Hobo With a Shotgun is one of the
fake film trailers
featured in the
Quentin Tarantino/
Robert Rodriguez double feature Grindhouse (although, who knows whether any or all of them might be made into real
silver screen products). Different trailers were rotated into different showings of the film, so the
Hobo With a Shotgun trailer was seen mostly in
Canada.
This sounds like one of those truly great films (e.g.
Snakes on a Plane) which gives you exactly what the
title says it's going to: "The streets gave birth to a stray dog who is now fed up" -- backed by a raspy
disco beat, said Hobo acquires said shotgun and proceeds to pump
lead into store-robbing
thugs,
dirty cops (and, as the
police chief rumbles, "we're
all dirty!"), and various other
lowlifes and
miscreants, ending up with a price on his head. There's some real nastiness in this trailer, things that would normally not be seen in one, like
teeth getting knocked out with a
chisel, and numerous shotgun-induced head explosions. Also, the store-robbing thugs (wearing
ski masks and holding a
machete to the
throat of a
hostage) seem to have a strange
M.O., threatening to kill the hostage to get the money from the lone
clerk (why not just threaten the clerk? Oh well, they do that too).
And, as it turns out, the fake trailer was not directed by Tarantino or Rodriguez, but was the winning entry in a Rodriguez-sponsored fake trailer
contest, in connection with the
South by Southwest festival. It was made by three Canadian filmmakers (hence the Canada showings), and surely seems to be the kind of thing that will give them a well-deserved career boost.
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And' to update the situation, some years later an actual film based on this trailer was indeed made and released in theatres, in much the same insane vein as
Machete, another film springing from a fake Grindhouse trailer.