From Dusk Till Dawn with Vanessa Guerrero

00:00:01
Speaker 1: On the Bechde cast, the questions asked if movies have women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zeph and Beast start changing with the Bechdel cast.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Hey, Jamie, Hey Caitlyn, want to go to the Titty Twister with me and have a couple drinks?

00:00:24
Speaker 3: Conceptually, yes, in reality I'm not so sure.

00:00:32
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:00:33
Speaker 3: I mean, getting past the door guy alone seems pretty existentially stressful.

00:00:38
Speaker 2: I mean, weren't you just so drawn in by cheech Maren's speech about pussy?

00:00:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't get in until cheech Maren breaks the fourth wall about pussy. I like, as as kind of like yucky as that speech is. I do wish that more movies included cheech marin breaking the fourth wall, a long protracted speech about pussy.

00:01:02
Speaker 4: I would not hate that.

00:01:04
Speaker 3: I would maybe have some notes on like the dial, maybe not let Quentin Tarantino write about pussy.

00:01:12
Speaker 4: Anymore, even I would say.

00:01:15
Speaker 3: But but yes, I do support in general that happening. What if that happen at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, you know, like anytime you're entering the big mysterious location. Cheech Baron was just there with his like pussy speech. What's another big like any haunted house movie? The Haunted Mansion. Eddie Murphy can't.

00:01:36
Speaker 4: Enter until he gets.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: And then Eddie Murphy punches the shit out of Cheech Marin before he goes inside.

00:01:44
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm not never happy to see Cheese take a punch, but something to consider for future. He's still alive, right, yeah, Okay, he's old but kicking and in the Cars franchise, which I always forget and warranted peating.

00:02:02
Speaker 2: Yes, we just haven't covered a Cars movie yet, have we?

00:02:07
Speaker 4: I think? Yeah.

00:02:08
Speaker 3: The fact that we got eight whole years into our feminist podcast without discussing cars, I just don't know how it happened.

00:02:16
Speaker 4: The time just slips away.

00:02:18
Speaker 2: Well, just you wait, listeners for Cars or February.

00:02:24
Speaker 4: Welcome to the Bechdel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftis.

00:02:27
Speaker 2: My name is Caitlin Dorante. This is our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. We've talked about it so many times at this point, so you know, look it up. Go back to a previous episode. I feel like we just got to get into it today.

00:02:45
Speaker 3: I like that we've like gotten to the era where we're like, we're not going to explain what it is anymore. It will come up once in like ninety minutes and that's it, right.

00:02:54
Speaker 2: I mean again, we've been on for eight years. In that time, we have not talked about cars, but we have explained our version of the Bechdel Test easily five five hundred times literally. So we're just gonna move past it today and just bring in our guest for this episode on From Dusk Till Dawn nineteen ninety six, Robert Rodriguez film. Our guest is a producer and writer at Game Grumps. You know her from our episodes on John Wick Raw Found Atomic Blonde. This is the fifth appearance five Timers Club. It's Vanessa Gerrera, Yo, welcome back.

00:03:34
Speaker 6: The first time I heard the cheech Maren pussy speech, I had watched this movie on cable with my mom and they dubbed over it by calling it kitty, and my mom didn't love that. I kept repeating apple Pie Kitty around the house.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: Stopping wet kitty, chicken, kitty horse, Kitty Wait. That is so I love a TV Yes, edit anecdote, that's the greatest.

00:04:03
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them for movies written by Tarantino, specifically because there's the my name's Buck and I like to party.

00:04:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, classic, Yeah, I mean he does if nothing else right, movies designed that are very difficult to broadcast.

00:04:20
Speaker 2: So, Vanessa, what is your relationship with From Dusk Till Dawn?

00:04:26
Speaker 6: So the first time I saw this movie, it was at a very long hair rushing session with my mother, as I have long and ridiculous curly hair, and this movie was on cable and my mom is it one for gore and violence, but she does love Cheech Marin and George Clooney. So we just sat and watched this entire movie in a day, and I ended up falling in love with it. And I looked up Robert Rodriguez and watched everything he had ever done and told my parents I wanted to get into entertainment and they said over my day body, But jokes on them. I ended up working for Robert Rodriguez anyway. So this was a big gateway film for me for both a lot of genre film and then the idea that just anybody could make something. So that was like instrumental to me. And yeah, this is a very fundamental film for me. And every time I watch it, I find more and more reasons to be grossed up by contin Tarantino.

00:05:31
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, gosh, I mean, and I do like that.

00:05:35
Speaker 3: I mean, on a longer timeline, Robert Ariguez sort of took the authorial role in this franchise instead of Tarantino continuing to write it.

00:05:43
Speaker 4: Because as you're watching this, you're like, they.

00:05:45
Speaker 3: Should have just let him rewrite the movie if he was going to direct it, Like it's unfair to make him direct some of this dialogue. I know that they're they're bros, but come.

00:05:54
Speaker 2: On, yeah, come on.

00:05:57
Speaker 6: Wow.

00:05:58
Speaker 2: I didn't realize this was such an important movie to you, Vanessa.

00:06:02
Speaker 6: It was. And it's really funny because it was like the first time I saw my mom indulge anything that was like willfully gross. So I learned a little bit about my mom that day where I was like, oh, you're kind of a weirdo too.

00:06:19
Speaker 2: I love those moments. I went to see Team America World Police in theaters with my mom. No way that has an extended like puppet sex scene. There's a scene where a puppet's puking for several minutes, and I was like sitting next to my mom and she wasn't like scandalized by it really, so I was like, Okay, my mom sent to some freak shit. Cool Jamie, what's your relationship with the movie.

00:06:52
Speaker 4: I had not seen this movie before. I was I don't know.

00:06:55
Speaker 7: Why, just the cards and of her, the stars, whatever metaphor I was reaching for there, it didn't happen. Although I would consider myself a Robert Reveguez fan, which probably sounds like fake fan because I have not seen this movie, but I've seen many of his movies.

00:07:10
Speaker 4: I read his book.

00:07:11
Speaker 3: I really love his book, in particular Revel Without a Crew.

00:07:14
Speaker 4: Have you read it? It's so good, It's the classic. It's very inspiring.

00:07:19
Speaker 3: I've seen his.

00:07:21
Speaker 4: His first feature. I don't know.

00:07:23
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of Roveguez movies this last year, so I'm filling in the blanks in my knowledge. I think, like a lot of people, I came in to Robert Rodriguez and his family era. I was there for the Spy Kids, SPI Kids two, Island of Lost Dreams, Spike Kids three D Game Over, and of course Shark Boy and lave A Girl, which we should cover someday but have gone on to, you know, like a launch his not that spi Kids is not an actual movie, it's in fact a classic, but his adult movies. But this was my first time with this movie. I know we've covered Sin City in the past. I mean we've covered his work. I was, this is like sidebar, but I did not realize his like fealty to the Spy Kids universe.

00:08:10
Speaker 4: He still directs every Spy Kids movie.

00:08:13
Speaker 3: Yes he does, including the ones that like don't feature any of the original cast, the ones where they like recast Antonio Banderaz with Joel McHale.

00:08:22
Speaker 2: Like what I didn't Okay, I didn't even know there were Spy Kids movies past the third one.

00:08:28
Speaker 3: There was one last year Caitlin Get Ready for Your and Robert Rodriguez. I mean they're part of his expanded universe. But I just think it's very cool. But he still is like, no, I'm another director. Yes, he is the ultimate spy Kid. Anyways, this movie, I really like the second half and the first half I was like, when is it gonna When is something gonna get gross?

00:08:56
Speaker 4: When it's something I get scary. What am I watching?

00:08:58
Speaker 3: I do I like this?

00:09:01
Speaker 4: No?

00:09:01
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, almost at the exact halfway mark, I really liked it until the end.

00:09:07
Speaker 4: So it was a journey. It's a very weird movie.

00:09:10
Speaker 6: It is.

00:09:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think I've.

