| 44th | Top banned films |
| 1st | Top film director and cinematographer collaborations |
| From Dusk till Dawn | |
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| Directed by | Robert Rodriguez |
| Produced by | Robert Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino Lawrence Bender |
| Written by | Quentin Tarantino Robert Kurtzman (Story) |
| Starring | George Clooney Harvey Keitel Quentin Tarantino Juliette Lewis Ernest Liu Fred Williamson Tom Savini Cheech Marin Salma Hayek |
| Music by | Graeme Revell |
| Cinematography | Guillermo Navarro |
| Studio | Dimension Films A Band Apart Los Hooligans |
| Distributed by | Dimension Films |
| Release date(s) | January 19, 1996 |
| Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $19 million[1] |
| Gross revenue | $25,836,616[1] |
| Followed by | From Dusk till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money |
From Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 action-horror film directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino. The movie stars George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Quentin Tarantino and Juliette Lewis.
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The film opens with fugitive bank robbers and brothers Seth (George Clooney) and Richie Gecko (Quentin Tarantino) fleeing the F.B.I. and Texas police. During the first few minutes of the film, they hold up a liquor store. They kill the store clerk and a cop. Two witnesses they held hostage in the store escape during the shooting. They hold a bank clerk hostage in the trunk of their car, whom Richie later rapes and murders (offscreen) to Seth's obvious dismay.
The Fuller family — Jacob (Harvey Keitel), the father, a pastor who is experiencing a crisis of faith, his Chinese American stepson Scott (Ernest Liu), and daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) — are on a vacation in their RV. They stop at a motel and are promptly kidnapped by the Geckos, who force the Fullers to smuggle them past the Mexican border. Seth and Jacob make an uneasy truce: if the Geckos can make it past the border, Jacob and his family will come out of the ordeal unharmed. During this, Richie hallucinates Kate making a sexual advance towards him. They succeed and arrive at the "Titty Twister", a strip club in the middle of a desolate part of Mexico, where the Geckos will be met by their contact Carlos (Cheech Marin) at dawn. The Geckos demand that the Fullers have a drink with them before leaving, despite Kate's obvious discomfort.
The group is initially rebuffed at the door by the doorman (Cheech Marin), and Seth, overreacting, beats him up before entering the club. Inside, they are again questioned and asked to leave by the bartender (Danny Trejo) until Jacob manages to convince him to let them stay by showing him his driver's license, which has a trucker rating. Seth is not happy about having been talked out of the fight, and begins drinking heavily while encouraging the entire group (kids included) to do the same. Richie drinks as well, but takes special notice of the club's star performer, Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) during an extended solo performance. However, near the end of her set, the doorman and bouncer that the pair beat up earlier arrive with back up, looking to settle the score with the Geckos. In a short confrontation, Richie is stabbed in his already wounded hand, and as he bleeds, he is attacked by a transformed Santanico, now revealed as a vampire.
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 Santanico and bleeds to death. Only Seth, Jacob, Kate, Scott, a biker named Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and Frost (Fred Williamson), a Vietnam War veteran, survive the attack. They quickly establish that despite their reservations about believing in vampires, they have to accept the reality at hand in order to live through the night. Seth also convinces the group that Jacob is their best weapon, but only if he rediscovers his faith and confidence enough to become a preacher again. The slain patrons — including Richie — then come back to life as vampires, forcing Seth to kill his own brother. Afterwards the group set about killing the vamped patrons.
During this second struggle, one of the vampires bites Sex Machine in the arm. Subsequently, Sex Machine changes into a vampire and bites Frost and Jacob before Frost throws Sex Machine through a window which allows an army of vampires to enter as bats from the outside. Seth and the Fullers desperately escape to a back storeroom and fashion anti-vampire weapons from items found therein, including a pneumatic drill, crossbow, shotgun and holy water (which requires Jacob to recover his faith to bless it). Jacob, knowing he will soon turn into a vampire as well, makes a reluctant Scott and Kate promise to kill him when he changes.
