From Dusk Till Dawn

Remember when vampires were a surprise?

In From Dusk Till Dawn, we get no hint of vampires for the first hour of the film.  Nobody mentions anything about vampires. Nothing.

This isn't like everybody talking about Harry Lime in The Third Man for the first hour or so, and then Orson Welles finally shows up in the shadows. In that film, they established the character's presence in the world of the film because other characters talked about him, and then he finally showed up.

This isn't really like Psycho, either, in which Janet Leigh's character goes on the lam, only to die in the shower in the middle of the film. Psycho goes on from there with different, new main characters, sort of rebooting the narrative.

Strangely, From Dusk Till Dawn is a bit like both. We get no clue about vampires, and when all hell finally breaks loose near the one-hour mark, we spend the remaining 40 minutes watching the characters (some new, some newly dead) deal with the consequences of the choices they made before the vampires appeared.

The Gecko brothers choose to flee the law to Mexico. They choose to kidnap a family with an RV.  The family chooses to go along rather than try to get away, fight, or attract the attention of the border patrol to get help. The family, in fact, chooses to travel by RV, yet stay in the hotel where they run into the Gecko brothers. From Dusk Till Dawn is a film about extreme consequences to even the most minor choices.

From Dusk Till Dawn is a screed about the merits of personal responsibility, and I don't think that's my sleep-deprived state talking. In the end, all the characters drive off by themselves, presumably to take care of themselves.  The two surviving characters have no one left to care for them, and no one left to care for, either. They're only responsible for themselves. Why not? Everyone else they've known in the last 12 hours turned into a monster.

That's part of what brings me back to this film. You get the standard Tarantino/Rodriguez touches — the hyperviolence, the clever language informed by '70s television, etc. But this film takes real risks, not the least of which is randomly throwing vampires into the mess after an hour of weird choices. This is what can happen if you are dumb, mean, or psychotic, the film seems to say. But this film also seems to tout the merits of self-reliance rather than some dipshit sparkly vampire bliggety blah.

Yes, blah blah blah, vampires possess some kind of romantic or sexual allure. Someone is always falling in love with a vampire, either in some trance or by choice. Here, that doesn't happen. This film is more about the mayhem and gore rather than the paranormal necrophilia of something like "True Blood" or the Twilight series. I prefer the mayhem. If vampires exist, this is probably what you'd get if you found a vampire bar out in the middle of nowhere. They don't have to be sneaky.

Ah, but tween girls don't line up to watch a movie with Cheech Marin as the vampire. You don't have HBO making an entire softcore porn series out of Mexican vampires in a truck stop/topless bar. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino weren't writing and selling gazillions of formulaic "paranormal romance" novels. Doesn't happen.

In defense of "True Blood," though, you do see them touching on social issues much more than in a film like From Dusk Till Dawn. Indeed, Rodriguez's film eschews political correctness, such as when George Clooney's character refers to the Asian character as a "Jap" when in fact the character is Chinese. (When corrected, Clooney's character says something along the lines of "Excuse the hell out of me.") This sort of apolitical correctness is present in most of Tarantino's films as well. Characters are often racist, sexist, etc. They want money, sex, alcohol, and other id-driven desires. These characters are not seeking some kind of sociopolitical redemption. They don't want to evolve.

From Dusk Till Dawn is not a great film (when I re-watch this one, I'm usually floored by how many bad, silly moments are here), but this is an interesting example of '90s cinema. My first look came in the mid-'90s, when everything Tarantino and Rodriguez did was "awesome" but no fanboy could explain why. Now, with some distance, context, and education, I can sort of articulate what's happening here — or at least, what I can make of this now. I like that.