Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia / Traiganme la cabeza de Alfredo Garcia / Mexico / USA / 1974

Many of the men in Sam Peckinpah’s films have skin that’s so leathery and tanned that you can imagine bullets bouncing off of it. They’re durable, often self-loathing antiheroes, sustained by hard liquor and a gun’s jurisdiction. Warren Oates’ Bennie epitomizes this man, enlisted forcibly to locate and deliver the head of a man named Alfredo Garcia. On the verge of completing his task, he drives down a lone highway somewhere in Mexico, his suit soiled in dirt from the grave he exhumed, a half-empty bottle of tequila in his right hand, and a severed head flopping around in the passenger seat. His strife will potentially enrich him (the head has a substantial reward), but it instead begins to contaminate him. The head makes an overwhelming stench, and it draws scores of flies. Similarly, Bennie’s demeanor has begun to deteriorate.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: MGM DVD
05 Feb 2007 11:34 AM | Comments (2)

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1. Paul Herzberg / 5 February 2007 / 9:25 AM / URL

   According to the book “Bloody Sam”, Bennie is, in essence, Warren Oates doing an impression of Sam Peckinpah. I don’t know if this changes your reading of the movie in anyway, but it suggests, somewhat like Orson Welles, Peckinpah tended to make movies about aspects of his own character.

   Not that that’s a bad thing…

2. Buck Theorem / 6 February 2007 / 2:30 PM / URL

   The other thing that I remember about this film is that – like “The Shining” – it is a study in meticulously constructed anti-climax. Very few films are bold enough to brave that, and fewer still pull it off. Reckon this one hits the mark.