DUSK TILL DAWN MOVIE
DUSK TILL DAWN FULL
DUSK TILL DAWN TV

With seemingly no one else in the store, save for one female customer out of earshot, Earl tells the easygoing Pete about his latest assignment hunting down the fugitive Gecko brothers younger brother Richie (Quentin Tarantino) has just broken his older brother Seth (George Clooney) out of police custody, and the two have taken a bank teller hostage, after a bloody bank robbery and crime spree. The clerk and ranger begin the sort of ugly, casually racist conversation that some engage in when they’re in a ‘safe space.’ Their talk ranges from attacking the mentally challenged to the dangers of microwave burritos ( very Tarantino-esque dialogue).

In a dusty, nondescript town, a Texas ranger named Earl McGraw ( authentically realized by the late chameleonic character actor Michael Parks) casually strolls into a dusty, middle-of-nowhere convenience store and begins a causal chat with the lone clerk Pete Bottoms (John Hawkes).

DUSK TILL DAWN MOVIE

Right out of the gate, the movie feels like a 1970s exploitation flick, or an updated western.

The late actor was a true chameleon, playing anything from a redneck lawman to an 80-something year old Mexican pimp (“Kill Bill Vol. Michael Parks as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw. collapsible screen, and turned off the lights. To do this, I once again broke out my digital projector, unfurled my 7 ft. So, for this anniversary retrospective, I wanted to give the movie as close to a cinematic presentation as I could approximate at home. Even my wife ( who doesn’t do horror) appreciates it.

DUSK TILL DAWN TV

“From Dusk Till Dawn” soon became a go-to action horror favorite of mine, and while I haven’t closely followed the sequels or the Amazon TV series, the 1996 film has, over the years, became a Halloween staple. Seth Gecko (George Clooney) is one angry motor scooter… This wildly divergent film almost felt like a two-films-in-one, or a double-feature, something Rodriguez and Tarantino would later attempt with the cinematic release of “Grindhouse” in 2007 ( which featured both “Planet Terror” and “Death Proof” on a double-bill, along with trailers for “Machete” “Thanksgiving,” and other then-nonexistent exploitation flicks).

DUSK TILL DAWN FULL

Renting the movie on laserdisc ( the clunky 12″ precursors to DVDs) is how I finally got to see “From Dusk Till Dawn.” The movie did a dramatic genre-reversal about halfway into its running time, switching from black humored, western/crime-drama to full horror at the flap of a bat wing. Contributing to its poor box office, I demurred and waited for its eventual home video release. However, none of my friends wanted to go–most of them weren’t into horror, as I was (and am). I was a bachelor in those days, and I sometimes went to movies by myself ( sometimes even catching midnight shows, if I couldn’t sleep), but based on my love of Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” I wanted to see this one with other people.

I still vividly remember trying to get my friends to come with me to see the new vampire/crime-drama flick from director Robert Rodriguez ( “Desperado” “Spy Kids”) and writer/actor Quentin Tarantino ( “Pulp Fiction,” “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” ) back in February of 1996.

Dusk till dawn