Fantastic

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2011)

I wanted to respond to the current top review, "True Tarantino." First of all, to call it "true Tarantino" and never mention Rodriquez is either misleading or ill-informed. Tarantino wrote the script and played one of the lead characters, yes, but he did not direct the film. He actually denied various subsequent levels of involvement with the film in order to concentrate on his portrayal of Richard Gecko after completing the script. I believe Rodriquez deserves as much credit here as Tarantino, and after the second half of the film, KNB Effects deserves as much as either of them.
That said, to say that the effects weren't "very good" is just silly. While the effects can often be campy and over the top to the point of being unrealistic, it's a monster film, and it treats the effects as such. These aren't your everyday "actor with false teeth" vampires, these are Evil Dead II style demons, creatures that resemble less Lugosi and more The Thing, mutated, weird, and disturbing, and more concerned with entertainment than realism. You must also consider that some of these effects were highly functional, not just simple makeup jobs but interactive builds that sprayed fluid, changed shapes, and moved about. You must also consider that this is a 15+ year old film. If you're looking for visual effects that blend practical makeups with CG elements in every shot, or worse, nothing but CG for "effects," then you're looking for the wrong thing here. Aside from a few blends, melts, and effect fades, everything you see was done in front of the camera, in person, for real, and it looks that was. None of the effects look like something you couldn't reach out and touch, and they all live up to some of the best and highest regarded horror and scifi effects created for film. I'd love to see what the OP thought was a "good" special effect.
All of this aside, this is a fantastic film. The first has is engaging, interesting, and unique, tugging you along for the ride in a familiar fashion to other Tarantino scripts in a decidedly Tex-Mex Rodriquez style. It slows down only to let you get involved with the characters, and is at no point boring or dismissible. If you take someone who has never seen this film, and doesn't know what it's about, and sit them down to watch it, the range of expressions and reactions you'll get to the mid-movie vampire shock are worth repeat viewings with a new audience. After the shift in story arc, the following scenes are fun, entertaining as hell, and right up the gore/camp/gun alley of anyone who enjoys the Evil Dead series (for whom KNB also did the effects). I can't imagine a more consistently entertaining film in this genre. It's one of my all-time favorites and it's always fun to see again.