'FROM DUSK TILL DAWN' ARMED WITH MOVIE CLICHES.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Staff Writer

Imagine if the only people who got to make movies were filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, and they set about quoting from themselves and other movies and TV shows until their shallow well ran dry.

You'd run out of movies pretty fast, if "From Dusk Till Dawn" is any indication. Watching it is like channel surfing on a closed-circuit television that plays only their previous movies, plus a few other pop-culture influences.

There's the twisted humor; the rude, profane dialogue; and the sadistic, over-the-top violence from "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction;" there are the heroes running from a building as a fireball explodes out of it, like in "Desperado."

There's the TV newscaster recounting the heroes' murderous, cop-killing crime spree, like in "Natural Born Killers." And don't forget the outlandish bar scene, from both "Pulp Fiction" and "Desperado."

Also, there's Juliette Lewis doing that awfully familiar provocative redneck waif thing, like in "NBK"; Harvey Keitel, from roughly six out of 10 independent movies of the last several years; and Quentin Tarantino, the actor, who was in "Desperado" and every one of his own movies.

But if you're looking for fresh inspiration, keep flipping. Maybe you'll have to try the movie classics channel.

To be fair, "From Dusk Till Dawn" started with a script that Tarantino wrote well before his career took off; so it's not surprising that it contains elements he later honed and repeated.

It's a twisted, underdeveloped B movie about a couple of brothers on a killing spree who take hostages and head for the border, where they stumble into a biker bar populated by vampires.

After "Pulp Fiction" made Tarantino a household name, the producers who had bought his early script for a song realized they suddenly had a hot property in a drawer somewhere.

Key to putting the package together were high salaries and a high budget - it's an irony of Hollywood that Rodriguez, who directed, had more than twice as much money to work with on "From Dusk Till Dawn" - $11 million - as on the far superior, far more inspired "Desperado." Essential to promoting the movie has been the meteoric rise to popularity of George Clooney, who stars on the TV series "ER."

Clooney and Tarantino play the murderous brothers. "A couple of real mean motor scooters," is how Clooney describes them. Tarantino's the weird, delicate, psychotic whose hallucinations make him believe people are saying provocative things to him. Clooney is the darkly handsome one with the motorcycle boots and the black flames tattooed on his neck.

Clooney's main job is to shove a gun in people's face and tell them what to do. "If you make a noise, Mr. 44 makes a noise," he tells a quivering female hostage, referring to his .44-caliber Magnum. The movie gives him one thing to do - act forceful. He does it just fine, but it doesn't get any more interesting than that.

Probably the most memorable performance in the movie is by Cheech Marin, who gives an outrageously profane, funny spiel outside a Mexican whorehouse that probably no other actor on either side of the border could pull off.

And at one point, the sleek and alluring Salma Hayek ("Desperado") performs a striptease with a python while wearing only a thong bikini and an Aztec headdress.

That's 55 minutes in, for those who'll want to make a note so they can fast-forward the video later, because it's basically at that point that the movie hits its stride. The vampires come out of the woodwork, giving Rodriguez a virtual army of creatures that can be killed in gory and inventive ways, and he indulges in an extended fever-dream of mayhem, special effects, and crowd-pleasing surprises.

It's as if the filmmakers spill out a toy box of all the things that amuse them or gross them out and set about making campy entertainment from it. At that point, the movie's laughing at itself so openly that you can't help but have a good time laughing with it. And besides, the music's cool, naturally. After all, the music was cool in "Pulp Fiction," "NBK" and "Desperado," too.

THE FACTS

The film: "From Dusk Till Dawn" (R; explicit language, extreme violence).

The stars: George Clooney, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Quentin Tarantino, Cheech Marin.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Written by Quentin Tarantino. Produced by Gianni Nunnari, Meir Teper. Executive producers, Lawrence Bender, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. Released by Miramax Dimension.

Running time: Two hours.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two stars

CAPTION(S):

Photo Clooney From "ER" to big screen