Hollywood has learned to be less hostile to bold and daring swings, even when they don’t quite connect. Todd Phillips pulled that off with Joker in 2019, landing a billion-dollar October shocker; the sequel, however, proved lightning doesn’t always strike the same spot twice.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, as writer and director respectively, attempt a similarly audacious gamble in 1996’s From Dusk Till Dawn, fusing a crime thriller with vampire horror, two genres that couldn’t be more incompatible. It’s a marriage that won’t find the unanimous support of the horror or crime thriller congregation. But laced with all the elements of a cult classic — authorial fingerprints, iconic excesses and contradictions — it certainly leaves a vivid afterimage.
At its onset, From Dusk Till Dawn sells itself as a gritty crime thriller with hostage-movie tension. For more than an hour, it fully commits to that identity. Brothers Seth (George Clooney) and Richie Gecko (Tarantino) are fugitives wanted across Texas for robbery, kidnapping, and murder (the latter boasting a body count of 16). The film wastes no time introducing the audience to the substance of the Gecko brothers’ characters when both wreck carnage at a remote convenience store.
Neither hesitates to kill anyone who stands between them and their goal of escaping with a stolen bank loot across the Mexican border. Where the older Seth’s reserved, calculating professionalism might even win over a heart or two, Richie’s deeply unhinged and erratic behavior is openly terrifying (for anyone who needs reminding that Tarantino is just as good in front of the camera as behind it) to both the captives and the audience alike.
No one feels this more keenly than widowed pastor Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel) and his two children, Katherine (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu), whose motorhome is unfortunate enough to be deemed the perfect mule for the Gecko brothers and who are promptly taken hostage. Once across the border, the quintet hole up in a dust-soaked strip-club bar aptly named the Titty Twister.
If this sounds promising, it should sound just as disappointing for anyone looking to see this hostage situation to the end to learn that all it takes is one pissed employee for the movie to derail into a full-blown vampire gore-fest. Once the bar is revealed to be a vampiric blood bank where they feed on unsuspecting truckers and customers, the third act kicks in full mode with vampire and human entrails alike scattering across the screen. Now joined by biker Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and Vietnam vet Frost (Fred Williamson), the Fuller and Geckos have to survive the night.
From Dusk Till Dawn’s Sharpest Edge Is It’s Dialog
From Dusk Till Dawn carries the unmistakable hallmarks of both Tarantino and Rodriguez. In the former’s case, it’s profane, often loose and drawn-out dialog. Few audiences would skip a good quarrel, and that is exactly what unfolds in nearly every scene of the film, whether between captives, captors or both. What better way to keep viewers invested than to lace constant conflict with humor, tension, and verbal one-upmanship?
Thus, lines like “Under the circumstances, I think I ought to get a f****** Academy Award for how natural I’m acting,” delivered by a liquor store clerk held at gunpoint in the opening scene, immediately establish the film’s tone and have since become iconic. Likewise is the Jacob’s venomous taunt of “Are you so much of a f****** loser, you can’t tell when you’ve won?” to a barely contained Seth.
A hidden power of Tarantino’s dialog (which Marvel Cinematic Universe writers have annoyingly not been paying attention to), is the way it deflects tension into humor without dissolving the former. “We’re having a Bikini contest, and you just won,” says Richie to a startled Katherine Fuller. Their first time encounter functions just as well, if not better, than a stray punchline.
From Dusk Till Dawn Decides its Allegiance Before the Vampires Arrive
From Dusk Till Dawn may be a multi-genre hybrid, but the film’s look, style, and feel subtly betray such alignment. In other words, Tarantino and Rodriguez had already picked the film’s camp long before the vampires arrive. For one, the action. There’s a high body count and nearly every shot is framed to make the Gecko brothers look cooler than the people around them, and a distinctly Mexican swashbuckling flair, à la guns drawn from crouches.
In the first half, especially, the attention to detail is painstaking: revolvers stop firing after six shots, reloads are visible, and implausible stunts are largely avoided. All of this quietly but firmly anchors the film in the grammar of the crime-western. Even as the film later mutates into horror, it’s obvious that the third act is deliberately cheesy steal of Dawn of the Dead (1979) with vampire genocide occurring in a laughable manner: we’re told these creatures possess superhuman strength, yet a single punch is sometimes enough to stun them
Tarantino and Rodriguez’s laissez-faire touch to the second half, however deliberate, truly hurts this film. Blood and special effects are inadequate to fill an audience already brimming with anticipation for a tightly wound, character-driven crime thriller grounded in tension, realism, and escalating moral danger. A large chunk of viewers are bound to hate the second half, not necessarily because it fails, but because the film’s first half so convincingly sells them on a different movie altogether.
From Dusk Till Dawn
6/10
- Release Date
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January 19, 1996
- Runtime
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108 minutes
- Director
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Robert Rodriguez
