Hardware Wars, 1978.
Directed by Ernie Fosselius.
Starring Scott Mathews, Cindy Furgatch (Freeling), Jeff Hale, Bob Knickerbocker, Frank Robertson, and Paul Frees.
SYNOPSIS:
Ernie Fosselius’s seminal parody Hardware Wars arrives on Blu-ray from MVD, featuring a new 2K remaster from the only known 16mm print in existence, along with a big batch of extras that prove the writer and director is great at not taking himself too seriously. If you’re like me and have fond memories of watching this silly short film on HBO way back when, this is a must-have.
Youngsters reading this review may be surprised to learn this, but HBO was kind of a Wild West in its early days. Sure, it showed plenty of movies, but it was also a little like YouTube before the Internet became a thing, serving up shorts such as Bambi vs. Godzilla and the subject of this review, Hardware Wars.
As far as I know, Hardware Wars is the first video parody of Star Wars (if not, then it’s definitely the first one to get mainstream attention). The humor employed by writer/director Ernie Fosselius is definitely of the MAD Magazine variety, as Fluke Starbucker, Ham Salad, Chewchilla the Wookiee Monster, and Augie “Ben” Doggie try to save Princess Anne-Droid from the clutches of Darph Nader (ask your parents about Ralph Nader).
The robot 4-Q-2, who resembles the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, and Artie Deco, a plucky droid who looks suspiciously like a canister vacuum cleaner, go along for the ride. Ham Salad’s spaceship is an iron, the Death Star is a waffle iron, and the laser blasts were created by scratching the film negative. When Chewchilla gets hungry, he munches on the cinnamon rolls that adorn the princess’s head.
“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss three bucks good-bye,” as narrator Paul Frees says in his best Orson Welles imitation (he was a great vocal talent who left the world too soon). Yes, Hardware Wars is corny, but I loved it as a kid and still love it today.
If you feel the same way, you’ll want this new Blu-ray from MVD Entertainment. A note at the beginning of the film says that the short was restored from the only known 16mm copy, which was not in great shape. The decision was made to leave the dirt and non-intentional scratches intact, rather than digitally remove them, since that’s how people originally saw Hardware Wars in 1978. I think that’s fine, since I can’t imagine anyone buying this Blu-ray is looking for a stellar audio/visual experience.
This is actually the second time the film has been remastered in 2K, and the version created in 2012 is included here too, which isn’t a big deal since this is a nine-minute movie that isn’t going to strain the disc’s capacity.
As far as bonus features go, there are a lot of them here, starting with a commentary track by Fosselius. It opens with him arriving to the session late, after the recording has already started, and, unsurprisingly, goes sideways from there. It’s a funny track, although I do wish he had also done a serious one, just to learn more about how the short came about.
There’s also a “director’s cut” of the film that uses outtakes, screwed-up shots, and other mistakes meant to show Fosselius’s ineptitude, along with a foreign version that has the characters speaking a pidgin Italian. Hardware Wars Saved Christmas is a goofy holiday story that uses festive versions of shots from the film.
Moving on, we have a 5-minute piece titled Hardware Wars Prequel Featurette, which is a parody of PBS’s Antiques Roadshow TV series. Someone shows up with the only remaining print of Hardware Wars, which the appraiser says was made before Star Wars, and George Lucas copied the short.
The Hardware Wars-related extras finish off with a one-minute round-up of awards it has won, including the 2003 Star Wars Fan Films Pioneer Award, and a six-minute 1978 interview with Fosselius from the late-night show Creature Features. He’s billed as a Video Laugh Specialist and talks about what he does as if it’s a job where he goes to people’s homes to make them laugh; he ends by hawking Hardware Wars merchandise.
Hardware Wars wasn’t Fosselius’s only movie parody, however, and two of them are also included here: Porklips Now, which he made in 1980, and Plan 9.1 From Outer Space from 2009. The former puts a meat-inspired spin on Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic while the latter uses puppets to re-stage scenes from Ed Wood’s schlocky classic. Both are about 21 minutes long.
MVD also included a mini poster as well as an insert that advertises actual modern day Hardware Wars merchandise: a souvenir program and a pack of trading cards.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
