![]() ![]() I absolutely love "From Dusk Till Dawn", very much one of those films that you either buy into or you don't. It was probably the most fun I had at the cinema back in 1996. If you are a genre fan don't miss it, if you are not you might give it a try and be pleasantly surprised. Clooney's cool performance, the fitting soundtrack, some hilarious moments, Tarantino's fine touches all make this a highly original, quite bloody, vampire adventure. Even the gore is presented in a silly way, making it less gory. If you are able to take it the way it comes, not too serious, there is a good chance you might like it. We have a crime movie to start and a horror comedy, really in the Sam Raimi way, to end. ![]() Still, because the movie shifts the way it does it becomes quite original. Especially the second part will find a smaller audience and in a way I was a little curious how the first part would have ended if they kept it as serious as it was. You see how this movie is actually two movies. Now they are a team and face vampires as their opponents. The Fullers and Geckos survive together with a guy who calls himself Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and a guy named Frost (Fred Williamson). Not long after they are inside it is revealed that every crew member from the bar is actually a vampire, feeding themselves on bikers and truckers that visit the place. So we have the first hour, filled with Tarantino-stuff in its dialogue and references, and then the party arrives at a bar called the Titty Twister. He travels with his adopted son Scott (Ernest Liu) and his daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis). Father Jacob (Harvey Keitel) used to be a minister but gave up faith after his wife died in a car crash. That the entire state of Texas and the FBI are looking for them is a problem so they force the Fuller family to bring them across the border with their motor home. We learn they want to reach the Mexican border. They are bank robbers, although they do the occasional killing as well. We see two brothers named Seth (George Clooney) and Richie Gecko (Quentin Tarantino). This means the first hour is just brutal and bloody, sometimes a little funny, in the 'Pulp Fiction' kind of way. It is brilliant, brutal, bloody, horror, silly and funny the way Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead'-series is all those things, the twist here is a screenplay written by Quentin Tarantino. Two worlds, two "types" of films, both finding their validity in Tarantino's work.'From Dusk Till Dawn' is kind of brilliant, brutal, bloody, Tarantino, horror, silly and funny. Someone like Tarantino, known for his homages and remixing, who wears his influence on his sleeve, can find the good in these films and apply them to some of his more "arsty" or "oscar-y" movies, and I think that is just beautiful. It speaks to the power of film in all forms, even if it's an exploitative, semi-pornographic action movie. To me, these projects are some of the most underappreciated love letters to cinema I've ever seen. They aren't great by any sight, but nonetheless their existence influenced some of the most influential filmmakers of our generation. These might not have been the best films, more often than not terrible by most standards, but that might just be the point. I've certainly run into similar concerns trying to put my friends onto films like 'From Dusk Till Dawn', them not immediately seeing the artistic merit of these films, and me having to explain the films are "supposed to be shitty". ![]() In the times of COVID-19, this concept of a highly energetic film going experience makes me all the more envious. I've done minimal research on the concept of 'grindhouse', lurid films meant to be double-billed, screened in dingy theaters for a rowdy crowd of movie goers. Having been born in 2000, it's safe to say I am not in the generation that would readily appreciate the particular cinematic style of these films, but I would lie towards the back half of the generation that this project was meant for. Not only did I watch Death Proof, but the interviews and questionnaires surrounding the films were incredibly fascinating and shed a far more productive light on the two watching experiences. The project, "double-billed" with Robert Rodriquez's 'Planet Terror', was always something that I avoided watching, me being more in favor of the earlier work from the auteur of the later westerns, which I believe to be better films. Over the last week, I've taken a dive into Quentin Tarantino's most misunderstood work, Death Proof. ![]()
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