"What's in Mexico?"
"Mexicans."
A break away from his earlier films such as 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Pulp Fiction', 'From Dusk till Dawn' starts as many of Quentin Tarantino's other movies do, but about a third of the way in makes an unexpected shift. It wasn't actually directed by Tarantino, but by Robert Rodriguez and Sarah Kelly, though Quentin did write the screenplay. Perhaps he was too busy playing Richard Gecko, brother of Seth Gecko (George Clooney (both he and Tarantino were clearly having a lot of fun (this was his first leading role in a movie))).
The film opens perfectly, the shop scene is classic Tarantino, and the there the movie continues in like fashion. The dialogue is great, the action is violent, but then vampires start killing everyone and it all falls apart.
The movie gets at least 85 until they reach the Titty Twister, a "Biker and Trucker only" strip bar in northern Mexico. It's inhabitants lure customers in, before feeding off them. It's all going along fine one minute, then the next the strippers are killing the patrons and the bands is playing instruments made of dismembered people. This part has some 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' flavour to it, coupled with special effects out of 'The Thing' and gore from 'Kill Bill'. It's not bad but it's not great, and while the shock factor as the first few people start turning into vampires and killing people is a lot of fun, the first half of the movie is definitely better.
I loved the bit where Seth comes back to find their hostage killed, and the pair stand looking at the corpse while Seth tells Richard off. There are flashes of gore as Seth talks, as the horror in his face grows. Another favourite was where Frost was going on about his time spent in Vietnam, and much of his speech fades into the background. Eventually Sex Machine (that's his name) bites him in the neck and finally shuts him up. The movie is full of black jokes like this, another great example is when some popcorn started popping in a store, because of the flaming corpse of it's owner.
The beginning was great, on par, perhaps, with 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Inglorious Basterds'. Sadly it is let down by the second half, though the movie post-twist is still watchable, and as a whole it is still a good film. "Well that was dumber than I remember" I said after Re-watching it recently, as the camera zooms out at the end and reveals that the bar is at the top of a pyramid, before cutting to the credits.
From Dusk till Dawn: 69.8