00:09:12
Speaker 3: Ever quite seen a movie take this heart of a turn that deep into the movie.

00:09:17
Speaker 4: But I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, Caitlin, what is your history with this movie?

00:09:22
Speaker 2: I had seen it once before and it was something I always wanted to rewatch because I remember enjoying it at the time. This was probably twenty ish years ago that I saw it for the first time, and the things I remember the most of the things that were like seared into my brain for all time were Selma Hayak being the hottest person in the world.

00:09:46
Speaker 4: This movie hasn't been done before since.

00:09:48
Speaker 2: I remember the big midpoint reveal because it sort of comes out of nowhere. For something like, for example, Jurassic Park, where suddenly you know, big scary things are attacking everyone. That's heavily foreshadowed earlier on, so it doesn't come out of nowhere this movie, truly, You're just like, oh, it's vampires now, oh okay, and it is it's that shot.

00:10:10
Speaker 3: Where Samahayak turns into a snake vampire right yeah again, Like, while there are criticisms to be made of this movie, like the cheech Marin thing, I would like a lot of movies to make that same choice.

00:10:25
Speaker 2: And then of course I remembered the dick gun. Yes, ah, couldn't forget that. The dick guns, sex machines, sex machines. Dick gun seared into my memory for all times.

00:10:36
Speaker 6: Played by the incredible Tomas Savini.

00:10:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I really appreciated him. So I love the band.

00:10:43
Speaker 3: When the band, I think the image that will be seared into my brain forever is when the band's instruments turned into.

00:10:49
Speaker 4: Just like guy's body parts little there's a.

00:10:51
Speaker 3: Little skeleton moroccos I really like pause that scene to be like, ooh, what's going on back here? Because like, yeah, they were not doing it halfway. I had a little freaky body horror instrument.

00:11:03
Speaker 4: It was awesome.

00:11:03
Speaker 2: See I only noticed the guitar, the torso guitars.

00:11:08
Speaker 4: You gotta slid down. Yeah, they they got They got really silly with it. It was really fun.

00:11:13
Speaker 2: Nice. So anyway, I wanted to rewatch this movie, not remembering much about it aside from those specific things, and upon rewatching it, I had a very similar experience to you, Jamie as far as hated the first half. It's a slog It's just full of all these problematic, nasty things.

00:11:33
Speaker 4: It like feels like a Tarantino movie for the first half.

00:11:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it gets really fun. Yeah, so I'm excited to talk about it. Let's take a quick break and then get into the recap, shall we. And we're back and were throwing back drinks at the Titty Twister, ready to recap from dusk till dawn. I'll place a content warning at the top here for rape and violence against swimming, because that is those are the identifying characteristics of Quentin Tarantino's character. We'll get into it, but.

00:12:24
Speaker 3: Wait before we has anyone ever seen the clip? When I told my boyfriend I was watching this, he was like, have you seen.

00:12:30
Speaker 4: The George Gluney interview for this movie? And then he showed me and it really made me laugh and re endeared me to George Flutey.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: Wait, what does he say?

00:12:38
Speaker 4: It's very funny? I guess that he is. It's for the press junket for this movie, and he's talking about how he got the role.

00:12:46
Speaker 3: And he's like, I guess Quentin Tarantino was watching Er and saw me and was like, whoa, I look so much like that guy.

00:12:55
Speaker 4: We could be brothers.

00:12:56
Speaker 6: Oh my god.

00:12:57
Speaker 4: And then George Clee keeps.

00:12:58
Speaker 3: Going He's like and I just was like, I don't really think so, but I'm interested in the.

00:13:04
Speaker 4: Movie, Like that's how we got the part.

00:13:07
Speaker 3: It's like like Tarantino thought he and Cludey looked so much alike they could be brothers, and that's why that happened. Delusional, so embarrassing, that's humiliating.

00:13:20
Speaker 2: I mean, Tarantino is such an embarrassing shitty person, Zionist freak.

00:13:27
Speaker 4: So you know, for the most embarrassing living people.

00:13:30
Speaker 3: But that was just really like, I it's a very funny interview clip because George Clotney is not pretending to respect the thought of looking like Tarantina remote.

00:13:40
Speaker 2: So there's that anyways, So I'm glad I know that that's very funny. The movie opens on a Texas ranger going into a liquor store to buy a couple of things from the clerk, and when he goes to use the restroom. We find out that the store is in the middle of being robbed and hijacked by two brothers, Seth and Richard slash Richie Gecko played by George Clooney and his identical twin brother gwentin Tarantino, respectively.

00:14:10
Speaker 3: Casting directors everywhere, We're like, we've got to get these two guys next to each other.

00:14:14
Speaker 4: They're twins.

00:14:17
Speaker 2: They had just robbed a bank and they're on their way to Mexico, and the whole thing turns into this violent shootout after Ritchie, who is a loose cannon, shoots the Texas Ranger. After this, Seth and Richie leave mostly unscathed. They get in their car and drive off. We also learn that they have a hostage who they took from the bank robbery, who they've trapped in the trunk of their car. The brothers stop at a motel and get a room. They bring the hostage inside. This is a woman named Gloria. Seth steps out for a moment and when he comes back, he disc covers that his brother, Richie had raped and murdered Gloria, and he's very pissed at Richard, but not enough to not keep hanging out with him. Meanwhile, we meet a family who is on a road trip in their motor home. The dad is Jacob Fuller, played by Harvey Keitel of National Treasure Fame, his most famous role.

00:15:27
Speaker 4: Yes, I think he would want that to be what you went with.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: Yes, I think so, yeah, as well as his two kids, who are teens maybe early twenties. Kate seems to be like nineteen twenty perhaps she's played by Juliette Lewis, and her brother Scott, who I think is maybe like sixteen seventeen, played by Ernest Low. Their mother has recently passed away and it has made Jacob, who is a pastor, question his faith in God, so that's some backstory for them. They end up stopping at the same motel that Seth and Richie are at, who barge into the family's room, hold them at gunpoint, and force them to drive the brothers across the border into Mexico in their motor home. The plan for the brothers is to cross into Mexico, meet up at a specific rendezvous point with this guy named Carlos, who is going to give them sanctuary in a place called El Ray in exchange for some percentage of the money they robbed from the bank. There's a tense moment at border patrol with an officer played by Cheech marin his first of three characters who he plays in the movie.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: He's really going full Norbit in this movie.

00:16:50
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, which we can all hope to in our acting careers, go full Norbit.

00:16:55
Speaker 4: We all deserve a orbit moment, that's right.

00:17:00
Speaker 2: So there's this tense moment where they almost get found out because Ritchie is being impulsive and insecure again. But they make it across into Mexico and they head to the rendezvous point, which is a bar called the Titty Twister, which is open from dusk till dawn. Hey, that's the name of the movie.

00:17:20
Speaker 3: I will say the neon Titty Twister sign pretty iconic.

00:17:26
Speaker 6: Pretty great, Yes, very cool.

00:17:28
Speaker 2: Yes. So the plan is for Seth, Richie and the family of three to go inside and just like drink and hang out until Carlos arrives and takes the brothers to Lray, at which point they plan to let the family go free. They arrive at the Titty Twister. It's this like titty bar slash dive for bikers and truckers, cheech Marin is out front playing his setecond character named Chet Pussy. Oh, given a speech.

00:18:06
Speaker 4: I did not know that was that character's name.

00:18:09
Speaker 6: His god given names.

00:18:11
Speaker 2: Yep, and right, you know, he's giving his famous pussy monologue. And for some reason I couldn't quite tell why, but Seth punches the shit out of Chet Pussy and then Ritchie like kicks him while he's down, and this will pay off later. But they go inside. It's rowdy, there's lots of testosterone. There are nude women dancing. The place is full of characters. We've got Danny Trejo as the bartender. We've got a guy named sex Machine who has the dick gun. There's this like big dude who Seth almost gets into a bar fight with.

