From Dusk Till Dawn 2 : Texas Blood Money (1999)

The original From Dusk Till Dawn, released in the mid-90s, was an interesting mixture of crime thriller and vampire horror movie. With a script by Quentin Tarantino it had both good dialogue and entertainingly over-the-top action horror sequences. Now, a few years later comes the first sequel, keeping a similar premise and some common locations but with a different cast and director.

The fact that FDTD2 was originally intended for a cinema release but was downgraded to be straight-to-video might set a few alarm bells ringing and the quality of this film certainly deserves it’s straight-to-video status. Where the original had George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Keitel starring, the best this can muster is Robert Patrick and a cameo from Bruce Campbell. Although the script still manages to be occasionally amusing it’s a far cry from that of the original and the quality of the special effects has declined from silly-but-reasonably-impressive to ridiculously silly and cheap.

Robert Patrick’s band of criminals set out to rob a bank in Mexico but reckon without some of their number being turned into vampires after one of them accidentally drives into a vampire in bat form. The scene is set for many absurd action sequences as a bunch of bank-robbing vampires take on the remaining criminals and the local police force. The vampires are probably among the more inept that have been seen on film - the scene where vampires repeatedly run up to then run away from a human holding an improvised cross is quite ludicrous.

The direction is occasionally interesting, with some reasonably interesting shots - such as a bat’s-eye-view camera but doesn’t manage to save this movie from mediocrity. Perhaps realising that this was never going to work as a serious horror film, the filmmakers half-heartedly try to make this into a comedy. There are a few funny situations and occasionally some of the jokes are quite ingenious, but amusing moments are too few and far between to save the film.

Overall this is an extremely poor quality movie, although it is reasonably amusing at times - both intentionally and unintentionally - and entertaining enough to be watchable. It does not deserve to be in the same franchise as the original film, or the superior second sequel.

Rating : 4 / 10

Click here to buy the DVD at Amazon.co.uk

All content ©2003 William Marnoch.

Comments? Agree/Disagree with the Reviews? Suggestions? Random Ramblings? Whatever you might want to say, feel free to e-mail me at william@wmarnoch.freeserve.co.uk .