Trivia
The band playing in the "Titty Twister" is Tito & Tarantula, featuring Robert Rodriguez; the lineup also features Oingo Boingo drummer Johnny 'Vatos' Hernandez.
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The "Fuller" family are named after writer-director Samuel Fuller, one of the primary influences on Quentin Tarantino's (and everybody's) style of "pulp" cinema.
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The name of the movie is taken from the signs found on drive-ins. These signs indicate the length of the shows, which ran "from dusk till dawn". The movie is full of references to midnight movies and films which were often intended for teenagers to watch late at night from their cars.
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Writer Trademark (Quentin Tarantino): [trunk shot]: When the opening credits finish and the Geckos retrieve their hostage, we look from the woman's point of view from inside the trunk of the car up at the Geckos. This is, of course, the familiar type of angle Tarantino puts in all of his films.
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Salma Hayek did not have a choreographer for her dance. Director Robert Rodriguez just told her to feel the music and dance to it. Rodriguez would later use the same tactic with Jessica Alba in Sin City.
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Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi were approached to play Pete Bottoms but neither could fit it into their schedules.
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According to the DVD featurettes, when Sex Machine is throwing around the other characters, Tom Savini actually punches many of the actors, including George Clooney.
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Before George Clooney was cast, Tim Roth, John Travolta, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, and Christopher Walken were offered the role of Seth Gecko. All passed because of scheduling conflicts.
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Quentin Tarantino was originally set to direct the movie, but decided not to direct so that he could focus more on the screenplay and his role as Richard Gecko.
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The famous line, "No thanks, I've already had a wife," was improvised by George Clooney. Director Robert Rodriguez never intended it to be in the final cut, but after the studio included the line in a trailer, he felt obliged to include it in the film.
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The characters of Sex Machine and Frost were originally written the other way around: Sex Machine was to be the muscular, scarred, leather-wearing biker while Frost was to be a more slender (yet deadly) individual.
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Originally, Satanico Pandemonium was called Blonde Death. Quentin Tarantino decided to go for a Latino/Mexican star, so he used Salma Hayek after seeing her in Desperado. The name Satanico Pandemonium came from the title of a gory Mexican horror movie (Satánico pandemonium) that Tarantino had seen on the shelves of the video store he worked in.
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If you look closely, when Cheech Marin is playing the Customs Agent, his name badge says, "Oscar Marin" which is Cheech's real-life father's name. His father was an LAPD officer.
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Salma Hayek has a real fear of snakes and had always refused to be near them. Naturally when she read the script, she knew her phobia would prevent her from taking the part. Robert Rodriguez conned her into thinking that Madonna was ready to nab the part instead so Hayek spent two months with therapists to overcome her fear.
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The first script that Quentin Tarantino was paid to write, for the mere sum of $1,500. Special effects technician Robert Kurtzman asked him to write a screenplay based on his story in return for providing the ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs.
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According to Quentin Tarantino, Renny Harlin and Tony Scott were the first directors who showed interest in directing the film.
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Quentin Tarantino originally gave the script to makeup effects man Robert Kurtzman to direct. When he couldn't commit, Tarantino showed the script to Robert Rodriguez, who eagerly signed on.
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George Clooney was picked partly because of his work on ER. Quentin Tarantino liked the irony that Clooney had gone from saving people at the ER to playing a character who sends people to the ER.
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The exterior set for the Titty Twister burned down at one point. This caused great delays in filming. Other delays were caused by dust storms and the threat of union action because of shooting with a non-union crew.
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Writer Trademark (Quentin Tarantino): Big Kahuna Burger: The fast food Seth bring into the hotel clearly has the "Big Kahuna Burger" logo on the side of the bag.
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At the beginning of the film, Pete Bottoms of Benny's World of Liquor (played by John Hawkes) mentions to Seth Gecko (George Clooney) that he should "get a fucking' Academy Award" for acting natural. Fifteen years later, Hawkes was nominated for an Academy Award for his supporting role in Winter's Bone.
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Originally Quentin Tarantino pitched this to John Travolta the same time as he was preparing to film Pulp Fiction. Travolta was not interested in working on a vampire movie and wanted to work on Pulp Fiction instead.
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Fred Williamson plays a character who mentions he was in the Vietnam War in 1973. This is ironic considering that Fred's first film appearance was in the movie MASH. While that film was set during the Korean War, it's said it was written for those with loved ones and for those serving in Vietnam as a form of comedic relief.
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Cameo
Lawrence Bender:
the film's executive producer is sitting at the first booth at the diner where we first see Jacob, Kate and Scott.
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Gregory Nicotero:
The long haired biker that Tom Savini's character steals the beer from is the makeup effects supervisor. His character makes a further appearance in a deleted scene where in he is brutally murdered by Santanico Pandemonium when she sits on his lap (in human form) and seduces him into a false sense of security. Then a second vampiric snake-like mouth erupts from her own and bites his head off in an explicit fashion.
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Director Trademark
Robert Rodriguez:
[Trejo]
Tattooed tough guy Danny Trejo also appears in Rodriguez' Desperado, Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams, Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Planet Terror, Grindhouse, and Machete. In all these movies except for "Once Upon" (where he plays "Cucuy"), his character had a "knife" name: Navajas in "Desperado" (navajas is Spanish for "folding knives", which his character used as throwing weapons), Razor Charlie, Isador "Machete" Cortez in the "Spy Kids" pictures, and another Machete in the connected films "Planet Terror," "Grindhouse" and "Machete."
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Spoilers
In the original script, Quentin Tarantino made all the Fullers and the Geckos survive the ordeal, but changed it to only one of each group surviving, because he felt it'd be more exciting with victims.
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Some of the growling noises of the vampire dog that Sex Machine turns into were provided by Robert Rodriguez's baby son Rocket Rodriguez who was just learning to talk.
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There was a special makeup effect in which one of the stripper-vampires has her stomach open into a large mouth. She shoves a bar attendant's head into the large mouth, and bites it off. The effect was so graphic that writer/actor Quentin Tarantino didn't even want to see it. The scene can be accessed in the deleted scenes section on the special edition DVD.
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Even though the character of Earl McGraw (Michael Parks) is killed in this film, Parks played the role again in the films Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Death Proof, and Planet Terror.
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Writer Trademark (Quentin Tarantino): Bare Feet: Tarantino's character Richard often finds himself involved with womens' feet. Richard is seen obsessing over Kate's feet when he holds her at gunpoint in the RV, He drinks the alcohol spilling from Satanico Pandemonium's foot, and even tells the hostage to take off her shoes before she gets into the bed with him, even though he is still wearing his.
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