00:18:50
Speaker 4: And if you're wondering, hmm, we're in a stripper bar.

00:18:56
Speaker 3: How long is it going to take for a woman to speak in this space where gender parody is fairly prominent? And it will take outside, Juliette lewis.

00:19:06
Speaker 4: A really long time, like a freakishly long time.

00:19:09
Speaker 3: Yes, correct, women will not speak or really even make eye contact or act as if there are anything but said dressing for a good twenty.

00:19:16
Speaker 6: Minutes, they'll hiss and gral before they speak.

00:19:19
Speaker 3: Even Selma Hyak, there is like a long stretch where I mean like she is certainly present, she's like performing, it's incredible, But for a while she just sort of stands there and does not seem to be listening or reacting to the dialogue.

00:19:34
Speaker 4: This hat and you're just like garantina whatever whatever.

00:19:38
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, So the two brothers and the family of three sit down and start drinking, though the family is reluctant at first. They are still the hostages of these two you know, maniacal brothers. Then Selma Hayak comes out. She's a dancer named Santanico Pandemonium. Great name, a reference to a horror movie from the seventies.

00:20:05
Speaker 6: I think, yeah, nunsploitation movie.

00:20:07
Speaker 4: Right, We've got to cover some nunsploitation on the show. That would be such a blast.

00:20:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get there. But she's doing a very sexy dance with this big snake wrapped around her, and all the men are like a wooa, And she finishes her show and just then Chet Pussy comes back in along with bartender Danny Trejo and the big dude from earlier, and they all gang up on Seth and Richie, who fight back and kill these three guys, except they don't kill them because they're already dead. Because twist, they're all vampires, and.

00:20:49
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, the movie is so awesome and great and we love it.

00:20:54
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly. It's at this point where things get fun, and it turns out everyone who works at this bar is a vampire. All the dancers, including Santanico Pandemonium, who transforms into reptile vampire and bites Richard, killing him, Danny, Trejoe, and Cheech Marin all the others reveal their true vampire forms and start attacking and feeding on the non vampire patrons. Some of the patrons fight back, such as Seth, Jacob and his family, sex Machine, and this guy named Frost played by Fred Williamson. This group is basically like the last ones standing after this whole initial vampire frenzy.

00:21:41
Speaker 3: I really love that exchange between Juliette Lewis and sex Machine.

00:21:46
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's so funny. He's like, what's your name? She's like, Kate, what's yours? Sex Machine? Nice to meet you, right, you too?

00:21:53
Speaker 3: And there's always like it's just unspoken allyship, we will not be asking follow up questions at this time.

00:21:59
Speaker 4: I love it.

00:22:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great.

00:22:01
Speaker 6: We are a band of brothers.

00:22:02
Speaker 2: Yes, then Richard Richie comes back as a vampire and Seth has to kill his own brother and he's sad about it. But I'm like, yes, please end this character once and for all, get him out of the movie.

00:22:20
Speaker 4: I have a genuine question for the zoom call.

00:22:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, putting our nineteen ninety six goggles on, are we supposed to be sad to see him go? I felt like we maybe are supposed to feel ambivalent about it. Even at the time of release.

00:22:34
Speaker 6: I don't know.

00:22:35
Speaker 4: I wasn't clear of this.

00:22:37
Speaker 6: He's kind of designed to be cannon fodder. Like he's so revolting and just like such a constant problem and has no redeeming qualities that it's kind of easy to throw him out first because you're like, Okay, well now the stakes are high, and I know what it means, but I'm not like that bummed.

00:23:00
Speaker 4: It does like serve to advance. George Pluony's character is like advancing towards God or whatever they're doing in the.

00:23:09
Speaker 3: Back half, Like right, okay, because I just was I was doubting myself for a second where I was like, in the present day, you're like, yeah, bye, but like I didn't know.

00:23:19
Speaker 4: It seemed like we were supposed to go fairly ambivalent towards it even at the.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: Time, right, But at the same time, I was like, well, wouldn't it carry more emotional weight if the first character to die was someone who we did care about and we're sad to see go? And I was like, wow, Tarantino is such a bad screenwriter for not like ensuring that that's the case. But I can also see, like, oh, to establish how high the stakes are, we off a character that we weren't meant to care about, But yeah, I don't really. It's kind of I was struggling with that as well.

00:23:51
Speaker 3: It's really hard to put yourself in the creative mind of someone who thinks they look like George Plooney.

00:23:58
Speaker 4: Yes, So I just kind of was a little puzzled on that.

00:24:02
Speaker 2: And who wrote himself a character that Salma Hayek would put her foot in his mouth and like drizzled whiskey down it and he's like gobbling that all up, and I'm just like, sir, you self indulgent motherfucker. Anyway. Okay, so we've got this group. They've just killed Richie, who turned into a vampire. Then they hear a bunch of flapping wings outside. These are vampires in bat form trying to break into the bar. Then a few of the other patrons who had been bitten moments earlier come back as vampires. So there's another round of killing the vampires. But then sex Machine gets bitten, so we know that he will soon turn, but.

00:24:51
Speaker 4: He keeps it quiet. He's not trying to go.

00:24:53
Speaker 2: I love that scene too, and he's like try he realizes like his hands are transforming and his fangs are coming out. He's like trying to hide it and like be coy in a really goofy way. I thought that was really funny.

00:25:05
Speaker 4: This is a great performance.

00:25:09
Speaker 2: So then the group kind of chats the pit and figures out what do we know about these vampires? How do we kill them? What weapons do we have at our disposal? And they realize their best weapon is Jacob, since he's a pastor, a mean, motherfucking servant of God to be exact to fight these demons from hell. Then we get the scene where sex Machine turns into a vampire and bites Frost and Jacob Before he turns, Frost flings sex machine into the door, busting it open, so all the bats fly in as Seth, Kate, and Scott take refuge in a storage cellar. Jacob is still in the bar area for a moment, but he's able to fend off this horde of vampires and join up with Seth and his kids, And then he makes Kate and Scott promise that when he inevitably turns, they will kill him, and they reluctantly agree. Then they arm themselves with whatever they can find in the storage area. They figure out that these vampires kill like it's a bar for bikers and truckers specifically, because like it's just like people passing through and they can kill and steal whatever they were hauling. So there's crates of like crossbows and super soakers that they fill up with holy water that Jacob has blessed. Stuff like that.

00:26:43
Speaker 6: I love the implication with the crossbow, because the crossbow comes in a box that shaped like a coffin at the crossmit, the implication that a vampire hunter came through, was killed and they robbed his shit.

00:26:55
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I didn't even make that connection.

00:26:58
Speaker 3: But yeah, I also felt for for poor Scott who I mean, I know that he does have like a powerful weapon, but the fact that he's somehow like saddled with a super soaker, it.

00:27:09
Speaker 4: Just was humiliating. Yeah, just like and it wasn't even a powerful super soaker.

00:27:14
Speaker 2: It was like a I, of all those weapons, I would have wanted the super soaker the most because I know how to handle a super I don't know how to shoot a crossbow.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: You have a license, you have a license to kill with a super soaker full of holy water, like a supercacer full of holy water.

00:27:31
Speaker 4: Is very funny.

00:27:32
Speaker 3: I'm it's funny, but it just was funny when anytime they were cutting to him, You're like, damn, he really got the short end of the weapon. Stick Kate looks so cool and he has a super soaker.

00:27:42
Speaker 4: Anyways, I like it.

00:27:45
Speaker 2: Okay, So they arm themselves and they go back into the bar, killing vampires along the way. They rip off sex Machin's head. He comes back as like a dog vampire or something, so there's like a showdown with him. There's a showdown with vampire Frost. Then Jacob finally turns and bites his son, Scott, who retaliates and kills Jacob just like he promised he would. Then vampires start tearing Scott apart, so Kate kills her brother to save him from you know, becoming a demon. So now it's just Seth and Kate and dozens of vampires are descending on them. But then they realize the sun is coming up. It's a dawn ever heard of it? So they shoot a bunch of holes in the walls, so the beams of sunlight come in and burn and explode the vampires, so they're saved. And then Carlos finally shows up, also played by Cheech Maren. Yes, yeah, and so Seth and Kate say goodbye. Seth heads off with Carlos, Kate drives off in the motor home, and then we get this final reveal that the Titty Twister was built on the remains of a presumably as tech pyramid, surrounded by dozens of like discarded semi trucks from all the truckers the vampires killed. So that's the movie. Yes, let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss where shall we start?

