“All right, Ramblers. Let’s get ramblin’!” – Seth Gecko

Some consider it ground breaking, some can’t handle the fact that it’s two movies in one, but From Dusk ‘Till Dawn was a true landmark film for many reasons. It was the first script Quentin Tarantino was contracted to write, it was George Clooney’s first feature film. At the time it was made and released the horror genre was so unpopular that Harvey Weinstein refused to let Tarantino, and the Film’s Director Robert Rodriguez even use the word “Horror” during the film’s promotion.

Originally envisioned by artist Robert Kurtzman as a vehicle for the effects house he created with Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger, the famed K.N.B. EFX Group, Tarantino was originally paid $1200 for the script which allowed him to quit his day job as a clerk at Imperial Video and never look back. By the time the film was actually in production he was the toast of Hollywood, fresh off Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, he allowed Robert Rodriguez wide latitude to bring Mexican cultural sensibility to the storyline, and agreed to take on the vile and criminally insane role of Richie Gecko in the film.
The film holds a special place in my heart for several reasons. It was unique in it’s story telling approach, and as always a Tarentino experiment. The Gecko brothers were so vile and deeply rooted in death and destruction, that by the time the vampires enter the scene (halfway through the movie) the challenge was to create such vile vampire creatures that the audience would actually believe that the The Fuller family (Harvey Keitel, Ernest Liu, and Juliette Lewis) would not only come to depend on the brothers for their survival, but actually bond with them after being kidnapped and victimized by the for most of the film by them.

It was groundbreaking in its combination of action movie pulp graphic violence, vampire mythology, and Mexican Aztec/Mayan cultural iconography. And also featured songs from Tito & Tarantula which at the time had just started featuring ex-Oingo Boingo drummer Johnny Vatos (who was a personal hero) as a vampire house band at the way off the beaten path whorehouse / roadhouse where almost everyone meets their doom.

It also features a nearly 4-minute monologue from Cheech Marin all about…well lets just say it’s not about cats.

So for the 20th Anniversary Fathom Events and Miramax pictures have brought this original, and brilliantly violent movie back to the big screen along with a Q&A featuring Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. If you never got to see this film on the big screen it is so worth a trip to the encore showing on November 9th, if for nothing else but to see a very nubile Salma Hayek as vampire queen Santánico Pandemonium dancing with a giant python (and despite a phobic fear of snakes)

Tickets are available at http://www.fathomevents.com/event/from-dusk-till-dawn