Very entertaining action packed horror film.

Rating: 8/10 (25 March 2008)

From Dusk Till Dawn starts with two wanted criminals on the run, brothers Seth (George Clooney) & Richard Gecko (Quentin Taratino) are wanted for murder & robbery. They hatch a plan to cross the border into Mexico & kidnap a preacher named Jacob (Hervey Keitel) & his two kids Kate (Juliette Lewis) & Scott (Ernest Liu) to help them, hiding in the back of Jacob's large motor-home they manage to get across the border to the relative safety of Mexico. Seth has arranged a meeting with Mexican crime-boss to pay him off to let them stay at criminal hideaway El Rey, the meeting is set to take place at the Titty Twister bar which is actually frequented by blood sucking Vampires...
Edited, co-produced & directed by Robert Rodriguez this action come Vampire flick is a bit of a gem that I have seen several times since it first came out & enjoy it each & every time. The script was by star Quentine Taratino who had just had bags of commercial & critical success (hell, he even won an Oscar for the screenplay) with Pulp Fiction (1994) & he followed that up with From Dusk Till Dawn which is a terrific Vampire horror film with a touch of heist flick about it. As has already been mentioned by the whole world & it's brother From Dusk Till Dawn can be split straight down the middle, the first half being a crime film with the Gecko brothers on the run from the law & during this half there is absolutely no indication that the second half of the film will explode into a full blown exploitation Vampire horror flick. Personally I think the sudden shift in tone, structure & even genre is a masterstroke & keeps the film unpredictable & it just feels totally & utterly right. There's plenty of action & gore, there's plenty of one-liners & amusing dialogue & it moves along like a rocket so it's never boring. Most of the character's are very good although I don't like how Tarantino made the Gecko brothers so unlikable, as the stars I would have thought they should be likable & not setting fire to innocent connivance store clerks which is the first meaningful thing we see them do.
Director Rodriguez does a good job here with plenty of action & gore. It's clear both Rodriguez & Tarantino are exploitation fans & From Dusk Till Dawn is stuffed full of homages & nods to a style of film-making long gone. In fact the name of the film itself is taken from the signs found on drive-ins which showed this type of film. These signs indicate the length of the shows, which ran "from dusk till dawn". There's a fair amount of violence & gore although nothing too graphic since it needed to get an 'R' rating, there's slit throats, decapitated heads, ripped out hearts, blood spurting, lots of severed limbs, exploding & melting Vampires, chucks bitten out of flesh, holes in hands & other assorted bodily mutilations. The film has a nice style & looks very nice as well. The special effects are generally good although the CGI computer effects look a bit dated now, having said that most of the effects are of the on set rubber & fake blood variety.
With a supposed budget of about $20,000,000 this is very well made with high production values. As well as being stuffed with exploitation homages in the script there are several cast members who will be recognizable to any horror film fan including Tom Savini, Fred Williamson, Harvey Keitel, John Saxon in a disappointingly little cameo, Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo & Salma Hayek also gets a small role. The acting is pretty good & the best thing thing Clooney has ever done.
From Dusk Till Dawn is a really fun action horror film that has a large plot twist about halfway through which I thought worked great. Followed by two straight-to-video sequels From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) & From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000) which were both poor & killed a potential franchise before it even started.