00:29:33
Speaker 6: Oh boy, I do want to say that at the end, not only were they killed by holes in the wall, but a disco ball, Yes, which is the funniest way to kill a vampire.

00:29:44
Speaker 3: So good, such a good last minute edition. And it was like plant it was there the whole time and it never even gotcurd to me.

00:29:51
Speaker 6: Chekhov's discoll ball exactly really good.

00:29:55
Speaker 3: All of the like practical effects and like the turn that the movie he takes is so fucking good. Like and the fact that Robert Rodriguez was I think like twenty seven to twenty eight when he made this is anytime I read about Robert Rodriguez's career, you're.

00:30:13
Speaker 4: Just like, how dare you be so awesome?

00:30:17
Speaker 3: So or like it's just really incredible that just how creative and innovative he was so young.

00:30:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, the practical effects are nuts, it's so good.

00:30:30
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:30:31
Speaker 2: So a little bit of development context for this movie. The story was conceived by a guy named Robert Kurtzman, who wrote the treatment for the film in the late eighties. Basically, he wrote it because he wanted to create a story that his special effects studio could make. So he's like, I want to make like a special effects heavy movie and he hired Tarantino to write the script. This was Tarantino's first paid writing assignment. This was nineteen ninety at this point, and he's like, yeah, I'll do it if you provide the makeup for my movie Reservoir Dogs. So they had this little reciprocity kind of thing. Kurtzman originally wanted to direct the movie, but he hadn't directed a future before, so they were like, let's get someone who has, you know, made a movie before. So then Tarantino basically was like, how about this Robert Rodriguez, guy, I think he'd be perfect. At this point, Merri Max was involved. So unfortunately Harvey Weinstein is part of this. But it started shooting in ninety four, so that's kind of the context for the conception and development of this movie. So it's a lot of men and you can tell.

00:31:56
Speaker 6: Oh, it's entirely non union too.

00:31:59
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, we've.

00:32:00
Speaker 3: Really threw me for a loop with a nineteen million dollar budget. You're just like the maths where show show me how this makes.

00:32:13
Speaker 4: Any possible feasible sense. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I it this feels like the like we were saying earlier, like the.

00:32:22
Speaker 3: Front half of this movie feels so Tarantino, who we've talked about, like unfortunately extensively on this show since we covered.

00:32:35
Speaker 4: Him last last year. We're saying he's a.

00:32:38
Speaker 3: Huge fucking Zionist. He sucks in this way that we haven't mentioned recently, I don't think. But even outside of that, it's he's so frustrating as a writer because I don't know.

00:32:50
Speaker 4: There's certain male writers. It's not like I want to give them benefit of the doubt, but like, I know.

00:32:56
Speaker 3: There are certain writers who are men who I'm like, I truly don't believe you can write a care competently.

00:33:01
Speaker 4: Who is not a man.

00:33:02
Speaker 3: But Tarantino, we know that's not true. Like Jackie Brown comes out the year after this, Yes, like we know he can write women intelligently and thoughtfully if he wants to. So for this script, you're just like, oh, he just like didn't want to, Like you have Kate, but that is it and.

00:33:21
Speaker 4: Even she's like pretty undercooked.

00:33:23
Speaker 3: It's on the writing end, and like it, and he like has way more interest in and I know he's pulling from grindhouse stuff, but it's like do something with it, man, like you know, because again we know he can do that, but he's just like choosing not to hear so, I mean, his writing, especially pre midpoint, I just found like unbelievably frustrating because you know he can do better and he's just not.

00:33:46
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, Like we remember Kate as this like really interesting, strong character, but that's more at testament to Juliet Lewis's performance and it is her actual character. The way it's written, I mean.

00:33:58
Speaker 3: It's so frustrating. Yeah, I And Juliet Lewis does a great job, Like I feel like she like makes a meal of the part with more than is even on the page. But also you're like you have Selma Hayek and you didn't give her anything to do outside of this like less than ten minute stretch.

00:34:18
Speaker 4: I kept waiting for her to come back, okay, waiting for her to like reappear out of the goo. She never ungoos.

00:34:25
Speaker 2: No, she never ungoos. But yeah, just to speak a little bit more to that the first half, which again and Tarantino is very all over the place, as we've been suggesting as far as like sometimes he'll put in a lot of effort and he'll write something like kill Bill, or he'll write Jackie Brown and then other times he'll write himself into the movie where he's saying the N word dozens of times a lah pulp fiction, or he writes this movie that's like full The opening scene is just like an Ablest diatribe for five minutes, and then you have a bunch of characters dropping all these racist slurs and homophobic slurs, and the fact that his own character that he wrote for himself is a rapist creep who like hallucinates a scene where Kate asks him to perform oral sex on her, and then that's brought back and it's just like to what end? I don't understand a lot of these choices, And like part of me is like, okay, well, the characters who go on this like Ablest rant at the beginning, is that to justify them being murdered shortly after? Because those two characters are shot and killed, And it's like, okay, well, were they written that way so that we won't feel bad when they die? But it just I don't really understand a lot of the choices. And I think that Tarantino just like has a tendency to revel in Lord Ablest, racist homophobic diatribes because we see him do it in several of his movies, so I don't know.

00:36:07
Speaker 6: He has a very nihilistic view of like what the general public thinks.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.

00:36:13
Speaker 4: Vanessa, How did this story age for you? Because you have connection to it?

00:36:18
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:36:18
Speaker 6: The first half age like milk Uh, both like the Tarantinois of it all. And I'm not saying that like a bad person has to be a likable character, but sometimes things feel like at least from Tarantinos and self indulgent, where it's like, oh, I can do this because I can. No one's really stopping me. And it's gross. And here's the thing. Both halves of these this movie are gross. The first half is gross and the second half is gross. But the first half is gross in a way that makes you feel weird in your skin, and the second half is gross in the way that's like grimy, gritty, like just the kind of thing that you actually like out of an exploitation film. And it's so interesting to me how these two halves conflict against each other, cause again, the second half takes everything that you like out of like Grindhouse into it, and in the first half it's just like, oh, it's everything that was like embarrassing and shameful about the genre in the first place.

00:37:20
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I it it's weird because it's, like you're saying, Vanessa.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: Both halves of this movie are very heavily referential to stuff that came before it, but like couldn't feel more different in how it ages.

00:37:37
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, the Ritchie character feels like.

00:37:41
Speaker 3: Sort of the most logical place to start, where like we've all established no one's really sad to see him go then and now I think in like a modern audience this would get a like full on cheer yea.

00:37:54
Speaker 4: From the crowd when he's off.

00:37:56
Speaker 3: But even so, I mean just a really knowingly to spit a character who it makes sense that the George.

00:38:04
Speaker 4: Clooney has a connection to. But it's just like it just I don't know, I felt like nothing was.

00:38:10
Speaker 3: Subverted by this character existing. And if Tarantino's whole thing is that he's referencing these old niche genres and subverting things or adding things or modernizing them, this like didn't do that, I don't think, And in a way where I think, like again, with the exception of Kate, every woman we meet in this movie dies or is constantly I mean, in Kid's case, constantly under the threat of violence, even if they don't even if.

00:38:41
Speaker 4: They aren't killed by it.

00:38:42
Speaker 3: The way that characters like Gloria are the way I mean, and it's it's more fun when the way you die is that you are a vampire who turns into goo. Far easier to get on board with. But even so, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I just it felt like, you know, women were largely set dressing in this world and with in the case of Rodriguez.

