Remember that post I wrote a while back about Sam Peckinpah’s revolutionary Western that goes by the title The Wild Bunch? In that post right there, I talked about how Peckinpah wanted to express his anger and frustration with the world he found himself living in (late 60s, Vietnam War casualties and the whole country going crazy) by painting his film of 1969 with an excess of bloody violence. He refused to accept the old Western style. He directed one of the most hard ass movies of the century and showing who he really was as a filmmaker.
However, I have some thoughts about another one of his movies (they’re all brilliant in their own ways: Straw Dogs, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, The Getaway, Cross of Iron and many more), one of his later ones and the last one starring his dear friend Warren Oates. The movie I’m talking about is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia released in 1974, a brutal story of a man being paid to retrieve another wanted man’s head. The problem is, the wanted man is already dead. Warren Oates stars as Bennie, a lone rider, a barman and an ex con, who’ll do anything for the right amount of money.

Alfredo Garcia is Peckinpah’s meditation on the sacred and profane. You might wonder if this is true, since his movies are usually very violent and were almost always X-rated by the distributors at the time. Well, I’ll tell you what; to hell with those distributors. Peckinpah was a troubled man and during the shooting of this movie he was influenced by Warren Oates to start abusing cocaine (which later lead to his premature death). His mind wasn’t in the right places, but his heart surely was because in the midst of all the bloody chaos that engulfs the main characters of Alfredo Garcia, there is always a theme of love, regret, betrayal, motherhood and devotion hiding underneath the layers of foul language and extreme violence. Why? Because Peckinpah refused to label himself as a B-movie director. Critics hated him, the material he adapted and the stories he tried to tell. Screw them, he kept on going and his movies are still relevant today just as they were back in the day.

In Alfredo Garcia, Peckinpah has no mercy. His characters are still filthy, sweaty and violent. Bennie is a mercenary, an angry dog looking for something that isn’t there. Bennie, if you will, in some kind of twisted way represents the director himself. Warren Oates admitted that he tried to copy Peckinpah’s walk, way of dressing and all around behavior. Bennie IS Peckinpah. He is a man forced by the higher laws, squeezed to a pulp in order to find a dead man’s head. He sacrifices everything he has just for a stupid dead man’s head. Peckinpah was known at the time as the number one enemy of Hollywood producers since he once claimed that making movies in Hollywood was a torture and preferred to move to Mexico and continue his career over there. Bennie’s story is Sam Peckinpah’s story. Digging up a grave, opening a coffin and finding a useless, lifeless body was Peckinpah’s trade. Nothing in movies is sacred. Just like a dead man’s grave. Everything ends in blood, casualties and if you’re lucky, a newborn baby. Not all masterpieces carry Oscar nominations and this movie is one of them.

So, yeah. That’s Peckinpah for you. A director who had balls made of steel and a talent that so many people tried to deny him. Good for you, Sam. Good for you.