50
Hardware veers loonily out of control and becomes a black comic exercise in F/X tour-deforce that’s ceaselessly pushing itself over the top.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
It's one of those movies made by hard-core techies, meticulous about the "period" details and utterly neglectful of pretty much everything else, including such nuances as plain old plot. [15 Sep 1990, p.E6]
50
The chief trouble with Hardware is that it doesn't seem to contribute anything uniquely its own to the genre, although it works hard dismembering bodies and otherwise crushing and tearing them apart with its circular saw and drill-bit arms after homing in on them with its ruby laser eyes. [14 Sep 1990, p.40p]
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott
To his credit, writer-director Richard Stanley, a South African native now living in England, brings his own bloody specialties to the banquet, and Hardware, although neither original nor especially thought-provoking, does serve its intended purpose by sending the hungry horror film fan away from the table satiated and nauseated. Compliments to the chefs. [12 Oct 1990]
50
Chicago Tribune by Johanna Steinmetz
Though it does know how to hammer home a point, Hardware doesn't always have matching nuts and bolts. It has an anarchic quality, a jolting, disorienting rhythm that makes us unsure of time frame in certain stretches and of motivation in others. [14 Sep 1990, p.I]
80
A little slow and vastly outdated now, but nonetheless very watchable.
30
Los Angeles Times by Michael Wilmington
Hardware isn’t long on ideas, emotions or character; it degenerates into a mindless slaughterhouse crescendo.
33
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Had the killer droid been conceived as a charismatic demon, Hardware might have delivered some B-movie kicks. As it is, there’s nothing particularly scary or awesome about this low-tech walking junk pile. It’s as if someone had remade Alien with the monster played by a rusty erector set.
37
Washington Post by Richard Harrington
While it's obvious that Stanley has seen a lot of genre films, he's not yet learned how to make one, though his shortcomings are less visual than dramatic and narrative; things look fast, but happen s-l-o-w. This Hardware needs a grease job.
20
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Hardware is a sci-fi-horror film of such dopiness that it seems certain to become a cult classic somewhere. Movies that are so insistently silly often have the effect of seeming to expand the mind after midnight, which may have something to do with metabolism if not with controlled substances.