♥♥♥♥
+ Best Gore Movie of the Year + Best Vampire Movie of the Year
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| A neat, gritty, retro-styled poster for Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn |
Two criminal brothers on the lam after a heist take an ex-minister and his two children hostage on their way across the US border into Mexico, where their rendezvous at a seedy biker bar named the Titty Twister evolves into a night of fantastic mayhem.
From Dusk till Dawn is an awesome movie. It marks the first major collaboration between Tennesseean master filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction (1994)), who wrote the screenplay, based on a story by Robert Kurtzman (The Rage (2007)), and stars as the nastier of the two criminal brother leads, and great Texan filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror (2007)), who directed it. They later collaborated on Sin City (2005) and their Grindhouse double-bill, which is really two individual movies. For my taste it is a lot more enjoyable than the more stylized-artificial and less fun Sin City. This action horror mixes the best of them both in an uncompromising, creative special effects-driven whopper of a film, a gleeful celebration of exploitation and b-movies' violent thrills and gore.
Harvey Keitel (The Congress (2013)) and Juliette Lewis (Free for All (2003), TV-series) as the minister who has lost his faith and his capable teenage daughter are especially good in the terrific ensemble gathered here, which also features a saucy Salma Hayek (Timecode (2000)) who works on the stage in the Titty Twister with a giant yellow snake in one of the film's sexy and more memorable scenes.
Related post:
Robert Rodriguez: 1996 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Desperado (1995) - Rodriguez' second Mexico actioner is a sexy, latino fireball
Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 25.8 mil. $ (North America only)
= Uncertainty (but likely a big flop)
[From Dusk till Dawn was released 19 January (North America) and runs 108 minutes. Tarantino wrote the script as his first paid writing assignment. Unusual for such a relatively high-budgeted US feature, the film employed a non-union production crew. Shooting took place in Washington, including Seattle, in California, including Los Angeles, and in Mexico from June - August 1995. The film opened #1 to a 10.2 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more week in the top 5 (#3) and ended its run after just 4 weeks. The film's world gross is not reported, and so its box office status is unsure. - If its final gross was in the neighborhood of 30-35 mil. $, it would still rank as a big flop. Tarantino was nominated for a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie award for the film. He returned with masterpiece Jackie Brown (1997). Co-starring George Clooney returned in One Fine Day (1996). Rodriguez returned with The Faculty (1998). From Dusk till Dawn became a cult item, and likely made money with its home video sales factored in. It spurred two sequels, From Dusk till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) and From Dusk till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (1999), none of them by Tarantino or Rodriguez. A From Dusk till Dawn: The Series (2014-16) was produced by Rodriguez for Netflix. A fourth movie is rumored. From Dusk till Dawn is fresh at 64 % with a 6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of From Dusk till Dawn?
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