It may be the strangest vampire movie ever, and that’s saying something. To understand this, you have to realize that I read as little as possible about a movie before seeing it. I try to avoid trailers, and recommendations from well-wishers play a big part in my choices. I came across From Dusk to Dawn in a couple of online lists and when I saw it was Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney, I doubted the vampire part. Indeed, for the first twenty minutes to half hour I was convinced I’d stepped into Pulp Fiction 2. (Tarantino wrote it, after all.) Those kinds of movies unnerve me, and just when I was wondering if I’d made a mistake, it became a monster movie. An action horror film. Lots of vampires and, surprisingly lots of talk about God.
In case you haven’t seen it, Clooney and Tarantino are brothers out on a crime spree. Harvey Keitel is an ex-minister out on a road trip with his teenage kids. After his wife’s death, he lost his faith although he still believes in God. (Classic theodicy.) The criminals abduct the family to get them into Mexico where they’ve made a deal with a guy. They meet at about the most salacious strip club you can imagine, one that caters only to truckers and bikers. It turns out that the staff and strippers are all vampires and they prey on the patrons. Okay, so the story doesn’t hold together. Clooney’s character, which is hardly the sort you’d want anywhere near you, tells Keitel’s that unless he re-finds his faith none of them will make it out alive.
There’s quite a bit of humor packed into the over-the-top fight scene, including dialog about how to defeat vampires. A couple of the patrons, it turns out, are pretty adept at that sort of thing, but the human holdouts keep getting bitten and have to be killed. Finally, the titular dawn arrives, leaving just Clooney and the minister’s daughter alive. I couldn’t help but to be reminded of Willy’s Wonderworld, in overall story arc, but the two are completely different in tone. The fact that the movie is 28 years old and that I’d only heard of it recently really surprised me. Especially since religion is so heavily involved in the story. Not only that, but the message about religion, in service of the story, is that belief is good. And this from a murderer and a thief. Strange indeed, but not easily forgotten.