Product Details

• Actors: Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Juliette Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Ernest Liu
• Directors: Robert Rodriguez
• Writers: Quentin Tarantino, Robert Kurtzman
• Producers: Elizabeth Avellan, Gianni Nunnari, John Esposito, Lawrence Bender, Meir Teper
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Walt Disney Video
• DVD Release Date: June 17, 1998
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (289 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1558908455
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,586 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "From Dusk Till Dawn" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

From a match made in heaven comes a movie spawned in hell! Young hotshot director Robert Rodriquez (El Mariachi, Desperado) teamed up with Pulp Fiction auteur Quentin Tarantino (offering his services as writer and co-star) to make this outrageous, no-holds-barred hybrid of high-octane crime and gruesome horror. QT plays Richard Gecko, a borderline psychopath who breaks his career-criminal brother, Seth (George Clooney), out of prison, after which they rob a bank and leave a trail of dead and wounded in their bloody wake. Then they hijack a mobile home driven by a former Baptist minister (Harvey Keitel) who quit the church after his wife's death and hit the road with his two children (played by Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu). Heading to Mexico with their hostages, the infamous Gecko brothers arrive at the Titty Twister bar to rendezvous for a money drop, but they don't realize that they've just entered the nocturnal lair of a bloodthirsty gang of vampires! With not-so-subtle aplomb, Rodriguez and Tarantino shift into high gear with a nonstop parade of gore, gunfire, and pointy-fanged mayhem featuring Salma Hayek as a snake-charming dancer whose bite is much worse than her bark. If you're a fan of Tarantino's lyrical dialogue and pop-cultural wit, you'll have fun with the road-movie half of this supernatural horror-comedy, but if your taste runs more to exploding heads and eyeballs, sloppy entrails and morphing monsters, the second half provides a connoisseur's feast of gross-out excess. Bon appétit! --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker

In this picture, the sensibilities of the screenwriter, Quentin Tarantino, and the director, Robert Rodriguez ("El Mariachi," "Desperado"), don't so much mesh as simply take turns: the first half feels like Tarantino's movie, the second half like Rodriguez's. The film begins as a rather self-conscious modern Western in which bad guys (George Clooney and Tarantino) streak toward Mexico; as in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction," the crooks have a tendency to babble inanely while threatening defenseless people with grievous bodily harm. For once, though, the logorrheic apprehension that Tarantino likes to build up actually has some sort of payoff: south of the border, the gunmen and their hostages are beset by hordes of vampires, and Rodriguez's berserk action style-weird weaponry, non-stop stunts, and samurai-speed editing-takes over. The movie's horror-comics second half is cheesy, derivative, and ultimately a little wearying. But it's also unpretentious and insanely cheerful. Also with Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Ernest Liu, Cheech Marin, Tom Savini, and Fred Williamson. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 97 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars "From Dusk" gets the shaft on Blu-Ray, courtesy of Echo Bridge, April 11, 2011

By 

Hugo D. Hackenbush (Main Street, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Dusk till Dawn [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

"From Dusk 'Till Dawn" is not a great film by any means, but it is entertaining...up to a point. The first half of the film is an effective, stylish and creepy noir/suspense film, with director Robert Rodriguez showing uncharacteristic restraint in his film direction. Clooney and (surprisingly) Tarantino are good in their roles, and play off of each other well. Unfortunately, the second half of the film becomes increasingly silly, as Robert Rodriguez succumbs to his fetish for over-the-top action and cartoonish violence, quickly undoing all the creepy suspense that was so carefully built up over the film's first half and settling for a parody-like tone for the rest of the film.

If done right, over-the-top horror film parodies can be very entertaining, as the first two "Evil Dead" films show. However, that sort of tone usually works best in a short feature format (such as the "Tales From The Crypt" television series). If the film is to be feature length, then a good deal of imagination is needed to sustain interest, otherwise a sense of a fatigue sets in. It is imagination that makes the "Evil Dead" films work as well as they do, and is what's missing in "From Dusk 'Till Dawn" (endless vampire explosions notwithstanding).

Still, if you're a "B-Movie" horror fan, the film definitely has its moments; besides the two leads, there's a great supporting cast (put together especially for genre fans), fun (albeit goofy) make-up effects, plenty of scantily-clad women, and buckets of fake blood, making the film an acceptable (if padded out) "B" genre film. Overall, a three-star film (out of five).

Regarding the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray release, it is truly a lazy catalog release title, if I've ever seen one. Currently available exclusively at Best Buy stores (but not on Best Buy's online website), I picked this up for ten bucks less than a week ago, and have already decided to get my money back (the Blu-Ray will see a general release in stores on May 3rd).

Presented in the incorrect film aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (from the film's original 1.85:1), the picture quality of the Echo Bridge transfer is a wildly inconsistent mess. A few scenes here and there look very good. However, most of the time the picture quality is soft and murky-looking, giving the film a dull, flat look. Colors tend to look unnatural and overly-saturated. The picture has plenty of digital artifacting and is riddled throughout with edge enhancement, killing off fine background detail. Blacks come off as strong but shapeless, crushing any detail thanks to the transfer's murkiness. I've read by some that DNR was occasionally an issue with the transfer; personally, I didn't see it, but I think we can all agree that even if DNR has been used, it is the least of problems for Echo Bridge's Blu-Ray release of "From Dusk 'Till Dawn".

