I'm no fan of modern art. Sure, it's "modern"--whatever that means--but is it "art?" The answer may surprise you.No. No, it is not art. Not even close to art. In fact, the quite substantial dump I deposited in my home toilet following my morning cup of coffee last weekend is closer to what I would personally consider art than the modern art I've forced myself to pay to see in the past few years, and not simply because I adorned it with glitter. No, my bowel movement was a thing of quiet beauty, organic and poignant without being pretentious. My crap deserves a place in a rich asshole's Hall of Paintings, which I assume every rich asshole has somewhere in his or her house. If I'm wrong, rich assholes, let me know. (I'm probably not wrong.)
If not being able to look at "modern art" without chuckling uncontrollably makes me some kind of Philistine, so be it. Who am I trying to impress? You people? What are you doing with your lives? You're reading a movie review blog maintained by a complete nobody, that's what you're doing. And I thank you for that.
Richard Stanley's Hardware asks the question, "What if all that horrible modern art stopped just sitting there making us laugh and came to life and tried to kill us?" And follows it with the question, "And what if it tried to kill us in a post-apocalyptic setting?" And ends this line of questioning with the question, "And what if the resulting film was nearly impossible to watch?" And Hardware was born!
Hardware takes place in "the future." The United States is mostly desert with the occasional nuclear power plant, smog factory, and huddle of dilapitated skyscrapers. The cities are filled with homeless butchers (Seriously, why is every single hobo in this movie chopping up meat? They don't even have any customers waiting! They're just slicing up weird pink meat for no one. It's sad when you think about it.) and metal band frontmen who have been forced to pilot water taxis in this sad new America born out of nuclear war, so much nuclear war, in fact, that the sky is permenantly stained orange and the air is mostly toxic. Not only that, but 80s-style music is all the rage and FCC regulations have been thrown out the window. That's right. In the new, poisoned American you can watch live torture on television and listen to a radio personality named "Angry Bob" (played by Iggy Pop) shout vulgarities all day long. And GWAR is still around! Yes, that GWAR!Oh, and the government is preparing to enact a non-voluntary sterilization program. Apparently, citizens lucky enough to have survived the nuclear holocaust are so filled-to-the-brim with radiation poison, the government has decided that procreation is no longer a viable option and those who disagree will be fined, jailed, and forcibly sterilized. That's some heavy shit you're laying down, Richard Stanley. It's forcing me to take a look at what's going on in my own time. The paralells and the similarities and whatever. Pardon me, but I'm just in utter awe of your insight, sir.
Stanley creates a pretty compelling world for his goofy characters to inhabit, but everything he sets up comes crashing down spectacularly when Hardware goes from a thoughtful, post-apocalyptic object lesson to a schlocky gross-out dark ride. But, hey, don't get me wrong: I love a good schlocky gross-out dark ride, keyword "good."
Moses Baxter--Moe to his friends--survives in this new desert-world by collecting, well, garbage and selling it to that fat asshole Burglekutt from Willow. Remember that guy? He was such a little jerk-off. Remember when Willow made that bird magically take a shit on Burglekutt's face? That was awesome! Anyway, that's who pays Moe for all the garbage he pulls out of the sand.
As the movie opens, we meet Moe and his British friend Shades, named so because he sometimes wears sunglasses, as they attempt to sell some useless crap to Burglekutt, or Alvy as he is known in this particular film. As they wait for the diminutive scam artist to return from the back room, a mysterious drifter enters the shop with his own burlap sack full of trash, or more specifically, various robot pieces. Moe buys the bag from the dude for 50, I would assume dollars, but who knows what they use for money in this topsy-turvy, post-apocalyptic world.
Anyway, Moe gives the bag of robot bits to Burgle...sorry, Alvy, taking a robot head for himself. "I'm gonna give this to Jill for Christmas," he smiles. "She'll love it." If you haven't already guessed, Moe is a total ladies man. Women love rusty robot heads, especially at Christmastime. Good call, Moses!
Jill, of course is Moe's long-suffering girlfriend, an artist of sorts, who lives in a sprawling, junk-strewn apartment like a sexy hermit. Her apartment is run exclusively by shitty, old-fashioned computers connected to a main control panel which also looks like total effing shit. Yes, in the future, mankind has been forced to return to the shitty personal computers of yore, only they can do far more than we ever, ever imagined. Why were we so hard on those little guys?
Moe shows up at Jill's, Jill welcomes him back with open arms--she loves the robot head, by the way--and the next thing you know, Moe is groping Jill's naked ass with his robotic hand (?) in the shower. Nice.
In a moment of post-coital inspiration, Jill affixes the robot head to an unfinished piece of crap, er, art, that she has been struggling with. She spray paints the head to resemble the American flag and melts a few baby dolls with a blowtorch to glue around the head. The whole piece is a statement on the government's desire to control society's reproductive habits. Or maybe it's just a bunch of melted baby dolls surrounding a rusty, robot head. I guess we'll never know because the robot head comes back to life, reassembles its body using the various tools strewn around Jill's apartment as well as bits and pieces of her supremely shitty trash sculptures. Then, as things often do in the films I reguarly review on this site, shit gets crazy.
From this point on, Hardware becomes a pretty standard "haunted house" movie. Things go bump in the night, those things just happen to have sawblade arms. Girls scream, blood spurts, robots jump out and say "boo." Blah blah blah. It's fun, but rather pedestrian.
I'd be remiss however if I failed to mention Lincoln Wineberg Jr., the thoroughly repellent neighbor character played by the late William Hootkins. Before Allen of Happiness fame, there was Lincoln Wineberg Jr. Lincoln--his friends allegedly call him Link--enjoys the finer things in life: stalking, dirty phonecalls, Peeping Tomism. Ah, the life of a fat pervert. A life of relavite ease, that is until a robot programmed to snuff out human life bores out your eyeballs and drill rapes your beer gut. Link exits Hardware the same way he entered: covered in sticky stuff.
If I was watching Hardware correctly--eyes open, head pointed at the television screen, volume at a suitable level--I think it is postulated by various characters that the robot, known as the MARK 13, is the government's chosen method to "thin the herd." Sterilization is just a lie the TV is reporting. Robots are the real answer. Death: the ultimate sterilization.
And, boy, do some sons of bitches get sterilized. Chief, the man in charge of building security who wears football pads for some reason, is chopped neatly in half by Jill's front door; Link, as mentioned before, is poked to death; Vernon, Chief's chess-partner and second-in-command, in the wrong place at the wrong time, gets shot in the skull; and Moses, our handsome hero, is injected with poison from MARK 13's needle-fangs. Damn.
Here's a question for those of you who have actually seen this film: Why does Moe start slicing the shit out of his arm after MARK 13 pumps him full of poison? And why does a roach crawl out of one of the cuts? I thought Moe was going to be exposed as a robot himself and whoop up on MARK 13 in a thrilling climax that would somehow make Hardware worthwhile. Instead, he dies and MARK 13 is killed by his sworn enemy: the shower.
Mustard?
Hardware is not good. It creates an interesting world and presents some thoughtful ideas, but deteriorates into a brainless splatterfest with strobe lights. Can we stop with the strobe lights please? They don't make things "more scary," they just get on everybody's nerves. I walked through a "haunted mental hospital" attraction last Halloween that packed it's last "scare room" with so many stobe light effects I thought I was going to have a seizure. It was awful. I've never felt closer to death. Did it have the desired scare effect? Probably, but I was scared for my life as opposed to scared of the local teenager in the blood-stained lab coat shoving a chainless chainsaw in my face. I'm just saying, leave the hacky strobe effects to Carowinds, Hollywood. You're better than that.
