from dusk till dawn * 1/2 . directed and edited by robert rodriguez . written by quentin tarantino . photography , guillermo navarro . production design , cecilia montiel . music , graeme revell . cast : harvey keitel , george clooney , quentin tarantino , juliette lewis , cheech marin , fred williamson , salma hayek , tom savini , ernest liu . a miramax release . 100 minutes . rated r ( language , graphic violence , more violence , sex , sex and horror exploitation ) " el mariachi , " the made-for-pennies first major work of robert rodriguez , was better than " desperado , " his big-budget sequel . his third movie , a segment in " four rooms , " intensified the slide . in the latter , writer-director tarantino did even worse . " from dusk till dawn , " written by tarantino , directed and edited by rodriguez , is also a disappointment . mister ugly ( tarantino ) and mister pretty ( clooney ) are the gecko brothers . their name ( remember michael douglas's gordon gekko in " wall street " ? ) is the starting point for smug , mostly ineffectual filmic in-jokes and references . the geckos are sadistic robbers and killers . escaped convict seth ( clooney ) seems relatively rational by his standards ( but how could he be ? ) and is in nominal control . dumb , trigger-happy richard ( tarantino ) is a card-carrying delusional nut , sex maniac and rapist . real-life hyper-kinetic , weirdo tarantino is well cast . clooney too . he slips easily into the strong , menacing character of rodriguez or tarantino movies . the pair have just robbed a texas bank , killed many and taken a hostage . ( all this is later reported on tv with amusing black , media-satirizing humor ) . in a roadside gas station the brothers add to the body count . it's so gratuitously , crazily shown that the violence is stylized and surreal . as they're fleeing to mexico , another in-joke , a kind of x-ray of their car's trunk , reveals momentarily their trussed up hostage . someone has been watching godard and truffaut movies ; someone ought to have learned from them more about substance and subtexts . a family of three in an rv are the next hostages . the parts are performed with unusual calm --another in-joke . harvey keitel is a widowed pastor who has lost his faith . in another joke on the audience , keitel's daughter juliette lewis , whom we would expect to join the brothers as a natural born killer , does not . in a logic-defying gag , chinese-american ernest liu plays the son . clooney wonders : " how can he be your son ? he looks japanese . " " no " retorts keitel , " he looks chinese . " of such bits is the first part made . they are sort of promising , although for a good , oddly lyrical yet based-on-fact killing spree movie i would recommend " badlands " ( 1973 ) with martin sheen and sissy spacek . entering mexico , the brothers rendez-vous with their mexican contacts in titty twister , a huge , crass , baroque , surreal strip joint in the middle of nowhere . it is full of nude dancers and swarthy , murderous-looking mexican bikers and truckers . ( texican rodriguez keeps perpetuating movie cliches ) . one of the customers has a miniature cannon strapped to his private parts . the joint almost makes you smell sweat , body odors , and think of v . d . violent things happen . after a lull , satanico pandemonium ( beautiful salma hayek from " desperado " ) does a number with a huge snake . suddenly she morphs into a ghoul --as does everyone else . becoming allies , captors and hostages unite against an onslaught of vampires , the undead , monsters . the struggle goes on forever . how long is " forever " ? my stopwatch 's battery got so fed up that it died . at the start of this second half there are sporadic gags . " does anyone have a cross ? " ( to stop the vampires ) . " no , but two pieces of wood would do . peter cushing does it all the time . " a disquisition on vampires follows . " we need a book , a real book " " like a time-life book ? " cheap humor , but still preferable to the mayhem . interminably , the morphing and re-morphing disgusting vampire critters attack . the lurid , incoherent hodge-podge of massacres is an orgy of gore and dismemberment . it also kills whatever character development was present earlier . unrelieved , very dull , this becomes a second , tacked-on , irrelevant movie . the visuals and other special effects are skillful , but so what ? it's all deja vu . the only original , also surreal gag , at the very end , when we see the back of the joint . it is built like a mexican pyramid . the fortune all this cost could have rodriguez's parents , nine siblings and extended family live in comfort for a lifetime , with money left over for another ten generations . this flick is not merely over-the-top , it tops the topper . it is not plain old pulp fiction either . much of it is what happens to pulp after it's been digested . 
