Hobo with a Shotgun...

Every now and again a film comes along that makes you proud of where you come from, no matter where that happens to be. 

For horror enthusiasts, this is all the more true, as so much of our genre is dominated by films that are horrible in all the wrong ways.

Our French kin have been managed to shock the fuck out of us in recent years, think: Inside, High Tension, Martyrs. 

Those Spaniards spooked us out with The Orphanage and have been riding rabid on the whole REC franchise. 

You can always trust the Americans to remake anything they think people will pay a buck for, and I guess we have to thank them for giving us George A. Romero and zombies and slasher films and invincible super killers and pedophiles that invade our dreams.

And don’t get me started on those Asians, with their J-Horror and K-Horror. 

Even fellow Commonwealth members have been in on the carnage, with Shaun of the Dead coming out of the U.K. and the absolutely fucking amazing The Loved Ones coming out of Australia in 2009. 

For us Canadians, we haven’t really had that much to cheer about lately in terms of horror. I mean, David Cronenberg is Canadian, ehh? But he hasn’t really been active in the genre for a while and is probably off somewhere with Viggo Mortensen filming more movies or falling in love or some shit.

Let's not forget our proud history: our country folk are responsible for the original Black Christmas and My Bloody Valentine films. 

Canadian Vincenzo Natali brought us the Cube films in the 1990s which undoubtedly influenced the whole Saw series, as well as last year’s Splice, but that movie kind of sucked. 

We can also take credit for the the whole puberty/werewolf allegory of Ginger Snaps.  And for making a somewhat intelligent zombie movie by the name of Pontypool, which really is an interesting take on the whole zombie mythos. 

And really our film industry and government incentives does lead to a lot of shit being filmed here, some of it genre.

With this year’s Hobo with a Shotgun, we really do have something all our own though. 

A film written and directed by Canadians. Filmed in Canada. Filled mostly with Canadian actors. A film that is actually super fantastic. 

I’m not really one for nationalism, but this is really a nice story.

It all started when Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were putting together Grindhouse. They wanted people to make throw back exploitation trailers and submit them. 

They’d pick a winner, and that trailer would be shown between the two films that made up Grindhouse.

Hobo with a Shotgun won the whole damn thing. 

Written and directed by Nova Scotia boys John Davies and Jason Eisener respectively, the short eventually made it’s way into the blood soaked, off the wall feature film I had the pleasure of watching earlier this evening.

And really, this is the best film I’ve seen all year. 

The premise is simple: a hobo without a name rides the rails and gets of in Hope Town-- colloquially known as Scum Town by the residents--which is an absolute shit hole full of murdering, rape, drugs and a pedophile Santa. 

Visually, Scum Town is very interesting, a kind of graffiti Western urban decay kind of vibe. 

Said hobo just wants to save up for a lawn mower, so he can start his own mowing business, but eventually gets caught up in the ville’s violence and uses the money he saved up to buy the titular shotgun and make things right “one shell at a time,” as the poster boasts.

There’s really not much point in telling you all what I liked, because I liked absolutely fucking everything. 

As campy as some of it is, film legend Rutger Hauer plays hobo with such an earnestness and gravity that he really is the heart of the film and all the hyper violence and messed up shit that happens around him never manages to get silly or escape the realm of seriousness he projects onto all of it.

The writing here is absolutely fucking brilliant, too. There are so many great lines and exchanges...

Ivan:

They are going to fear the fuck out of me. In fact, they are going to make comic books out of my hate crimes.

Hobo:

I promise you, when I get out of here, I am going to bite your face off.

Gives you a taste for what you can expect in terms of dialogue. 

Also expect tonnes of gore, a dozen or so incinerated school children, two bad ass demon type things that might have killed Jesus and Joan of Arc, and a cameo by George Stroumbolopoulous. 

Really, a must see. Should be part of the school curriculum, I'd say. 

I give this film five out of five shot gun blasted, man hole decapitated stuck thumbs because this is the kind of shit that really makes me proud to be Canadian.

xoxo

D-bag