I only caught the "edited" version on Sci-Fi Channel, but must admit that I found this to be a mildly entertaining film. It takes a basic ideas (vampires robbing a bank) and goes with it and runs.

The problem is that that's really all there is, and there's not much running track. Like the original, it tries to stay "reality" grounded as a caper flick, but given this is a shorter movie, this goes on _way_ too long before you actually get to vampires.

Once we get the first guy bit by a vampire, it moves along to "vampires rob a bank" and "vampires shoot it out with police." But...that's really about it. The writers seemed to have run out of ideas, and so we just get interminable variations on these two basic ideas. There is no real climax - the vampire bad guys are subsequently interchangeable, and the only really competent one (Jesus) gets killed before the formerly-dimwitted one. The ending is just one big shootout, prolonged by a convenient solar eclipse. Which is another pointless plot point - if you want vampires to be in the darkness, just keep them in darkness and have the sun come up normally. Adding the solar eclipse does nothing here. It's stuff like this which suggests the writers didn't know quite what they were doing.

As for the Raimi-esque POV shots, a little goes a long way - something that Scott Spiegel should have learned from the master. It's kinda fun the first twenty times, but after that...

Overall, I'd recommend it if you can catch it on the cheap. It's no classic, but it's mildly amusing.

This movie was horrible. I couldn't believe how bad it was. I was expecting a great sequel to a great movie. But, I didn't get that. All I got was a terrible sequel with terrible acting, and terrible directing. Now don't get me wrong, I loved From Dusk till Dawn. In fact it's my favorite movie. But this can't even be compared to the first. It shouldn't even be associated with the first. Granted it didn't have the superb directing of Tarantino and Rodriguez, or the acting of Clooney, Tarantino, and Kietel. Bruce Campbell and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen were the only thing that made me keep watching. But they appeared for what, a whole five minutes. In fact I can't believe that Tarantino or Rodriguez had anything to do with this movie. Scott Spiegel, who is that?. Sorry Scott, your movie was TERRIBLE.

This straight-to-video sequel to the surprise cinema hit of '96 is a lot better than I had heard and expected. Sure, it's just a rehash of the original film done on a much smaller scale (and lower budget, obviously), but what this film may lack in money and originality it more than makes up for in pacing and almost non-stop action. It's definitely a tongue-in-cheek cross between comedy and horror, a fact which some reviewers seem to have missed, and is pretty enjoyable on a dumb-but-fun scale.

Director Scott Spiegel first cut his teeth by assisting with some of the EVIL DEADs back in the '80s, before making his debut with the incredibly gory slasher movie INTRUDER. Here, we find out that Spiegel hasn't progressed as a director (as has his pal Sam Raimi) in the twelve-odd years since then, as basically he uses exactly the same kind of comic-book style as in that movie. Spiegel's penchant is for bizarre camera angles, so we witness things occurring from behind moving fans, from the point of view of a man doing press-ups, from the mouth of a vampire, from the bottles of barrels and glasses, and lots more besides. Far from being annoying and over-the-top (well, maybe over-the-top) as some reviewers would have you think, these dodgy camera angles are the highlights of the film for me; at least they're somewhat original and make the film more fun and interesting to watch. You can just imagine Spiegel trying to work out where he can place the camera next...

The contrived plot is tenuously linked to the original film by having a brief scene set in the bar (seemingly rebuilt after the slaughter that occurred there before), and also a cameo appearance from that vampire barman Danny Trejo, who sets the plot in motion. Don't be fooled into thinking that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino had anything to do with this film, as they didn't; being executive producers, all they had to do was let Siegel use the rights of the film so that they could get a cut of the money. That's their achievement over with.

The cast is familiar only to those who enjoy similar B-movies and straight-to-video releases. The noticeably ageing Robert Patrick is surprisingly pretty good as the lead, especially considering the slumming level of some of his performances in the past decade. Bo Hopkins plays the town sheriff, and could well be playing exactly the same character he did in MUTANT fifteen years previously; did someone mention typecasting? Also of interest are some brief cameos from Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Bruce Campbell, who star in a movie playing on television (!) at the very beginning of the film, and are bitten to death by a flying swarm of vampire bats.

These bats lead me on to the special effects in this film. They are cheap, yes, but they're also enjoyable on a B-movie level. The bats themselves are purely CGI, and are pretty well done; not in the least bit realistic, but then they don't have to be for a comic-book film like this. The vampires look less like aliens this time around, more like actors with prosthetic appliances, contact lenses, and false teeth, and of course we don't get to see any fancy morphings either. Saying this, the vampire deaths - where they dissolve into skeletons - are suitably grotesque and gruesome, and highly reminiscent of the end of the first EVIL DEAD. The blood and violence level is relatively high but not disturbing, more splattery in the style of BRAINDEAD, with severed heads bouncing around and the like.

After a fairly nondescript two-thirds, this film suddenly kicks into high-gear at the end with a showdown between the majority of the Mexican police force and the four vampire bank robbers, with Patrick caught in the middle. Here, seemingly endless amounts of bullets are fired, loads of vehicles explode, and people are slaughtered wholesale. Pretty damn impressive on the low budget this film has, and it almost comes close to a similar scene in TERMINATOR 2 on which it models itself. In fact, this finale is highly entertaining and packed with action, flying stuntmen and other cheesiness. While FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2: Texas BLOOD MONEY never rises above the level of a B-movie, it's undeniably enjoyable entertainment that contains a tongue-in-cheek approach sometimes lacking in movies today. Fans of EVIL DEAD II and similar efforts should have a field day. Yes, this is a bad film, but it's a damned good bad film that never becomes boring!