Jason Eisener’s 2011 splatter-fest Hobo With A Shotgun was one of those movies that delivered exactly what it promised. Not just Rutger Hauer blowing away scum with his weapon of choice, but a bloody, gleeful throwback to the grindhouse and exploitation cinema that inspired it, down to some inventively gruesome methods of murder and a healthy heaping of faux-pretentious philosophizing courtesy of the Blade Runner star:
Now, Eisener is back with a new film, one that sounds even grittier and more violent than the one that came before. Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the director has signed on for an adaptation of New York City Outlaws, an obscure ’80s comic about a bunch of vigilantes tearing their way through the Big Apple after a massive police strike sends the city spiraling into crime. Featuring characters like the mohawked “Thunderclap Jones,” the comic carries its debt to Walter Hill’s The Warriors on its (lack of) sleeve, with artist Ken Landgraf decking the Outlaws out in tight leather battle costumes and creator Steve Kapelonis and writer Robert Huszar filling their mouths with tough-talking dialogue.
Published by Outlaw Comics, the book only ran for five issues back in the mid-’80s, but apparently it made an impression on screenwriters Bryan Connolly and Zack Carlson, who transformed the lurid comic into a script. Now Eisener is handling the Outlaws’ transition into film, presumably with an eye on coming up with shit even crazier than the lawnmower shields, shotgun axes, and broken bones fashioned into knives that dotted his previous film.