FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological, metaphysical*


The original FROM DUSK TILL DAWN is famous for the involvement of director-editor Robert Rodriguez and screenplay-scribe Quentin Tarantino. However, despite their unquestionable input, at base the original story by makeup/effects guy Robert Kurtzman is most concerned with producing as many crazy-ass prosthetic effects as a horror-fantasy can hold.

In 1996, watching DUSK on the big screen was a hoot. Almost twenty years later, the film doesn't hold up as anything but a series of cheap thrills, though the central idea remains appealing. A couple of tough crooks-on-the-run, holding a small family hostage, blunder into a Mexican titty-bar. The bar is run by vampires who prey upon truckers and bikers whose disappearances will presumably never be missed. The first half-hour plays like a mundane suspense-tale: will the innocent nuclear family-- lapsed preacher Jacob Fuller (Harvey Keitel), his daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) and adopted son Scott (Ernest Liu) win free from the merciless gunmen Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino)? But the gangsters' success at fleeing the U.S. law into Mexico takes a PSYCHO-like turn as they find themselves immersed in a titty-bar version of the Bates Motel, where customers who check in-- well, you know.  There follows a series of fight-and-chase scenes, interrupted with a few dramatic moments, ending with a slightly ironic coda for the survivors of the firefight.

The first section shows the greatest attention to detail. The Gecko Brothers have a dysfunctional relationship: though Richie is responsible for breaking Seth out of jail, Seth is the more rational of the two, regarding himself an experienced holdup-artist who doesn't kill without necessity. Richie, however, is a dangerous psychotic given to imagining that his hostages are out to kill him or have sex with him-- and both scenarios lead Richie to commit gratuitous murders. Seth knows that his brother is crazy but remains loyal to him, hoping that they can retire to Mexico with their ill-gotten gains. In contrast, the Fullers are reasonably cohesive, even though Jacob's kids bust his chops a little about having given up his religious status. The script doesn't really explore the characters of Scott and Kate, though. The focus is almost entirely on Jacob's loss of faith due to the loss of his beloved wife, but in the Rodriguez-Tarantino universe, loss of faith can best be countered by becoming a kickass Warrior of God.

One of the main pleasures of DUSK the first time out was its gestures to earlier icons of adventure-cinema. John Saxon and Michael Parks don't get much to do, but Fred Williamson, who had not made a high-profile film in years, is fetishized for his status as a major adventure-icon. In the history of metaphenomenal films, Tom Savini's fame depends far more upon his skill with special effects than at acting. Still, though he had acted in other films prior to DUSK, in this film his semi-comic turn as tough biker "Sex Machine" raised Savini to the level of a minor character-icon in his own right. In fact, Savini's acting is better than Williamson's. The latter's image of extreme toughness descends into silliness when he rips a vampire's heart right out of its body.

Tarantino is reasonably good as the alternately whiney/hyperviolent Richie, but he only works because Clooney gives a more nuanced performance than usual. Jacob Fuller is the only character given a level of development approximate to that of Seth Gecko, but as noted above the Robert Rodriguez answer to "the silence of God" is really no more than a lot of noise.

The weakest link in DUSK, though, is the vampires. Because they're thrown into the plot in such a haphazard way-- as I argue above, as little more than an excuse for lots of FX-stunts-- there's no coherent vision of what these vamps can or can't do. The script gets some humorous mileage out of the fact that the humans defending their lives are desperately trying to figure out the nature of supernatural killers for the first time ever. But that said, there's no reason why some vampires keep semi-human forms, while others seem to be auditioning for ripoffs of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. The central villain, Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek), has a cool opening performance, but she's killed early on, after which the vampires are just a motley crew of monsters.