Jason Eisener – ‘Hobo with a Shotgun’
There’s a certain beauty to a so-called ‘B-movie’, the one-time low-budget bottom end of a double feature in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Of course, the term has been transcended now and includes films with higher budgets that merely toy with the genres and conventions previously associated with such efforts, particularly the horror and exploitation works of yore.
The brilliance of a good B-movie often comes in its unashamedness of being just that, and nowhere is this more evident than in Jason Eisener’s debut effort Hobo with a Shotgun from 2011. Eisener had won the fake trailer competition through Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 B-movie homage Grindhouse, which led to him getting his first big shot at making a feature-length film.
The result is nothing short of astounding, sickening, hilarious and eternally memorable. The exploitation black comedy action stars none other than the legendary Rutger Hauer in the titular role, an undoubted coup for the movie in sum. Hauer’s portrayal of a pissed-off hobo will, perhaps, in time, go down as one of his greatest roles, if not for its memorable nature, then for his ability to ramp up the tongue-in-cheek humour expected of a film in the black comedy exploitation genre and to intentionally act in the sense of poor quality.
Narratively, we find the said hobo arriving in the mis-aptly named Hope Town, although its sign has been replaced with the words Scum Town, many of which we will soon meet. Hope Town is run by a sick crime villain called ‘The Drake’ and his equally barbarous sons Ivan and Slick. Although the town, acts of sickening violence take place. Fellow hobos fight on film for small change, they’re tortured in arcade-style games, and even Ricky from Trailer Park Boys has his head decapitated for getting on the wrong side of The Drake.
But when The Drake and his sons act out on our hobo hero and his new friend, a prostitute called Abby he decides to take revenge. The hobo had his heart set on purchasing an admittedly useless lawnmower, a throwback perhaps to simpler times, but after performing in acts of true degradation for a filmmaker, he decides to buy a sawn-off shotgun to take his revenge on Ivan, Slick and The Drake.
Queue some of the best exploitation movie moments of the 21st century, let alone the cinema history period, as the hobo heads around the town delivering justice one shell at a time. While on the surface, Hobo with a Shotgun might seem something of a cheap throwaway (and on the one hand, of course, it unashamedly is), it actually serves as an examination of our contemporary ills.
Are not the “bumfight” filmmakers representative of Instagram and TikTok accounts looking for a cheap like, especially those that capitalise on the misfortune of others? Evil, in general, exists in the world, and though it’s portrayed through hyperbole in Eisener’s debut, it’s poignant nonetheless, elevated by a parody and pastiche of the 1970s trashy soundtracks of days gone by.
And it’s all delivered in a highly-saturated aesthetic; the blood is red as can be, Scum Town in a horrific neon, making the hobo’s justice all the more satisfying. And that word is perfect in summing up the Hobo with a Shotgun experience; every shell lands, and we more than root for our unconventional hero and lament his unfortunate end. Hobo with a Shotgun simply transcends what it is to be a ‘B-movie’. There’s no need for any presupposed level of intelligence here, replaced rather by an intoxicated visceral frenzy of violence.
