In review: second annual Nova Scotia Retro Film Festo

The Nova Scotia Retro Film Festo returned for its second year to Halifax’s independent theatre, the Carbon Arc, from Jan. 30 to Feb. 2.

This year’s programming spanned a range of genres, including vintage short films, queer family dramas, horror films and teen stoner comedies. 

Dalhousie Gazette arts staff writer, Alex Josevski, shares his thoughts on a couple of standouts.

Margaret’s Museum (1995) 

In Margaret’s Museum, a pre-Tim Burton Helena Bonham Carter stars as Margaret MacNeil, a young woman living in a small Cape Breton mining town in the 1940s. Following the death of her father and brother in the mines, she starts taking care of her ill grandfather, suffering from black lung disease after a lifetime in the mines, and her younger brother, alongside her controlling and bleakly cynical mother. 

MacNeil’s life is upended when she meets the charming, older Neil Currie (Clive Russell), a Gaelic-speaking, bagpipe-playing free spirit who wants to escape the black hole of his fate in the mines. 

What struck me immediately in Margaret’s Museum is the fatalism that hangs over the entire film. At the end of every workday, an alarm whistle goes off throughout the town, and all the women breathe a sigh of relief, knowing there will be no widows that day. When an accident does occur, an air raid siren pierces through the air, enveloping the town in a hurried panic as everyone rushes to the work site to see who’s been injured or killed. Then, they go back to work the next day like nothing happened, since death has become such a common occurrence. 

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Margaret’s Museum finds the little joys and pleasures in a town of eccentric personalities. Told in a slice-of-life, plotless manner, Mort Ransen’s film takes its time observing the rhythms of the townsfolk and tracing the various relationships. Such as the young love of a miner’s son and the mine manager’s daughter. 

These strands and ideas eventually explode in a shocker of a finale, whose underlying anger is thematically potent if ultimately underserved. For a film as patient as Margaret’s Museum, it was a shame to see it rush to the credits so close to the finish line. Where this film ends up is quite fascinating, and I wish I had gotten to spend more time dealing with the ramifications of it. And what about MacNeil’s titular museum, you might ask? I dare not spoil the surprise.

Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) 

Film fans of a certain age may remember 2007’s Grindhouse, an ambitious homage to the sleazy exploitation films of the ’70s. Structured as a double feature, the project includes a film directed by Robert Rodriguez and a second by Quentin Tarantino. 

As part of the presentation, fake trailers for other grindhouse films were played before the two features. While the other trailers were made by big-name filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth, select Canadian screenings of Grindhouse also showed a trailer by Dartmouth filmmaker Jason Eisener, whose Hobo with a Shotgun submission won the Grindhouse fake trailer contest at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. 

Primarily shot in Dartmouth (with some Halifax locations), the feature-length version of Hobo with a Shotgun stars Rutger Hauer (of Blade Runner fame) as the titular hobo … with a shotgun. 

After hopping off a freight train, our unnamed hobo stumbles into a town (aptly titled Scum Town) that has descended into chaos and lawlessness under the thumb of a local crime boss, “The Drake,” and his two psychotic sons. Between the corrupt cops, pervert Santas, bum fight promoters, serial killers, street decapitations and cocaine-fueled yuppies, our hobo becomes fed up and takes justice into his own hands. 

“Hobo Stops Begging, Demands Change,” one newspaper headline reads as his shotgun vigilantism ascends him to folk hero status, consequently making him The Drake’s number one target. In response, The Drake unleashes a pair of demonic, armoured bikers known as “The Plague,” armed with swords and a grappling noose that look straight out of an ’80s arcade game. 

The title, Hobo with a Shotgun, is about as self-explanatory as film titles get. You’ll know whether you’re the target audience for Hobo’s brand of midnight movie excess from the poster and premise alone. But amidst the extreme gore, sleaziness, bad taste humour and over the top vulgarity is a surprising amount of heart. 

Hobo with a Shotgun certainly won’t be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of cult genre films, then you’ll be right at home.