FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (Robert Rodriguez, 1996) **1/2

Rating: 6/10 (22 October 2006)

This is another film I'd been wanting to watch ever since it was released. As some of you may know, I'm not much of a devotee of Quentin Tarantino - even less so Robert Rodriguez - and my main interest in it was to see how they approached the horror genre. I wasn't all that surprised to find that it's much more of a Tarantino/Rodriguez hybrid of cool dialogue, excessive violence, foul language and slam-bang action than an out-and-out vampire film!
Anyway, the first half (which is the non-horror part, incidentally) is the best with George Clooney and Tarantino himself (still a worthless actor and mean as mush) on the run after a heist and kidnapping Harvey Keitel's preacher and family on their way to Mexico. When we finally get to the vampires, it's like the film-makers didn't quite know what to make of them and wanted to get it over with - as we only see a succession of humans getting bitten and transformed into the undead themselves, until dawn arrives and the vampires left standing are destroyed by sunlight.
Tarantino gets to wear monster make-up and an embarrassed-looking Harvey Keitel dabbles in gung-ho action heroics - but this section does feature a delightful double-act in fx master Tom Savini (playing a character called "Sex Machine" and decked-out with a cannon device in his pants placed on top of his crotch!) and former 'Blaxpoitation' star Fred Williamson. For the record, Clooney is likable as ever, Juliette Lewis does her typically confused yet aroused teenager, while Salma Hayek is a sultry snake dancer billed as "Santanico {sic} Pandemonium" (but her appearance is much shorter than I had anticipated, given the prominence she is given in stills I had seen from the film!).