Two Movies For the Price of One!

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2005)

In "From Dusk Till Dawn", director Robert Rodriguez give us a Hitchcockian twist on the audience. The first hour of the movie is a heist film, as two brothers have robbed a bank and need to reach their contact in Mexico. The movie is suspenseful enough on it's own, as George Cloony and Quentin Tarantino (who also wrote the film) play the bank robbing brothers, Seth and Richard. They take a family hostage, lead by father Jacob (Harvey Keitel) and children Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu), and use them to sneak into Mexico. That's when the movie changes from a heist thriller to a vampire scare-a-thon. The meeting point is a strip club where vampires run the show. You can almost hear Tarantino snicker in the background, wondering how he was able to get two of his favorite movie genres into one film. Tarantino also indulges in a passion, I'm sure, of his, as he licks whiskey off of Selma Hayek's toes (his reputation of having a foot fetish is well documented). I was really enjoying the heist aspect of the movie, but I suppose there wasn't enough there to fill entire movie, so the decision to go another way was a good one. The out of left field aspect of the vampire story is jarring and will surprise audiences who don't know it's coming (I guess that counts you out, as you've read this far). The blood and gore that does come from the vampire story is well done and does harken us back to the 1970s super-gory movies. Even Fred Williamson is in this movie. How much more B-movie can we get? There are lots of little jokes thrown throughout the movie, my favorite being Tom Savini's attempt to hide the fact changes are happening around him. The movie will entertain those who like both movie genres that are featured in From Dusk Till Dawn, but those who are squeamish about cursing, blood, guts, decapitations, vampires, or Cheech Marin, maybe this is not for you.