This is a little better!
From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter (1999)
Directed By: P.J. Pesce
The Prologue
So, the classic From Dusk Till Dawn got two straight to video releases in 1999. The first one was “meh”, but then we had the second one in, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter. While still nowhere near the level of the original, this one did shock me in the fact it was still very watchable. It was kinda fun in some spots and not so much in others, but there just seemed to be a lot more connections to the original than the second one had. While some might call this one more mindless fun, the key word would still be fun. And that’s a lot better than a lot of negativity, right?
The Movie
“Prequel” to the first From Dusk Till Dawn is set in Mexico in the early 1900′s which begins with the escape of Johnny Madrid, a dangerous local outlaw, from the gallows who then kidnaps his hangman’s beautiful daughter, Esmeralda, with a little help from Reece, a female outlaw from the U.S. With the hangman and a local posse on their trail, Johnny meets with his gang who all rob a stagecoach which contains American author Ambrose Bierce along with newlywed couple John and Mary Newlie. As night falls, all parties coincidentally seek shelter in an isolated inn/whorehouse which is run by vampires led by the high priestess Quixtla who targets Esmeralda. Esmeralda is revealed to be the half-human, half-vampire princess Santanico Pandemonium, whom the vampires want as their heir in which all the humans must join forces if they are to survive the night from the vicious blood-suckers.
Among the many improvements from part 2 of this series, this one benefits by having Michael Parks in a more prominent role. You may recall he was in the original for a bit, but it’s a different character here. Still, it’s a very interesting character and this movie as a whole has better characters than it’s predecessor. It also helps that the story is ten times better than part 2′s. Now it may seem more like a retelling of the original in some ways only this time around in a more Western form, but it’s still pretty good. Not near as original as you might want, but good none the less. These facts alone should tell you it has part 2 beat. It won’t reach the original by any means, but t beats 2.
From an effects standpoint we do have some issues. The CGI doesn’t look very good at all. Not that you’d expect it to be good considering it was 1999. I don’t even like most CGI from 2009, so you can bet how well it goes over here when snake heads pop out of bodies and all that mumbo jumbo. The more natural effects looks good and I can’t really say anything negative about the gore effects, but I will note the transfer on blu-ray makes the blood look a little bit like kool-aid. But I don’t even try to pas off as a blu-ray expert, that could have been what they were going for. You can tell that this director did have a sense of style.
So things get a little silly, but you have a lot of vampires and action. I think the positives do outshine the negatives here, which is by far something you couldn’t say about the last one. Michael Parks does a grand job and once again steals the show in a film, it’s just a shame there wasn’t more people like him around in this movie. While it still can’t lace the shoes of the very first From Dusk Till Dawn, it’s not bad to kick back and watch when you just want some action and blood on the screen. If that’s what you are looking for this film can at least fulfill your needs in that sense.
The Conclusion
Better than From Dusk Till Dawn 2, but not in the same ballpark as From Dusk Till Dawn. It’s got some fun characters and unless it’s CGI, the gore isn’t half bad either. I don’t know of many vampire western films but if there is a group of them, this one would probably be one of the better ones. If you want to own this on blu-ray or complete your From Dusk Till Dawn collection, you can get it HERE.
The Rating (6/10)
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