Hoboken Hollow (2006)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

The nefarious Broderick family hold various drifters, hobos, and migrants captive at their slave ranch in Texas. Writer/director Glen Stephens relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, does an ace job of creating and sustaining a powerfully bleak atmosphere of utter hopelessness and depravity, makes fine use of the desolate backwoods locations, and develops a considerable amount of nerve-wracking tension. The sturdy and credible acting from an excellent cast rates as another substantial asset, with especially praiseworthy work by Jason Connery as tough and troubled war veteran Trevor Lloyd, C. Thomas Howell as the evil and slippery Clayton Connelly, Mark Holten as the dim-witted Weldon Broderick, Michael Madsen as the shady J.T. Goldman, Deneen Frazier as the ruthless Lois Broderick, Randy Spelling as browbeaten foreman Parker Hilton, Lin Shaye as the no-nonsense Mrs. Broderick, Robert Carradine as the mean Thad Simmons, and, in a regrettably minor part, Dennis Hopper as the amiable Sheriff Green. The jolting moments of sadistic violence and torture pack a seriously harsh punch while the redneck clan are a truly scary and brutal bunch. The fact that the plot is inspired by actual events adds an extra unsettling edge to the already upsetting proceedings. John-Paul Beeghly's glossy cinematography gives the picture an impressive polished look. Evan Evans' rattling score hits the shuddery spot. Worth a watch.

"Hoboken Hollow" is a disappointment.The plot: Trevor (Connery) is a war veteran trying to take life easy and hitchhiking his way to California. While hitchhiking, a trucker named Clayton (Howell) asks him for help on his ranch. Trevor agrees only if he can leave the next day. Trevor finds out very quickly that the ranch is filled with deranged lunatics who like to torture and kill their helpers.It's a good idea for a movie but it just doesn't work because the pacing is lethargic and the scares are minimal. Howell does a decent job as one of the killers, but Connery is wooden.If you're thinking "Hey, Madsen and Hopper are in it! It can't be all bad...." well, I'm sorry, you're wrong this around. Hopper is in this for about two minutes and he basically says the same line over and over: "I'll give you a lift to the next town". Madsen has it worse because once again, as in "The Covenant: Brotherhood Of Evil" he has an obviously phony mustache. 2005 was the "glued on facial hair stage" in his career. One more thing: Anthony Michael Hall was one of the producers of this mess. Odd...."Hoboken Hollow" is a very poor flick, that you should only watch if you're a Madsen or Hopper completist (I've seen "Tycus" and "The Prophet's Game" with Dennis and "Flat Out" with Mike. I deserve a medal. Not Really.) For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

Hoboken Hollow is set in west Texas where three vagrant hitchhiker types, Andrew (Kingsly Marin), Howie (Rudolf Martin) & Archie (Erick Brubaker) have all been picked up by & offered work by a couple of guys named Clayton (C. Thomas Howell) & Junior (Jonathan Fraser) who run a ranch out in the sticks called Hoboken Hollow, unfortunately for the three hitchhikers they soon wish they had been left at the side of the road as working at Hoboken Hollow is quite literally torture. Owned by the Broderick family life at Hoboken Hollow is tough, you are forced to work all day, you barely get any food, you don't get paid, you get treated like dirt & if you try to escape you end up in pieces hanging from meat hooks. However ex-soldier Trevor Lloyd (Jason Connery) has other ideas...Written, co-produced & directed by Glen Stephens I have mixed feelings about Hoboken Hollow, I sort of liked it & hated it in equal measure. The script starts off extremely promisingly in an isolated way out in the sticks The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977 -2006) & Wrong Turn (2003) sort of way as it sets the story up. Unfortunately while I was hoping for a slick, nasty atmospheric gore filled slasher by the mid way point of Hoboken Hollow I thought I was watching a prison drama as the story settles down & focuses on the trials & tribulations of the workers rather than the activity of the homicidal Broderick's, I'm all for a good story but this goes off the rails so to speak & once it had settled down I started to find myself becoming bored & a bit disinterested. Having said that it's still a decent little horror/thriller with some nice exploitation, some rape & a fair bit of torture although the final twist is as obvious as they come & I'm not convinced the guys kept there would have been so co-operative, I mean why didn't they just take the chainsaw they had been given to chop wood & use it against their captors, torturers & eventually murderers? I know I would have at least tried to get away & a good old fashion chainsaw would have made for a decent weapon, right? I'm confident I would have been able to convince my captors to hand over the keys to the pick-up truck with the aid of a trusty chainsaw.Director Stephens does a fine job, Hoboken Hollow is surprisingly well shot & has that isolated, baking hot Texan outback feel to it. The family & their house reminds of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre although Hoboken Hollow is more graphic & doesn't go for atmosphere or scares as much. The gore is OK, there's a severed arm, a severed foot fed to the pigs, someones leg is repeatedly stabbed, someone is impaled on a large spike & there's some torture where people are hanged, electrocuted & peed on. I think this is one of those films where you think you see more than you actually do.With a supposed budget of about $1,100,000 Hoboken Hollow is very well made with impressive production values & it actually looks like a proper film, the special effects are decent & there's a surprisingly good cast here including Sean Connery's son Jason! I wonder if his dad's seen Hoboken Hollow because if he has I'd be more than interested to know what he thinks of it! Michael Madsen, the great Dennis Hopper, Robert Carradine & Michelle's sister Dedee Pfeiffer who I haven't seen since her role in Vamp (1986)!Hoboken Hollow is OK overall but I thought it had both good & bad points, unfortunately the bad points are pretty crucial to how I feel about it. It's an OK watch but I'd be hard pushed to recommend it to anyone.

I watched this movie with my cousins when I visited England recently and was expecting your typical "based-on-a-true-story" horror film. While it delivered the goods on that front and seemed to please the kids, the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. It turns out - when I ran it by my parents - that I must vaguely remember the "actual events" from back in the eighties when the creeps that did this stuff -- a lot of it at least -- went to trial. When I went looking around on the internet (I think I searched for "Texas slave ranch" or something like that) I found some articles in the New York Times archive and the movie seemed to be accurate in a lot of ways. Who knows why the idiots didn't gang up on their captors and run away? Or why they didn't turn their axes and chain saws on the slave drivers? I guess each person probably had their own reason for being there. After that I got to thinking about why we average working stiffs let the corporations and police push us around. We'd take 'em easy if you based it on our sheer numbers yet we continue to play the game by their rules. I think it's mostly because it's easier to go with the flow than to deal with what might happen if you buck the system. Most of us don't want to be the one who dies to make an example to the rest. So the metaphor is the Broderick's are the governments and corporations that exploit us and the drifters are us! Heck, it made me want to see it again to test my theory but it's not released here yet.