Only now does it occur to me... FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY

Only now does it occur to me... that as far as straight-to-video sequels to moderately successful cult vampire-Westerns from the 1990s go, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY is not quite so satisfying as VAMPIRES 2: LOS MUERTOS.  Still, there are a few things going on worth mentioning.

"Executive produced" by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, I'm assuming that only means they were willing to lend their names to the project in exchange for a royalty check.  In reality, this is the Scott Spiegel (the Sam Raimi crony who brought us INTRUDER) and Duane Whitaker (a Tarantino crony) show, two men whose ambitions exceed their abilities, though they do have a fair amount of action-movie-moxie. It kinda feels like a movie William Lustig or Lewis Teague might've cranked out on a bad day.

Pictured: action-movie-moxie.

The film opens with unexpected cameos by Bruce Campbell and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen ("Kelly Kapowski" from SAVED BY THE BELL), playing two sleazy lawyers who are killed by CGI bats in an elevator.

Bruce Campbell has made a specialty act out of appearing in a number of bad movies for less than five minutes.

Then it develops into a vampire-heist movie starring Robert Patrick (TERMINATOR 2), who looks appropriately "cool," but he's given very little of substance to do.

It's sad that Patrick is given the rare leading man opportunity in something this weak, because I know he has the chops to really pull it off.  Ah, well.

Spiegel also shows off his pet obsession of Italo-Horror (and Sam Raimi)-inspired ridiculous POV shots (also on full display in his slasher INTRUDER).  The best one here is probably the oscillating fan-POV in a dingy hotel.

(Also note: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and BREAKING BAD's Raymond Cruz accompanying Mr. Patrick.)

Anyway, there's a lot of Dick Dale surf rock and vampires and explosions and Danny Trejo shows up for a bit as "Razor Eddie," presumably the twin brother of the deceased "Razor Charlie" from the first FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.

Trejo runs it up the flagpole.

I'm not despairing, though: I have heard promising things about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3, which takes the franchise back a hundred years and stars the inimitable Michael Parks as famed author Ambrose Bierce (!?). 

Film Review: STRIPTEASE (1996, Andrew Bergman)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 117 minutes.
Tag-line: "Some People Get Into Trouble No Matter What They WEAR."
Notable Cast or Crew: Demi Moore, Ving Rhames, Robert Patrick, Armand Assante, Burt Reynolds, Rumer Willis, Pandora Peaks. Cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt (THE HUNGER, THE COTTON CLUB, LETHAL WEAPON). Music by Howard Shore (AFTER HOURS, VIDEODROME, THE LORD OF THE RINGS).
Best one-liner: "I don't need no stripper to telling me how to live!"
Best eerily Hawksian exchange: "So we're it? A cop and a bouncer?" –"Plus two strippers and a kid. We're in great shape." Compare to RIO BRAVO: "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" –"That's WHAT I got."

Now here's a crowded, chinwagging tableau that would make Howard Hawks proud, presented without comment: "Creamed corn wrestling!" "-Corn?" "-Corn wrestling?" "-That's disgusting!" "-No chance that I'm gonna roll naked in creamed corn with a bunch of drunken yahoos trying to stick niblets up my hoo-ha!"

Note Fabio poster.

Playing out like an unholy second-generation love-child of Elmore Leonard and Menahem Golan, the set-up to STRIPTEASE is this: Judge awards custody of Rumer Willis to deadbeat dad Robert Patrick, and FBI employee Demi Moore must strip for her daughter's love. Kinda like the female OVER THE TOP, in a way.




The film takes this already mind-blowing premise and piles on more and more inspired lunacy at a breakneck pace: Bouncer Ving Rhames has a tiny monkey sidekick and imbues his performance with a genuine artistry that surely isn't called for:

Armand Assante is wondering how the hell he got here (hint- this was his follow-up to JUDGE DREDD):

there's a Jewish stripper named 'Ariel Sharon' who has a crush on Steven Spielberg, Demi strips with a moody intensity that tells me she thought she had a shot at Oscar gold, and all of this somehow germinates into a searing exposé of Big Sugar!

The courtroom tableaux are worth the price of admission alone:


"Your honor, my ex-husband is a THIEF. That hardly qualifies him to raise a seven-year old CHILD."


"Neithah does bein' a mothuh without a JOB!" [bangs gavel]


There's the obligatory post-shower towel dance, and I have to give points to STRIPTEASE for including it, because I think it only was actually obligatory from 1982-1994.



Oh...and how could I forget: Burt Reynolds.

Reynolds plays Congressman Dilbeck (or, Congressman 'Dildo,' as he eloquently states in one exchange) as if he is constantly drunk and/or mentally disabled. Kind of a 'chicken or the egg' question here is: 'Was Dilbeck written as a psychotic rummy, or did Reynolds just show up drunk and they took it from there?'

Don't answer that. He's even involved in a barfight, which I think must've been part of his contract since HOOPER. Reynolds is doddering around, covered in Vaseline, muttering things like "We can talk about anything you want, as long as you're nekkid."

As time has told, Reynolds is not your garden variety pervert (i.e., see my scholarly papers on the topics of goosing, necrophilia, et al. as presented in STROKER ACE and RENT-A-COP), yet STRIPTEASE kinda seeks to reduce and simplify his myriad depravities to level of a Saturday morning cartoon villain:

He likes having sexy ladies around.

He likes seizing sexy ladies.

He likes dancing with sexy ladies in his boxers, which may as well have big hearts on them.

