FromDuskTillDawn

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

The Gecko brothers are a couple of bad customers who are on the run after robbing a bank. During the robbery, which happens before the movies starts, they killed some lawmen, as well as some civilians. The movie starts with them at a liquor store in the middle of nowhere, were the body count continues to rise. Eventually the brothers are forced to kidnap a father and his children to make it past the border into Mexico. They think they are home free. All they have to do is wait at a bar called the Titty Twister until their contact comes to pick them up. But the bar is home to a rather large group of vampires, so things don’t go as planned. The rest of the flick is them finding creative ways to kill of the vampires until the sun comes up!

Long before Grindhouse Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were working together to give horror fans something to cheer about. I remember going to see this movie it first hit the theaters. After seeing Pulp Fiction I was a huge Tarantino fan, so the idea of him working on a horror flick was a pretty awesome idea. And unlike so many other times that I was disappointed From Dusk Till Dawn lived up to my expectations. How often does that happen?

So the movie is really interesting because in a lot of ways it is actually two movies. The 1st 45 minutes feel like the violent crime flick that one would have expected Tarantino to write (based on a story by the effects maestro Robert Kurtzman). You have a lot of over the top violence and quirky characters with the oddest character being portrayed by Tarantino himself. But after they get to the bar and the vampires show up it shifts gears and becomes a really over the top gore fest with tons of practical effects from KNB. Hell these are 2 of my favorite types of movies and I get them both in the same flick! This one really delivers the goods and is a blast from start to finish. The pacing of the story is wonderful and it shifts gears smoothly from one genre to the next. It is absolute genius.

Genre fans will also be pleased to see many familiar faces in this one. Guys like Fred Williamson, Michael Parks, and Tom Savini all make memorable appearances. Plus we get a cameo from the legendary John Saxon. Heck even effects man and Day of the Dead actor Gregory Nicotero shows up briefly for a funny confrontation with Savini’s character Sex Machine. Speaking of Nicotero I think that the effects work in Dusk Till Dawn will also please genre fans. We get a ton of nasty looking vampires (no sparkling tween girl crushes here) that rip and tear thru the humans, literally. You have limbs and heads flying all over the screen. Oh and when the vampires start to go they do so in very explosive and “squishy” ways. All in all there is an impressive amount of fake blood being poured all over the screen.

So I really hope that most of you reading this review have already seen From Dusk Till Dawn. If not please let me recommend the new DVD from Echo Bridge home entertainment. It is reasonably priced and worth the purchase. I say this because this movie is one of the best experiences that I had going to the theaters in the ‘90s and 15 years later it still is just a fresh and entertaining as the first time that I saw it. Not many movies hold up that well so if you haven’t seen From Dusk Till Dawn or just haven’t added it to your collection you need to fix that.

4 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer