This isn't a Tarantino movie, but in a way it almost feels like one. Its pretty basic and simple, and the plot doesn't get much deeper than that, with pretty shallow characters and the movie relying heavily on action and cheesy dialog. It has some memorable moments, we get a sexy dance scene with Salma Hayek who was in her prime during this time, we get lots of gore and deaths, and it actually isn't too cliche, and has lots of famous actors. Bank robber Seth Gecko and his violent brother, Richie, are on the run -- a robbery gone bad left several people dead -- and the FBI and Texas Rangers are in pursuit.
As they head for Mexico, the brothers meet the Fuller family heading the same way. They take the family hostage and continue the trip in the Fullers' RV. Chaos breaks out when they stop at a bar to meet the cartel king who offered them shelter. The bar is home to vampires and becomes the scene of another fight in a reimagining of a 1996 movie by the same title, created by Robert Rodriguez, who brought that version to the big screen. Meanwhile the former minister Jacob Fuller is traveling on vacation with his son Scott and his daughter Kate in a RV.
Jacob lost his faith after the death of his beloved wife in a car accident and quit his position of pastor of his community and stops for the night in the same motel Seth and Richard are lodged. When Seth sees the recreational vehicle, he abducts Jacob and his family to help his brother and him to cross the Mexico border, promising to release them on the next morning. They head to the truck drivers and bikers bar Titty Twister where Seth will meet with his partner Carlos in the dawn.
When they are watching the dancer Santanico Pandemonium, Seth and Richard fight with three bodyguards. But soon they discover that the bar is a coven of vampires and they need to fight until dawn to leave the place alive. In this action-horror flick from director Robert Rodriguez and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, Tarantino stars with George Clooney as a pair of bad-to-the-bone brothers named Seth and Richie Gecko. After a string of robberies that left a river of blood in the Geckos' wake, the sadistic siblings head to Mexico to live the good life. To get over the border, they kidnap Jacob Fuller, a widowed preacher played by Harvey Keitel, and his two children, Kate and Scott . Once south of the border, the quintet park their RV at a rough-and-tumble trucker bar called The Titty Twister, where Seth and Richie are supposed to meet a local thug.
After a couple of drinks, they realize that they're not in a typical bar, as the entire place begins to teem with vicious, blood-sucking vampires. With the odds stacked greatly against them, the Fullers and Geckos team together in hopes of defeating the creatures of the night. Makeup artist Tom Savini and blaxploitation star Fred Williamson appear as allies against the vampires, and Cheech Marin fills three different roles.
To get over the border, they kidnap Jacob Fuller, a widowed preacher played by Harvey Keitel, and his two children, Kate Juliette Lewis and Scott Ernest Liu. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and described it as "a skillful meat-and-potatoes action extravaganza with some added neat touches". The thing that's always most impressed me about From Dusk Till Dawn compared to other vampire movies is the fact that for the first hour, it's not a vampire movie. It's just a very straightforward, Rodriguez and Tarantino-esque crime drama.
The film is simply about two brothers trying to get to Mexico and the trouble they get into along the way. Then, halfway through, there's a complete and total shift in tone, but it works because you're already so invested in these characters. It's almost impossible to pull off, but they make it seem somehow easy.
Because the Gecko brothers, the family they've kidnapped, none of these people were expecting vampires to come along and ruin their day, either. More than twenty years ago, filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino spun the vampire genre on its head with From Dusk Till Dawn. In that time, the film has only grown in popularity, having been reimagined as a TV series produced by Rodriguez.
The movie had a great script, a great director, and an excellent cast including George Clooney, Juliette Lewis, Harvey Keitel, Salma Hayek, and Danny Trejo. Not to mention a surprisingly chilling performance from Tarantino himself. Parents need to know that the TV series From Dusk Till Dawn, which is inspired by the film franchise, is all about crime, family, and vampires. It contains a lot of mature content, including bloody shootings, gruesome ritualistic crime scenes, hostage situations, and other violent behaviors.
It also has strong sexual content, including stripping and nudity. Drinking is visible, and drug cartels play a role in the drama. This supernatural series follows a pair of fugitive brothers after a bank heist leaves several people dead.
After crossing the border with their hostages, they are stranded in a strip club filled with vampires and are forced to fight until morning in order to survive. 108 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$19 millionBox office$59.3 millionFrom Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 American action horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino. On the basis of the first episode, which appeared on Netflix yesterday and aired on the El Rey network in the US, it's iffy.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez himself, it's more or less an elongated version of the film's first eight minutes. The Gecko brothers – here played by Not George Clooney and Not Quentin Tarantino – have robbed a bank and are heading to Mexico, but first they need to stop off at a liquor store. They meet a Texas ranger and, if you've seen the film, you'll have a pretty good idea of what happens next. Unless you can't remember what happened in the first half of the film because you only watched it for the sexy vampire battle at the end.
Road movie cum horror film in which two criminal brothers on the run kidnap a family and hide out in a nightclub where the clientele are vampires. The show was based on the 1996 movie of the same name directed by Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino. The plot follows a pair of American criminal brothers who take a family as hostages in order to cross into Mexico, but find themselves trapped in a saloon frequented by vampires.
It featured an all-star cast including George Clooney, Juliette Lewis, Salma Hayek, and Tarantino himself. Seth Gecko and his younger brother Richard are on the run after a bloody bank robbery in Texas. They escape across the border into Mexico and will be home-free the next morning, when they pay off the local kingpin. They just have to survive 'from dusk till dawn' at the rendezvous point, which turns out to be a Hell of a strip joint.
When I moved to Ibiza – a place famous for attracting nocturnal creatures from all over the globe – I truly felt like I'd come home. I'd discovered a place where everything seemed to happen after the sun went down; where you could dance till dawn or work till dawn – and for a solid period there, I even managed to combine both. My life was a dusk till dawn affair for many years but what I didn't realise for a very long time was that there was another type of lifestyle happening on the other side of the clock… enter the dawn till dusk brigade.
Of course, over the years my lifestyle eventually shifted gears enough that dusk till dawn activities became – as they are for most people – more of a weekend affair and my days were pretty routine . Then, when morning rolls around as it inevitably does every single day, I have to hit the snooze button five times and drag myself out of bed to face the day. The plot centers around the Gecko brothers, two dyed-in-the-wool criminals on the run from the police after a prison break in Texas.
Causing death and destruction wherever they go, they eventually manage to sneak past the border with Mexico by taking a pastor and his two teenage children hostage in their RV. They go to a trucker bar, the Titty Twister, to spend the night as they wait for their rendezvous. What happens at this point is a very sudden and unexpected Genre Shift when it turns out that the bar is a front for a clan of vampires, and they have to fight for their survival through the night . Of course, this has become widely spoiled and as such, loses most of its effect . One of the scariest moments in the film comes long before they even reach the bar, with Richie being left to keep an eye on the motel maid they've taken hostage when Seth goes out. He comes back, finds Richie sitting calmly on the bed—alone.
There's nothing nearly as explicit here as the violence we find later on in the movie. The horror here is accomplished through editing and cinematography. Of course, in From Dusk Till Dawn, once they reach the bar, that's when the horror starts. It's a simple concept when you think about it, but it works really well. Just about everything in this film is trying to be unconventional.
Not only is it not structured like your typical horror movie, but these aren't your typical vampires, either. The KNB crew did an amazing job creating all sorts of weird and memorable creatures, each one different from the last. With its palette of hideous monstrosities, decapitations, dismemberments, eviscerations, topless dancers, profane dialogue, and bare foot licking, this motion picture pushes the R-rating to the edge.
All I can really say about the last 30 minutes of the film is, if you liked "Dawn of the Dead" , you'll like this. The plot is forgotten as Rodriguez goes for violence and special effects, including people who morph into hideous creatures in the middle of the barroom brawl. There's also an outbreak of vampirism among the leading characters, in scenes owing something to "Assault on Precinct 13" and "Night of the Living Dead." After the title sequence, we get to know the central characters, Seth and Richard Gekko . They've robbed a bank and left a trail of dead and wounded (all toted up by a TV news reporter's digital carnage readout). Richard has helped Seth break out of prison, and now they're heading for the Mexican border with the bank loot, and Richard, who is a rabid loony, is blasting everyone in sight, including innocent bystanders.
Soon after entering the club, chaos ensues as the employees and strippers are all revealed to be vampires. Most of the patrons are quickly killed, and Richie is bitten by the star stripper, Santanico Pandemonium, and bleeds to death. Only Seth, Jacob, Kate, Scott, a biker named Sex Machine, and Frost—a Vietnam War veteran—survive the attack.
The slain patrons, including Richie, then come back to life as vampires, forcing Seth to kill his own brother. Bank-robbing brothers encounter vengeful lawmen and demons south of the border in this original series based on Robert Rodriguez' cult horror film. In the hands of lesser filmmakers, From Dusk Till Dawn would be an absolute tonal mess.
It required the perfect blend of action, horror and humor to pull it off with even the smallest bit of success. But Rodriguez, Tarantino, the cast, the KNB crew, all the way down the line, they knew exactly what they were making. And that, above all, is why we're still talking about this film more than 20 years later.
More than that, one of the most brilliant things about From Dusk Till Dawn is that the bar is the safe haven they're trying to reach. It's set up in such a way that it makes you feel safe, because everything we've been taught from movies is that once you reach the destination, the threat is over. Yet the reason From Dusk Till Dawn entertains is because it never takes itself seriously. The movie has been designed as a burst of high energy, and that's exactly what it turns out to be. From Dusk Till Dawn will appeal to only a small portion of the cinema-visiting population, but for those who enjoy this kind of tongue-and-cheek horror story, the film has a lot to offer.
"It was written at a time before I was even a filmmaker," Rodriguez says of his original notes from 1993, which initially envisioned the film as a deeply ironic narrative. "But it probably won't be as interesting as a behind-the-scenes story if it's just a comedy about this place, so I'll turn it into a thriller. Nevertheless, it's come full circle since it brought him to El Mariachi, the still-groundbreaking indie that now serves as the impetus forRed 11 and the docuseries about its making that he developed at the El Rey network.
Of course, by the time 5pm arrived I was well in need of a siesta – as regular readers of this blog know, I love a good siesta on the best of days, let alone on those where you've been up since before the dawn. My body clock was well and truly messed and and trying to auto-correct itself. So I foolishly had a nap and then wouldn't you know it, later that night when I was trying to lullaby myself to sleep, I was wide awake as usual.
And then the next morning was a replay of the one before. And so it went on… but over the course of two weeks, my body clock started to do as it was told. The more sunrises we saw , the more we came to realise that they are every bit as magical as sunsets.
It's just that there aren't a whole slew of bars playing Balearic beats (or full-on tech-house depending on where you choose to watch them) dedicated to them. But that's what makes the sunrise even more special; it's the silence that surrounds it. The breeze rustling the tree tops, the birds slowly starting to chirp, the waves lapping the shoreline – the sounds of life unfolding naturally, as it should be. When they find themselves in dire straits, the real weapon becomes Jacob Fuller being a mean you-know-what servant of god and when all hope is really lost, the sun comes up and the disco ball blitzes the monsters into pieces. It turns out there's more than one way to kill a vampire and From Dusk Till Dawn takes that to an extreme.
The setting of a film's main content is key to the climax. With a name like The Titty Twister, the bar that the Gecko Brothers use as a rendezvous point is shocking in more ways than one. Aside from its suggestive alliteration, the establishment is an odd joint in the middle of nowhere filled with patrons that are just as dangerous as Seth and Richie. Reserved to truckers and bikers only, it's a menacing place for the gang to wait out the night and that's even before the fangs come out.
Risky and risqué, the Titty Twister hosts beautiful dancers, booze, and a great Chicano rock band that keeps the party going. Modeled after Kurtz's compound in Apocalypse Now, the bar seems like a safe haven for innocent debauchery with Cheech Marin boasting a variety of… sex workers, but it quickly turns into an isolated space of attack. The Titty Twister is a notable establishment in horror locations filled with surprises, especially when the final shot of From Dusk Till Dawn exposes its long running business. It's not everyday that you're rooting for the bad guys, and the Gecko Brothers are some really bad guys. Rather than playing on romantic notes, as vampire films tend to do, From Dusk Till Dawn puts two villains in the driver's seat long before adding more redeemable players.