I posit that this reductive, superficial view of Burt Reynolds perversion is dangerous and, on behalf of Liza Minnelli goosage, I daresay irresponsible. Though the Vaseline scene is pretty incredible in its commitment to loopiness, so I'll let it slide this time.

And speaking of Saturday morning cartoons, the finale involves slow-motion leaping and a denouement that has absolutely zero deviation from that of a SCOOBY-DOO episode.


All of this, naturally, contributes to the film receiving high marks from me. (Also see: DR. JEKYLL AND MS. HYDE).

In the end, STRIPTEASE is a serious drama with a smattering of light-hearted social satire. Er, allow me to submit a revision to that statement: Demi Moore thinks STRIPTEASE is a serious drama, and that ensures that its heart is, somehow, in the right place. It is her performance that gives it that patented Golan-Globus level of sincerity. I guess that's why it works. My only caveat––instead of $12.5 million, they probably should have paid Demi, say, whatever they gave Mario van Peebles for RAPPIN' or Lucinda Dickey for NINJA III...

Film Review: THE FACULTY (1998, Robert Rodriguez)

Stars: 3.75 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Tag-line: "Six students are about to find out their teachers really are from another planet."
Notable Cast or Crew: Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Robert Patrick, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Jordana Brewster, Shawn Hatosy, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Christopher McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, Usher Raymond, Jon Stewart, Daniel von Bargen, Summer Phoenix. Music by Marco Beltrami (THE HURT LOCKER, 3:10 TO YUMA). Written by Kevin Williamson (SCREAM, DAWSON'S CREEK).
Best one-liner: "Body Snatchers is a story somebody made up, dingus. It's located in the fiction section of the library." –"Yeah, so is Schindler's List." Whewww.

Well, so far this week I've discussed a few terrific films from what I'll call the "Golden Era of Horror/Sci-Fi Remakes (1978-1988)," so now it seems only proper to look at one from a little further down the line. THE FACULTY. This film is packed to the brim with things that I should hate- marketable young stars, jaw-droppingly pathetic CGI, and a self-reflexivity that's at best, bratty, and at worst, dangerous. (Dangerous in terms of what the 'Kevin Williamson model' would go on to inspire- and I feel like it's leaked out of 90's horror films and into 00's-10's corporate culture- I see so many advertisements and commercials these days possessing the "this is so bad but aren't we so clever for making it so bad *wink wink wink wink*" and the "if we acknowledge that it's bad, then we take the wind out of the sails of any actual criticism" aesthetic.)

A picture of Kevin Williamson.

Despite it all, however, THE FACULTY is a fairly likable movie. John Carpenter was a master craftsman, and, I daresay one of the cinema's best storytellers in the past twenty-five years. Howard Hawks was his hero, and you can feel Hawks' power coursing through Carpy's veins. Robert Rodriguez is cut from the same cloth, except for the fact that he worships Carpy. (At the tender age of thirteen, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK inspired him to become a filmmaker.) And though Rodriguez's films can be absolutely kickass (though just as often can be exceedingly dopey), one can plainly see that some of the secrets of the masters are being lost in the 'trickle down,' as it were. The qualities, however, that intercede on occasion to save Rodriguez (and, to some extent, THE FACULTY) include his natural proclivity toward visceral, immersive editing (he almost exclusively edits his own pictures) and his unwavering dedication toward over-the-top imagery. (I must say that his wholehearted embracement of CGI disgusts me, but in the majority of his films, he does exercise at least some degree of restraint.) Regardless, on to the film:

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have watched THE FACULTY on multiple occasions, I have derived enjoyment from the experience, and I plan, one day, to watch it again. I could plead ignorance, but I know better. I love THE THING '82, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS '78, all of which THE FACULTY shamelessly rips off and then pretends that it's okay because there's a wink and a nod and a slick post-modernism. There's CGI so embarrassingly substandard that it borders on blasphemy. It's a rare special effect, indeed, which is so poor that you find yourself reaching for the cat o' nine tails so that you may flog yourself for daring to enjoy the movie which contained it, but THE FACULTY contains several such effects.

UH


How bout some groan-inducing homage to THE THING?


And as a side note, who do we blame for this cringeworthy (freeze frame/character name) 90's (and beyond) storytelling device? Do we blame Sergio Leone? He couldn't have known what it would come to...


And why they gotta do a 90's teen spin on the blood test scene from THE THING??

Then there's the matter of Alice Cooper's classic "I'm Eighteen" being limply covered by Creed. Perhaps the less said, the better, but it would seem that the hard rockin' gods are just as offended as the sci-fi actioner gods. And even John Hughes is pissed because (excluding Laura Harris' Southern-fried transfer student) the final survivors are THE EXACT SAME ARCHETYPES AS THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

What a weirdo

Of course, one could make the argument that these 'sins' I've outlined are some of the film's strengths, but allow me to tell where the film's assets truly lie- the title. Or, to be more specific: the title characters.

Infected by slug-like parasites from space, Robert Patrick is peppy, cheerful, and absolutely out of his fucking gourd. He's having more fun than the rest of the cast combined.


This is the kind of part he was born to play, so why the hell didn't he have more juicy, high-profile roles of this caliber?! (Well, I guess there's always COP LAND and THE DIG.) Not to be outdone, Piper Laurie's ready, able, and willing to kick it up a notch. At one point, she even gets a dated, silly SCARY-JUMP-CUT-ZOOM:


Rounding it out are a zany Jon Stewart (who makes one final appearance that's worth staying for the end credits):

a deranged, drunken Daniel von Bargen; and a glassy-eyed, spine-chilling Bebe Neuwirth.

So....almost four stars (I guess)... may my penance commence.

-Sean Gill