Hobo with a Trash Can (2015)

Directors: Mark Charles Adams ("The Apple That Bit Back"); Tonjia Atomic ("The Hungry Ghost"); Lloyd Emmons and Kyle Leonard ("Condomdemned"); Steven A. Grainger as ("Grab Bag"); Christopher Kahler as ("Frying Saucer"); Claire 'Fluff' Llewellyn as ("Welcome to Retroville"); Vincent Marshall as ("Dr. Hanger")

Screenplay: Tonjia Atomic as ("The Hungry Ghost"); Lloyd Emmons and Kyle Leonard ("Condomdemned"); Adam Gibson ("The Apple That Bit Back"); Steven A. Grainger as ("Grab Bag"); Claire 'Fluff' Llewellyn  ("Frying Saucer" and "Welcome to Retroville"); Vincent Marshall as ("Dr. Hanger")

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

Another anthology, a no budget production too, an incredibly obscure one in which a group of directors, on the rule they are given a dollar and buy an object to built a story around, put together a film about a homeless man with a shopping trolley whose seizures when he holds certain objects lead to each tale. The title clearly wanted to ride the coat tails of Hobo with a Shotgun (2011), a neo-grindhouse throwback which was a talked of title four years previously. This is a very different work however, with none of that film's over the top gore or tone, but a collection of micro-budget films which feel like fragments.

The wraparound Welcome to Retroville is beholden to being cut up and divided between the stories within it as with other anthologies. Here it follows a homeless man who has the worse day possible, first assaulted by a woman (played by the segment director and daughter of Worchester, England Claire 'Fluff' Llewellyn) randomly with a frying pan in the street, then dragged off the street by the police accused of murder of her husband. Of interest in knowing this is a British-American collaboration, as Llewellyn played an important part in this film being made, and that there's a segment later on which is entirely set in England. It is a nice bit of unconventional patriotism rather something to be embarrassed about.

Your taste in this type of film is in lieu to it fighting against its limitations, especially over a very low budget, existing in a no man's urban environment where cops have no discernible appearance to real life police and shove paper bags over suspects' heads. The wraparound, alongside a sense of They Live (1988) by an apparent conspiracy with a frying pan technology and humanity's addiction to bacon, is not really explained. It is also tentatively connected to all the plots because of the fact, whenever he touches certain objects, the titular hobo will drop out of consciousness in a trance of green CGI and woozy synth, but this never being explained.

Like if there is an immediate issue with the film, it's that most of the anthology stories do not really grip one. The first segment Frying Saucer, in which a newly married woman (Llewellyn) slowly comes to realise her husband is an alien behind a conspiracy to make a frying pan, is fun in the sense of the little foibles and joys of no budget cinema, the amusing lines and eccentric nature of this being about a frying pan so good at cooking bacon it becomes "like the necter of the Gods". Subjective taste comes to play a lot more with these films however as a result. Here as with throughout Hobo with a Trash Can, you have to accept the varying acting, minimal technicality and a lot of oddness, but there was an additional issue having seen this anthology already beforehand that it does drag unless any of the segments were memorable.

Not at the point of Frying Saucer mind, which is still distilled with some personality and weird verisimilitude, where these problems are at least pushed back by the eccentricity of the production. With the first segment, you get many details that I found fascinating for myself to see - a strange anti-climatic story of domestic horror where, in an incredibly short Skype session, the actress playing the lead's mother (her actual mother) has an incredibly peculiar acting style in describing not to leave wine opened or it will go sour. For most, this is not the point of cinema - for myself, who has developed a taste for these micro-budget films, segments like these alongside many factors we want in cinema are now part of their virtues even if they are merely quirks.

Due to the nature of the production, the stories due have an extreme minimalistic nature than even other micro-budget films, at points even like half dreamt day dreams that were happened to be shot in digital video, marked in fake grain effects at least for the wraparound which is arguably an ill advised and dated touch to the neo-grindhouse aesthetic. Grab Bag is about a paper bag, like an attempt at a fairy tale in which a tiny man tricks various people to look in a paper bag that clearly shows them something they want to take out of it, only for them to be dragged into it and eaten gorily. In vast contrast, Condomdemned is where a condom leads to a man being paid by another to date a woman, all with the suspicious goal that he will have a camera on him to film them having sex; the tale has a twist to it, but honestly it is the kind of production where the quirks are more interesting, such as the icky if funny joke of a brand of condoms called "Double Dipping" which is made from reused latex.

After this we get the segment that makes Hobo with a Trash Can actually worth seeing by even people not necessarily fond of these types of films. The Apple That Bit Back begins with a shadowy Russian in the middle of acquiring a dangerous weapon, only to be bemused when the scientist he has paid off to steal it produces an apple in a suitcase...and becomes even more bemused when the apple is the actual weapon and is a homicidal sentient apple that escapes, attacking a couple of male housemates with divided views on the virtues of fruit.

The production is British, with our deadpan humour as one of the housemates suggests that fruit and five-a-day are comparable to the sign of Satan with Vitamin C, evoking that regardless of budget and resources you can win people over with ease. The apple segment, which leads to the amusement of man versus fruit, a rampage of apples rolling down the stairs on an unsuspecting victim, and the surprising toxicity of apple if you eat too many (which is scientifically accurate), is helped by being considerably more comedic in tone, openly silly, but it is also legitimately playful and creative in comparison to every other part. Even the actor with the less than stellar Russian accent gets around it by that broad voice being part of the humour and how his character is nonplussed by anything. Also in knowing of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978), which was a parody but had a franchise which included tomatoes attacking Paris and a children's animated series 1990-1, the idea of an apple taking a bite out of the Big Apple eventually is not that absurd and pleasingly embracing this absurdity of itself. Especially as you do have an apple appear at someone's bed side cabinet and be able to talk, menacingly telling them it will eat their soul, the short despite budget limitations made by people who thought out the funniest material for their story first.

After this however, a film which beforehand had dragged along has its newly acquired legs cut out from under it from two segments afterwards this which are confused or pointless. The penultimate The Hungry Ghost is a confused piece which starts with a man crying how hungry he is for a long period of time, only to invade a gambling den in a Chinese restaurant and start chewing on the patrons. It is revealed to have supernatural implications, as the players are not human and using souls as wagers, but even with the little bit of gore too it is an ill thought out sketch. God knows what the point of Dr. Hanger was. A few minutes long, it is worth spoiling entirely as, set in a bare room, it is about a governor's daughter getting an abortion by way of a coat hanger, which is the entirety of the story, baring the twist that the baby was through her father's molestation, and nothing else. Literally brisk in existence, the result is an actual non-sequitur in being a fragment, in a tone bleaker but inappropriate for the anthology and utterly in bad taste, as it is not shocking in a profound way but amateurish.

Neither helping in that the wraparound just finishes - no ending to its alien conspiracy, in which a homeless man is arrested for a murder he did not commit, become imprisoned in a shack against his will, and possibly involved in a shadowy scenario - leaving a film that eventually drags into in a monotony that few would have patience with if they were not used to this type of cinema. This is bad for fans of this type of cinema as those final two segments and the wraparound's conclusion do not help a work that, if it had a different finale half, might have been much more memorable. It is a shame as the Apple segment by itself is a thing to love and adore, the segment which pulls this anthology up to something worth seeing, left with a combination of absurdity that I admit to enjoy (deranged bag masters, homicidal apples) too. Against bland concoctions which I could do without however, it is in itself a distillation of no budget cinema itself where for everyone I have found rewarding, consistency is a danger as much as it is for considerably higher budgeted work.