Bad Girls We Love: Santánico Pandemonium in From Dusk till Dawn

With a name like Santánico Pandemonium, you know she’s gonna be too hot to handle.

It’s been a hell of a day for the Gecko brothers. On the lamb from the law—thanks largely to loose cannon brother Richie—they’ve kidnapped a pastor and his two teenage children. At gunpoint they force the family to drive them over the border to Mexico. Once in Mexico, they stop off at the desert strip club The Titty Twister to meet a contact at dawn. Well, it’s dusk now, so older brother Seth figures they might as well order some liquor and enjoy what the strippers have to offer while they wait, right?

Wrong.

As any fan of the 1996 Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez collaboration From Dusk till Dawn knows, that’s when it shifts radically, from road movie to all-out, balls-to-the-wall bloodbath. You see, the Titty Twister is a vampire bar. The Geckos and their captives don’t know this, of course, so they settle in for the main act: the voluptuous exotic dancer Santánico Pandemonium. Her arrival does indeed signal that pandemonium is only moments away, but first the Americans—and we—are treated to Santánico’s jaw-dropping stage show, in which she dances and writhes seductively, while a massive albino Burmese python wraps itself around her body. Turns out these Mexican vamps are descended from some Aztec snake gods. After she seduces with her hypnotic body, Santánico reveals her true, gruesome form, and the proverbial shit hits the fan. It’s feeding time for this bar full of vampires. Mayhem.

I have loved From Dusk till Dawn ever since it came out in ‘96, and repeated viewings are always a blast. The way it accelerates into a higher gear at the strip club never fails to set my pulse racing. The cast is sensational, with special kudos to George Clooney as Seth, Harvey Keitel as Jacob the pastor experiencing a crisis of faith, and Juliette Lewis as his feisty daughter Kate. Yet my ode to this delightful exploitation flick will have to wait for another time, because today is all about Santánico, as portrayed by Salma Hayek in the role that really elevated her to stardom. The way she seduces Seth, Richie, and us in that string bikini is so iconic it’s easy to forget she’s only onscreen for ten minutes. In those ten, riveting minutes, Salma as Santánico forever became the unforgettable face and the unforgettable body of From Dusk till Dawn. In that brief appearance, Hayek secured her place in cinematic history. Had she never done anything else ever again, her performance in this film would still be talked about by film lovers and shown in highlight reels of cinematic history until the end of time. She’s that memorable here.

As cinematic vampires go, it’s awfully hard to find one any sexier than Santánico Pandemonium. Sure, once she reveals her serpentine skin, a lot of the sex appeal wears off. Even though at that moment it’s full-tilt boogie, ain’t nothing gonna take away the memory of Santánico’s sensual striptease. Salma Hayek’s otherworldly, slammin’ body, and her mastery of it during the scene, created pure cinematic-sex-magic: one of those rare instances where you drop everything and just watch. Like Debra Paget’s earlier snake dance in The Indian Tomb (1959), or Michelle Pfeiffer “Making Whoopee” atop a grand piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). During these rare movie moments, you don’t look at the time, you don’t answer the phone, you don’t look up actors on IMDb—you just watch. In this case, you watch Salma Hayek do her thang and you thank the Aztec snake gods for letting you witness it.