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Originally Posted by funkychinaman
I wonder why they picked THIS fake trailer to make a full movie out of. It wasn't even included in the version of Grindhouse I saw in the theater. Of all the fake trailers, Machete was the obvious favorite to be made into a feature, but come on, Werewolf Women of the SS must've been (an albeit, distant) second.
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The other Grindhouse trailers were written and directed by well-known directors on very high budgets (the Thanksgiving trailer, for example, was a $900,000 project, which is considerably higher than many feature length independent films). Those directors, in many cases, have the means to produce those films if interest is shown, Rodriguez being the most likely of them due to his long list of successful films and well-known ability to produce a highly-regarded film on a relatively small budget. Some of the trailers didn't attempt to piece together enough of a narrative to be constructed into a feature length without the film being flat (the Don't trailer, for example, was based on a number of trailers that made the film seems fantastical and created a narrative that wasn't true to the film in order to garner interest based on shock and violence, Suspiria comes to mind, as well as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue). Others were clearly imitating other films (Thanksgiving, Halloween and Friday the 13th, Werewolf Women of the SS, Ilsa, and the historical Werwolf plan).
Hobo With A Shotgun, however, was selected out of a number of similar fake trailers in a contest to be shown on the DVD and in Canadian theaters. The film was created in Canada, where production costs are much lower, using mostly unknown talent and independent, young crew. The assumption is that it went over well in Canadian theaters, the producers approached them about turning it into a feature as the narrative was simple and costs would be low in the director's (and audience's) native Canada, and, as the exploitation film formula dictates, bringing on a single, older name actor to play the title character. The differences between the actual production of this film and Machete, despite genre similarities, are night and day.
Quote:
Originally Posted by funkychinaman
I'd call it a B movie, but that's an insult to B movies. Machete has Danny Trejo, De Niro, Jessica Alba and Jeff Fahey, this movie has Rutger Hauer and... that guy from Trailer Park Boys. It felt like a student film. A student film starring Rutger Hauer.
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Machete is not a B movie. To say that Machete is a B movie and then follow it with a laundry list of A-list actors just demonstrates that someone has been fooled. Hobo With A Shotgun was a relatively low-budget film, using a single name actor and a few quick, cheap cameos. It thrived on shock value and violence and takes itself as seriously as any exploitation movie during the hayday of the genre did. Machete is a farce, taking high production values, high budget production costs, high-end acting talent, and dressing it up as a low-brow, low-rent B movie. The reason Machete takes itself less seriously is because it is not what it pretends to be, and everyone involved knows that.
04-03-2011, 02:17 AM
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