Horror Movie A Day: From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money

Robert Rodriguez is a huge fan boy. Every time he release a film he promises at least a trilogy full of sequels. Whether we want them or not, We got El Mariachi Trilogy, Spy Kids, From Dusk Till Dawn and even Sin City is in the works.  I’m still waiting for his promised The Faculty sequels. I don’t think he’s short on ideas, there’s plenty of good scripts in Hollywood, he just wants to see all his projects come to fruition. Like any good fan boy eh watches a movie comes out and dreams up what’s next, except he’s in a position to make those “what's next dreams” happen.

I remember being completely excited at the thought of the From Dusk Till Dawn Sequels. Quentin was going to write one and Robert was going to direct it, and Robert was going to write one for Quentin to direct. That never came to pass. Instead we got the first sequel, three years later, direct-to-video, from Director Scott Spiegel, who’s never done anything interesting before or since.  Even though you can tell that Robert Rodriguez storyboarded most of this, the film still felt very static, sadly due to Spiegel simple style. 

The box art seems very promising, the T-1000 Vs. Vampires.  And that big Mexican dude who was in the first one. But sadly he was in it even less than Bruce Campbell. Who had a small cameo with Tiffany Amber Thiesen.  Their three minute cameo takes place at the very beginning. Check it out below.

 

The movie centers around Robert Patrick getting together a crew to rob a Mexican bank full of Gringo drug money. The only time the movie refers to the eponymous Texas Blood Money is in a phone cal. A nice twist would have been the Gringo drug dealers to show up and defend their money alongside the police. But the movie is never that smart, it’s clever title refers only to the blood sucking vampires that attack Robert Patrick's crew. Much like the original film, good guys and bad guys have to get together to ward of the vampires. That's pretty much the only connection to the original, that and a throwaway reference to the Gecko Brothers and a short visit to the Titty Twister bar that was the site of the first film.

The movie isn’t all bad. It’s actually quite fun. I’m of the mindset if a horror movie can't have a decent story or acting, then it should just throw everything else on the wall and see what sticks. It can be bloody and gory but above else it should be fun. This movie plays well, you don’t need to invest a lot to enjoy it. It can easily play in the background if you want to do something else. It has a few good scares and tense moments at the beginning. But when it becomes a heist movie, it stops being scary, and becomes borderline ridiculous, but still enjoyable. It’s taken me ten years to sit down and actually watch this film, partly because it was much maligned by critics, and I didn’t want to ruin the first one by watching a poorly made sequel.  I doubt I’ll be remembering much of this beyond Bruce Campbell’s cameo, but it did have some good ideas behind it that might have been better used in the first film. There was an eclipse that allowed the Vampires to come out in the day, the bat cam, and the very unique bite cam and the brim of the hat cam, not to mention lots of great camera placement, all due to Robert Rodriguez no doubt, and while the dialogue wasn't so interesting it did have some colorful character actors to spout them, which made it bearable. For a boring Sunday afternoon, it sure helped pass the time.

I’ll never watch it again. But I’m not sorry I did. I recommend this to fans of the original, it doesn’t taint it in anyway,

I give it 2 and a half big Mexicans.