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FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
Rating:  ½
USA. 1996.
Director – Robert Rodriguez, Screenplay – Quentin Tarantino, Story – Robert Kurtzman, Producers – Gianni Nunnari & Meir Teper, Photography – Guillermo Navarro, Music – Graeme Revell, Visual Effects Supervisors – Diana Dru Botsford & Daniel A. Fort, Bat Visual Effects – VIFX, Digital Effects – The Post Group, Mattes – Illusion Arts, Makeup Effects – Kurtzman Nicotero Berger EFX Group, Production Design – Cecilia Montiel. Production Company – A Band Apart/Los Hooligans Productions.
Cast:
George Clooney (Seth Gecko), Quentin Tarantino (Richard Gecko), Harvey Keitel (Jacob Fuller), Juliette Lewis (Kate Fuller), Tom Savini (Sex Machine), Fred Williamson (Frost), Ernest Liu (Scott Fuller), Cheech Marin (Border Guard/Chet Pussy/Carlos), Salma Hayek (Santanico Pandemonium), Michael Parks (Earl McGraw), Brenda Hillhouse (Gloria Hill), Danny Trejo (Razor Charlie)
Plot: Wanted for armed robbery, brothers Seth and Richard Gecko flee police pursuit across Texas. They take as hostage Jacob Fuller, a Baptist pastor who has lost his faith, along with his teenage daughter Kate and adopted Chinese son Scott. Seth agrees to them let go free if Fuller drives them across the Mexican border in his RV. Across the border they go to The Titty Twister, a dusk till dawn biker bar, to meet Seth’s contact. But there they find that the bar staff, the bikers, the strippers and bouncers are all vampires and are thrust into a to-the-death fight for their own lives.
For a time around the mid-1990s Quentin Tarantino was the coolest guy in Hollywood. Tarantino’s meteoric rise from videostore clerk to the leader of the new brat pack was the stuff of which Hollywood discoveries are made. Tarantino first emerged on the scene with the brash and brilliant crime thriller Reservoir Dogs (1992) and then slammed it home with the breathtaking Pulp Fiction (1994). Tarantino was the first of the filmmakers to emerge from the video generation – his films come packed with not only quotes but entire monologues about film, tv and junk culture. He writes laconically naturalistic dialogue and made violence, dashed up with a nihilistic cynicism, ultra hip. Less than a year after Pulp Fiction, Tarantino seemed to have his finger in every pie. He had only having directed two films but had already had two books published about him; he directed episodes of ER (1996– ); cameod in films like Desperado (1995), Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995), Spike Lee’s Girl 6 (1996), even The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz (2005) for goodness sake; became possibly the most over-exposed interviewee around; lent his name to friends like Roger Avary and Robert Rodriguez to gain a wide audience for their films and united other fledgling directors in the anthology film Four Rooms (1995); and ushered a series of foreign imports and B movie video releases in under his name. And everywhere else people were reviving old Tarantino scripts – True Romance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994) and From Dusk Till Dawn – that were sold but never produced when he was still a videostore clerk. Plus of course the Tarantino-styled thriller with cynically chic underworld, non-linear plots and wry monologues inspired a whole host of imitators, ranging from the good – The Usual Suspects (1995), Out of Sight (1998), Sexy Beast (2001) – to the amusing – Get Shorty (1996) – the so-so – Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1996) – to the downright awful Killing Zoe (1996) and the output of Guy Ritchie. Alas after the so-so Jackie Brown (1997), which certainly revived the career of Pam Grier but did little else, Tarantino disappeared for a time in the latter half of the 1990s, before making a return to screens with Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004) and Death Proof (2007).
Texan-born Robert Rodriguez is another customer altogether. Rodriguez’s first film El Mariachi (1993), a South of the Border spaghetti Western, was made for $7000 and is perhaps one of the slickest no-budget films ever made. Desperado (1995), his big-budgeted Hollywood remake-come-sequel, successfully fused El Mariachi with the balletic pyrotechnics of the Hong Kong action film. It seemed natural that two such individualistic talents as Tarantino and Rodriguez, riding the Hollywood outside edge, would not only meet but also strike up a friendship and a collaboration, which emerged with From Dusk Till Dawn. The two have frequently worked together since – Rodriguez uncreditly directed the scenes where Tarantino appears in Pulp Fiction and composed music for the Kill Bill films; while Tarantino cameos in Desperado and appears as a Guest Director for Rodriguez in Sin City (2005); and the two collaborated on the double-bill Grindhouse (2007).
From Dusk Till Dawn began life as a script that Quentin Tarantino wrote circa 1990, developing out an idea for Robert Kurtzman who was intending to direct the film. Robert Kurtzman is a makeup effects man better known as the K in the high profile KNB EFX Group. And while Kurtzman’s version of From Dusk Till Dawn never went ahead, Kurtzman debuted later the same year with the inane robo-babe film The Demolitionist (1996) and then went onto make Wishmaster (1997). (And judging from Kurtzman’s other films, his From Dusk Till Dawn would only have emerged at best as a B-budget film).
