Not Like The Original
From Dusk Till Dawn, was notable as George Clooney's big-screen debut, and as the first collaboration between tyros Tarantino (he wrote the script, co-produced, and co-starred) and Rodriguez (he directed and co-produced). It's no masterpiece, merely a wildly entertaining, bizarre, kick-ass action picture, blessed with a terrific, committed cast (including Harvey Keitel and Juliette Lewis), an exceptional roadhouse blues score, gleeful gore and — no surprise — a snappy script. Save for the gleeful gore, Texas Blood Money is missing all of the above.

Co-written and directed by Scott Spiegel (who co-wrote another, infinitely better sequel, Evil Dead II) Texas Blood Money hits us with a cheap trick right off the, uh, bat. A couple of lawyers, played by Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Bruce Campbell, get trapped in a high-rise elevator with a swarm of hungry bats. What does this have to do with the rest of the movie? Exactly nothing — it turns out to be a scene from a movie playing on a TV. It does serve to use up five minutes of the films' already brief (80 minutes) running time. Consider it a favor.

Back To The Twister
The original film's final shot sets up a possible mythos that could have easily extended the original into the past and/or the future, in the way that Sam Raimi audaciously expanded upon his original Evil Dead. But instead, Texas Blood Money virtually ignores the original, settling for a low-rent retread of its bank-robbers-attacked-by-vampires story. We meet the main protagonist, Buck (Robert Patrick from Terminator 2), while he's watching the previously mentioned killer bat movie. Fresh out of prison, he's ready for some more criminal mayhem. His old pal Luther, who has just made a bloody escape from prison himself, asks Buck to set up a team to pull a bank robbery in Mexico. Luther's a little too busy eluding the authorities to assemble a team himself, so he'll meet them at a hotel south of the border.

On the way to their hotel rendezvous, Luther has a mishap with his car. The nearest place to ask for help is the Titty Twister, the ultimate biker bar so prominently featured in From Dusk Till Dawn and darned if he doesn't get bit by a vampire. But bank robbers being bank robbers, he meets up with his boys, and they hit the bank — you see, vampires need money, too.

Sequel To Put You Off Sequels
Director Spiegel's only claim to style is in putting his camera in some very silly places. We're treated to a dog-dish-cam, a beer-cooler-cam, a fang-cam... It's funny once, sort of, but he does it in virtually every scene. Plus, to show off his deep knowledge of his chosen genre, he treats us to a homage of Psycho's shower scene — with buckets of extra blood, of course.

It's a sequel to put you off of sequels for a long time, with all the earmarks of direct-to-video dreck, including cheap special effects, unknown and uninteresting actors (who may as well have little targets painted on their necks since you know exactly who's vampire bait), plenty of off-screen action to keep those production costs down, and a nudge-nudge wink-wink script overflowing with clunky quips. And if you're looking for DVD extras, forget it — the disk has none. Stick to the original From Dusk Till Dawn and leave Texas Blood Money on the DVD store shelf.