ON LOVING HOBO SNUFF FILMS
by Ernie Earnhardt, Filmmaker

When I was 18 I got sick of the movies. I mean how many times do you have to see Gene Hackman barking an order into a walkie talkie before you start thinking "I've seen this all before." That's right, action movies today suck. That's why I got into snuff films.

I'm not talking about the kind of snuff films where they kidnap young girls and force them to eat fecal matter before shooting them dead, I'm talking about the funny kind - the kind where some drunken drifter gets his head blown off in front of the camera — for entertainment value.

	I really scared the crap out of this hobo when I caught him drinking down by some railroad tracks; (scene from 'All Hoboes Got To Die')

I went to USC film school and graduated in 1977 wondering what to do. It was harder than hell to scrap together a few dollars to produce a film then, and that's why I think I made my first snuff film, "Dead Hoboes Tell No Tales" for $45 (to cover catering and editing lab expenses.)

I offered some hobo a bottle of Asti Spumanti, brought him under a dingy underpass and shot him between the eyes of in front of some grainy 8mm film. Do you know how hard it was to write a script around that bit of action?

I couldn't decide whether or not to start the movie off with that scene or have the story build up to that climactic finale. In the end I decided to use it as a repeating slo-mo sequence to some disco-funk. It was my first taste of success!

This is probably my favorite shot of all time. I love how the dynamics of the visual perspective of the trains trailing off into the distance brings beauty to the cinematography. (Scene from 'Ride The Bullet Train')

Since then its been a hell of a ride. I get scripts in the mail every day from wannabe snuff-film directors and they go straight to the garbage. You know why? Because they have a plot. People who watch snuff films want to see only one thing - hoboes getting shot. I've always tried to preserve that kind of cinema verite in my films that others can't seem to grasp. Here just take a look at the great films I've produced and you'll see why I'm the King of the Snuff Film:

Dead Hoboes Tell No Tales (1977)
Massacre On Hobo Hill (1982)
All Hoboes Got To Die (1983)
Killin' Hoboes Ain't Easy (1984)
A Dead Hobo Is A Good Hobo (1985)
12 Gauge Hoboes (1987)
Ravaged Hoboes (1989)
Ride The Bullet Train (1991)

True, its been over 10 years since I came out with a new film. Maybe I'm just sitting on my laurels like Quentin Tarrantino did after he made Pulp Fiction. Let's face it though, there's only so many ways you can kill a hobo and frankly I felt like I had pushed the genre to its limit. Then one day I saw The Matrix. I realized then that a myriad of computer-aided camera effects could be used to produce a special new hobo film — can you imagine a 360° hobo slaughter scene? It would be intense! My friend Dennis Hopper, the actor, is a huge snuff film fanatic and he's financing this next gig of mine. I can't tell you the name of it yet, but its gonna have a lot of hoboes gettin' blasted... with futuristic weapons.