The Dude Wines, Dines & Designs...

Regular readers of the site may have seen the recent article about the work of Grindhouse poster designer extraordinaire Tom Hodge, better known as The Dude Designs. His retro styled posters for Hobo With A Shotgun and Father's Day hark back to the bygone era of video nasties and exploitation cinema and left me immediately wanting to see those films.

The Dude Designs...

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but I don't think the same idiom applies to movies. There's nothing I enjoy more than a good movie poster, and I often base my decision on whether to watch a film on how creative the poster design is. The granddaddy of the art form is Saul Bass, followed closely behind by the amazing Drew Struzan (whose work we've featured on the site before), but it's exciting when someone new arrives on the scene with a cool body of work to admire.

Hobo With A Shotgun - Coolest Poster Ever

Yeah, but my question is, what's it all about? Joke.

Continuing the Grindhouse aesthetic from 70's cinema as well as the somewhat failed Tarantino/Rodriguez experiment from a couple of years back, this film is actually the result of a competition that ran during the release of Planet Terror/Death Proof to find a fan made trailer that captured the spirit of Grindhouse.

After winning that contest with his original short, director Jason Eisener was able to get funding to make a feature length version of the film, with Rutger Hauer picking up the shotgun in the lead role. Looking at the poster that's pretty good casting in my opinion. He's one angry Hobo.

This looks to me like it could be better than both Planet Terror and Death Proof. I quite liked Planet Terror, although it was more like John Carpenter gone mad and didn't really capture what Grindhouse was all about. Death Proof was closer to the real thing (simple premise, cheap execution), but was a bit too car orientated for me.

Apart from a couple of well made 70's style posters making the rounds, little has been seen of Hobo With A Shotgun yet (although the poster looks like it holds some clues), but with its world premiere at Sundance later this month, I expect it to become a much talked about slice of throwback cinema. Michael Madsen, take note.

I hope the film is as good as the retro styled posters. If so, count me in.