Sometimes a movie can be a best horror movie you never saw candidate but there are other instances where a movie has been seen and talked about but altogether lost to time. Richard Stanley has had a long career in terms of time he has been active but a very small amount of output in terms of actual number of projects. While the saga of his journey to direct the big budget remake of The Island of Doctor Moreau and subsequent firing has been widely captured in the documentary Lost Soul and his latest success with The Color Out of Space was highly regarded but tinged with controversial allegations, he had a couple of gems before all that. Dust Devil, his sophomore effort, still very much so belongs in the Best Horror You Never Saw category and I will get to that one too, but Hardware (pick up a copy at THIS LINK) is such a unique animal that I had the urge to revisit and remember why I dug it all those years ago.

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The movie was called derivative of things like Alien and Terminator for obvious reasons. The central robot stalker could be right out of Skynet’s early arsenal to go after John Connor and the isolation and claustrophobia the seethes into almost every scene after the first 20 minutes wears it’s inspiration of fleeing the xenomorph on its futuristic sleeve. Going beyond that though, the movie had more inspiration to it whether it was intentional or not. While its admitted and direct inspirations were from the works of Philip K Dick, Damnation Alley, and Soylent Green, it bared a little too much resemblance to a comic called SHOCK that appeared in the weekly British sci fi comic 2000 AD in 1980. The creators sued and were successful enough to not only get the writer’s credit but also get a little based on blurb in later releases of the movie. Think Terminator having to acknowledge the great Harlan Ellison and his story Soldier from Tomorrow.

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Hardware is a great time and it’s a shame that it isn’t easier to find. Sure, you can get a used copy of that Severin disc that I talked about but $100 can be a hard pill to swallow even if the thing was brand new. It’s possible that we could get a future physical release, or you could always import a copy from another region if you have the means and, if you’ll excuse me, Hardware but for now I’d say if you can catch it somewhere then consider yourself lucky. It’s the type of movie that rarely gets made anymore and while that’s a bummer, it’s nice to know these still exist and maybe inspire filmmakers in the future.