And its grindhouse authenticity is no accident: Like the Machete that came before it, Hobo with a Shotgun has direct ties to Grindhouse, the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double-feature that paid homage to the genre -- namely, it started out as a fake trailer, entered by director Jason Eisner in a Canadian promotional contest for the film (it won, and accompanied Grindhouse in some Canadian screenings of the film). The original fake trailer is above, and it does a pretty good job as a loving send-up of the genre. The trailer for the actual movie, though, which is below, absolutely nails it:
From the soundtrack to the garish filters to even the typeface of the logo, Hobo with a Shotgun rings true, both in tone and in spirit: In the logical progression of exploitation flicks, the only valid entry to the canon is what tops what came before -- so you take a genre classic like Maniac, say, which was shocking enough in the early '80s to prompt a walk-out from Gene Siskel but now seems kind of tame, and you up the ante. More crazy fake blood. More vile characters. More disgustingly creative ways to kill people (did you catch that decapitation at 1:39? Awesome).
And in that respect, it's a success -- the trailer is enough to make you want to vomit, even if you are a fan of the genre. It's a film that has no redeeming value whatsoever, but then again, it would argue, neither does the world it inhabits.