Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
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| Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia | |
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 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia movie poster |
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| Directed by | Sam Peckinpah |
| Produced by | Martin Baum |
| Starring | Warren Oates Isela Vega Robert Webber Gig Young Helmut Dantine |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | August 14, 1974 U.S. release |
| Running time | 112 min |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,500,000 (estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo García) is a 1974 film directed by Sam Peckinpah.
Originally based on an idea brought to Peckinpah during the making of The Wild Bunch, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was shot on a very low budget in Mexico following the failure of Peckinpah's 1973 Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It is widely considered the director's darkest and most personal film. Peckinpah himself claimed that it was the only film he ever made which was released exactly as he had intended it. Warren Oates, an actor who had frequently worked with Peckinpah, stars as Bennie, an American piano player living the low life in a Mexican brothel. Bennie stakes everything on a bounty set by a Mexican cacique on the head of Alfredo Garcia, the man who impregnated his daughter.
The film was universally panned when it was released in 1974 by critics who claimed that Peckinpah had gone over the edge into cinematic sadism and dementia (one exception to this was Roger Ebert[1]). The film was a complete box office failure upon its release, but in the intervening years it has acquired cult status. It is regarded by some as Peckinpah's most uncompromising and courageous film, and the performances by Oates, Isela Vega, and Kris Kristofferson are also often singled out as elevating the film above its genre origins. The film's dark humor and satirical take on the 1970s clichés of the road movie and the buddy movie (Oates spends much of the film driving around Mexico talking to a severed head) have led some to see the film as an early anticipation of the surreal, violence-ridden black humor of directors like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino.
It was widely known during and after production that Warren Oates' performance as Bennie was an imitation of Peckinpah himself. Oates went so far as to don the director's own clothes and sunglasses to play the part. Co-writer Gordon Dawson has also admitted that he based Bennie's character largely on Peckinpah.
The film is the subject of a running joke on the BBC Radio 4 programme I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and a pun on its name will invariably appear during a themed film club round.
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[edit] Plot
The film is set in motion by Mexican cacique El Jefe (played by frequent Peckinpah actor Emilio Fernandez) who offers one million dollars for the head of gigolo Alfredo Garcia, who has impregnated his daughter. El Jefe's bounty sets off a storm of bounty hunters, assassins, and assorted low-lifes, who scour Mexico for the missing ladies' man.
Bennie (Warren Oates) gets wind of the bounty, and convinces his girlfriend Elita (played by Mexican movie star Isela Vega) a former lover of Garcia, to take him to Garcia's village, where he has been buried after dying in a car accident.
Bennie and Elita drive to Garcia's village, followed by several bounty hunters. On the way they are waylaid by two thugs, who plan to rape Elita; Bennie manages to kill both of them. When Bennie digs up Garcia's corpse, the bounty hunters ambush the couple, killing Elita and leaving Bennie for dead.
Driven half-mad by what has occurred, Bennie chases down the bounty hunters, kills them, and takes Garcia's head for himself. As he travels across Mexico with the head in a duffel bag, he begins to develop a psychotic relationship with it, constantly talking to it and nicknaming it "Al". Leaving a trail of corpses behind him, Bennie finally confronts El Jefe, who tries to pay him off. Overcome by grief, remorse and rage, Bennie goes on a violent rampage, killing El Jefe and his bodyguards. Attempting to flee El Jefe's compound, Bennie is gunned down by El Jefe's men in a hail of machine-gun bullets.
The film ends on a freeze frame close up of the barrel of a machine gun, over which Peckinpah's directorial credit appears.
[edit] Cast
- Warren Oates as Bennie
- Isela Vega as Elita
- Robert Webber as Sappensly
- Gig Young as Quill
- Helmut Dantine as Max
- Emilio Fernández as El Jefe
- Kris Kristofferson as the biker
- Chano Urueta as Manchot (the bartender)
[edit] Reception
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was savaged upon release by critics and ignored by audiences. Most viewers found the film's bleak worldview and constant violence difficult to take, and Bennie's elevating psychosis throughout the film, expressed through his macabre relationship with the severed head of the title, led many critics to see the film as proof of Peckinpah's declining mental state. One critic went so far as to declare that the film was so bad that it was now necessary to reevaluate Peckinpah's entire career in light of it.
Peckinpah himself was deeply proud of the film. Never apologizing for it, he often cited it as his purest and most personal work, and the only one of his films which was completed without any compromises to studio or audience, precisely as he had intended it.
After Peckinpah's death, the film began to be reevaluted by critics and audiences. Many critics came to praise the film's uncompromising vision and the film has begun to be seen as the consummation of the themes present in all of Peckinpah's films – the conflict between honor and the necessity of survival in a dishonorable world, the dangers of vengeance and greed, the nature of human violence, and the self-destructive tendencies of modern masculinity. Some have gone so far as to compare it to the films of John Huston such as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which Peckinpah had cited as an inspiration. (The bounty hunter played by Gig Young actually gives his name as "Fred C. Dobbs" at one point – the name of Bogart's character in the Huston film.)
The film remains a cult favorite, and has never found a wide audience. It tends to polarize critics and viewers, some claiming that it is the beginning of Peckinpah's descent into mediocrity and self-parody, while others declare it to be Peckinpah's last true masterpiece (though some would reserve that accolade for Cross of Iron). Critic Roger Ebert has included the film in his "Great Movies" list, alongside Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.
[edit] References
- ^ Ebert, Roger (August 1, 1974). Review of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved on 2007-03-12.
[edit] External links
[edit] Films influenced by Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997)
- Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis (1997)
- The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
- Hostel (2005)
- Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986)
| Films directed by Sam Peckinpah |
|---|
| The Deadly Companions • Ride the High Country • Major Dundee • The Wild Bunch • The Ballad of Cable Hogue • Straw Dogs • Junior Bonner • The Getaway • Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid • Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia • The Killer Elite • Cross of Iron • Convoy • The Osterman Weekend |
