Seemingly inspired more by the sincere splatter genre than the “in it for the money” Grindhouse exploitation industry, Hobo With A Shotgun builds on its original basic revenge-thriller fake trailer into something greater and quite unexpected.
As with the best of the splatter output Hobo With A Shotgun is a horror movie for people who don’t like scares, but instead enjoy the OTT thrills and chills of ridiculous amounts of fake blood and theatrical amputations. It’s not offensive, it’s just a live action cartoon for adults.
Amongst its many influences are to be found ingredients from Evil Dead 2, Braindead and Tokyo Gore Police liberally folded into the mix, as well as nods to classic anime, with The Plague duo being reminiscent of the apparently indestructible Gold and Silver team from Osamu Dezaki’s 1983 Golgo 13 adaptation.
If you’re wanting to look deeper into the film’s subtext then you could also see this as an unofficial prequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, with Rutger Hauer’s disillusioned replicant Roy Batty arriving at the Westworld-like twentieth century themed Hope Town where violence and corruption are acted out for the pleasure of the masses. It is here in Hope Town that Batty meets Priss for the first time, in the form of Molly Dunsworth’s hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Abby.
But maybe that’s just me imagining things.
Director Jason Eisner manages to keep control of a visually off-the-rails production and does what the exploitation films he pays tribute to often fail to do: be not boring. Although he surely couldn’t have pulled off such a laudable feat without the touching, played-for-straight performances of Hauer and Dunsworth and an inventive crew of special effects artists.
My above theory that Hope Town is really a theme park for bloody entertainment is my only way to explain the one area where the film is slightly let down – which is in the performances of its villains who certainly don’t play it straight. I imagine that they too are replicants programmed to act like people in 2019 believe people acted like a few decades previously. At least I hope that’s the reason. This can also help to explain some of the heightened scenes of horror and rampant amorality that pass by the in-film general public without them doing much about it, in particular one involving a packed school bus and a flame thrower.
