“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near Tannuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain.” – Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty

I was once told that the mark of a real actor is the ability to deliver any kind of line whether it’s Shakespeare or a Tidy Bowl commercial. Rutger Hauer is one of those actors. That line is one of my favorite movie quotes but without Rutger Hauer the character Roy Batty would have been just another B-movie cliche. That one line explains everything about Blade Runner and there’s not a lot of actors that could have pulled it off. I guess that’s why I applaud Rutger for taking on Hobo With a Shotgun. It’s not a Tidy Bowl commercial but it is pure Grindhouse even more so than Machete.

Machete , directed by Robert Rodriguez, was one of the five fake trailers made for Grindhouse that subsequently became a movie. Hobo With a Shotgun was the winning entry in Rodriquez’s  2007 SXSW Grindhouse Trailer Competition. It’s obvious that there is a lot of over the top talent waiting to make trashy films out there; Check out Maiden of Death or The Dead Won’t Die on YouTube. The creators of Hobo With a Shotgun: Jason Eisner, screenwriter John Davies and producer Rob Cotterill found themselves with a miniature hit on their hands. In Canada it was included with the five original fake trailers and the popularity on YouTube soared. I admired Robert Rodriquez for getting Machete financed, Hobo With a Shotgun gives me hope that real people can still make movies too.

 

 

Welcome to Hope Town. Yeah right look at that sign and turn around. If you’re living behind a dumpster in Hope Town you’re a plaything for freaks. It’s endless fun for The Drake (Brian Downey) and his sons, Slick (Gregory Smith) and Ivan (Nick Bateman). Liberty Valence, excuse me The Drake, just terrorizes the law abiding citizens and they keep their eyes averted if they know what’s good for them. Since Jimmy Stewart isn’t around the town has to wait for the hobo played by Rutger Hauer.

Our Hobo hero has been around. He knows how to keep out of trouble but some remnant of humanity moves him to step in when streetwalker Abby (Molly Dunsworth) picks up the wrong John. He was just trying to get money to buy a lawnmower to start a little business and get off the road but Abbey becomes his reason to buy a shotgun instead and take care of all the scum one shell at a time. I’m not sure what I’d think if the local newspaper started to have headlines like: “Hobo stops Begging, Demand’s Change” and “Parent’s Smile as Bodies Pile” I guess I’d tell Acadia to put away his Santa Suit and infographic for a while.

It ain't 1981 anymore for sure.

Did I mention The Plague? if The Drake isn’t enough in his John Travolta disco white suit there are two robo-bikers that live in a goth castle and drag and armored coffin behind their bikes. I remember lots of pot smoke in the theater when I watched these kind of movies in the eighties but it’s still a lot of over the top fun without that. It’s an unrepentant assault on good taste and mainstream values that spits on mainstream movies like a good Punk Rock band.

 

Still Jello Biafra is fifty three and has a pot belly now. I worry about him stage diving and sometimes it just seems like he’s going to break a hip. I’d worry about getting mugged too if I went into the kind of neighborhood I saw the Grindhouse films in originally. I’m just getting too old for the mosh pit and getting a contact high in a grimy theater that shows XXX during the day. If you have to put a newpaper down first I’m waiting for it to hit the art house or Netflix instead.

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