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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - January 19th

"FROM DUSK TILL DAWN" released in 1996

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Fugitive bank robbers and brothers Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) are fleeing the F.B.I. and Texas police. They hold up and destroy a liquor store, killing the clerk (John Hawkes) and  Texas Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks). Two witnesses they held hostage in the store escape during the shooting, but they still hold a bank clerk hostage in the trunk of their car, whom Richie later rapes and murders. Meanwhile, The Fuller family — Jacob (Harvey Keitel), the father and a pastor who is experiencing a crisis of faith, his son Scott (Ernest Liu), and daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) — are on a vacation in their RV. They stop at a motel and are promptly kidnapped by the Geckos, who force the Fullers to smuggle them past the Mexican border. Seth and Jacob make an uneasy truce: if the Geckos can make it past the border, Jacob and his family will come out of the ordeal unharmed. They arrive at the "Titty Twister", a strip club in the middle of a desolate part of Mexico, where the Geckos will be met by their contact Carlos (Cheech Marin) at dawn. The Geckos demand that the Fullers have a drink with them before leaving, despite Kate's obvious discomfort.

Soon after entering the club, chaos ensues as the employees and strippers are all revealed to be vampires. Most of the patrons are quickly killed, and Richie is bitten by the star stripper, Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek), and bleeds to death. Only Seth, Jacob, Kate, Scott, a biker named Sex Machine (Tom Savini), and Frost (Fred Williamson) — a Vietnam War veteran — survive the attack. The slain patrons, including Richie, then come back to life as vampires, forcing Seth to kill his own brother. During this second struggle, one of the vampires bites Sex Machine in the arm. Subsequently, Sex Machine changes into a vampire and bites Frost and Jacob before Frost throws Sex Machine through the door, which allows an army of vampires to enter as bats from the outside. Seth and the Fullers desperately escape to a back storeroom and fashion anti-vampire weapons from items found therein, including a pneumatic drill, crossbow, shotgun, and holy water, which requires Jacob to recover his faith to bless. Jacob, knowing he will soon turn into a vampire, makes a reluctant Scott and Kate promise to kill him when he changes. With that, the four remaining survivors launch their final assault on the vampires, in a hopes of fighting them off untill dawn!

Jacob: Does anybody know what's going on here?
Seth: I know what's going on. We got a bunch of fucking vampires out there, trying to get in here and suck our fucking blood. And that's it. Plain and simple. I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires," because I don't fucking believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what I saw, is fucking vampires. Now, do we all agree that what we are dealing with is vampires?
Kate: Yes.

Top and Above:   Bank robbing brothers Ritchie (Quentin Tarantino) and Seth Gecko (George Clooney) join forces with their "hostages" the Fuller family - Scott (Ernest Liu), Jacob (Harvey Keitel) and Kate (Juliette Lewis) to survive until dawn!

From Dusk Till Dawn was the first script Quentin Tarantino was paid to write (for the princely sum of $1500) by special effects technician Robert Kurtzman; based on his original story in exchange for the providing the effects for the ear-slicing scene in Tarantino's feature debut Reservoir Dogs (1992). At first Kurtzman, and then Tarantino, were set to direct the picture, but both couldn't commit to directing; Tarantino preferred to concentrate on writing the script and playing the character of Ritchie Gecko, while Kurtzman would later serve as the film's producer and special make-up effects supervisor (along with his partners in KNB Effects, Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger). According to Tarantino, Renny Harlin and Tony Scott (who directed Tarantino's script for True Romance) were the first directors who showed interest in directing the film, before Tarantino showed the script to his friend Robert Rodriguez, who eagerly signed on.