The four then make their final assault on the undead. During the battle, both Sex Machine and Frost attack but Kate kills Sex Machine and Jacob kills Frost. Jacob changes, but Scott hesitates to dispatch his father, allowing Jacob to bite Scott. Scott then hits Jacob with holy water and shoots him. Scott is then captured by several vampires who begin to devour him. Begging for death, Scott is shot by Kate. Only Seth and Kate are alive, surrounded by vampires. Just as they contemplate suicide, streams of sunlight shine through new holes in the walls, making the vampires back away. Dawn has come, and Carlos is trying to shoot his way in. On Seth's call, Carlos' bodyguards blast open the door, letting in full sunlight and killing every vampire inside, aided in part by the disco ball in the center of the room. Carlos admits that he had never entered the club, but that he had thought it looked like "a fun place". Angry over the deaths of Richie, Jacob and Scott, Seth demands that Carlos lowers his take (30%) for his stay in El Ray. Carlos reluctantly agrees.
Kate asks Seth if she can go with him to El Ray, but he declines, saying, "I may be a bastard, but I'm not a fucking bastard." She (in the RV) and Seth (with Carlos) go their separate ways after Seth gives Kate some cash. As they leave, the camera pans back to reveal that the "Titty Twister" was actually the top of a partially buried ancient Aztec temple. Many vehicles lay abandoned at the bottom of the temple.
From Dusk till Dawn employed a non-union production crew, which is unusual for a production with a budget above $15 million. Rodriguez, Tarantino and producer Lawrence Bender defended this choice because it made for a more team-like atmosphere on the set instead of people having to stick to their certified jobs. Yet the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts targeted the production for strike action seeking to shut down filming, feeling that the film was a large enough production to warrant a unionized crew. Police were employed on set during some shooting days although no industrial action took place. This issue is covered in the making-of documentary Full Tilt Boogie featured on the film's DVD.
Critical reception for From Dusk Till Dawn was mixed. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and described it as “a skillful meat-and-potatoes action extravaganza with some added neat touches”.[2] In his review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “The latter part of From Dusk Till Dawn is so relentless that it's as if a spigot has been turned on and then broken. Though some of the tricks are entertainingly staged, the film loses its clever edge when its action heats up so gruesomely and exploitatively that there's no time for talk”.[3] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Rodriguez and Tarantino have taken the let-'em-eat-trash cynicism of modern corporate moviemaking and repackaged it as junk-conscious 'attitude.' In From Dusk Till Dawn, they put on such a show of cooking up popcorn that they make pandering to the audience seem hip”.[4] However, in his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “The movie, which treats you with contempt for even watching it, is a monument to its own lack of imagination. It's a triumph of vile over content; mindless nihilism posing as hipness”.[5] Cinefantastique magazine’s Steve Biodrowski wrote, “Whereas one might reasonably have expected that the combo of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez would yield a critical mass of nuclear proportions, instead of an atomic fireball’s worth of entertainment, we get a long fuse, quite a bit of fizzle, and a rather minor blast”.[6] In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle called the film, “an ugly, unpleasant criminals-on-the-lam film that midway turns into a boring and completely repellent vampire 'comedy.' If it's not one of the worst films of 1996 it will have been one miserable year”.[7] In Marc Savlov's review for the Austin Chronicle, he wrote, "Fans of Merchant-Ivory will do well to steer clear of Rodriguez's newest opus, but both action and horror film fans have cause for celebration after what seems like a particularly long splatter-drought. This is horror with a wink and a nod to drive-in theatres and sweaty back seats. This is how it's done".[8]
The soundtrack features mainly Texas blues by such artists as ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan. The Chicano rock band Tito & Tarantula, who portrayed the band in the Titty Twister, appears on the soundtrack as well. The film's score is by Graeme Revell. "Dark Night" by The Blasters plays over the film's opening credits.
The film was followed by two direct-to-video follow-ups, a sequel, From Dusk till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money and a prequel, From Dusk till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter. Danny Trejo is the only actor to appear in all three, although Michael Parks appears in The Hangman's Daughter. Rodriguez, Tarantino and Bender served as producers on all three movies. Both sequels were received poorly by critics. Texas Blood Money currently has a rating of 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. [9]
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From Dusk till Dawn is a 1996 action-comedy-horror film about two criminals and their hostages who unknowingly seek temporary refuge in an establishment populated by vampires, with chaotic results.
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