00:39:06
Speaker 4: And Tarantino, they know how to not do that, so it feels more deliberate that they're choosing to.

00:39:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Richie character being this like predator, this rapist, which his brother Seth challenges and says, what's wrong with you? This is not okay, I don't go around doing this. Why are you doing this? But again he's like, but let's go to Mexico and hang out forever, so not challenging him enough. And now we have this looming threat for Kate, the only like major character in the movie who is a woman, this threat that she might be sexually assaulted by this guy, and for what, Like there's already enough tension with the brothers abducting this family and holding them hostage, there's tenshion and in this imminent vampire attack kind of thing. So like I just don't know, like why make it a point to make the only major character who's a woman feel unsafe in that context when like the movie's about something else, it's about vampire.

00:40:18
Speaker 6: I just it's played for a bit too. Yeah, Like it's played for laughs, like ha ha ha. This creep won't stop looking at this young girl and imagining weird shit about her. And like they even have that like conversation where he's like, oh, did you want me to actually do that? And she's just like okay, dude, whatever, and she's so scared. It's played for laughs.

00:40:38
Speaker 3: Right, and that never I kept waiting for that to like come back or have the fact that he was like hallucinating these interactions have a narrative impact.

00:40:49
Speaker 4: But you're right, it was just a joke, Like it was isn't this hilarious that this guy.

00:40:53
Speaker 3: Is so delusionally abusive that he assumes that women are giving can sent for him to do something that they haven't set Like, it's just so many levels of fucked and irritating and I don't know. Yeah, I feel like the threat of sexual violence did not need to be hanging over Kate the way it did for the stakes to stay high, like you're saying Klan right.

00:41:18
Speaker 2: And then as far as the other women who we do see again, most of them are nameless set dressing nude dancers, so there's all kinds of heavy objectification and sexualization. And then these women are brutalized in a way that feels different when the like man vampires are killed. It feels like the movie is again like reveling in men inflicting violence on these women vampires, and it feels like the movie finds them to be, you know, disposable beings to be killed, not just because they're vampires, but also because they are sex workers. And it's like, oh, yeah, we can easily cast them off and kill them in a very exploitative way because they are sex workers. And the problematic stuff carries on into the like fun second half. The second half isn't immune to a lot of the problematic stuff we see earlier on.

00:42:20
Speaker 4: But I guess the only thing, because I agree that they do dye in very exploited ways, the only thing that made me feel better is that everyone dies.

00:42:28
Speaker 3: Yes, So it wasn't like they were uniquely God, this is like so depressive, but like they weren't uniquely dead. But I do agree that the way that they were, you know, framed and killed like drew emphasis to their bodies and all this stuff. But I was glad that at least I was like, if they're dying, we're taking everyone out, and that at least the movie does subscribe to that. But again, it's like, the only women in the story with any narrative agency is Selma in theory very briefly, although she is.

00:43:04
Speaker 4: I was shocked that.

00:43:05
Speaker 3: I was like, we gave her this unbelievable setup where she's like hotter than anyone's ever been in a movie before her since, and then she just turns to goo in like a second. It just felt like she was set up to be so powerful, and it just feels like that's well, that shows how the movie feels about her, and we people of the future know she is like an unbelievable actress and should have. But even the way her character is set up, you expect her to be She's like the queen, She's powerful really, then she's like one like Bop on the head from The Phantom of the Opera chandelier, Like.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: It was just so, how does that even kill her? Like it's not even clear why she dies from a chandelier falling on her.

00:43:49
Speaker 6: No, she just melts into goether. And it's crazy because, like Robert Rodriguez is capable of giving her more to do. Desperado was a feast of Selma Hayek, Like we got to see all of her acting chops in that movie and like different nuances to her because she's like, you know, kind of on the side of the villain but not really whatever. But like we get to see more of Selma Hayek in another Robert Rodriguez movie. So the fact that she's so severely underutilized in something where her introduction is so interesting is ridiculous to me.

00:44:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, it seems like she's being set up to be like the big bad Yes, And there's a part where she has like cornered Seth and she's like, I'm gonna make you my little servant, my little lap dog, blah blah blah. And I thought that that was like that would have been such a cool thing where if for if not Seth, some character she had like taken prisoner, and I don't know, maybe if it happens to sex machine or something, but like that would let her be a character for longer, that would also heighten the stakes of the whole situation. But instead, it's like, you're gonna be my slave. Welcome to slavery, she says to Seth, and then he says, no, thanks, I already had a wife.

00:45:11
Speaker 3: And it's like, wow, I fact that that's how she's vaporized in to Goo.

00:45:16
Speaker 2: You're just like, ah, wow, it's And then I want to speak to how this role affected her career in the years after this. She speaks to being very heavily type cast in movies. Upon the release of this movie, she was sent like countless roles for stripper characters, and of course, not that there's anything inherently wrong with a stripper role, but to be typecast as that and not seen for anything else or not considered for any other type of role, that's a different story. She also speaks to just more about, you know, being limited in the roles that she was offered. I'm pulling from an interview with GQ that she did, I think last year or pretty recently. She says, quote I was typecast for a long time, my entire life. I wanted to do comedy, and people wouldn't give me comedies. I couldn't land a role until I met Adam Sandler, who put me in a comedy Parentheses twenty tens grown ups, okay, feminist masterpiece, but I was in my forties. They said you're sexy, so you're not allowed to have a sense of humor. Not only are you not allowed to be smart, but you were not allowed to be funny in the nineties unquote. And she's speaking like specifically about the role she played in From Dusk Till Dawn, leading to being typecast for many many years after this, and then apparently she wanted to do comedies this whole time, and then Adam Sandler saw the comedic potential in her thing.

00:46:58
Speaker 4: I mean, and she has I mean, thankfully.

00:47:00
Speaker 3: I mean, I hate that it took so long if that's what she wanted to do, because she has been in a lot of comedies in the last ten years. It seems like if that's what she wanted to do, she's finally has this sort of freedom to do so. But like, ugh, that's so sad because she doesn't she gives an amazing performance in this movie, and it feels like she's punished for it.

00:47:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:47:21
Speaker 3: I also I was curious about the Vanessa your thoughts on like the lore behind this movie because we about I think almost ten years ago now Robert Rodriguez did I think two seasons of a serialized TV show based on the World from Dusk Till Dawn that I think more intentionally builds out the lore of the vampires and really roots it in Mexican and Aztec mythology, which this movie does not really seem to be doing. It kind of seems like Tarantino guaranteininging his way around it as it's a horror expert.

00:48:01
Speaker 4: How does the like vampire lure feel to you?

00:48:04
Speaker 6: Well, on one end, I like that when they went with vampires, even though they didn't like look like your typical vampires, they had like the vampire rules to follow, because as an audience, it's like such an easy shorthand for us to be like, oh, we know exactly what they have to do, we know exactly what vampire rules are, steak are like all that good shit. It's a really easy way for the audience to be like, I know what's happening. I enjoy the mixing it into like as tech culture because I think when it comes to like things like as tech or mayand culture, there's so little that like the main public knows about that you can like weave something like that into it. And also like both of them have pretty bloody pass with like human sacrifice and things like that, so it's like not that far of a stretch for an audience to be like, okay, maybe vampirism. Although when it's Robert Rodriguez handling it, I like it more than the idea of like Tarantino using in a shorthand because Robert Rodriguez handling it, that's just a guy who like already likes Mexican culture and like enjoys extrapolating on that kind of lore. When it's Tarantino handling it, he's just a dipshit and right, so it feels very different, Right, Yeah.

