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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not a good film, but it never tries to be, March 6, 2005
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.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
From Dusk Till Dawn 2 - Not as Good as Original, October 31, 2000
By A Customer
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.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not much of a follow up to the first, but it's ok, August 15, 2005
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.
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