From Dusk 'Til Dawn 2 : Texas Blood Money (1999)

Dir: Scott Spiegel

I admit only picked up this Z-grade sequel on the grounds that it had Tiffani-Amber Thiessen on the front cover. For anyone else who may share such base motives, I warn you, she appears only for two minutes at the very start of the movie (with Bruce Campbell!) but gets mauled by bats in a gratuitous scene that's unrelated to the rest of the film. A shame because the real cast members (excluding Robert Patrick, who's always good value) fail to engage, as they blunder their monotone way through a truly abysmal screenplay. The whole story from start to finish is given away on the back of the UK DVD box and that lasts only a paragraph. I can probably do it in a sentence: Texan bank robbers on the run get attacked by lame-ass rubber-faced vamps. Unlike the first one, which shares a similar concept, this isn't stylish, fast, funny nor particularly gory (even KNB's usually sterling FX work looks fake and awful here). Characterisation is non-existent and clichéd. Spiegel's direction grates enormously and the kooky camera angles that worked so well in his debut, "Intruder", simply annoy and look hokey here (those 'camera between the fangs' shots are embarrassingly n00b). To cap it all off, this one includes THE single dullest shoot-out scene in the history of cinema and one monumentally feeble attempt at a plot 'twist' that's so contrived, I actually winced aloud. They should be ashamed of this one. *