Hogan and Nixon Smoke Christmas (2010)

This is the latest movie from director Kevin Strange and his crew at Hack Movies.  If you aren’t familiar with them basically they are a low and sometimes no budget group of filmmakers that make some of the most tasteless, offensive, disgusting, and completely hilarious low budget flicks that you will ever see. 

This movie revisits a pair of stoners that showed up in Hack Movies first short film, Dead Shit. This time around Hogan and Nixon are called upon by Santa Claus to save Christmas.  See jolly old St. Nick got into the weed that he was bringing the boys for Christmas, and because of a mix-up actually smokes some Voodoo Zombie weed and manages to turn himself all undead!  So it is up to Nixon and Hogan to save Christmas by delivering the last 3 gifts to Strangeville.  Now if it weren’t bad enough to have the fate of Christmas in the hands of Hogan and Nixon, Sasparilla the Weed Witch shows up.  Seems Santa was obligated to fill the Christmas wish by stealing from her, and she isn’t happy about it. 

Let me start my actual review of this with the same warning that I always give when reviewing a Hack Movie.  If you aren’t a fan of low budget shot on digital or video flicks then don’t watch a Hack Movie.  If you don’t like your humor in bad taste and over the top, then don’t watch a Hack Movie.  I get really tired of people who don’t like independent cinema or crude humor watching these movies so they can bitch about them.  Now I have to be honest.   I’ve watched a lot of these kinds of movies, and most of them are garbage.  But I loved most all of the Hack Movies since the very first one, Dead Shit.  So lets talk a bit about Hogan and Nixon Smoke Christmas.  This is probably their best movie so far.  It is really funny, though again the humor is a bit on the gross side.  But that shit (literally in some cases!) makes me laugh.  I loved how they brought in a lot of the old characters back for more fun, including on crusty old neighbor type that I thought was great.  In the past some of the Hack Movies have had pacing issues, but this one is perfect.  Funny, entertaining, and well paced.  You can’t ask for anything more than that from any movie, regardless of budget. 

I also wanted to take the time to congratulate the entire crew at Hack Movies.  Every time I sit down and watch the latest movie it always shows technical improvement over the previous efforts.  This movie is no different.  I honestly didn’t expect that this time around because the camera work and sound had become pretty much perfect.  But what was noticeable here were some pretty good low budget special effects.  Zombie Santa Claus looks pretty good and the minions of Sasparilla aren’t great, but have a cheesy charm to them.  There is also a bit where the boys “power up” to kick some ass.  The makeup here was fun, and actually provides one of the best lines of the movie (think Tom Cruise…). 

Bottom line is some movies exist to be silly and fun.  If you sit down and watch a Hack Movie with that in mind I guarantee you will have a good time.  I recommend Hogan and Nixon Smoke Christmas.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2010 John Shatzer