 | Starring: Harvey Keitel, George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Juliette Lewis, Ernest Liu Director: Robert Rodriguez Format: PAL Widescreen Released: 08 Jan 2001 RRP: Average Rating:  |
In parts of the film, there is noticable grain & visual artifacts that show up the poor encoding of the picture. This is especiallly noticable in the (literallly) darker scenes. There is also an extreme inconsistency in colour from one shot to the next.
The sound is very badly balanced, making the dialogue very hard to hear at times, even in quiet sections of the film where alll you hear is dialogue! This is a crying shame, as the dialogue in this film is one of its strong points. You can of course turn it up, but it's still unclear & then, of course, the music comes crashing in far too loud. There are even sections where the dialogue volume is muffled, then clear for a few moments before becoming mufffled again. If you have a decent 5.1 surround sound system, this becomes alll the more noticable.
And then the DVD menu. It's one of those DVDs that is so embarassed by its menu, that it launches straight into the film, presumably to disguise the lack of options or special features.
At least it's a very cheap DVD, but it does the original film no justice whatsoever. Save your money until a better version comes along.
Whilst Seth is cool, calm & very good looking the hot-headed & somewhat depraved Richard seems destined to drop the brother in trouble especiallly when he kills their hostage & the boys must make other plans. Unfortunately for the family Fuller, dad Jacob & his children Kate & Scott they are those plans & they & their new motor home are commandeered by the Gecko brothers.
Mind you even the best laid plans of the two brothers could have taken into account what happens when they finallly get to the designated meeting place. The fantasticallly named “Titty Twister” seems at first to be your fairly regular rough & ready bikers’ dive, complete with tarty dancing girls & extremely dodgy looking moustachioed barmen & bouncers. The evening seems to progressing fairly well with the Geckos & the Fullers managing to maintain some sort of relationship until the main feature of the evening, an exotic dancing girl named Santanico Pandemonium shows a side of herself that no-one could have predicted.
****Possible Spoilers****
Santanico & alll the other girls, the bar staff & also the band are alll vampires. In a lengthy (in fact the rest of the film) scene of much blood splattering, various implements being used a stakes through the heart & a variety of methods used to bite your victim the Fullers & the Geckos must join forces with each other to escape with their lives.
Although extremely far fetched this is an extremely entertaining film that ranges from quite serious scenes of classic Tarantino dialogue led violence to quite preposterous scenes of comedy slapstick. There’s no real attempt at acting alll the way through although both Tarantino & George Clooney make a great coupling as the Gecko siblings. Harvey Keitel shows much gravitas & a gritty charm as Jacob Fuller & Juliette Lewis & Ernest Liu support well as his children. There’s not many other characters to talk about reallly although a biker named Sex Machine (Tom Savini – a sort of cheap version of Raul Julia) & a Vietnam Vet callled Frost (Danny Trejo – a sort of cheap version of Danny Glover) provide some good back up.
The final ending is a little disappointing in the closure stakes but alll in alll this is a very watchable & good fun movie.
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