Friday 31 January 2014

Trailer: El Ray's FROM DUSK TILL DAWN - THE SERIES

Friday 31 January 2014

At first I thought it regrettable Robert Rodriguez will risk sullying the good name of his cult 1996 horror movie FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, but then I remembered there were two straight-to-video movies that did that already. They were so awful I only admit they exist under duress. Turning the original film into an ongoing TV drama doesn't seem possible, let alone close to a good idea, but Rodriguez needs something with brand recognition to draw eyeballs to his fledgling El Ray Network (which launched just before Christmas).

A trailer surfaced a few weeks ago, but a better one has now been released (see above). It's not as reliant on vampires as I was expecting, but I'm sure others will be confused by that. Is it a sign the budget isn't there for the kind of vampire mayhem the film's climax contained? Who's going to be watching FDTD if there aren't vampires aplenty? I think people are hoping for a gonzo version of True Blood with two fugitive gangsters.

Anyway, my main reactions to this trailer are: didn't Robert Patrick (in Harvey Keitel's role as family man preacher) learn his lesson, after headlining shitty sequel From Dusk Till Dawn 2? And the actors playing the Gecko Brothers (D.J Cotrona and Zane Holtz) just scream "pretty-boy cheapness" (which will be a huge problem for me, as it's hard to shake the much cooler visual of George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino as those characters).

FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: THE SERIES debuts 11 March on the El Ray Network. (You can watch more television promos and trailers embedded in my revamped Calendar page.)