Only now does it occur to me... THE QUICK AND THE DEAD

Only now does it occur to me... that the first time Sharon Stone produced a vanity project (this was her first-ever producer credit) she chose a Western mash-up of UNFORGIVEN and BLOODSPORT.

Written by Simon West (best known to readers of this site for his twisted fairy tale adventure THE 10TH KINGDOM) and script-doctored by Joss Whedon, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD is revenge tale told from beneath the shadow of ONCE UPON A TIME WITH WEST, but with the trappings of UNFORGIVEN.

[Gene Hackman essentially plays "Little Bill" once more, although this time he shamelessly phones in his performance.

Also, a criminally under-used Lance Henriksen is our stand-in for Richard Harris' "English Bob," but more on that in a minute.]

The aforementioned revenge is sought during a gunfighting contest, which is set up, tournament-style and with plenty of montages, almost exactly like the Kumite in BLOODSPORT.  Though directed with stylistic panache by Sam Raimi (a Raimi Western?!––hey, at least it's got "dead" in the title), it's never quite as good as it ought to be, and for a movie lined wall-to-wall with Leone-style duel scenes, it's rarely exciting.  A "too much of a good thing" scenario of there ever was one. 


A few small observations:

#1. Mopey Sharon Stone.  I don't know why, but when actors produce their own vanity projects, they usually make sure that they get to do plenty o' mopin'.  They want as much screen-time as possible to knead their brows and get that sad, faraway look in their eyes.



This is a Revenge-Gunfighting-Kumite movie for godssake, and Sharon Stone is over here patronizing the audience and jonesin' for an Oscar.  They should've just had Charlize Theron do it.


#2.  Big stars for cheap!  There's a pre-TITANIC and ROMEO + JULIET Leo DiCaprio:

and a pre-L.A. CONFIDENTIAL and GLADIATOR Russell Crowe:

They're fine.


#3.  Alan Silvestri totally plagiarizes his own soundtrack for PREDATOR throughout this movie.  It's a good soundtrack, but I kept waiting for the Predator to show up and enter the tournament.  Now that would've been something.


#4.  Bruce Campbell had a scene, but it was deleted.  They should release it in a collection with the deleted Alice Cooper scene from MAVERICK.


#4.  Keith David.  Massively underused, but wearing one of the best/worst fake mustaches in memory.

A fair trade, I suppose.


#5.  Lance Henriksen.  He's not around for long, but he essentially steals the movie as "Ace," a trick-shooter with a tremendous fashion sense.

The way he looks makes me furious that he never popped up in a supporting role on DEADWOOD.


#6. A Woody Strode cameo.

He's pretty ancient at this point, but he has a brief bit as a the town undertaker, and it's a nice throwback to ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST.


#7.  Mick Garris.  Errr–––WHAT?!

Seen here on the left manhandling Gary Sinise, Mick Garris (infamous Stephen King crony and director of laughable King adaptations like THE STAND, THE SHINING, DESPERATION, RIDING THE BULLET, and QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY) plays a glorified extra during a Sharon Stone flashback.  I have to say that when I woke up this morning, I never imagined my day would have Mick Garris in it.  Well, there he is.

–Sean Gill

Only now does it occur to me... FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY

Only now does it occur to me... that as far as straight-to-video sequels to moderately successful cult vampire-Westerns from the 1990s go, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: TEXAS BLOOD MONEY is not quite so satisfying as VAMPIRES 2: LOS MUERTOS.  Still, there are a few things going on worth mentioning.

"Executive produced" by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, I'm assuming that only means they were willing to lend their names to the project in exchange for a royalty check.  In reality, this is the Scott Spiegel (the Sam Raimi crony who brought us INTRUDER) and Duane Whitaker (a Tarantino crony) show, two men whose ambitions exceed their abilities, though they do have a fair amount of action-movie-moxie. It kinda feels like a movie William Lustig or Lewis Teague might've cranked out on a bad day.

Pictured: action-movie-moxie.

The film opens with unexpected cameos by Bruce Campbell and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen ("Kelly Kapowski" from SAVED BY THE BELL), playing two sleazy lawyers who are killed by CGI bats in an elevator.

Bruce Campbell has made a specialty act out of appearing in a number of bad movies for less than five minutes.

Then it develops into a vampire-heist movie starring Robert Patrick (TERMINATOR 2), who looks appropriately "cool," but he's given very little of substance to do.

It's sad that Patrick is given the rare leading man opportunity in something this weak, because I know he has the chops to really pull it off.  Ah, well.

Spiegel also shows off his pet obsession of Italo-Horror (and Sam Raimi)-inspired ridiculous POV shots (also on full display in his slasher INTRUDER).  The best one here is probably the oscillating fan-POV in a dingy hotel.

(Also note: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and BREAKING BAD's Raymond Cruz accompanying Mr. Patrick.)

Anyway, there's a lot of Dick Dale surf rock and vampires and explosions and Danny Trejo shows up for a bit as "Razor Eddie," presumably the twin brother of the deceased "Razor Charlie" from the first FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.

Trejo runs it up the flagpole.

I'm not despairing, though: I have heard promising things about FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 3, which takes the franchise back a hundred years and stars the inimitable Michael Parks as famed author Ambrose Bierce (!?).