Hobo with a Shotgun gives you exactly what you’d expect from a movie called Hobo with a Shotgun. You can decide whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but Magnolia has certainly put together a package worth owning if you fall on the side of the former.
Like Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun began as one of the fake trailers sandwiched between the Grindhouse double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, though Hobo appeared only in Canadian cinemas after it won a contest giving it the privilege to do so. Long story short, the fake trailer’s director (Jason Eisener) was ultimately given $3 million to make a feature from that premise and this is the result.
This exploitation film, in case the title isn’t descriptive enough, takes the Death Wish formula and puts it in hands of a homeless man played by Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner). He dreams of saving up enough money to buy a lawn mower so he can start a modest lawn care business. But he hops off a train into a seemingly lawless town and soon tires of the sadistic antics of local crime kingpin Drake (Brian Downey), prompting him to take it upon himself to take back the streets he so affectionately calls his home.
While Brad certainly wasn’t entertained, I enjoyed Hobo for the outrageous one-liners and over-the-top performances from Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman as Drake’s profanity spewing sons Slick and Ivan. There’s plenty of decapitations and blood for the gorehounds, but quotes like “when life gives you razor blades, you make a baseball bat covered in razor blades” are the real attraction here. The many plot holes require an almost amusing amount of oversight. Why did Hauer’s shotgun come pre-loaded? How do the bodies continue hanging from the man hole covers after the heads have been pulled off? Does it even matter?
This film isn’t filled with the abundance of grain that you’d probably expect from a so-called “grindhouse” movie. In fact, it was filmed digitally (using the RED Mysterium-X) and I’m glad that cheesy artificial scratches weren’t added to make it look more vintage. Heavily saturated and filled with neon filters, the look of the film is already ugly enough. This Blu-ray features an excellent transfer that maximizes that ugliness, which is probably the highest compliment I can hand the folks at Magnolia since that appears to be Eisener’s desired effect.
Hobo comes loaded with a barrel full of special features. The 45 minute making-of documentary “More Blood, More Heart” is a great place to start as it tracks the development of Hobo from the original fake trailer to the feature’s Sundance premier. Also worth watching are a pair of separate Fangoria interviews with Hauer and Eisener and a series of video blogs featuring the cast and crew used as part of the online marketing campaign to hype the film’s release. Quite fittingly, the other highlights include a bevy of trailers.
We get the original fake Hobo with a Shotgun trailer and the the hilarious Van Gore trailer that won Hobo‘s own faux trailer contest, as well as a pair of red band trailers and TV spots for the Rutger Hauer-led Hobo feature. On top of that, we get plenty of deleted scenes, an HDNet look at the film that shows Eisener and Hauer talking about the film while lying in bed together, the “Shotgun Mode” that allows the viewer to go behind the scenes while watching the feature film, and two audio commentaries. The one featuring Eisener and Hauer is predictably the more entertaining of the two.
One thing that remains consistent across all the film’s supplements is a general feeling of exuberance from Eisener and his friends/crew. They seem so genuinely thankful that someone would give them the money to make a feature film, even one budgeted at just $3 million. Their excitement is contagious and left me hoping they continue to get the opportunity to do what they love. It’s almost like watching those kids from Super 8, only these “kids” happen to be in their 30s.
The film is far more vile than the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse movies, but I’ve given my copy of Planet Terror plenty of spins over the years. I’m sure Hobo will have a similarly high replay value if it sounds like your cup of tea.
