**½/****
starring Rutger Hauer, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworth
screenplay by John Davies
directed by Jason Eisener
by Alex Jackson Director Jason Eisener and screenwriter John Davies must have been left in the care of a particularly negligent babysitter throughout the 1980s. Their Hobo with a Shotgun, an adaptation of a fake trailer the two made for Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse contest back in 2007 (it won, and was subsequently attached to Canadian prints of the film), not only cites Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Robocop, and probably Cobra among its myriad references but also pays what I think is an incontrovertible homage to Tinto Brass's infamous 1980 debacle Caligula. The villain's preferred method of public execution greatly resembles Caligula's "lawnmower" and he has no shortage of naked bimbos to shower in the blood or join in on the torture. Hobo with a Shotgun is essentially in the Troma tradition–there's a rather studious contempt towards anything resembling introspection or sincerity, much less good taste, and there's a very deliberate amateurishness at work here. Perhaps nothing demonstrates this more than the garishly oversaturated cinematography; Hobo with a Shotgun isn't upstaged by its look, though it is defined by it. This isn't a real movie so much as the kind of X-rated cartoon that pedophiles keep in the basement for the purpose of grooming young boys. Similarly attention-grabbing are the villain's two sons, Tom Cruise parodies who sport Ray Bans, drive a DeLorean, and whoop and holler like they're in The Color of Money. They mutilate homeless men for sport, placate the townspeople with Tony Montana-sized mounds of cocaine, and recite dialogue like, "The only thing I'm going to let slide is my dick in your pussy." Somehow, the joke of this '80s rich-kid douchebaggery never grows stale.