00:49:23
Speaker 3: I was sort of curious about that because I feel like there are tropes present in the movie that seems like is sort of course corrected in the series, which I don't think any of us have seen, but just based on like interviews Rodriguez did around like how did you want to reimagine the lore to work for the TV show. But like you're saying, Vanessa, it's not like you would necessarily trust Tarantino to handle lore that exists out of Hollywood. That seems to be like sort of where he can deal with lore. I don't know. It's interesting because you do have the trope of the like kind of ancient burial ground trope that we've talked about in other horror movies. That is, we've most often seen applied to indigenous American tribes. And I mean how it is, usually a house is built on a native burial ground and then things happen to white people that are scary, and that's like kind of what happens in this movie also, But there's more going on than there is in your average horror movie. There's more thoughtfulness.

00:50:29
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:50:30
Speaker 2: It almost feels like Tarantino was like, what's an interesting little button I can put on the end of this without giving it any kind of thought about the implications or yeah, anything like that.

00:50:43
Speaker 4: Didn't need it, No, no, you don't.

00:50:46
Speaker 2: Robert Rodriguez has spoken about the lack of positive representation of LATINX characters in Hollywood. How he has made a concerted effort to change that. But it also feels to me like there are stereotypes present of LATINX people perpetuated in this movie. The various cheech marin characters, for example, the way that Selma Hayek is heavily sexualized, the way that Latina actresses often are in movies like It struck me that there are stereotypes present, and you can, I'm sure chalk those up to Tarantino's writing, but I was just curious about, like, is it just like the nineteen ninety six of it all? Was Robert Rodriguez not in a position to be able to make changes or you know.

00:51:39
Speaker 6: So when I say this, I want to clarify that I am not a monolith for an entire people. I have my own personal opinion on this, and this is not like the opinion of every Latin American person, But this is just an observation that I've made a lot of the times when representation doesn't exist, you take the little scraps of it that does, and you, I don't want to say explain away, but you kind of like deal with the stereotypes that go along with it because you're like, well, at least it exists, because like, growing up in a Latin American family, we like things like speedy Gonzales and Nacho libre and things that were like quote unquote maybe like not necessarily the most peacey thing, but it was like, but nothing else exists, nothing else exists where we were there in the first place. And it's a lot like almost like queer representation too, where like the only early representations we had were like the very like fruity, highly effeminate, like over the top characters.

00:52:38
Speaker 2: But it's like, but that's all we had, right, the queer coded villains, and yes, such.

00:52:43
Speaker 6: And I think with a lot of like early Latin characters, we would take what we can get, and a lot of those were characters that now are deemed more politically uncorrect.

00:52:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were just talking about that on a recent Matreon episode on sixteen Candles, regarding the long duck Down character and how there were certain viewers of the movie who were, like, including the actor who played that character, admitting to not really realizing how racist of our portrayal that character was because there was so little other representation of Asian characters in mainstream Hollywood cinema. I mean, like tropes beget tropes, beget tropes, right, So it's like a cyclical thing that exists until the cycle is broken, which it only recently started to be broken well in Hollywood.

00:53:47
Speaker 3: And I think that, I mean, I guess because I noticed the tropes you're talking about as well, Kitlan, I feel like, I mean, even if we're talking about this moment in movies and general power dynamics, Tino definitely has the power over Rodriguez as a filmmaker at the point where pulp fiction was so huge, this is like his I would be really curious how their collaborations operated at this time, and like, did Rodriguez give a lot of like creative input was he Like, it seems like there is collaboration going on, but I'm kind of unclear on what it is.

00:54:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.

00:54:28
Speaker 3: I mean, like I trust Rodriguez, and like you're saying, Vanessa, we know that like as time goes on, he prioritizes this more and more in his work as he becomes more powerful. But I just wonder if, yeah, like if there was to some extent like negotiations or like compromises that had to be made to even have the movie made. The way it was.

00:54:51
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:54:52
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that the thing that really stood out to me in particular, I mean, just because of what we looked for on our show, is how Latin women are treated, in particular in this movie, where I mean, the only two women we get to even know with names are Sama Hyk's character, who is heavily objectified and then immediately turns to go after I mean, and I do love a bonk on the head kill. It always makes me laugh, but be serious, and then Gloria, whose death is.

00:55:24
Speaker 4: Far more brutal.

00:55:25
Speaker 3: And I don't know, I mean, the only thing that I can say for it is I'm glad that it happened off screen, because I think that there are.

00:55:33
Speaker 6: Some movies that would not do that, but no, they'd indulge in it.

00:55:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so it's like outside of that, though, like what can we even say? Because she you know, and all the women in the story sort of serve for a good period of time to characterize how Richie and sets values are different, because Seth theoretically would not assault and kill a woman unless he absolutely had to, and Richie thinks it's fun. And so it's like, I don't know, like obviously, you know, they're set dressing their objects even when they are characters.

00:56:11
Speaker 4: And I would even apply.

00:56:12
Speaker 3: That to Kate to some extent for a good portion of the movie. But I don't know, I mean, I it's tricky because I think you're totally right, Vanessa is like it's almost a thirty year old movie, Like there was not a lot of representation at the time. And it's not as if Rodriguez went on to like show active contempt for Latin characters in his work, like it only continued to grow from there.

00:56:44
Speaker 6: But yeah, and this is not a knock on Rodriguez or how the movie handled it, but in general, Latin American media growing up not great about women. A lot of the women I saw on TV, especially in like comedy context were like a guy dressed as a baby and a girl in a bikini, and that stretched out to like the weather or news reporting, where like the standards for what a woman looked like on TV was so different for what a like, a man can be the ugliest, loubbiest thing, but a girl had to have a six pack and like show it off in order to even exist on network at television it was it was ridiculous.

00:57:23
Speaker 4: God, the patriarchy so depressing.

00:57:27
Speaker 3: I'm glad, Selama. Hi, I mean we're covering it's a big Sela High week on the pod because we're recording our episode of Frida later this week.

00:57:35
Speaker 6: Oh my god.

00:57:36
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're excited.

00:57:37
Speaker 3: Yes, but yeah, I mean it's fascinating finding Selma hYP at this point in her career too, where she's just breaking through in American movies and just knowing watching now like how unbelievably talented and also how comparatively underused she is.

00:57:53
Speaker 4: It's just a lot.

00:57:55
Speaker 3: But like you're saying, Vanessa, like Rodriguez eventually acknowledges that she's like the most talented person in the world by giving her a better role, but the fact that she had to fight for it that hard just feels very, I want to say, of the time.

00:58:09
Speaker 4: But I know that it's still a very real problem. Now, Yeah, should we get to Kate and Scott.

00:58:16
Speaker 2: The kids, Yeah, let's do it. The spy kids.

00:58:20
Speaker 4: They kind of are proto spy kids, you could say.

00:58:25
Speaker 2: Hmm, I feel as though they're both a bit underwritten.

00:58:30
Speaker 6: Yes, And.

00:58:32
Speaker 2: What I was noticing about Kate is that I was clocking, like, Okay, how often does she have to be saved by a man versus does she ever save a man when the you know vampires unleash and it seems pretty even split Yeah, as far as she is saved. But then there's that big moment towards the end when sex Machine is a dog vampire question Mark and he's about to kill Seth, but she like pulls up with her crossbow and she's like, I got this and kills sex Machine once and for all, saving Seth.

00:59:11
Speaker 4: And I did that like ten years ago. People would be like, isn't that a marriage suit? And you're like, well, look.

00:59:16
Speaker 3: At the you know movies this movie is referencing. I'm just not worried about it. I like that she's using a scary weapon, like.

00:59:25
Speaker 2: Ready, and look at the other characters who are men, such as Jacob and Scott does right, Well, Scott only has.

00:59:36
Speaker 4: A water gun.

00:59:37
Speaker 3: I actually do believe he's he has the license to wield that.

00:59:41
Speaker 2: But Jacob, right, but Jacob has a shotgun that he's suddenly using expertly, even though he's a pastor. You've got Seth, who you know, he's a you know, professional bank robber, so he might know weapons and tools more, but he also like has this I don't even know what that thing is. It sounds like a chainsaw, but it looks like a giant drilled thing that he sticks a wooden stake into, and it's like, how does he know how to use that? So yeah, like every character just suddenly becomes this like a action movie hero and you're like, yep, fine.

