From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money Review

Review of From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999) by screenqueeen: 👍 3/5

HOOPTOBER 7.0 DAY 23 8 DAYS REMAIN

This is certainly not its predecessor. It has to be faced that there just cannot be follow-ups to something like the first that build on the world and lore the way Tarantino/Kurtzman wrote it. Rodriguez wasn't a sequel guy until the 2000s and Tarantino isn't either (remember KILL BILL was supposed to be one long odyssey for The Bride) so new voices and pairs of eyes were encouraged to pick up the sequel. From all the seriousness of the first title leading up to the camp nature of the ending it makes sense to inject some more ridiculousness into what is now the DUSK TILL DAWN franchise, and if you can't get Raimi to do it, why not Spiegel?

It's ridiculous, chewy and doofy. But that's what it set out to be (with a neat cameo from Campbell in some TV movie Robert Patrick watches in a grimy Texas motel). You can't do a PSYCHO shower scene with a bat puppet and make it frightening or tense. In fact I had to rewatch that sequence a couple times just because I adored it so much (and it's now my favorite shower scene redo at this moment). Spiegel does a good job making the vampires feel a little like deadites but still leaving them the ferocity they had in the first DUSK TILL DAWN while tossing in a new rule or two of his own for the beasts.

I might be in the minority on this one but this is some pretty fun goofy shit. It drags every once in a while but grabs your attention intermittently. It's even pretty funny and goofy. Did I say goofy? Goofy.