From Dusk Till Dawn

-Buena Vista (1996)

Summary

Two bank robber/killers kidnap some people then stumble into a vampire hell-pit of death.

My Thoughts

I've owned this DVD for over a year before I watched it.  For some reason it never seemed like it would be that great to begin with, and the only reason I had it was that it was free when I purchased Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown on those films release on DVD. In need of fodder for a review, I decided to give it a spin. What I got was an entertaining couple of hours, but not much more than that.

The picture is nice and the 5.1 mix is pretty damn good considering this is a free DVD. The plot is another story all together.

The movie begins violently, and I've never been big on seeing totally innocent people getting brutally murdered in films like in Natural Born Killers. Therefore, the bloody beginning was a little shaky for me, but it's done with such style that I couldn't stop watching. Tarantino's films do that for me. Even though his characters might be the worst people on Earth, he has such smart dialogue and the characters are so colorful that it is impossible for me to not want to watch.

The story begins by following two badass bank robbing brothers. The two Gecko brothers, played by Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney, are quite the violent and wacky duo. Quentin's character, whom I shall call Quentin because he always plays himself, is a nut job who I figured would get what was coming to him in a pretty bad way. George Clooney, whom I shall call Tattoo, is a murderous thief with a heart of gold.

The brothers eventually kidnap a family in order to have an insurance policy for their escape. Harvey Keitel is always a cool actor, and as the father of the small family he's a great character. He plays an ex-preacher that has lost his faith and is taking his family to Mexico. The ex-preacher bit is a little clichéd, but it works well for the story.

What I liked about the beginning of the film was that it was very much like other, better Tarantino films. It is clearly evident that he wrote the screenplay. The dialogue is smart, funny, and gives you a lot of the unexpected. I didn't have very big hopes for From Dusk Till Dawn at first, but I really started liking it after watching it for only a few minutes.

That's when the movie becomes really shitty, really quick. Everyone goes into a titty bar for some fun and excitement after crossing the border successfully. Boobies are always a welcome sight, but they signal a transition from good film to bad film. Before this point I had turned to Shawn and said, "This movie's actually pretty good." Then he said, "We just have to see what happens with the vampire stuff." I don't know if he jinxed the movie or not, but there's a good chance that he did.

Salma Hayek comes out and does some sort of a corny snake dance that is meant to mesmerize everyone. At this point, I thought that she was going to be the head vampire lady. Unfortunately, I was wrong. When her little dance is over, Cheech (from the infamous Cheech and Chong) and some big buddies of his, come back to avenge a beating dealt out by the Gecko brothers earlier. The brothers try to kill these guys, and think that they do until the baddies get back up baring big scary teeth.

The whole bar turns into a vampire feeding frenzy as the vamps try to kill all the patrons. Tattoo and Vampire Salma have a brief exchange before he puts an end to her. I totally didn’t see that coming, as Salma deserves a lot more credit than the first bitch vampire that Tattoo kills.

Most of the patrons are wasted by the vampires, but there are a couple of guys who manage to hold their own. One is an Indiana Jones want-to-be with a dick gun (you'd have to see it to know what I'm talking about) that's completely juvenile and stupid. The other hero type is a big badass played by 70s man-of-action Fred Williamson.  Shawn noticed was that the hero types adjusted pretty quickly to a vampire situation. It’s as if there are people in society that are ready for any problem and can adjust to the circumstances of a vampire, mummy, zombie, Nazi, or evil monkey attack.

I've got to wonder if the vampires had to deal with the patrons killing them before they got them every night or does it just happen to occur the night the Gecko boys blow into town. If it's just the one night, then what luck for the Geckos that they get two other allies. Otherwise, I think these vampires have to work on their method of killing victims without losing so many of their own kind.

From Dusk till Dawn also features one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in a film in a long time. When the Gecko brothers and crew first go into the bar there is a crappy rock band. This band changes into a crappy vampire rock band that keeps playing evil rock and roll, when the establishment turns all vampire. This doesn't just sound stupid, it is stupid. It reaches an entirely higher plane of stupidity when we see that the lead singer/guitarist is using a human torso as a guitar. Firstly, the acoustics on a human torso would be horrible, and secondly where did he get it? Does he just whip it out when its go time? The human body decays fairly quickly in a titty bar (it's a known fact); I can only imagine the pain it would be to engineer such a device and then have it fall apart several days later.

The action borders on ridiculous to just plain campy. I can see that the film is homage to the vampire genre and that its aim is for camp, but if this is the case the whole film should have had the same tone. There is a jarring transition between the two types of stories. It strongly resembles the much superior The Lost Boys, but with a much more serious beginning and ending. In The Lost Boys you get silly camp from beginning to end. Also, you know you're in trouble when a character says in a very serious voice anything that sounds like, "Back in Nam…", or "When I was in Nam…" Please, give me a break.

The plot is pretty straight forward in the den of evil. There is no other goal other to stay alive, and only a couple of characters achieve this goal. I'm not going to say who, but it's almost predictable. There was one character whose death really surprised me, in fact, it actually shocked me, but I'll leave that as a nice surprise.

When the two survivors make it out, the movie gains back its clever dialogue. This is my biggest problem with this film; it goes from excellent to crap then back again. What happened here?

The final frame is an extra twist that was actually extremely smart. It left the door open to sequels, and they made about 16 of them.  I won't ruin the shot for you, but it also made me wonder how such a place could exist without anyone knowing about it.

All in all, it’s okay when you've been drinking, and it’s worth watching to the point they actually get to the titty bar, but after that it really goes downhill.

Extras

There's nothing on this disc except a couple of trailers and a chapter search. I can't believe they list chapter search as an extra.

NOTE: The version that I'm reviewing is actually an older DVD but, there's a collector's edition for those who may be big fans of the movie (all three of you) with actual extra content on it.

Score:

Film: 7.5

Extras: 2.0

Edition: 3.0

You’d be better off with the Collector’s Edition.

-Paul