Highlights
- Hardware may have bad special effects and questionable acting, but its political commentary is surprisingly effective.
- Despite its flaws, this cult classic horror film has stood the test of time and even influenced movies like The Matrix.
- Hardware may be more focused on gutsy visuals than quality storytelling, but its willingness to lean into its own quirks makes it an entertaining watch.
Many sci-fi horror fans shun Hardware as a cheesy mess of bad special effects and questionable acting, but that hasn’t stopped this 90s movie from becoming a beloved cult classic. Richard Stanley wrote and directed Hardware as a commentary on America slowly sliding into fascism. Without getting into how close to home this theme hits, it’s also surprising how effectively it was handled. This didn’t exactly put Stanley into the pantheon of greatest horror filmmakers of all time. His high-minded concept barely even translates throughout the movie.
It’s hard to think about American politics when talented actors are fighting a bargain-bin version of the Terminator. Yet, Hardware clearly did something right as horror movie fans are still talking about it over thirty years later. In many ways, this ‘little horror movie that could’ was ahead of its time. With a little squinting, one might even spot the ways it might’ve influenced the worldbuilding in movies like The Matrix. Hardware is more gutsy visuals than quality storytelling. It more than makes up for its own faults, though, by being exactly what it is and leaning into its own quirks.
What is Hardware about?
Hardware is very similar to other sci-fi movies. It’s got a kind of Blade Runner meets Dune vibe about it. It takes place in an unnamed city at an unspecified point in an orange, dystopian future. On its face, Hardware is simply about a man trying to win back a woman’s heart by appealing to her passions. Moses ‘Hard Mo’ Baxter (Dylan McDermott) goes to a junkyard to sell valuables for credit pieces. He just wants to buy his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis) a Christmas gift. When Nomad (Carl McCoy) enters with the intent to sell android pieces, Moses buys them for himself.
He keeps a lot of it – including the head – and sells the rest to the junkyard owner Alvy (Mark Northover). The android pieces turn out to be the broken prototype of the M.A.R.K. 13. Moses later reads a bible passage to Jill as she sleeps. He ironically lands on Psalm Mark 13:20, which says: “No flesh shall be spared”. Somehow, this leads him to guess the terrifying truth about this seemingly ordinary android. Talk about jumping to conclusions. The M.A.R.K. 13 was created by the government to bring about genocide in the name of controlling the population. Later that night, the M.A.R.K. 13 puts itself back together and immediately starts getting into murderous mayhem.
Why is Hardware considered a cult classic?
Hardware is a cult classic because it doesn’t hold back on doling out a campy good time. Yet, it manages to miss the pitfalls of most movie tropes. Jill is Moses’ girlfriend. She could’ve easily been the nagging type or the precious sweetheart who exists only to please her man. Instead, she welds, makes art, and isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Jill also fearlessly enjoys her own body and the pleasures she experiences by Moses’ hand (among other things). Moses comes off more like someone half-assedly cosplaying as a leading male action hero. He’s cocky, slightly manipulative, and sometimes rude.
At the same time, he curls up into a ball when he sleeps and lets Jill be the big spoon in their post-coital snooze. He’s a little less Mad Max and a little more Korben Dallas. The thing that truly defines Hardware as a cult horror movie, though, has to be the graphics. It at least sticks to mixing CGI with practical effects, but it’s still something to behold. To put it plainly, they’re awful. The villainous M.A.R.K. 13 looks like a junk pile come to life and moves like it needs an oil change. Still, it’s a good time that one can share with family, friends, and lovers alike.
How does Hardware end?
In the end, Jill has to fight for her life as the M.A.R.K. 13 chases her around her apartment. On its face, Hardware asks the important question of what happens when gift-giving goes terribly wrong. Moses just wanted his girlfriend to forgive him for his long absence. How was he supposed to know the android pieces he got her would come alive and try to kill her? Hardware later reveals that the government broadcast running in the background is setting up the public reveal of the M.A.R.K. 13. In the meantime, Jill struggles to be both clever and scared out of her mind. It causes her to make a string of dumb choices among some really smart ones.
Like hiding in the freezer when she realizes the M.A.R.K. 13 is using infrared to see. She’s one of the Final Girls that no one really talks about even though she kicks major butt and eventually makes it out alive. In Final Girl fashion, though, her survival comes with a high price. The M.A.R.K. 13 kills Moses and Alvy. It also kills her security guard Vernon (Paul McKenzie), and uses her front door to chop his friend/co-worker Chief (Oscar James) in half. The horror ends with Jill and her friend Shades (John Lynch) destroying the evil android. All it took was a hot shower and a hard bat.
Hardware is certainly no Terminator. It’s not a riveting tale about one woman’s fight against the futuristic android looking to end her life. Just because it’s not lauded as a masterpiece, however, doesn’t mean that Hardware has no entertainment value. In a weird way, what makes it bad also makes it fun to watch. There’s just something really pleasing about low-budget horror movies. What they lack in funds they more than make up for in heart. Plus, Hardware benefits from an even deeper theme with unsettling relevance to modern times.
The movie highlights its characters’ lack of resistance to the rising authoritarian regime. Sure, Jill complains about it as she works. She and Moses even argue about it. But unlike most other dystopian movies, there’s no rebellion forming against the increasingly intrusive government oversight. It’s just a noose slowly tightening around their necks until its evil influence is too close to home for them to ignore it anymore. Hardware ends with the English band Public Image Ltd crooning, “This is what you want/This is what you get”. It feels oddly appropriate, somehow.