In the mid-90s, the vampire film had reached a creative dead-end and became subject to relentless cross-hybridization in search of novelty. Thus we had vampire cop shows – tv’s Forever Knight (1992-6); vampire Westerns – Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989); vampire Mafia – Innocent Blood/A French Vampire in America (1992); and lame title jokes like I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990), Malibu Beach Vampires (1991) and Vampire Trailer Park (1991). From Dusk Till Dawn is a peculiar hybrid of vampire and action film. Imagine one half The Getaway (1971) and the other half I am Legend (1954) sort of retooled as an all-out barroom brawl.
The first half of From Dusk Till Dawn is a pretty good getaway film. Robert Rodriguez maintains a good degree of suspense and edgy character tension. Although it is surprisingly talky – especially in comparison to the balletic violence of Rodriguez’s other films – the audience I was with clearly expected more and became very restless. And it is clearly an old Quentin Tarantino script – he hasn’t quite polished his cult art yet – and has none of his wittily existential monologues. Moreover Tarantino seems stuck with a linear plot – part of the fun of both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction was the slick and exciting circuitousness of Tarantino’s storytelling. That said the opening monologue from the sheriff, which then pulls back to reveal the two brothers hiding in the back of the store is classic Tarantino.
We have to wait over an hour to get to the vampires whereupon From Dusk Till Dawn suddenly turns into something else altogether. The change of both plot and pace is rather bewildering. We suddenly go from slow tension to all-out action where Robert Rodriguez lets loose with the pyrotechnics and the creature effects. But this half is a decided disappointment. As a vampire/action film, From Dusk Till Dawn is a good action film but it is only a fairly ordinary vampire film. It’s easy to flow with the kinesis of Rodriguez’s direction, but at the end one sat wondering what From Dusk Till Dawn really had to say as a vampire film. It gives you a kinetic workover and brings on an impressive array of effects, but really has almost nothing to say. There are times too it lacks plausibility – the humans seem to learn how to deal with vampires in no time flat and then afterwards have a five minute conversation about how to kill them. Nor is there any explanation of what a vampire bar is doing in the middle of nowhere.
The much-touted makeups are disappointing – some of the vampirized cast members look more laughable than horrific. After its introduction in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) morphing surely became the most overused and tiresome technical innovation of the moment. The transforming vampires here do not look like biological creatures changing shape, they just look like morphing effects. There are some amusing interpolations on vampire tradition – the vampire hunter’s arsenal includes condoms filled with holy water, a power drill with a stake on the end of it, and a combination shotgun/crucifix. But take away the high-tech makeup effects and all From Dusk Till Dawn really is is the highest-budgeted and longest barroom brawl in cinema history. For all it matters the vampires could have been replaced with bikers, zombies or mutant Hare Krishnas. And when it comes to extended climactic all-out undead bloodbaths, Peter Jackson’s Braindead/Deadalive (1992) did it ten times better (and on a fifth the budget of From Dusk Till Dawn).
The film is certainly supported by a good cast, evidence of the clout that Quentin Tarantino’s name was drawing. George Clooney’s acting can be frankly bizarre at times – all full of seemingly spontaneous smirks, titters and head cricks. But in From Dusk Till Dawn, Robert Rodriguez trims Clooney back to a handsome ruthlessness that comes with a charismatic and surprisingly heroic kick on screen. It’s here you can see the polishing of Clooney’s screen persona, something that Steven Soderbergh would get down to a T. And while Tarantino seems to have his finger in every pie, he never quite comes off as an actor – he has the on-screen personality of a sniveling weasel. He was pretty awful in Desperado and Four Rooms and even worse in Destiny Turns on the Radio. But here his twitchily dangerous Richard Gecko proves surprisingly convincing. Harvey Keitel brings a little too much of the baggage of his usually cynically streetwise New York performances to the part to credibly play a milquetoast Baptist pastor. Juliette Lewis was for my money the best young American actress around in the 1990s – see the likes of Cape Fear (1991), Kalifornia (1993) and Tarantino’s own Natural Born Killers – but From Dusk Till Dawn criminally fails to give her much to do.
The film was followed by two made-for-video sequels, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) and From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (2000). The making of From Dusk Till Dawn was also depicted in the interesting theatrically-released documentary Full Tilt Boogie (1997).
After From Dusk Till Dawn, Robert Rodriguez went onto make a number of genre films, including the witty teen body snatchers film The Faculty (1998); the appealing trio of children’s spy films Spy Kids (2001), Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003); the quite brilliant ultra-violent film noir pastiche Sin City, Rodriguez’s single best film; a further children’s film The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D (2005); and half of Grindhouse (2007) with Tarantino, which was later seperately released as Planet Terror (2007). Tarantino’s only other venture into genre territory was his half of Grindhouse, which was released seperately as Death Proof (2007), although his A Band Apart production company did produce the worthwhile race-reversed alternate world film White Man’s Burden (1995) and the little-seen black comedy Curdled (1996) in which a forensic cleaner meets a serial killer.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1996
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