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First things first. If you don’t “get” exploitation filmmaking, nothing we say here is going to make you understand. Nor is it going to convince you to watch Hobo With a Shotgun, the Sundance darling from Michael Eisener now working its way through a platform release which includes pay-per-view digital download. The sensationalistic style of filmmaking is certainly an acquired taste and owes much of its current-day revival to purists, nostalgiacs and curiosity seekers. If its self-serving lavishness and indulgent excess never appealed to you in the past, then stay far way from Hobo with a Shotgun.
If, on the other hand, you get a rise from a film willing to tear to shreds the envelope of good taste and convention before lighting it on fire with an entire can of lighter fluid and a whole box of kitchen matches… and then grinding it all into the dirt with a booted foot, then head to the box office now.
A ‘70s-style opening sequence - complete with retro graphics, celluloid scratches, audio pops, and a shout-out to glorious Technicolor - highlights the titular hobo’s (Rutger Hauer) arrival into a new city some call Scum Town. What others sometimes call it rhymes with puck town.
What the grizzled, scratchy-voiced hobo observes upon setting foot off the train, rivals something out of A Clockwork Orange. A make-believe city permeating with crime, disease, and a citizenry that long ago surrendered to its bleak destiny. Where graffiti dominates the landscape and criminals prowl the streets under the rule of a crime lord named The Drake (Brian Downey) whom we first meet arranging a spectacularly gruesome beheading involving an open manhole, a crown of razor wire, and a manhole cover-sized yoke around the neck and his enemy. The resulting fountain of blood (can that really be a spoiler in a film like this) sets the film’s over-the-top tone. Eisener’s frequent use of Dutch angles, excessive cuts, and a constantly moving camera, owes its influence to the early films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.
To the hobo, a second-hand lawnmower hanging in a pawnshop window represents a means of cleaning up the city and starting a new life for himself. But the shotgun hanging one notch higher might be a more practical means of survival. In any other film, the irony of the character’s transformation might be worth studying: a societal reject outraged at the appalling state of the very civilization that has disowned him. But this is Hobo with a Shotgun! There’ll be no time for contemplation of such pompous nonsense. More people to kill.
The film’s middle is populated by a montage of the hobo dispatching scumbags with his trusty pump-action scattergun. No one’s safe from hobo justice, including crooked cops, pedophile Santas, and an endless supply of gold-toothed pimps. Even Slick and Ivan (Gregory Smith and Nick Batemen), The Drake’s preppy sons who aren’t above torching a school bus full of children with a flame-thrower, have a go with the homeless guardian angel.
Naturally, it’s all artfully done, sometimes only streams of blood splattering the bearded shooter’s face, other times the victim’s abdomen opening up before spilling guts onto the floor. Before it’s all over, we’ve been treated to an incredibly diverse array of homemade weaponry, ranging from ice skates to harpoons, and lawnmowers to toasters. Did you know a maimed limb could become an effective weapon?
Hobo with a Shotgun certainly delivers on its promises of excess. And we’re never above chalking up its many flaws to tone and style. As the film grinds through its choppy pacing, the atmosphere takes on a dreamlike quality, everything drenched in a Technicolor haze. And believe it or not, beneath the pile of bodies and layers of geeky excess lies a bit of heart in the form of a fair-haired maiden (OK, she’s actually a trashy hooker) named Abby (Molly Dunsworth) who joins forces with the hobo. Together they find themselves embroiled in a grindhouse Troma even the great Lloyd Kaufman would be proud of.
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