Robert Rodriguez’s retro-styled From Dusk Till Dawn is a tribute to the ‘B’ grindhouse (or drive-in) films of the seventies, and it looks it to the point of nearly being indiscernible from the real thing. It’s no secret that Rodriguez and Tarrantino are in love with these types of movies hailing from the seventies. Seriously, the people behind this movie went a long way to make this film seem as much like a seventies grindhouse thriller as it is; it looks like it, feels like it, and even the dialogue appears genuine (written by Quentin Tarrantino). The film goes so far in its imitation of the seventies style of cheesiness so convincing that I had to keep reminding myself this film is not that old.
Briskly paced and very entertaining, From Dusk Till Dawn wastes no time unfolding its tawdry tale in the form of a crime drama that introduces two criminal brothers on the run as two of its principal characters who provide the film’s premise, at least it seems that way. This film’s narrative is full of cliches and stereotypes, and, as the film continues in this fashion, more characters get introduced. As the plot develops, the film arranges for their paths to collide inevitably. The film spends its first half teaching and defining the characters and their relationships as they cross Mexico. Once there, they end up at the most prominent, most cliche location of all – the road-house/biker-bar/truck-stop in the middle of nowhere with a huge sign announcing its name as The Titty Twister. While this location and several other things about this film are cliched, this is an impressive set, where most of the movie’s action takes place and where Dusk Till Dawn shifts gears from a cliched crime drama into a cliched horror movie. From Dusk Till Dawn also boasts a terrific soundtrack.
Not familiar with this title? Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 American action horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. It stars Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Tarantino, and Juliette Lewis. In keeping with the film’s tribute to the seventies, the cast includes a couple of stars from that era, like Fred Williamson, a football player who who who transitioned into a blacksploitation movie star. Joining him is Tom Savini, legendary makeup, prosthetic artist, and actor as a whip-carrying badass that enters the fray on the humans’ side. The cast also features a much younger-looking Machete as the club’s bartender. The acting and how dialogue get delivered areare alsareo reminiscent of the seventies style. Clooney is not entirely convincing in his role as the homicidal killer/bad-as he portrays, while Tarantino is believable as the homicidal psycho he represents here.
From Dusk Till Dawn saves its payoff until almost the end of the movie when all hell breaks loose with the discovery that The Titty Twister is a nest of vampires and that everyone that works there is a blood-sucking card-carrying representative of the living dead. A lengthy fight ensues in which our questionable heroes hold their own against what, it turns out, is an army of vampires in every shape and size imaginable. When the dust settles, the two characters manage to survive.
While not overstaying its welcome, this film does come close to milking its narrative over-long and reaching its conclusion. when it does finally end. It leaves an opening for a sequel by revealing the bar is just the tip of an ancient Aztec pyramid.
Well, something that was never made quite clear in this movie, is that this colony of vampires, which built their tricked out bar, etc. over an ancient Aztec sacrificial temple, was that the hidden temple below them was built over a ‘Hell Mouth’, like the ones in the popular ‘Buffy, the Vampire Slayer’ TV series, which coined that word. These Hell Mouths are nexuses of the magnetic ‘Ley Lines’ of our Earth, and where they are, dark supernatural energies spew out of it, which in turn enables all kinds of bad stuff and black magic, and supernatural monsters, not just vamps, an entire zoo of monster types, to occur and thrive. That’s why the vampires in this film were so impossibly formidable, and could do thing the usual vamps cannot, like regenerating a head when decapitated, etc. They were being supercharged, fed dark energy from the Hell Mouth below them. They, and other supernatural monsters that utilize such forces, are far weaker and more vulnerable, the father away they move from such sites. (A recurring STUPIDITY in all of the horror movies involving Exorcisms is, why are you IDIOTS performing an Exorcism in the demon’s habitat?! MOVE the possessed kid or adult FAR way from that geological spot, and the demon’s strength wanes away quickly, and they can be EASILY dispossessed! Never fight a spider in the center of its web!) Also, even as there are Hell Mouths in our world, there are also ‘Life Springs’, where the Ley Line nexuses emit life-affirming and healing energy. These days, most of them have churches or religious centers build over them, because long ago, everyone figured out that spots are where the miracles keep happening!