10/01/2009

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

Day #424

Another trek due north. And the same impossible thing happens as yesterday. I end up BACK at MY igloo - The Igloo of the Uncanny (in case you haven’t been paying attention).

The mystery deepens when I discover someone has paid a visit! Written on a fresh page of my notebook is an unintelligible phrase, “KOM DERE VEKK IDIOTER!!!”.

What can it mean???

Today's movie appears to be the first one from the 90's... surely another clue...



FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (1996)

Has it really been 12 years? I remember watching this and loving it way back when it first came out – as I'm sure you did – but for some shameful reason I haven’t watched it from start to finish since. I’m delighted I have now though, because I’ve fallen in love with it all over again. Which reminds me of how I met my ex-fiancee again after a long absence. My ex-fiancee who I ended up killing. But that’s another story.

There are so many wonderful moments in From Dusk Till Dawn. Only an idiot would attempt to whittle them down into one of those dumb, lazy ‘Top 5 moments’ lists. Anyway, here are my top 5 moments from From Dusk Till Dawn:


1. The start. The hold-up in the convenience store.

Wonderful Tarantino dialogue which George Clooney is absolutely made for. The scene ends with Clooney and Tarantino walking away from the building as it explodes. I’m a sucker for any scene where someone walks away from an exploding building without flinching.

2. The many faces of Cheech Marin. He’s the border guard. Then he’s the fabulously monickered Chet Pussy.
And Carlos at the end. I fucking love the guy.

3. Vampire Quentin. Wonderful make-up. Loved the large forehead. Vamp Harvey Kietel wasn’t too shabby either.

4. Salma Hayek.

No explanation required.

5. The ending. The farewell between Cloonie and Juliette Lewis is kind of touching. And so he goes of to El Rey. Which is a place name from The Getaway , obviously, but I remember reading somewhere else that it’s supposed to be Hell. THE Hell. With a capital ‘H’. Which explains Clooney’s reluctance to allow Juliette to tag along. As he says, he "may be a bastard, but not a fucking bastard." Which is more or less what Bogart said to Bergmann at the end of Casablanca.

10 comments:

  1. i too this in the theatre and liked it waaay more than the two frends i saw it with. two other great momments was the band playing corpse intruments (take that Gwar) and Fred Williamson and Tom Savini as bikers who get turned into vampires. that crotch gun Savini was rocking was pretty awsome. how he fired that thing was anyone's guess.

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  2. I think my favorite moment was the Fred Williamson's reminiscing about Vietnam.

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  3. Love this film, and everything about it. It was definitely more successful thank Tarantino/Rodrigez's Grindhouse experiment. Another great thing about this film is the excellent documentary film detailing the making called Full Tilt Boogie.

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  4. So many great moments. Yep, the band's "fuck you and goodnight" before exploding was pretty cool. Not the sort of thing you see or hear all that often.

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  5. Great Post IK! Hard to believe it's been 12 years already. . .

    I remember that there wasn't a theatre showing this movie, near me, so I traveled about 45 minutes away to see it, and it was well worth the trip! :-)

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  6. Oh, it's lovely. and as a jim thompson fan, the el ray stuff blew my skirt up so much I couldn't see a thing!

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  7. An amazing film. I hadn't seen that comic styling poster. I'm rather enthralled by it.

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  8. One of my all-time favourite films - love the way it starts out as one kind of movie and ends as another. The Satanico Pandemonium scene stands out the most for me - a perfect combination of Salma dancing with a snake and the awesome song 'After Dark' by Tito and the Tarantulas. Classic scene!

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  9. I can't believe this movie is getting on a bit, It certainly don't look 12 years old.

    I remember this was my grandads favourite movie when it came out, and not being a buyer of VHS he rented it lots... odd guy :)


    Great great movie!

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  10. One of the best scenes and also one of the funniest moments comes in the scene where we see Sex Machine transforming bit by bit into a vampire, it just cracks me up - especially when he covers his mouth after his fangs start forming, and his right hand changes to become all monster-like with long claw-like fingernails and then his left hand changes and then he hides his hands behind his back. And he's completely unaware of it at first as is everyone else. It's got my two favorite kind of TFs (transformations) in them - the 'Bit By Bit' variety where a person changes one part at a time, and the 'Completely Unaware He/She is Transforming' kind where the transformee doesn't realize he/she is transforming. It's no wonder Aardman paid tribute to this scene in Curse Of The Wererabbit.

    If you listen closely you can hear the acid rock version of Star Spangled Banner playing during the part with the demonic voice telling him to 'kill them all'. It definitely works, and makes the scene more eerie in tone. Gotta love seeing Sex Machine transform like that!

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