From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money

This is a straight to DVD release which was never going to compete with the brilliance of the original however it retains the same spirit of gory fun and makes for an enjoyable blast of daft entertainment.

The opening features Bruce Campbell as a lawyer getting into an elevator with a colleague and then being set upon by a cloud of bats. Campbell is superb and I just wish the whole movie featured him but we pull back to reveal the real star of the show, Robert Patrick, who plays Buck a thieving trailer trash loser and he has been watching Bruce's exploits on his battered television. It's a cheesy and comical start to the film and sets the tone for what is to follow.

Buck is planning a bank job in Mexico with a buddy who just escaped from prison and they agree to meet at El Coyote Motel which just so happens to be near the Titty Twister (the strip club from the original). Buck puts together a team and they settle down in the flea-bitten motel watching cheap porn while they wait for Luther. Meanwhile Luther has an encounter with a giant bat on his way and by the time he turns up, after a brush with Razor Eddie (played by Danny Trejo) he's a vampire. For the rest of the movie we get gory action all the way as Luther gradually converts his buddies and they face down the police while carrying out the bank job.

While some people will get fed up with it I found the direction quite inventive and thought it added to the comedy, there are shots from all sorts of bizarre perspectives, we see the action from inside the mouth of a vampire biting a victim, there's a camera pan stuck to a rotating fan and a scene shot through the bottom of a pool of blood. There's no doubt it's silly and deliberately over the top but bearing in mind this is pure tongue in cheek entertainment director Scott Spiegel certainly gave it a unique feel.

The gore is well handled and while the effects are relatively cheap they do the job. The b-movie cast are quite good, Patrick is likeable as the loser Buck, Duane Whitaker gives a decent performance as Luther and Raymond Cruz is convincing as a steroid filled muscle psycho.

The script isn't great and the plot is completely daft but the film is going for frenetic action and comedy which it mostly achieves. The pace never lets up and coming in at under an hour and a half it never outstays it's welcome. If you are looking for real horror then you won't find it here but if you want a bit of mindless cheesy entertainment and you like “bad” movies then you could do a lot worse.

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