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I obviously didn't have high hopes for "From Dusk Till Dawn 2" after its opening reel. Like the infamous "Congo", it makes the grave mistake of killing off the multi-talented Bruce Campbell in the first five minutes, and also does the same thing to Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, despite the fact that all the ads for the movie had mislead one into believing that she has a sizable role in it. The fact that their death scene has absolutely NOTHING to do with the main storyline doesn't help much either, but amazingly, "FDTD 2" eventually makes up for these miscalculations and becomes a surprisingly fun direct-to-video quickie. Whatever flaws it possesses are redeemed by the enthusiasm of the cast and the filmmakers, who probably realized that they were making an inconsequential film, but seemed to have had a ball doing so nonetheless. It's directed by Scott Spiegel, who co-wrote "Evil Dead 2" and has been a long-time associate of Sam Raimi's, and he gets help on the script from Duane Whitaker, who has a major role in the film and is probably best known for playing the bizarre pawn shop owner, Maynard, in "Pulp Fiction". The two of them may not have the same polish as a Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez combination, but they both have an obvious love for the genre and at the occasional moment in the film, some fresh new ideas to add to it.The original "From Dusk Till Dawn" was one of the most enjoyable genre efforts of the 90s, which unfortunately, received a lot of criticism from non-horror fans who thought that Tarantino's screenplay started off as a potentially interesting drama that sold out midway through, opting instead to become a over-the-top gorefest in the second half. Of course, most genre aficionados found those horror elements so entertaining that they didn't care at all about the detour in Tarantino's script. Of course, "FDTD 2" doesn't near measure up to its predecessor, but if there's one thing that it does to improve upon it, it's that it doesn't even try to pretend that it has the potential to be anything else, and just presents itself as a good ol' horror outing, mixed in with a fairly standard heist story. It also helps, however, that the characters are more sharply written and the dialogue is more witty than you'd expect for a flick of this kind. The fine B-movie cast somehow makes you care in spite of yourself, and by the time the movie reached its climactic bloodbath at the bank, I was surprised by how much I was into the film. But when all is said and done, what really matters is if the horror elements deliver, and Spiegel does just that, providing some very inventive death scenes and some show-off Raimi-esque camera work (including a neat point-of-view shot of a key going into a keyhole). Sure, the gore and the F/X aren't exactly up to the "Saving Private Ryan" level of realism, but it's not like they were that great in the original either. It's not the slickness of the production, but the enthusiasm and spirit of it all that matters. And since "From Dusk Till Dawn 2" has that kind of spirit and delivers what it promises, it comes across as a direct-to-video production that's pretty-damn-fun!
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