in the second decade of the Twenty First Century, Hardware gives a shockingly accurate foresight.Of course there are anarchisms that’s nearly impossible to avoid. Land line video phones never came to be, the environment of the planet never became that screwed up as predicted and big hairstyles kept is knowing this is an 80’s ear film complete with a hot redhead. However, the concept of the self-repairing, self-assembling, heat-vison-driven and electrical-power-parasitic robot is shockingly vanguard for the time. The actors go a good job and you can see genius in the script scene with he budget they had to work with it.This movie along with Hackers (1995) makes for a very good Cyberpunk double-feature evening. Get your parachute pants and a bowl of microwaved popcorn ready for this treat. The second DVD in the package has a lot of extras completing the package. It also explains why its sequel was never made.

This review is for the Two Disc Limited Edition.This 1990 movie is somewhat a cult classic, so people tend to either love it or hate it. Think of it in terms of the 1950s and 1960s B-rated scifi. If you love those, you'll probably love Hardware. Why do I compare it to those 50s and 60s films? I do so because the special effects are mechanical, not CGI, and because the story line is rather simple. What you see is what you get. There aren't a lot of hidden meanings or agendas for you to attempt to ferret out. "No flesh shall be spared" became somewhat of a catch phrase for "Hardware." That wasn't something Richard Stanley originally planned. It was Dylan McDermott whom pointed out the similarity between the use of the MARK 13 robot and the Mark 13 Bible passage, although the Bible passage is more often translated as "no flesh should be saved."The real gem in this 2-disc limited edition is the 2nd disc. It includes the 54 minute, recently updated, documentary/making of featurette, "No Flesh Shall Be Spared." A special treat is the 1985 43 minute short, "Incidents in an Expanding Universe." This is the precursor to "Hardware." It's actually not bad, especially if you take into account this Super 8 film was made on a shoestring budget by a group of teens. You'll see some of the themes were used in "Hardware." Also of note are the flying cars, the design of which has been used a number of times since this was made. There are also two short-shorts, "Sea of Perdition, Ep. 7" and another very early Richard Stanley offering, filmed on Super 8, "Rites of Passage." In another featurette, Richard Stanley discusses what he had envisioned for "Hardware 2," with a bigger budget, and why it was never made. Also included are deleted/expanded scenes, a German trailer, and an original promo.