FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: THE SERIES, SEASON 1 (2014)

 

I would never have thought FROM DUSK TILL DAWN would have been improved by adaptation to another form, but the ten episodes of the 2014 teleseries do successfully confer greater depth on the sketchy characters and their background.


For one thing, in the film crazy Richie Gecko is largely defined by the degree of trouble he brings to his more sensible brother Seth, and his perverse hallucinations are nothing but indicators of his mania. In the teleseries, Richie (Zane Holtz) is in part crazy because, like a latter-day Renfield, he's responding to the call of a master vampire. Even before the Geckos cross the Mexican border, Santanico Pandemonium is calling out to Richie, and not until they arrive at the Titty Twister does brother Seth (D.J. Cotrona) realize what's going on with his brother.

Jacob, Kate and Scott are still present, but since two of them are doomed to die in the series just as they do in the movie, the Fullers are not given appreciably greater development. Other potential plotlines are expanded, as with a conflict between the Geckos and local Mexican gangsters, and a Texas Ranger named Gonzalez follows the Geckos into Mexico as well. But without question the greatest improvement is that the vampires are substantially re-thought. Their indebtedness to Aztec mythology is slightly suggested in the movie, but in the series, more information about the vamps is doled out by the character of Sex Machine, who is himself revised into a rather peculiar professor of mythological studies. The Mexican vamps are redefined as "culebras," and are said to be closer in nature to snakes than to bats. Since the teleseries isn't trying to drown the viewer in makeup effects, the result is the vampires aren't nearly as erratic in form or in function. Further, their occupation of the titty-bar is given a more metaphysical function.

The ten episodes of the series take the audience a series of events roughly paralleling those of the movie. The biggest change is that both Richie and Santanico (a fetching Elza Gonzalez) do not perish as they do in the movie: they get clear of the annihilation of the titty-bar and depart for new territory. Seth and Kate are again the only "good guys" to survive the vamp-holocaust, but in contrast to the film's conclusion, the two characters remain together, though they're not explicitly pursuing Richie and his vampire mistress. Presumably, since the series has been granted a 10-episode extension, all four will cross paths again, and new characters will have to be invented to take up the slack for all those that took the dirt nap.