7. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Crime Drama to Comedy/Horror If you've seen it, you'll of course know how it ends, but it's worth reminding ourselves that Robert Rodriguez' fifth film begins with a group of bank robbers on the run. It warrants a mention simply because, almost two hours later, it's almost impossible to recall just how we got from there to here. Brothers Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) are heading to a Mexican safehouse but can't seem to stay out of trouble on the way. In the back of their car is a hostage, a bank teller brought along for the ride. Once they reach the border, they enter a strip club called The Titty Twister- where it seems that the second half of the film is bottled up and close to bubbling over. A fight breaks out and Richie is stabbed in the hand. The sight of blood prompts one of the strippers (Salma Hayek) to transform into a vampire, pounce upon poor Richie and generally confuse the hell out of everyone. For Tarantino's script deliberately and dementedly combines the two genres to create a special kind of alchemy. The former has the makings of a brooding crime thriller, a ' heist and hostage' along the lines of his previous
Reservoir Dogs; while the latter is a nightmarish, bloody B-movie in which our survivors arm themselves against an onslaught of the undead with such improbable, improvised weapons as a jackhammer-turned- stake. The violence is both slapstick and splattered across the screen; and you can certainly see where the idea for
Planet Terror came from. Given the shock and success of such an experiment, one wonders if we shouldn't welcome more movie mash-ups in the future...