if beavis and butthead had a favorite movie , from dusk till dawn would probably be it .
scripted by quentin tarantino and directed by robert rodriguez ( desperado ) , the movie panders to the very worst in sex and violence — and is incredibly fun to watch .
it starts off as a pulp fiction-type crime story , with criminal brothers george clooney and tarantino robbing a convenience store .
because this is a tarantino movie , however , it’s not just a case of pull the gun and take the loot , it’s a case of a hole being shot through someone’s hand , a man on fire jumping out behind the counter and the entire store blowing up as they drive away .
the opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the movie — everything overdone and nothing as it seems .
clooney and tarantino bring a hostage to the motel and then hijack an rv with a family in it .
harvey keitel plays the backslidden ex-preacher and juliette lewis his daughter , whom registered sex-pervert tarantino eyes endlessly .
you know you’re mentally unbalanced when you find lewis the least bit attractive , although she’s not nearly as obnoxious as usual in from dusk till dawn .
the first half of the movie has the criminals and hostages trying to get to and through the mexico border , clooney’s strategy involving hiding in the rv shower while lewis is on the toilet .
it does its trick ; the border guard takes one look at lewis relieving herself and immediately goes blind , never noticing clooney or tarantino .
once they get to mexico , it’s time to wait at the rendezvous point , a topless bar called titty twister where we’re once again reminded tarantino wrote the movie as he drinks champagne off the foot of a stripper .
finally , after about ten minutes of intercut boob shots and clooney forcing keitel and lewis to drink with him , the stripper turns into a vampire .
soon half the people in the bar are vampires and the other half fall or fight back .
that’s right , we’ve come all this way to see a vampire movie .
but like everything else , tarantino takes this age-old genre and twists it to his own ends to produce over-the-top entertainment .
so we get holy water condom balloons , heads rolling , quadruple impalement on an overturned table and keitel getting bitten by a vampire and announcing he only has a few minutes left before he becomes ” a lap dog of satan . ”
the from dusk till dawn dialogue is 100% tarantino , hovering between absurd and disgusting ( as when they’re entering the nightclub and cheech marin announces the main attractions of the titty twister ) , but always entertaining , and is a huge reason the movie is so much fun to watch instead of being one more second-rate gorefest .
clooney , keitel and especially tarantino are so over-the-top with their delivery that the dialogue is that much more hilarious , ensuring not one second of from dusk till dawn is taken the least bit seriously .
stuff like this would be terrible in any other movie , but tarantino and rodriguez know exactly what to do to entertain people , even if there’s absolutely no message or meaning to from dusk till dawn .
pulp fiction had the vulgarity and violence for a reason , but this movie just throws it out for cheap entertainment .
from dusk till dawn isn’t the classic of modern cinema that pf is , but is does prove you can do a good job making a really bad movie .