{"id":967,"date":"2015-06-01T00:24:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T00:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/?p=967"},"modified":"2015-06-01T00:24:43","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T00:24:43","slug":"review-from-dusk-till-dawn-the-series-season-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/review-from-dusk-till-dawn-the-series-season-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series Season 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FromDuskTillDawn\"<\/a>The From Dusk Till Dawn<\/a> series has been on my Netflix list for at least a year, but I\u2019ve kept putting it off, mainly because every time I\u2019ve had the time and inclination to binge on Netflix there\u2019s been another series I wanted to watch more. When I finally got around to it earlier this week, I wasn\u2019t really sure what to expect. I knew it was about the Gecko brothers, so it couldn\u2019t really be a sequel (since Richie died in the movie), but it also obviously had vampires, which meant it didn\u2019t quite make sense as a prequel. It somehow never occurred to me that Rodriguez was rebooting his own movie as a series, but that\u2019s what he did.<\/p>\n

The first three-quarters of season one follow the movie so closely that you can pretty much plot each episode directly to a scene in the movie. There are a few changes and lots of additions, but the overall story is basically the same. Episode 1 is the shootout with Earl McGraw and Pete at the liquor store, Episode 2 focuses on the Gecko brothers in the car and introduces the Fuller family, Episode 3 is Big Kahuna burgers and the murdered bank teller, and so on. The main plot divergence doesn\u2019t happen until the end of episode 7, which features Santanico Pandemonium\u2019s dance and the big vampire reveal at the Titty Twister, and even then there are a lot of similarities and references to the movie.<\/p>\n

Obviously, you don\u2019t expand an hour and change of a movie into seven 45-minute episodes without adding some new stuff. There are some flashbacks (like the bank robbery that the Geckos were making their getaway from) and \u201clost scenes\u201d (Seth\u2019s burger run was more exciting than you\u2019d guess from the movie, and introduced us to his wife), but most of the extra time is spent on new subplots. Most of the new material builds on things from the movie, but there is one completely new major character: Freddie Gonzalez, Earl McGraw\u2019s partner. He\u2019s involved in the liquor store shootout and spends most of the series trying to catch up with the Gecko brothers and avenge Earl and solve a series of ritual murders that he thinks Richie committed.<\/p>\n

Carlos (one of Cheech\u2019s array of characters in the original movie) gets a greatly expanded role in the series that mostly serves to build up the mythology of the (as it turns out, not really) vampires and make a lot more sense of the ancient temple-to-titty bar conversion. The mythology is further developed through the visions Richie keeps getting, which also manage to make his creepy behavior and hallucinations a little less sex-murderer-y. All of this new mythology works to turn the last few episodes into a whole mythic \u201cjourney to the underworld\u201d thing that\u2019s every bit as cool as half an hour of vampire-killing carnage (not that there isn\u2019t still plenty of vampire-killing carnage). On the Fuller family side of things, we find out that the death of Jacob\u2019s wife was more complicated than we thought.<\/p>\n

The cast is mostly made up of people I didn\u2019t know or who looked vaguely familiar. The guy playing Seth Gecko doesn\u2019t live up to Clooney, but he does the best he can and you get used to him pretty quickly. The actor playing Richie is unsurprisingly better at it than Tarantino, coming across as an actual creepy, nerdy, hardened criminal instead of, well, Quentin Tarantino trying to play a creepy, nerdy, hardened criminal. He also looks more believably like he could be Seth Gecko\u2019s brother (whether it\u2019s George Clooney or the other guy). The girl who plays Kate is much more believable as the teenage preacher\u2019s daughter than Juliette Lewis, but doesn\u2019t really pull off the transformation to vampire killer as well. The rest of the unknowns do a respectable job; there are a few (mostly minor) characters that are pale imitations, but they\u2019re trying to fill roles originally played by people like John Hawkes and Danny Trejo, so you can\u2019t really blame the actors.<\/p>\n

Of the recognizable actors, Don Johnson makes a valiant effort as Earl McGraw, but there\u2019s no escaping the shadow of Michael Parks. Robert Patrick does a great job in the Harvey Keitel role early on, but never quite makes the transformation from faithless preacher to mean motherfuckin\u2019 servant of God. Last but not least, Wilmer Valderrama is surprisingly menacing yet stylish as Carlos and (sort of) plays a border guard, but didn\u2019t repeat Cheech\u2019s hat trick by also playing the pussy rant guy. Also the pussy rant was considerably toned down, despite the series containing plenty of violence, a few f-bombs, and nudity. Since the show was created for Rodriguez\u2019s El Ray cable network but also marketed as a Netflix original, they were probably dealing with some weird guidelines for what they were and weren\u2019t allowed to do.<\/p>\n

You may notice that so far I haven\u2019t mentioned Sex Machine, the dick-gun wearing biker played by Tom Savini in the movie. Sex Machine is a character in the series and I would like nothing more than to tell you all about him. I can\u2019t, though, because even telling you who played him would be an unforgivable spoiler for something you\u2019ve really got to experience for yourself. If you\u2019ve seen the series, you know what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n

When people describe the From Dusk Till Dawn movie, they usually say something like, \u201cIt\u2019s an hour of a Quentin Tarantino movie and then it turns into a crazy vampire killfest.\u201d Some say it in a tone of annoyance, confusion, and general distaste. Others say it with the kind of excitement that makes it clear that it\u2019s the most awesome thing ever. I fall into the latter (correct) group, so obviously I enjoyed the hell out of a series that takes the basic premise and adds a layer of well-done legendary secret history that makes even some of the sillier parts of the movie make perfect sense. Those of you who loved the movie as much as I did will probably enjoy the series, though some might prefer the \u201cit doesn\u2019t matter if it makes sense, as long as it\u2019s cool\u201d approach of the film to all the extra context provided by the show. If you didn\u2019t like the movie, I honestly can\u2019t guess what you\u2019ll think of the series because your mind is completely alien to me.<\/p>\n

Last I heard, there\u2019s a second season of the series coming sometime this year. Given the way Season 1 ended, I\u2019m not really sure what to expect but I\u2019m willing to give it a try. Probably as soon as it hits Netflix this time around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The From Dusk Till Dawn series has been on my Netflix list for at least a year, but I\u2019ve kept putting it off, mainly because every time I\u2019ve had the time and inclination to binge on Netflix there\u2019s been another series I wanted to watch more. When I finally got around to it earlier this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,37],"tags":[30,29,27],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-reviews","tag-horror","tag-movies","tag-supernatural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingyak.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}