Grisly, goofy fun

Rating: 8/10 (29 October 2019)

The Geckos, couple of desperado brothers (Clooney and Tarantino) and the family that thay have taken hostage end up in an ultra-sleezy Mexican stripper-bar that is also a den of the undead, so blood (red and green) is spilled by the bucket as the desperate group tries to live out the titular period. The violence is so over-the-top that it floats above the offensively objectionable and lodges firmly into the ludicrously entertaining. The film starts slowly: it takes the Geckos 45 minutes shoot up a liquor store, grab their hostages, and cross the border, but once they are unsafely ensconced in the "Titty Twister", the action sequences (preposterous even by fantasy-bloodbath standards) are nonstop and sanguinely amusing. The cast, which includes Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Cheech Marin (in multiple roles), and Danny Trejo is great, as is Robert Rodriguez's direction, and the script (by Tarantino) is profane and comical. The plot's a sieve and there are endless inconsistencies in the vampire life (death?) cycle, but this is not a story-driven film by any stretch of the imagination, so who cares. The closing shot is priceless. Definitely not for the squeamish, the fragile, or the easily offended.