01:00:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate the Mary Sue conversation, but sometimes I feel like, well, do we also ask when men randomly know how to use things?

01:00:28
Speaker 2: And yeah, for sure, I like it's weird because like, you can criticize Mary Sue characters, but you can also criticize the criticism of Mary Sue characters because like that there's a double standard there.

01:00:42
Speaker 4: We've come a long way.

01:00:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, I generally liked Kate's character. I just felt like there were certain like we've talked about before, I don't think that the constant threat of sexual violence over her needed to be there to maintaining the stakes. Like that felt just kind of clearly exploitative and just there because it could be there. But you know, I just I felt like it just removed agency from her.

01:01:12
Speaker 4: Thankfully, she does get to do stuff in the back half of the movie. But I also felt like.

01:01:18
Speaker 3: I don't know, this is like a smaller point, but the fact that we're told that Jacob is having a crisis of faith because he just lost his wife. His wife also the things that are hanging in the balance for Jacob for a while is the death of one woman and the threat of sexual violence over another, which is.

01:01:37
Speaker 4: Love those steaks for him.

01:01:39
Speaker 3: But the fact that, like the grief over his wife, only narratively impacts Jacob, we never get any insight to how it's affecting the kids, which felt weird and felt like just a very clear, intuitive opportunity to give more insight into both Kate and Scott, like how are they dealing with this loss? How did they feel about it? But really the only thing we get the most we get with Kate in the first half of the movie is that conversation she has with Jacob at the diner, where she is basically just asking Jacob questions about himself and asking questions about his crisis of faith. He doesn't ask her anything about how she is doing with the loss of her parent. The movie doesn't really have any interest in how that loss affects anyone except Jacob because that advances the plot in the third act with George Clooney, and they're weird, you know, like god thing, So I found that to be frustrating.

01:02:43
Speaker 4: Yes, And then there's Scott.

01:02:45
Speaker 6: Scott has such an interesting dynamic built in too, where it's like, oh, Scott's adopted, and like what relationship did he have with his mom? And like what relationship does he have with Kate and where does he like feel like he fits into this world? And he's just kind of a character the entire time.

01:03:02
Speaker 4: It's so frustrating.

01:03:03
Speaker 3: And then he's just like unceremoniously killed off at the very end, which I found, like it just it. Yeah, again, there were so many opportunities with Scott that like that was one of the few things I was like interested in possibly seeing explored by this movie. Not that you would trust Tarantino to do it, but like the fact that you know, the Robber brothers are you know, being very racist towards Scott, they're being very hateful towards him, and Jacob and Scott are both sort of holding their ground and are like fuck you, like we're a family. This is what this is. And I mean, as complicated we don't know very much about the adoption. We don't know very much about Scott at all. And it's not like it's the job of this movie to harp on it like they're a family.

01:03:51
Speaker 4: That's it. But I just sort of the fact that that is.

01:03:55
Speaker 3: I appreciated that that was very deliberately set up, but then the fact that we go on to learn nothing about Scott when there's so much about him that is interesting and with Kate, like they've just lost their mom, but like, for whatever reason, it's not supposed to be important, and like Scott, I feel like sort of retreats into the background of the movie more and more as it goes on, where it's clear that, like you know, it's I feel like it's a pretty clearly telegraph that Kate is going to be our final girl. And once that becomes clear, if like Scott becomes less and less important, which sucks because he's a very interesting character and yeah, by the time he's sort of just like torn to shreds by the end, it just felt very anticlimactic and like we could have really been set up to like, even if we do have to lose him in the rules of this movie, I feel like if we obviously, if we got to know him better, it would have had more impact. But I felt like it sort of was a little hollow in the way that it was presented.

01:04:59
Speaker 2: Right you barely see the two siblings interacting, and you don't really get a sense of their relationship either, which seems strange. It just yeah, it feels like the writing just thinks as most of these characters as an afterthought. And it's also just curious to me why we would like open on the you know, bank robber brothers, since they're not the people were necessarily rooting for. Aren't we rooting for Jacob and his family as this sort of like protagonistic central force of the movie, Like why wouldn't we open on them?

01:05:40
Speaker 3: And maybe this is just like it's very possible that this movie was not designed for us to think this hard about it, But like I was curious by the end.

01:05:48
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know, Like Kate, you just would imagine her whole family is dead.

01:05:56
Speaker 3: Why did she display more loyalty an interest in her kidnapper then the fact that her whole family is dead, Like it just felt it worked as a final girl beat because this is like a beat that we're very used to seeing, but like she has and I did at least again it's like peanuts, but like I did appreciate that they're not like and now she and Seth are gonna see what happens in this like awesome. You know, I'm glad that that happened. I don't think it was necessary for his character to have to draw the boundary. That felt like a weird thing where he's like.

01:06:33
Speaker 2: Babe, babe, why does she even ask to go with him?

01:06:37
Speaker 4: I don't.

01:06:37
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess it's like, well, I mean, you know, as opposed to having nobody in the world, I can understand why that would be positioned, but it's just like so emotionless next to like the amount of loss she's experienced. And by the end, I feel like she's almost acting more familiar and like more in tune with Seth than she did with her own family. I don't know, Yes, yeah, like where did that come from? You don't know this man and he's only presented.

01:07:06
Speaker 2: Danger to you and he abducted you.

01:07:08
Speaker 3: Yeah.

01:07:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.

01:07:09
Speaker 6: It was very silly that they'd even imply that Kate would want to go with him at that point instead of like I don't know any ideas about self preservation right now.

01:07:22
Speaker 3: It just I feel like, yeah, the end beat like really hit home how underthought her entire character was. Even though she did have like increasing agency, she did get the like she was a great fighter. She lives till the end. She survives, but so much of it just like doesn't scan if you think about it too hard.

01:07:43
Speaker 4: Yeah.

01:07:43
Speaker 2: Worth mentioning too that not only is she under this like looming thread of sexual violence from Richie, but there's also that scene where the first cheech Marin character comes into the motor home because he's like border patrol investigating what's going on. He opens the bathroom when and granted she's like pretending to use the bathroom, but she also like has her pants down and she's sitting on the toilet and he's leering at her for like a long time, a long time, and she's like, close the fucking door, dude, And then he continues leering at her as he very slowly closes the door. So every time she turns around, there's some predatory man leering at her and hallucinating about her. And I mean it's tricky because it's not like this is unrealistic you know, in the real world, women are regularly under the threat of sexual violence from men because of rape culture. But again, if you're going to include that in the movie, say something about it or condemn it or something. But again, it's usually just there in this movie as like a weird jokey thing that adds nothing to the.

01:09:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's it.

01:09:02
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I'm like being so but it's like I really did, especially the back half once the vampire stuff kicks in.

01:09:08
Speaker 4: I really do enjoy this movie.

01:09:11
Speaker 3: I like that the that the story sort of evolves to include more like I guess non Tarantino lore, that it grows towards something that's always sort of encouraging to just know when you're you know, doing dispatches from the future that you know.

01:09:30
Speaker 4: And then it's tricky because it's like it's such a flawed movie. I really, I don't know.

01:09:36
Speaker 3: I just the first half is so this was such a bomber to me. And then I've never felt so surprised to be in a good mood by the time the movie ended, because I was just like so not into the first half.

01:09:48
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, does anyone have any other thoughts about the movie?

01:09:54
Speaker 6: My mind just keeps going back to that disco ball so good.

01:09:58
Speaker 4: It's so good.

01:10:00
Speaker 6: It's such a good indicator of like the things that does work about this movie when it thinks about, like, oh, what are some like upgraded new for the nineteen ninety six ways to like eliminate a vampire. It's it's so fun in that aspect and such a welcome relief after like the first half of the movie being like what woman will succumb to sexual violence? Getting something as doofy as like reciprocating steak is such a breath of fresh air.

