When it comes to the convyer belt of slapdash sequels that Dimension put out over the years, surely the most frustrating must be their continuation of their 1996 vampire blowout, From Dusk Till Dawn. Essentially a tex/mex merging of the sharp-suited crime epics of Quentin Tarantino and the maniacal, South of the border stylings of Robert Rodriguez, the result was an anything goes eruption of anti-hero cool and hysterically violent gore puns that saw George Clooney staking vampires with a modified jackhammer and Tarantino using Salma Hayek to indulge to his foot fetish in the most unsubtle way imaginable.
There was no way in blue hell that a sequel – especially a direct to video one – was going to match up to the maniacal majesty of the original, but the presence of Tarantino and Rodriguez on producing duty, along with Scott Siegel, a cohort of Sam Raimi and the director of the cult, overblown 80s slasher Intruder managed to inspire hope nevertheless. Unfortunately, it was soon drained from us like plasma in a punch bowl at a bloodsucker’s ball…
Burly bank robber Luther Heggs has managed to score himself an unofficially early release from prison by breaking himself out and immediately starts putting his old gang back together in order to nail a much needed score. To do this, he calls his former right hand man, Buck Bowers and talks him out of the reformed lifestyle he’s been trying to cultivate and before you know it, Buck is rounding up his old compatriots in crime, including down on his luck rodeo clown, C.W. Niles; intense, jacked-up psycho, Jesus Draven and slow-witted security guard Ray Bob who are all eager to leap back into the life and they all gather at a local motel to await their boss.
Luther, however, has become a little indisposed after an abnormally large bat bounces off his radiator grill in his way to the meet-up that leads to him breaking down. However, the bar he stops at to make a call turns out to be the rebuilt Titty Twister and after a run-in with new bartender Razor Eddie, Luther suffers a severe neck bite that’s starts instantly turning him into a fanged, creature of the night.
Upon finally meeting up with his gang, Luther is still, bizarrely obsessed by completing the job and robbing the Bancos Bravos bank and insists that the heist now has to take place right now, while the sun is still yet to rise. While Buck wonders why Luther would pull such a switcharoo with no time to prepare, the head of the gang starts changing his men into vamps one by one in order to pull off such an audacious robbery, starting with Jesus and the vivacious woman he’s giving a pre-heist hump to and soon Niles is next to succumb.
While enhanced bat powers prove to be invaluable at breaking into a fortified building (being able to transform into a flying rodent makes sneaking through air vents a snap), Buck remains rightly suspicious of the change that’s rapidly coming over his partners in crime – being rich is great, but being rich and a monster? Fuck that!
Thanks to the wit of Tarantino and the anarcic fun that Rodriguez usually brings to his movies, From Dusk Till Dawn tackled its gonzo, ballsy, mid-movie twist with a certain sense of intelligence as the story suddenly shifted its entire genre from cool crime flick to berserker horror/comedy with the flick of a fang. However, its sequel proves to be a far dumber affair as a reduced budget and an overly cartoonish attitude means that the slick balance of the original is lost in plotting so loose you could wear it like a blanket.
The main issue here is Scott Spiegel’s exaggerated directorial style that plays like a poor man’s Sam Raimi and takes weirdly ambitious camerawork to distracting extremes. Way back in 89, sticking the camera within the dials of rotary phones and other such wacky locations gave Intruder a quirky, fresh feel for a slasher released in the dying days of the subgenre, yet here it mostly proves to be incredibly annoying as Spiegel gives us shots from the POV of everything from whirling shotgun barrels, twirling combinations dials and even from the inside of a vampire’s mouth as it sinks its teeth into a jugular vein – although admittedly that last one is pretty sweet. However, the sheer amount of them just gets annoying after a while as Spiegel just slams them in at the drop of a hat.
It’s a shame, because the basic premise of vampire bank robbers treads the razor-thin tightrope between coolly stupid and stupidly cool enough to be a fun sounding premise, but while Seth Gecko and his wildcard brother Richie swaggered into the Titty Twister as awesome anti heroes, Texas Blood Money crams the cast list full of half-assed caricatures who prove to be as subtle as a TNT root canal. When these half-wits aren’t chipping in their two cents about the state of plots in pornos or boasting about getting their dick wet, their uttering same-store tough-guy dialogue that feels more like unfunny parody than even a shadow of Tarantino’s famous prose. “Everybody be cool. You, be cool.” demanded Clooney in the first film – “Do you think we’re just wasting our time coming over here like we suck farts out of a dead chicken?” is hardly on the same level.
Still, if Spiegel is unsuccessful nailing the thuggish eloquence of dear old Quentin, he’s far more victorious when it comes to trying to match the deranged energy of Robert Rodriguez’s action sequences with a typically loopy shootout rounding off things with explosions, imaginative stakings and stuntmen ragdolling all over the place. In fact, the final third almost makes up for the plodding, clumsy, first two, but unfortunately it’s not enough to make up for a film’s worth of lunkheaded plotting (why is the vampire Luther so adamant he should be using his supernatural powers for basic robbery) or possibly the worst collection of fake-looking, rubber bats since the heyday of Hammer. Let’s put it this way, if you’re watching this movie at around three in the morning while so stoned that basic needs like a decent script or genuine fun don’t really matter anymore; congratulations, you are watching Texas Blood Money correctly.
From Dusk Till Dawn’s greatest weakness doesn’t ultimately prove to be daylight or a stake in the chest but instead, despite all the gore, goofiness and un-PC posturing, the movie proves to be weirdly dull – even with an early cameo from Bruce Campbell. Spiegel’s attempts to follow in the footsteps of either Tarantino, Rodriguez or Sam Raimi ends up in a bloodily energetic romp completely lacking in focus or genuine laughs and as a result, leaves this further tale of the Titty Twister feeling as disappointingly flat as a stripper without implants.
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