Before George Clooney was cast, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, and Christopher Walken were all offered the role of Seth Gecko, but all passed due to scheduling conflicts. Tarantino then pitched the role to John Travolta while he was casting Pulp Fiction, although Travolta was not interested in working on a "vampire movie" and wanted to work on Pulp Fiction instead. Clooney was picked partly because of his popularity from the TV show ER (1994) - Tarantino apparently liked the irony that Clooney had gone from saving people at the ER to playing a character who sends people to the ER! Harvey Keitel and Juliette Lewis were soon added to cast, both actors having previously worked with Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers respectively. Rodriguez cast his Desperado star Salma Hayek in the role of vampire queen Santánico Pandemonium (the name originating from the title of a gory Mexican horror movie - Satanico Pandemonium: La Sexorcista (1975) - that Tarantino had seen on the shelves of the video store he worked in). Reportedly, Hayek has a real fear of snakes and had always refused to be near them, so naturally when she read the script, she knew her phobia would prevent her from taking the part. Rodriguez however "conned" her into thinking that Madonna was ready to nab the part instead so Hayek spent two months with therapists to overcome her fear.

Santanico Pandemonium: I'm not gonna drain you completely. You're gonna turn for me. You'll be my slave. You'll live for me. You'll eat bugs because I order it. Why? Because I don't think you're worthy of human blood. You'll feed on the blood of stray dogs. You'll be my foot stool. And at my command, you'll lick the dog shit from my boot heel. Since you'll be my dog, your new name will be "Spot". [she transforms into a vampire] Welcome to slavery.
Seth: No, thanks. I've already had a wife.
[shoots the rope holding the wooden chandelier, which impales her]

 Top and Above:   Vampire queen Santanico Pandemonium (Salma Hayek) leads the horde of the Titty Twisters strippers/vampires!

Production began on 13 June, 1995 outside Barstow, California. It was a particularly troubled shoot, with the exterior set for the Titty Twister burning down at one point, causing delays in filming. Other delays were caused by dust storms and the threat of union action because of shooting with a non-union crew - which is unusual for a production with a budget above $15 million.  

Greg Nicotero, who served as one of the main make-up design artists (and has worked on almost all of the films of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino ever since), cameo-ed in From Dusk Till Dawn as the long haired biker that Tom Savini's character (Sex Machine) steals the beer from with his whip. His character makes a further appearance in a deleted scene where in he is brutally murdered by Santanico Pandemonium when she sits on his lap (in human form) and seduces him into a false sense of security. Then a second vampire snake-like mouth erupts from her own and bites his head off in an explicit fashion. In another deleted scene, there was a special makeup effect in which one of the stripper-vampires has her stomach open into a large mouth and shoves a bar attendant's head into the large mouth, and bites it off. The effect was so graphic that Tarantino didn't even want to see it (although the scene can be accessed in the deleted scenes section on the special edition DVD).

TRIVIA:   From Dusk till Dawn has a total body count of 122!

Top:   Writer/actor Quentin Tarantino on the 1995 set of From Dusk Till Dawn with director Robert Rodriguez;

Above:   Rodriguez on set of the TV series with stars D. J. Cotrona and Zane Holtz

On its first week of release, From Dusk Till Dawn grossed $10,240,805 in the United States making it the highest-grossing film of the week. The film eventually grossed over $25 million and earned mainly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and described it as "a skillful meat-and-potatoes action extravaganza with some added neat touches". In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "The latter part of From Dusk till Dawn is so relentless that it's as if a spigot has been turned on and then broken. Though some of the tricks are entertainingly staged, the film loses its clever edge when its action heats up so gruesomely and exploitatively that there's no time for talk". Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Rodriguez and Tarantino have taken the let-'em-eat-trash cynicism of modern corporate moviemaking and repackaged it as junk-conscious 'attitude.' In From Dusk till Dawn, they put on such a show of cooking up popcorn that they make pandering to the audience seem hip".

From Dusk till Dawn was followed by two direct-to-video prequels, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money and From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter, with both films produced by Rodriguez, Tarantino and Lawrence Bender. Danny Trejo is the only actor to appear in all three movies, although Michael Parks appears in both From Dusk till Dawn and The Hangman's Daughter (albeit as a different character in The Hangman's Daughter). Currently, Rodriguez is writing, directing, and producing the TV series From Dusk till Dawn, for his own cable network, El Rey, with it's third season airing from September 6 to November 1, 2016.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   63%

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