'From Dusk Till Dawn' (R)

By Hal Hinson
Washington Post Staff Writer
January 19, 1996

We should have known we were doomed when, during a recent interview in a British magazine, Quentin Tarantino applauded Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls" as one of the best movies of last year.

The script for Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn" is the first feature that Tarantino has written since his breakaway success with "Pulp Fiction," and from the evidence here, the designing auteur of that landmark film is resting on his laurels. A violent road movie that disintegrates into a lurid vampire spoof, "From Dusk Till Dawn" is a tired, humorless pastiche of various exploitation genres that is not the least bit imaginative in its campy deconstruction of conventions.

The result is a plodding, aggressive film that is neither engaging, disturbing nor funny. The story is simple almost to the point of absurdity. A pair of homicidal brothers on the run from the law, Seth and Richard Gecko (George Clooney and Tarantino himself) are nobody's idea of heroes. While knocking over a small bank, they take a hostage, but after Richard rapes and kills her (without Seth's permission), they need another prisoner.

Jacob (Harvey Keitel) and his kids, Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu), fit the bill nicely—plus their recreational vehicle is parked right outside the door. All the brothers' prisoners have to do is get the boys to a certain honky-tonk, and they'll be set free.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple. When the group finally reaches its destination—a rockin', anything-goes sort of roadhouse—it turns out to be the haunt of voracious vampires.

Bummer.

If the movie is a casually straightforward, even straight-faced, homage to road movies before the club, it abruptly shifts into full-bore farce afterward. Once inside, Seth and his brother spar with the clientele (mostly bikers and truckers), until a stripper named Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) makes her entrance and signals her comrades to let the sucking begin.

After that, it's nothing but spurting aortas and flash-burning carcasses. As the night ticks toward dawn, this beleaguered squad of humans attempts to fight its way out of trouble, ramming the evil undead with stakes.

There are some jokes scattered here and there—the main one being the presence of Fred Williamson, who makes one superfly vampire killer—but for the most part, the jokey tone is sustained by the outrageousness of the bloodletting. It's so excessive that it's meant to be hilarious.

The audaciously choreographed atrocities of Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead" movies—from which Tarantino and Rodriguez have borrowed liberally—were hilarious. But "From Dusk Till Dawn" doesn't have the wit or the inventiveness of Raimi's films, nor does it provide the basic pleasures of most exploitation films.

With the exception of a hyperbolic opening sequence at a liquor store, the film fails to showcase the formidable talent for large-scale pyrotechnics that Rodriguez, who also edits his movies, showed in "Desperado" (the studio remake of his independently financed "El Mariachi"). And nothing of the anxious mix of tension and humor that characterized Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" or "Pulp Fiction" is evident either.

The only good news, really, is that Clooney makes a terrific debut as an action star. His looks translate beautifully to the big screen, as does his California laconism. He, at least, bears watching, even if "From Dusk Till Dawn" does not.

From Dusk Till Dawn is rated R for excessive violence, gore, adult situations and suggestions of child molestation.

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