HARDWARE

HARDWARE. Richard Stanley, director, script. UK (and Morocco): Palace Pictures (prod.) / Miramax (US dist.), 1990. "Millimeter and Palace in Association with British Screen and British Satellite Broadcasting Present a Wicked Films Production." "Based on an original story entitled 'SHOK!' appearing in Fleetway Comics' '2000 AD' by Steve MacManus and Kevin O'Neill." With Iggy Pop as Angry Bob. Cyberpunk, heavy Industrial, postmodern movie, featuring a Mark 13 robot killing machine; rev. Brooks Landon, Cinefantastique 21.5 (April 1991): 22-23, our source for this portion of the entry. Landon relates the film to THE TERMINATOR and to the work of Mark Pauline, a San Francisco performance artist.

Note the film as also Horror-S. F., featuring a decayed, post-holocaust near-future, very funky world. A salvage man finds a disassembled M.A.R.K-13 AI combat robot that reconstructs itself in the apartment of a woman who tinkers with industrial art—the robot utilizing ambient odds and ends—and threatens the woman (sic on periods in M.A.R.K-13; and see Mark 13 in New Testament). See for Hand of Rotwang prosthetic on right hand of male lead. The robot's eyes become clearly activated during a sex scene, an activation visually connected with a voyeuristic photographer with a background in surveillance, a voyeur who ends up getting killed by the robot. For the M.A.R.K-13, Cf. denuded terminator robots in the Terminator films, plus various 'droids in the Star Wars series. Note occasional fractal imagery.

HARDWARE's cyberpunk roots "in the tradition of Industrial Culture music groups" is discussed by Brooks Landon, The Aesthetics of Ambivalence 101-02, 108.

Rev. Brooks Landon also in Cinefantastique 22.4 (Feb. 1992): 22-23.

The film is discussed at length by J. P. Telotte in "Enframing the Self: The Hardware and Software of Hardware," SFS#67 = 22.3 (November 1995): 323-32.

(RDE, 04/10/93, 18/11/93; expanded 12May19)