I was going to do “The Devil’s Rejects” to follow up “House of 1000 Corpses”, but I’m saving it for later, for a couple of reasons. For one, there’ll probably only be one more of these pre-Halloween, and I don’t want two out of the three to be the same director. For another, the fact that it’s the sequel to HKC is pretty much the only reason I’d have for classifying it as a horror movie. So what we’re going to do instead, since we’ve had one from the 2000’s, is do one from the 90’s, and then end things with one from the 80’s. And my 90’s pick is…

Title: From Dusk Till Dawn
Starring: George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo
Release Date: January 19, 1996
Running Time: 108 Minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Rotten Tomatoes Ranking: 64%

Even the RT gives this one above 50%, which for a horror movie means it must be at least excellent. And before we go any further, let me just say: it fucking is. The first characters we meet are the Gecko brothers, Seth and Richie (Clooney and Tarantino, respectively), who have just robbed a bank, killed a bunch of cops during their escape, and taken a hostage. It’s quickly established that Seth is the badass out of the two (and what a fucking badass he is; seriously, one of my favorite movie characters ever) but has some dignity and ethics with regard to his thievery, while Richie is more of a sadistic pervert. The two end up in a motel, looking for a way to smuggle themselves into Mexico, so they can meet up with their co-conspirator Carlos (Marin) and he can take them to El Ray.

Their way in to Mexico comes in the form of a family led by Jacob Fuller(Keitel) and including his daughter Kate (Lewis) and chinky son Scott. It’s not just me who thinks Scott’s chinky-looking, either, since Seth notices it during the kidnapping, though he mistakes him for Japanese which Jacob gets all pissy about. After promising Jacob that he’ll let them all go if they don’t pull any shit, and fooling a gullible Boarder Patrol Officer (Marin, again), Seth directs the Fullers to a bar called the Titty Twister, where they’re all going to wait until Carlos arrives in the morning. Eventually they get in after altercations with a doorman (Marin) and the bartender Razor Charlie (Trejo, who’s mainly listed under “Starring” because he’s the star of pretty much everything he’s in), Stockholm Syndrome starts to set in on the Fullers. They end up drinking with Seth and Richie and Scott bonds with Richie in particular over the strippers. During a dance by one of the featured strippers (Salma Hayek), the doorman who Seth and Richie beat up before entering comes in and along with Charlie and a bouncer, confronts them. Charlie stabs Richie’s hand, then the Geckos shoot all three.

It’s at this point that the twist happens. Seeing the blood on Richie’s hand, the stripper turns into a fucking vampire and bites the fuck out of Richie’s neck. Then everyone working at the bar turns into vampires as well, and just starts massacring the patrons. And I’m not talking the gay neo-vampires that you see in shit like Twilight and Buffy, either. These are fucking ugly, vicious, kick-ass vampires, like in real life. At first, Seth, the Fullers, and two other patrons are left alive to actually fight them, but eventually it’s down to just Seth and Kate. As they begin to be overwhelmed, sunlight shines through a window and they see that it’s killing the vampires. At this point Carlos shows up, Seth yells for him to shoot through the door and he does, letting in a shitload of sunlight and killing them all as Seth and Kate run out.

The end scene has some hilarious dialogue between Seth and Carlos, and then as they drive off to El Ray and Kate drives back home (presumably), the camera pans out to reveal that the Titty Twister is actually the top part of an Aztec temple, implying that this is the source of the whole vampire thing.

I haven’t talked too much about acting in these yet, but I absolutely have to here. Clooney, Tarantino, and Keitel are all brilliant in their roles, to the point of being pretty much irreplaceable. I honestly couldn’t think of anyone who would even be acceptable in any of those three roles other than these actors, after having seen what they did with them. Marin is Marin in all three of his cameos, but particularly as Carlos, who is easily the best of the three.

The story is unique in the fact that the twist (and as a result, the entire vampire angle which made up the second half of the film) wasn’t even marketed or revealed in trailers leading up to the movie’s release. So when Hayek turns into a vampire, on first viewing it’s supposed to be a complete surprise, and while I was fucked out of getting to experience that aspect since someone told me about this movie long before I saw it, I can imagine it must’ve been pretty polarizing for theater audiences especially. The film was directed by Robert Rodriguez, but Tarantino actually wrote it, and this shows in the dialogue that makes up the first half of the film. Post-twist, all the vampire stuff is done really well, even if some of it is a little silly (like the guy who after being decapitated as a vampire then turns into a vampiry rat-like thing, which SO wouldn’t happen in real life).

Overall, the most unredundant way to sum up my thoughts on this movie are this: I’ve seen it many times prior to this month. However, this month, I assume because Halloween is coming up, Encore keeps showing it at least two nights per week. I’ve seen it while scrolling through the guide several times as a result, and every single time I’ve put it on.

Art Score: 7
Entertainment Score: 9
Total Score: 88

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Category: My Million Movies, Reviews | Tags: cheech marin, danny trejo, film, from dusk till dawn, george clooney, Halloween, harvey keitel, horror, JCC, juliette lewis, Morphine Nation, movies, My Million Movies, quentin tarantino, salma hayek, titty twister, vampires // 4 Comments »