Mark Stewart's From Dusk Till Dawn Page: Cut Scenes

Guide To Cut Scenes

The following scenes were filmed, but were cut

during the editing process.

An alternate take of the opening scene between liquor store clerk Pete Bottoms, played by John Hawkes, and Texas Ranger Earl McGraw, played by Michael Parks, was filmed. In that scene, after McGraw pays for his Jack Daniel's, he and Pete say their good-byes and McGraw walks out of Benny's World Of Liquor alive. This was a take in which Rodriguez simply never called cut. He wanted to have a take where McGraw got out alive just in case a they decided to make a sequel.

Immediately following the introduction of the Fuller family, there is a scene that was cut which showed some of what Seth was up to before he brought the burgers and beer back to the hotel. The scene opens with a long steady cam shot, performed by Rodriguez, that follows over the Gecko brother's Cougar and up to a phone booth were Seth is talking to Carlos, arranging their meeting at The Titty Twister. This shot was done on the last day of shooting and was a difficult shot for both Rodriguez, who was working hard to make the steady cam work look good, and Clooney, who had a tongue twister at the end of his dialog that kept slipping him up. A total of ten takes were done, but the scene was eventually cut for pacing, though Rodriguez states that he is quite proud of it.

A number of small cuts were made during the vampire slaughter scene just after Ritchie is killed. Most of these were made for the MMPA, who asked Rodriguez to trim some of the more violent moments, while other shots were cut for pace.

A scene that we didn't get to see shows what happened once Santanico Pandemonium, played by Salma Hayek, wakes up after Seth has shot her off of Ritchie. Her eyes open and she slithers away backward like a snake. The shot was performed in reverse and then played backward to achieve the odd motion.

As the scene explodes in The Titty Twister one vampire was to dive down from the high ledges that previously held dancers (The picture below is a rough look at it. The effects were not complete for this shot.)

As Seth and company fight the vampires, Scott Fuller is cornered by one. Seth comes to his aid, pulling out his .44, aiming it at the vampire and saying, "Step aside, son." A portion of this moment was used in some of the trailers (See picture below).

Santanico Pandemonium sits on the lap of one stunned biker (played by Greg Nicotero of KNB) and mesmerizes him. Once he is under her spell, a second mouth comes out of her mouth and bites his head off. The effects were not completed for this shot but the picture below will give you an idea of what it would have looked like.

Shortly after Ritchie's death, a great deal of material was cut for pacing and much of it showed Seth's reaction to what was exploding all around him. He beats off vampires with a pool stick and shoots some of them with his .44. At one point he is held in the hypnotic gaze of one of the female vampires, who approaches him, ready to make the kill. She is distracted, however, when a biker attacks her. Here, Rodriguez pulls out one of his old gags from the days when he made short horror films on video using his brothers and sisters as a cast and two VCRs for editing. The vampire forces the biker onto a table and pops a zit on him just to torture him (See picture below). Seth is able to shake off the spell of the vampire and continue fighting.

Immediatley following that scene, Seth witnesses another vampire kill a biker by biting off the biker's head. The vampire is one of Rodriguez's designs for the movie and can be seen during the mexican standoff sequence. She is a gremlin looking character that is sitting on the lap of a stunned biker. In the sequence, the biker looks away from the beautiful waitress on his lap and watches the carnage around him in stunned silence. When he turns back around, he finds the waitress has transformed into the gremlin vampire and she shoves the biker's head into a mouth that opens up in her belly and bites it off (See pictures below). This was one of several scenes inspired by John Carpenter's film THE THING. It plays into what Rodriguez describes as a man's worst nightmare, which is to pick up a girl in a bar and once the beer goggles come off, to find out that she is completely hideous.

Several shots of Jacob and Frost staking vampires and putting out the fire that Frost started were cut.

Several additional shots of Sex Machine killing vampires were cut, including one humorous scene where he becomes frustrated with the number of bikers and truckers who keep coming back to life.

The scene in which Tom Savini's character,Sex Machine, gets bitten suddenly by a dormant vampire was trimmed. In the theatrical release Sex Machine is bitten and then he stabs the vampire twice with a piece of wood, but in the original cut, he stabs the vampire 12 times. The sequence apparently got a great reaction from the test audiences, but the MMPA asked Rodriguez to trim it because they felt that the fact that the male vampire had long hair might lead to some confusion as to whether the vampire might be a woman.

Another brief scene shows Sex Machine killing a vampire and then pulling out a small camera and snapping a photo of the dying vampire. This scene is a reference to Tom Savini's penchant for taking pictures of everything.

Originally, after Sex Machine has been bitten and just before he begins to change into a vampire, he leaves the crowd during Frost's Vietnam speech and stands by the pool table. There he sees a still standing bottle of Chango Beer and shatters the bottle with his whip. Tom Savini is actually very good with a whip and even though the crew did several takes of the shot, he nailed it every time.

After Sex Machine and Frost have been turned into vampires, Jacob has been bit, and Seth, Kate and Scott have escaped into the storage room, there is some excised dialog between Kate and Scott about whether Jacob is dead and if they should go back for him. Kate wants to go back, but Scott prevails, reminding her that once anyone is bit, they will change into a vampire sooner or later.

Once Jacob is let into the storage room, he has a longer speech about what to do about the vampires and also shares a nice moment with Scott and Kate, telling him how much he loves them and how proud he is of them.

Some additional shots in the storage room sequence in which the group prepares their weapons indicate that the storage room has two levels and that Seth found some of the materials for his motorized stake on the second level.

Some carnage during the final battle was cut, including some additional shots of Sex Machine as a vampire and a shot of a vampire running at Seth, Seth jamming his motorized stake into the vamp and then lifting him up and over his head, slinging the vamp into the wall behind the bar.

Another sequence that shows Seth and Kate fighting vampires at the end of the film was cut. Seth picks up Scott's holy water balloons and uses a cluster of them on a vampire. He then picks up his motorized staker, which has stopped working, pulls the wooden stake out of it and uses that to kill another vampire. Meanwhile, Kate is approached by a vampire and her arrow gun locks up. She gets it to work at the last moment and shoots an arrow point blank into the vampire's head.

After the credits have rolled, there is one final shot in the film of the crew in front of The Titty Twister. They all run toward the camera and wave in what looks to be early morning. Rodriguez had intended to include this shot, but forgot it during the time crunch as the film was being completed. It has now been included on the laser disc, however it is still missing from the video tape and the DVD.