Film Summary CDXXXIV (Hobo with a Shotgun)


There's a Hobo travelling via train who stops off in the most miserable looking town in all of North East America. He has a dream, he wants to own a lawn mower so he can mow Lawns as his profession. In a way he is the quintessential Lawnmower Man.
But criminals and deadbeats keep getting in the way. The hobo decides to take up his own brand of vigilante justice. He beats the crap out of this one kid who's the son of the main crime lord of the town. He takes him to the police station only to be brutally assaulted and tossed out. For even the police are working for the criminals.

The hobo meets one nice person in the entire town. A prostitute girl whose luck is about as good as his. Now the hobo has a shotgun and he's going to clean up the city one Shell at a time. The rest of the movie is just him in a one-man Killing Spree against an entire city full of criminals and delinquents.
There's some over the top fighting and Gunplay at the very end of the film and the one girl gets involved in her own little Fiasco of violence.

Hobo with a Shotgun is one of those cheap late 80s early 90s looking films that you find on the back of a second hand shop with a cover that looks more interesting than anything the film could possibly hope to be.
Or at least that's the expectation of a film like this. Hobo with a Shotgun is surprisingly good. Not brilliant, not amazing. Just good.
With wonderful over-the-top Gore effects, some surprisingly good lighting and a cast of Wild and insane characters. It promises to be nothing but fun.
It lacks any form of actual emotion and any form of drama and tries to portray easily falls out the window when everybody starts getting their hand blown off.

I'm surprised they were able to keep this film entertaining the whole time. Most people who try to create purposeful Grindhouse exploitation usually end up making absolute crap.
But this film knew what it was doing. It was smart enough to spaced out its action and it wasn't stupid enough to have over the top encounter is in the very beginning. It's a steady buildup from partial Insanity to Absolute insanity.

They were smart enough to keep the movie under an hour and 25 minutes. This is a movie that benefits from a quick pace and direct confrontation. There's very little in the way of filler. The closest I could come up with would be the prostitute girl giving out a little monologue towards the end of the film after the hobo was kidnapped by the two ridiculous looking Armour-clad BDSM people.

I honestly wasn't expecting anything out of this film. I thought it would be a kind of enjoyable romp that would have a lot of middle-of-the-road filler. But it's consistently entertaining.

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