Plot
Two brothers Seth (George Clooney) and Richard "Richie" Gecko (Quentin Tarantino), wanted by the FBI and Texas police for a bank robbery that has left several people dead, stop at a liquor store with the intent of just picking up a state map, but the psychotic Richie kills Ranger Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) and the cashier (John Hawkes) and burns the store down. During the gunfight, Richie is shot in his left hand.
The Geckos are heading towards Mexico, where a contact has arranged a safehouse for them. Along the way they stop at a motel and it is revealed that they had been keeping a bank teller (Brenda Hillhouse) in their car trunk as hostage. While Seth goes out to buy some food, Richie brutally rapes and murders the teller, which infuriates Seth when he returns.
Meanwhile, Jacob (Harvey Keitel), a pastor who is experiencing a crisis of faith, arrives at the same motel with his daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis) and his adopted son Scott (Ernest Liu). Realizing that the family's RV can be used to get them across the border, the brothers kidnap the family, making a truce that if they can make it past the border, Jacob and his family will not be harmed. When the RV reaches the Mexican border, the Gecko brothers hide in the bathroom with Kate, to ensure Jacob will not say anything to the cops. But when one cop (Cheech Marin) comes up to the window to speak with him, Jacob behaves nervously, and says it just him and his son crossing the border. The cop hears a noise in the back and asks what it was. When Jacob replies it was his daughter, the cop comes aboard. He knocks on the bathroom door and Kate answers. When they open the door, they see Kate sitting on the toilet, the brothers hidden behind the shower curtain. Kate yells for them to get out, and the cops leave, believing they have cleared the RV of any suspicious activity. After successfully reaching Mexico, they arrive at the "Titty Twister", a strip club/brothel in the middle of a desolate part of Mexico, to meet their contact Carlos at dawn.
Inside, Seth and Richie drink heavily, encouraging the entire group to do the same. Richie takes special notice of the club's star performer, Santánico Pandemónium (Salma Hayek) during an extended solo performance, after which Chet Pussy (Cheech Marin again) and some others approach the group, looking to settle the score with the Geckos. In a short confrontation, Richie is stabbed in his already wounded hand, and seeing his blood, Santánico attacks him, undergoing a transformation into a horrific vampire.
Chaos ensues as the employees, the strippers and the house band (Tito & Tarantula) are all revealed to be vampires. Most of the patrons are quickly killed. Richie is bitten by Santánico and bleeds to death. Only Seth, Jacob, Kate, Scott, a biker named Sex Machine (Tom Savini) and a Vietnam veteran trucker named Frost (Fred Williamson) survive the attack. They quickly establish an alliance in order to survive through the night. Seth convinces the group that Jacob is their best weapon, if he rediscovers his faith, and they also figure out how forming a cross with two objects helps fend off the vampires.
The slain patrons, including Richie, reawaken as vampires, forcing the group to kill them all. During this second struggle, one of the vampires bites Sex Machine's arm. While the group is listening to Frost recount an event from his days in Vietnam, Sex Machine transforms into a vampire and bites both Frost and Jacob before being tossed through a boarded up window, which allows many other vampires, in the form of bats, to enter. Seth and the Fullers retreat to a storeroom and improvise anti-vampire weapons from supplies left by prior victims of the bar. The four stage their final assault on the vampires, their weapons proving effective in destroying many of the creatures. During the battle, Sex Machine is killed by Kate and Jacob slays the vampiric Frost. Jacob transforms, but Scott is hesitant to kill him and gets bitten. He manages to dispatch his father and is dragged down by other vampires. Kate follows the wishes of her brother and kills him, also destroying his attackers.
As the sun rises, only Seth and Kate remain alive, surrounded and low on ammunition. Just then, sunlight breaks through the bullet-holes in the bar walls and burns the vampires. Seth and Kate shoot out more holes, which allows them to survive until Carlos and his guards show up. They open the doors, and the sunlight reflects on the bar's disco ball, killing the rest of the creatures while Seth and Kate flee outdoors. Safely outside, Seth confronts a bewildered Carlos (also Cheech Marin), who asks if the bar was run by psychopaths. Seth sarcastically replies that psychopaths don't explode in sunlight. Angry over the deaths of Richie, Jacob and Scott, Seth demands that Carlos lower his 30% take for his stay in El Rey and telling them to wait in the bar, to which Carlos reluctantly agrees. Kate offers to accompany Seth, but fearing for her safety, he declines and gives her some cash. After Kate drives the RV away, the camera pans back to reveal that the "Titty Twister" bar is the top of an Aztec temple partially sunk into a valley wall, most likely the source and true home of the vampire monsters who've been spreading their curse for centuries, with many abandoned motorbikes and trucks seen around it which means many people met a horrible end.
Read more about this topic: From Dusk Till Dawn
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)