Cinematic Vampires
This vampire movie came out in 1996, directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Salma Hayek, Fred Williamson and several other well-known actors and actresses.
In the beginning, we are introduced to the brothers Gecko, Seth (played by George Clooney) and Richie (played by Tarantino). Richie breaks brother Seth out of prison, leaving behind a body count as they make tracks across Texas in their run for the border. They intercept a family on vacation (played by Keitel, Lewis and a newcomer), and use them to get across the border into Mexico. The first half of the movie is vampireless, but interesting in its own right. The group ends up at a bar called "The Titty Twister", your average bikers and truckers getting drunk and rowdy while beautiful, mostly naked chicks dance for them. The guys meet Santanico Pandemonium:
Then, quite suddenly, all hell breaks loose and the bar's disguise is blown wide open. It's really a haven for vampires, and all of the employees vamp out. They begin feeding on the bar patrons, including Richie Gecko, who then becomes a vampire and meets his tragic end.
In reading a bit on this film from Fangoria's first published book Vampires (1996 - Harper Prism), I learned the reasoning behind why these beautiful women were turned into what the director calls "butt ugly vampire chicks." Rodriguez' idea was in order to scare the male viewing audience. Couples go out to "scary" movies, and the men are much harder to scare. This attempt was aimed at psychological horror. " 'Since a bar is usually where a guy's worst nightmare of picking up a girl who he thinks is beautiful but turns out to be really ugly occurs, we came up with this idea of Butt-Ugly Vampire Chicks,' the director says. 'So a guy will be sitting there, and a real pretty girl will come up to him and start lap dancing, and then she'll turn around and be a horrible monster?Most guys can't get scared in horror movies these days, but if you show them something like this, they'll get freaked out. You get them where they live and breathe.' "
The second half of the movie doesn't really jive with the first half, but if you take the whole thing for what it is - a movie about a rapist and a (gorgeous) killer trying to get away scot-free while taking hostages to a titty bar in Mexico where beautiful women turn into ugly vampires and few survive - it turns out to be an interesting, non-stop action 108 minutes.
Links
For more info, and some sound bites, check out this link
As on all my other pages, I do not own the copyrights to any of the pictures, on this page. I found the pictures on a website linked through the link I provided just above.