01:10:30
Speaker 3: Yeah. The only other thing I had was just like quickly referencing Frost as a character who's also like a Vietnam veteran, which the movie goes way out of its way to make note of the PTSD he's experiencing as a Vietnam veteran, which I know is like also a I don't know, like a reference to other movies and other genres and all this stuff. But because he's the only black character in the movie, just felt worth kind of out and that that he kind of like turns into like stranger thinks vagina monster.

01:11:04
Speaker 4: By the end of the movie.

01:11:06
Speaker 6: He does.

01:11:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, he really does turn into like mister pussy Mouth, and I like, well, I just wish I knew him a little better.

01:11:14
Speaker 2: Oh, I was reading that is like he has bat face. Sure well, also like some of the vampires look human ish, but then they just have like distorted features, like vampire features on their face, and then other ones are like full demons with like full demon bodies. And I'm like, oh, who are these vampires and what's up with them? The last thing I had? And I'm curious what the rest of you think about this. But as soon as they get to Mexico, this movie does something that a lot of movies do, which is put a yellow filter on the thing. This is something that I don't think has come up on the show a lot, but it has been discussed heavily where movies with scenes that are set in the Global South tend to put this yellow filter like over the movie to other these places and to suggest that, you know, these places are hot and dirty and uncivilized and things like that. You could argue that them entering Mexico and driving to the bar coincides with dusk from the titular from dusk till dawn, and maybe that's why there's this yellow hue because the sun is setting. But because there's such a history of movies doing.

01:12:36
Speaker 4: This, I was just right.

01:12:39
Speaker 2: It was something I noticed well.

01:12:40
Speaker 3: And the fact that that's like when the magical elements enter the story, I feel like it is implied that Mexico like is whatever, Like there's less law.

01:12:53
Speaker 4: It's like it's just like implied that it's.

01:12:56
Speaker 3: You know, just like a lot of tropes that we see all of the time of like once you cross the border, you're home free, you can do anything you want.

01:13:04
Speaker 4: And then it's like.

01:13:04
Speaker 3: Visually presented in this very particular way as well. And then the survivors of the whole ordeal are two white characters, like it's.

01:13:15
Speaker 2: You know, all the people of color perish by the end, they're all goo.

01:13:21
Speaker 4: Goo, everyone's goo. Does a household Goo?

01:13:23
Speaker 3: And I'm like, does the I was kind of curious, I'm like, does the did each twister.

01:13:28
Speaker 4: Like reset every night?

01:13:29
Speaker 3: That was sort of the feeling I was getting. Oh yeah, I sort of wondered if just like the goo rises when dusk falls again and they just sort of don't like it's a groundhog day vampire goo, because you're like, surely this would have happened sooner.

01:13:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like every night they just kill whoever whatever patrons have come into the bar.

01:13:51
Speaker 4: But I guess it would make me feel better to know that. I guess.

01:13:53
Speaker 2: I think it's implied that this was the first time there's goo because this is the first time that any vampires are dying. Only the vampires are killing the patrons, sucking their blood, and then discarding their bodies somewhere. So this is like the first gou incident because this is the first time the humans fight back. Curious, this is my head canon. I don't know if this is true or not, like.

01:14:15
Speaker 4: Curious or and curious or I guess.

01:14:17
Speaker 3: I just like in my mind, I guess when the movie ended, I was like, oh, so this is just gonna happen again tomorrow.

01:14:22
Speaker 4: But maybe that's not true.

01:14:24
Speaker 2: Well, are there any vampires left?

01:14:26
Speaker 3: No?

01:14:26
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just I sort of thought.

01:14:28
Speaker 3: When dusk fell they rose from the goo. Maybe I just don't know enough about vampires. Oh see, I thought the goo just.

01:14:33
Speaker 4: Sort of like read persons.

01:14:35
Speaker 2: No, I think they're permanently goo.

01:14:37
Speaker 6: I think their goo forever.

01:14:39
Speaker 4: Damn tough break.

01:14:43
Speaker 2: Well about that bachtel test.

01:14:46
Speaker 4: Oh boy, the movie.

01:14:48
Speaker 2: Doesn't pass any people of marginalized genders do not speak to each other. I don't think and that's the end that.

01:15:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I I don't think so.

01:15:04
Speaker 2: But our nipple scale, where we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on examining the movie through an intersectional feminist lens, it's like a point five for me. It's not high at all based on everything we discussed, no need to really re hash it all. I think I'll give it a half nipple and it will go to the torso guitar or the dick gun. Then my two favorite props, Yeah, I like my head canon.

01:15:42
Speaker 3: Is that there is a like Hustler style b plot going on inside of the Titty Twister that we are just not privy to, and that the dancers at this club do have something cooking. But based on what we have, yeah, I guess I guess I'll go one because I like Robert. I guess I just But in terms of yeah, intersexual feminism, I mean there's there's really not much to be had. The only character that we see character is even remotely and as we've discussed, not particularly well, is like a young Christian white girl who goes on to become the final girl. Outside of that, there's just no interest in showing women doing things at all, and even the one character who does get to do things spends the entire first half of the movie threatened by sexual violence and really made to feel a frightened way that like, isn't necessary plot wise, Yeah, Tarantino wrote it.

01:16:46
Speaker 6: We know.

01:16:48
Speaker 3: It's just like we know both of these directors are capable of much more, and I feel like that's part of what I am rating on a harsher curve. And the fact that this even remotely Hindu Salma jayaks for for even one second makes it all the more difficult.

01:17:05
Speaker 4: Anyways. I love spy kids yea, and I love Once upon a Time in Mexico, and.

01:17:12
Speaker 3: I love Machete. And this movie does get one nipple from me, and I will give it to Samahayak because she deserves it and she should be in as many middling Adam Sandler comedies as she chooses.

01:17:30
Speaker 2: Vanessa, how about you?

01:17:32
Speaker 6: I give it one nipple. And that is because both Salmahayak and Juliet Lewis are doing so much more than is being asked of them. They're doing so much more than the script calls for and giving life to characters that would otherwise just simply exist to further the plot of men. So for these two beautiful flowers growing amongst the concrete, I give one nipple.

01:18:03
Speaker 3: Incredible five time our guests, Vanessa, thank you so much for coming back.

01:18:08
Speaker 6: I had such a good time.

01:18:09
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, we were so excited to talk about this movie with you.

01:18:12
Speaker 3: And again, come back anytime, whatever feels right, Just let us know the movie.

01:18:17
Speaker 4: We're ready.

01:18:17
Speaker 6: I would love to.

01:18:19
Speaker 2: Where can people follow you on social media? Check out your work, etc.

01:18:25
Speaker 6: Uh. You can find me under any ss Guerrero on Twitter and sns Guerrero on everything else. I show run and produce a show called ten Minute Power Hour that is on The Grumps every Monday at nine o'clock. Please watch that. It pays for my life. And gosh, I think that's all I really have coming up right now. I feel like there are other things I'm forgetting at the moment, but they'll come to me eventually.

01:18:52
Speaker 4: Hell yeah.

01:18:53
Speaker 2: And you can follow us on Instagram at bech Podcast, on our Patreon aka Matreon at patron dot com slash Bechdel Cast, where you get two bonus episodes every month centering around a genius theme that Jamie and I cook up and then deliver on. And that's five dollars a month. And this month, for Spooky Season, we are doing Pearl and the Exorcist.

01:19:19
Speaker 4: Yes, so fucking ready possessed by the devil or ego. And it just goes on from there. And you can get our merch.

01:19:29
Speaker 3: At teapuble dot com Slash the Bechdel Cast for all of your merchandising needs. And with that, let's get into our camper that is now empty of our entire family and right off into the distance to an uncertain future.

01:19:46
Speaker 2: What do you say, Let's do it? Bye bye bye. The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftus, Sophie Lichtermann, edited by Molaboord. Our theme song was composed by Mike Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskresenski. Our logo and merch is designed by Jamie Loftus and a special thanks to Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit linktree slash Bechtelcast