As a result of my disappointment with the Echo Bridge release, based on the good reviews I've read online, I decided to take a chance and order online the Canadian Blu-Ray release of "From Dusk 'Till Dawn" from Alliance. Now, I must confess that I'm not very big on importing Canadian Blu-Ray's, and I've heard fairly crummy things about Canadian distributer Alliance's Blu-Ray releases. Well, after a side-by-side comparison, there is simply no contest: in every respect, the Alliance Blu-Ray release is superior to the Echo Bridge U.S. release.

The picture of the Alliance disc is sharp throughout, without any of the murkiness and softness that plagues the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray. Colors pop but maintain a natural look, blacks are strong without being crushing, and neither DNR or edge enhancement are anywhere to be found. Regarding the audio, both the Echo Bridge and Alliance versions contain a DTS-HD 5.1 audio mix (ignore the notation of 2.0 stereo on the cover of the EB release of "From Dusk", as it's a misprint). My initial (and rather quick) comparison did not find much difference between the Alliance and Echo Bridge releases. However, a second, deeper comparison revealed there was indeed a difference between the two soundtracks, and once again, Alliance came out ahead. Surround was more expansive throughout with stronger panning effects, and bass was definitely more present. In fact, about the only thing the two releases have in common is a complete lack of extras.

Overall, while the Alliance transfer is not quite demo quality, it is a vast improvement over the Echo Bridge release, and a commendable hi-def transfer for a catalog title (In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Alliance transfer of "From Dusk 'Till Dawn" even trumps Lionsgate's recent U.S. Blu-Ray releases of the "Scream" trilogy, which were all flat-looking and had far too much edge enhancement for my tastes). Only the complete lack of extras prevents me from giving the Alliance Blu-Ray release a four-star review.

So, to sum up: since both Blu-Rays are competitively priced and available right here on Amazon.com, I recommend that casual and hardcore fans skip the U.S. Echo Bridge release and pick up the Canadian Alliance Blu-Ray release. Is the picture quality on the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray disc better than the Miramax DVD? Sure...and for all my complaints, it's not the worst transfer that I've seen on Blu-Ray (check out "Five Corners" and "Lars and The Real Girl" to see truly terrible Blu-Ray transfers). However, considering the fact that a far superior three-year-old Blu-Ray transfer already exists elsewhere, there is simply no excuse for the existence of this poor Blu-Ray release, which is why I give the Echo Bridge Blu-Ray a one-star (out of five) review.

Of course, true fans will also need to pick-up (or hang on to) the Miramax two-disc DVD set, with all of its top-notch bonus features, including the feature-length making-of doc, "Full Tilt Boogie", audio commentary with Rodriguez and Tarantino, deleted scenes and outtakes, a special effects doc and more (I do not recommend that DVD set for casual fans, as the picture is presented in non-anamorphic widescreen).

Between this and the shamelessly cheap Blu-Ray release of "Halloween: H20", I'm going to take a pass on future offerings from Echo Bridge.

57 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great exploitation film. Repeat: EXPLOITATION!, October 28, 1999

By 

Captain Opinionated (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Dusk Till Dawn (Widescreen Edition) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A lot of folks have trouble with this film. They are turned off by the over-the-top violence, mayhem, and sex. What they don't understand is that it is nothing more than a really well-made exploitation film. Remember those? Movies which had no higher agenda than providing plenty of fun, cheap thrills, like gratuitous sex and violence? Many of them were made in the late '60s and throughout the '70s? Like Women In Prison films? Blaxploitation? Car-racing movies? Slasher films? Russ Meyer movies? Anyone? Well, for those who DO remember, and who don't need every flick they see to contain lofty statements about the nature of mankind and the universe, you will love this movie. The cast is great: I mean, come on, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Fred Williamson... even Quentin, who can't act, is utilized effectively. Clooney has a great role which no one seemed to appreciate, Hayek does a lewd dance with a snake which will make your shorts explode, and Cheech Marin is, as always, a laugh riot. This film is at fever pitch every step of the way and contains plenty of Rodriguez camera-acrobatics and clever Tarantino dialogue. Please understand, people, this film IS trash. Good, fun, doesn't-take-itself-at-all-seriously trash! God love it!

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't Do "Dawn", April 20, 2011

By 

MovieManTN (TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Dusk till Dawn [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

Miserable Blu Ray release of a great movie. The picture is cropped from its original aspect ratio, the sound is sub-par, and the picture quality is all over the map. There are moments when the picture is stellar, especially during the beginning moments of the film in the outdoors. Colors pop and the picture is crisp and clear, but then it will suddenly change to something comparable to VHS.

Extras? Forget it! Nothing...zero...zilch.

It's a shame that one of Miramax's best titles wound up in the hands of this company, who produced such a horribly shoddy transfer of this film. Skip it and stick with your DVD.