Insane, Gory Fun

Rating: 8/10 (17 April 2004)

This is a wild, crazed, demented, sick, loud, gore-splattered, profanity-laden, explosion-heavy, hot and sexy vampire film. It's also a lot of fun if you can stomach all the previously mentioned elements.
Seth and Richard Gecko (played by George Clooney and the amazing Quentin Tarantino) are fugitives on their way to Mexico amid a storm of bullets and fire. After hijacking a motor home and the nice family it belongs to (jaded ex-minister Harvey Keitel, daughter Juliette Lewis and son Ernest Liu) the strange group is heading for a notorious Mexican strip joint called The Titty Twister. Unfortunately, the group has no way of knowing that the bar is staffed by some really nasty vampires.
Some of my favorite people are in this odd little flick: the aforementioned Tarantino (who has never done anything that I don't like), the amazing Keitel (totally cast against type here and doing an amazing job as always), the smolderingly beautiful Salma Hayek, playing the sinuously sexy dancing vampire Satanica Pandemonium, and Cheech Marin, who actually has three roles in this movie but who stands out as the doorman of the Titty Twister, enthusiastically announcing all the varieties of, um, women and their sexual organs to be found within. It's absolutely hysterical...but only if you're not easily offended by the common nickname for house cats being used to describe the female genitalia. Quentin Tarantino also does an outstanding job in his role as the delusional Richard, who imagines he hears crude come-ons from any and every woman he spends too much time around. Keep an eye out for early evidence of his now notorious foot fetish in the scene he shares with Salma, her white snake (nice Bram Stoker touch, by the way) and her bare feet.
The violence is explosive and virtually non stop by the third act. The make-up effects by Tom Savini (who also has a role as a biker named Sex Machine) are pretty damn cool, but as with every film that Tarantino has touched, the real action lies within the words spoken by the actors. The script is fast and clever and as incredibly funny as it is offensively sick. This is half vampire film, half Spaghetti western with a little Reservoir Dogs thrown in for good measure. And it's really damn fun too. Fans of Tarantino should enjoy this, and vampire fans tired of the same old formulaic films might just enjoy this odd side road into new territory. The easily offended should stay far away. The rest of us without an ounce of PC will be laughing our tasteless butts off.