Product Description

Get ready for nonstop action when a bank-robbing gang of misfits heads to Mexico with the blueprints for the perfect million-dollar heist! But when one of the key crooks wanders into the wrong bar ... and crosses the wrong vampire ... the thieving cohorts one by one develop a thirst for blood to match their hunger for money! Ultimately, the last fully human burglar (Robert Patrick -- THE FACULTY, STRIPTEASE, TERMINATOR 2) is forced to join with his arch rival, a Texas sheriff (Bo Hopkins -- PHANTOMS, THE NEWTON BOYS, U-TURN), in an action-packed, kill-or-be-killed battle to stop these evil creatures and save their own lives!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34095 in DVD
• Brand: Disney
• Released on: 1999-09-28
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Amazon.com
B-movie mavens turned A-list genre fiends Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino teamed up in 1996 to take vampire gothic south of the border into spaghetti Western territory for the gory cult film From Dusk Till Dawn. The high-concept mix of southwestern criminals versus supernatural nasties proved too irresistible for either of the video-hound creators to allow it to remain dead (or undead, as the case may be), so they plotted and produced a pair of direct-to-video sequels. Tarantino takes a story credit on the first, a heist film coscripted and directed by Scott Speigel. A Mexican bank robbery helmed by drawling criminal Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) turns into a literal bloodbath when his crew are turned into hungry bloodsuckers. Speigel, a buddy of Sam Raimi, tops both Tarantino and Rodriguez for sheer cinematic acrobatics, putting his camera in the most absurd places (even from inside the mouth of a vampire chomping down on a victim) and driving the film with adrenaline-charged overkill, but despite some clever scenes and a hilarious Psycho spoof, it turns into another aggressively trashy latex-mask and rubber-bat gorefest as cops and robbers team up against the fanged gang. Bo Hopkins costars as the police detective dogging Patrick's trail. Bruce Campbell and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen make cameos in the jokey opening sequence and Speigel and fellow director Kevin Smith briefly appear as vampire bait. Bartender Danny Trejo is the only returning cast member. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Not a good film, but it never tries to be
I'm not entirely sure why I rented this movie, but I suspect it's because Bruce Campbell was involved. The thought of Bruce Campbell and Quentin Tarantino connected to a horror movie is enough to make me plunk down ten bucks to see anything they create in the theater. Fortunately, this movie went directly to video, so I didn't waste my ten bucks.

Bruce isn't really in the film. He's in a film within a film and he dies early. Grrr. If you're a fan of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, she dies along with him.

And what do they die from? Why, bats of course. Vampire bats, to be precise. Bats figure as villains in this movie, which is unfortunate as they're not particularly scary and look like bad Halloween decorations most of the time. Must all bats flop around like two fish connected by a wire hanger? Don't any of them glide?

Anyway, the plot, such as it is, involves four guys planning to rob a bank in Mexico: C.W. the safecracker (Muse Watson), Ray Bob the dimwitted comedic relief (Brett Harrelson), Jesus the muscle (Raymod Cruz), and Buck the Main Character (Robert Patrick). Luther the mastermind (Duane Whitaker) is supposed to meet up with them at some random seedy hotel, but on the way he hits a bat.

No not the baseball bat, but a big vampire bat. He runs over it with his jeep then shoots it with his gun. Of course, that's a vampire he shot, who eventually bites Luther. Luther decides to go on with the bank heist and keeps his appointment, slowly turning the other members into vampires.

"Why would vampires want to rob a bank?" asked Buck of Sheriff Lawson (Bo Hopkins), who was hunting him before they banded together to kill vampires.

"I suppose vampires need money too," says Lawson.

Vampires in this series are super vulnerable to sunlight. They can turn into bats at will. They are invulnerable to most weapons but die if anything pokes through their heart (steel rods, antlers, you name it). But most hysterical of all, they are terrified of ANYTHING IN THE SHAPE OF A CROSS.

I have to restate the ludicrousness of this vulnerability, because at one point one of the vampires is upset by a CROSSBAR. That is, a naturally occurring series of right angles. At various moments throughout the movie, characters suddenly remember to make the sign of the cross with whatever their holding. Apparently, it never strikes anyone that they should just put up their fingers in a cross. Or their arms. Or two shoes.

Eventually, the Mexican police show up and then the carnage begins. In between, we have a homage to Reservoir Dogs, Psycho, and Evil Dead. In fact, the director (Scott Spiegel) takes the Sam-o-cam to new heights. We get the blood-puddle cam, the inside-a-vampire's-mouth cam, and the ultra rare up-the-phone-cord cam. When a character cracks a safe, the camera moves around in circles from the dial on the safe's point of view. When a character walks by a moving fan, we see the fan's point of view. Inspired moviemaking at its finest.

In the middle of all this is the obligatory solar eclipse, which extends the carnage for another twenty minutes.

From Dusk Till Dawn: Texas Blood Money is not a good film, but it never tries to be. Completely unpretentious, it seeks to add to the direct-to-video horror bin. In that regard it succeeds admirably.

From Dusk Till Dawn 2 - Not as Good as Original
It seems Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodrigues wanted to make a franchise series without any thought apart from trying to milk money out of unsuspecting filmgoers. This and the 3rd installment went straight to video so they knew the sequels were not up to par with the original. FDTD 2 is very predictable so there are no surprises, not even the gory vampire killings. The only reason to watch this movie (especially if you're a male) is to see Playboy Playmate Maria Checa in a brief supporting role in which she is killed in a shower scene directly ripped off from Hitchcock's PSYCHO.

Not much of a follow up to the first, but it's ok
This has probably been said a million times already. This sequel just about has nothing to do with the last film other then there is vampires. The first on edefinitly has a much better plot and development, script, concept etc.... but this sequel is OK but I bet people are probably saying what I did, "It's an OK movie, but it wasnt really worthy of being called DTD2, it should have been something else"

Overall, the movies OK IMO, it stars the guy from Terminator 2 who played the T-1000... him and his buddies go to Mexicon to rob a bank and one of them gets bitten and turned into a vampire, and then that one turns the next guy into one untill whats-his-face is the only one not a vampire and he decides to help against killing them with the cops.

Not scary, nothing comapred to the 1st, not enough gore and killing, but overall it's OK... but please keep in mind, it really is being critisized as being a followup to the 1st without having much to do with it at all.