From Dusk Till Dawn (2 Disc Collector's Edition) [DVD]

• Record Label: Dimension Films.
• Catalog#: 5017188883238.

From a match made in heaven comes a movie spawned in hell! From Dusk Till Dawn sees young hot director Robert Rodriquez (El Mariachi, Desperado) team up with Pulp Fiction auteur Quentin Tarantino (offering his services as writer and costar) to make this outrageous, no-holds-barred hybrid of high-octane crime and gruesome horror. Tarantino plays Richard Gecko, a borderline psychopath who breaks his career-criminal brother, Seth (George Clooney), out of prison, after which they rob a bank and leave a trail of dead and wounded in their bloody wake. Then they hijack a mobile home driven by a former Baptist minister (Harvey Keitel) who quit the church after his wife's death and hit the road with his two children (played by Juliette Lewis and Ernest Liu). Heading to Mexico with their hostages, the infamous Gecko brothers arrive at the Titty Twister bar to rendezvous for a money drop, but they don't realise that they've just entered the nocturnal lair of a bloodthirsty gang of vampires! With not-so-subtle omb, Rodriguez and Tarantino shift into high gear with a non-stop parade of gore, fire and pointy-fanged mayhem featuring Salma Hayek as a snake-charming dancer whose bite is much worse than her bark. If you're a fan of Tarantino's lyrical dialogue and pop-cultural wit, you'll have fun with the road-film half of this supernatural horror-comedy, but if your taste runs more to exploding heads and eyeballs, sloppy entrails and morphing monsters, the second half provides a connoisseur's feast of gross-out excess. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com On the DVD: the DVDs lavish features on us. The outtakes and deleted scenes are more of the same--exploding bellies, pus, blood and naked women with large teeth. The documentary "Full Tilt Boogie" is entertaining enough; the row with the unions, which it faithfully records, raises real issues about independent filmmakers and their work force. There are two music videos, a stills gallery, a reasonably acute commentary by Rodriguez and Tarantino and material about the art direction. The film is presented in Dolby Digital and a widescreen ratio of 1.85:1 as well as an ordinary one of1.33.1. --Roz Kaveney