From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) marks the first collaboration between writer/actor Quentin Tarantino and director Robert Rodriguez. The film is a collection of the filmmakers’ fetishes, preoccupations, and hang-ups that plays out in a veritable cavalcade of gross-out violence and rampant misogyny. Like the script for Natural Born Killers (1994), From Dusk Till Dawn is Tarantino unfiltered and unafraid. The film makes a number of bold choices that either play into the viewer’s kinks or totally repels them.
The film is littered with the favorite actors of both filmmakers. Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Salma Hayek, Michael Parks, Danny Trejo, Fred Williamson, and special make-up effects man Tom Savini all get their hands dirty in blood and guts as Rodriguez records the mayhem with his usual flare. The use of these favorite stars give the film the feeling of an elaborate home movie produced by a bunch of friends with millions of dollars to spend at a high school slumber party.
The premise of the film is simple and leaves ample room for Rodriguez to shoot strippers, vampires, mutilations and explosions any way he wants. The name of the game is self-indulgence. From Dusk Till Dawn could be written off as style for style’s sake except that there is an art to style. The problem with the film is that what is being stylized lacks little substance other than superficial titillation.
Filmmakers having fun, having a blast, does not usually make for a great movie. With few exceptions, like Evil Dead II (1987), movies made this way tend to isolate an audience. One either shares the same fetishes as the filmmakers or one is left wondering why the film was made in the first place. From Dusk Till Dawn is an explosive assault on good taste with nothing to say about society, culture, or even the genre the film is working in. From Dusk Till Dawn is what it is and one either digs it or not.
