“Everybody be cool. You, be cool.” – Seth Gecko.
There’s nothing that embodies ‘90s cool like Robert Rodriguez’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: A tattooed George Clooney. Harvey Keitel as a conflicted ex-preacher. Juliette Lewis. Tom Savini playing a biker named ‘Sex Machine.’ Fred Williamson. Not even screenwriter Quentin Tarantino putting himself in front of the camera can diminish the film’s cool. Some might argue he’s even pretty good in it.
Thirty (!) years on from the film’s release, and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN is back in a fresh novelization from Christian Francis and story creator Robert Kurtzman. Released by Echo On Publications (and featuring a foreword from Kurtzman himself), it aims to reopen the doors of the Tity Twister for a lively literary restaging of Rodriguez’s best work.
Like the anaemic Netflix series, it takes the bones of Tarantino’s script to blaze its own bloody path, introducing new subplots and characters while fleshing out the Gecko brothers and the Fuller family. From the striking opening sequence on, its broad strokes are the same: A tense holdup in a remote convenience store. A murdered hostage in a scummy motel. A hijacked family vacation. The gang’s arrival at a rowdy strip club full of sleazy bikers and truckers. You know the rest… Or at least, you think you do.
Three (!) decades later, and the events of the Titty Twister have gone down in movie history. Francis and Kurtzman can’t hope to replicate the surprise of that sudden genre twist, so instead they pick apart its characters. And not just Seth, Jacob and the kids either… No, the first few chapters, in glorious first person, put us inside the heads of unlucky convenience store clerk Pete, even-unluckier hostage Gloria, and an overzealous border control agent named P.A.I.C Kessiye-Flores. It’s a smart way of introducing a sense of propulsion to a journey we’ve taken many times before (most of us on well-worn VHS tapes) and digging into the inner lives of those on the edges of the story.
Once we arrive at the Titty Twister, the book narrows its scope, adopting a third-person narrative. Here, it focuses on the survivors as they attempt to hold the line till, uh, dawn. The surprises don’t stop, though, and new characters are introduced as old ones show off some fresh dimensions (Sex Machine’s real name, for instance).
If the new dialogue struggles to stand zinger-for-zinger against the original work, the characters still shine. Not everyone benefits from the deep dive; Seth’s inner monologue doesn’t always ring true as the character played by Clooney. But it’s largely successful in staying true to the film. Curiously absent, however, is the toe-tapping, toe-sucking lap dance sequence, suggesting a sense of embarrassment at the film’s most prominent predilection. For anyone who wants to read that sort of thing, there’s always Tarantino’s own Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization instead.
It’s a breezy read, and one which should be consumed in a single sitting – as you would any good work of pulp fiction. The fun’s not over once the credits roll in the mind’s eye either. The book also includes Kurtzman’s original story outline as well as a collection of illustrations, concept art and storyboards by Kurtzman, Bill Hunt, Shannon Shea and John Bisson.
Francis and Kurtzman’s FROM DUSK TILL DAWN is an inventive restaging of the story, staying faithful to its anarchic spirit while offering plenty of surprises of its own. Cool.
