From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Elevator Pitch: Bank robber Seth Gecko and his psychopathic brother Richard are on the run after committing a bank robbery, and are bound for Mexico. They have a hostage from the bank and at a desert liquor store kill the local sherrif and the store operator, racking up their murder numbers on the media. Later at a motel Richard rapes and kills their hostage causing them to have to move on and so they hijack an RV driven by a disalusioned priest and his son and daughter. The gangsters use them make it to the rendezvous in Mexico, the Titty Twister club, a sleazy joint filled with naked dancers and leering truck drivers. But unbeknown to them it is a vampire trap.

Content: Well! The rape is implied, in the club there is a lot of nude dancing and a almost continuous drinking. At various points there are shootings with hand guns. In the RV there is tension as the passengers are threatened, and Richard eyes up the teenage daughter. Then once in the club the villains and the hostages are forced to combine forces to deal with the vampires, who, just to remind you must be staked through the heart, or be exposed to sunlight, and there are a lot of them. Not everyone is going to survive.

A View: I had attempted to watch this movie in the past but had been put off by the violence, but this time I sat through it, and had probably adjusted to the blood and guts by the time we got to the finale.  It was just about approved by the critics whose view was mixed, and probably influenced by George Clooney’s performance, since he was fresh from ER and playing against type. Perhaps the film-goers appetite for gore had not been developed at the time since it might just have broken even at the box office. So probaby a watch for nothing if you are a Tarantino fan.

Additional Info: This was an early Tarantino script, written before Pulp Fiction for $1500.