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Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia [1974]


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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review

Sam Peckinpah knew he couldn't call a movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and get away with it. That's why he did it. When he undertook this nakedly personal project, in self-exile in Mexico, the director was a deeply bitter man out of favour with critics, the media, and the Hollywood establishment, which had just released his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid in a mutilated version. "Bring Me the Head..." sounded like the parody title of an ultraviolent Sam Peckinpah movie, and he flung it in our faces just as his onscreen surrogate tosses the titular object at the camera. Thing is, the movie is a masterpiece--raw, shocking, beautiful, and brave--in which Peckinpah confronts his enemies and his own demons. Warren Oates plays a gringo piano-player stuck in Mexico who hears that some powerful men are willing to pay a bounty on a guy he knows. They don't know the guy is already dead, killed in a car accident. It'll be easy to exhume the trophy and collect the money--except that it will cost our seedy hero everything he has and ever wanted. John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre had always been a key legend for Peckinpah; this film is a subterranean re-imagining of it, with Oates as both the son of Fred C. Dobbs and the carnival-mirror reflection of Peckinpah himself. And Isela Vega's performance as the sainted whore Elita--bruised and worldly one minute, radiant and clear-skinned as a child the next--is an act of grace. --Richard T. Jameson


ONE OF PECKINPAH'S BEST
Review date: 2008-09-01 Rating: 10 out of 10

Simply excellent. I loved most of Peckinpah's work. I do not wish to judge his character but most of his films (THE GETAWAY, PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, STRAW DOGS and this one) are certainly some of the best films in movie history. Warren Oates on his way to ruin was an excellent choice for the lead role. Great directing - as usual - great acting and a sinister dark humor throughout the film make BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA a great neo-westen.

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Reviews


Overrated :Peckinpah's twisted self-portrait
Review date: 2008-03-27 Rating: 2 out of 10

Warren Oats wearing huge black sunglasses kills over twenty people in an attempt to deliver a bag containing the rotting head of Alfredo Garcia to a Mexican drug lord. In two hours Warren Oates fights hired killers, swarms of flies, bottles of tequilia, and some random locals in Mexico in his attempt to claim his reward in delivering Garcia's head.

The Wall Street Journal called this movie "so sadistic in its imagery, so irrational in its plotting, so obscene in its effect, and so incompetent in its cinematic realisation that the only kind of analysis it really invites is psychoanalysis."
It was banned in several European countries.
In 1969 The Wild Bunch was released and it became a major success. Peckinpah went on to direct Ballad of Cable Hogue, Straw Dogs and the wistful Junior Bonner(Steve McQueen- box office flop) and then the classic The Getaway (McQueen).

Peckinpah also directed the great picaresque, elegiac movie about friendship and betrayal: Pat Garrett And Bily the Kid.
The film was unfortunately re-edited and butchered by the production company and released as an incoherent mess. Peckinpah, a raging alcoholic at this stage in his career, decided to make Alfredo Garcia.
In this writers view Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a rambling mess, and has the patina of a cheap amateur production, with a messy direction, and silly story.

Sam goes all grungey on us!
Review date: 2008-03-17 Rating: 10 out of 10

A Sam Peckinpah film which was probably a bit maligned at the time of its release. I can remember a reviewer in the local Bournemouth free-sheet giving the film a panning. (Something about the director losing his OWN head.) Since then, "BMTHOAG" has grown in importance and is now viewed as being right up in the pantheon of great SP films.

It has a distinctly "un-glossy", almost "grunge-like" quality that must have seemed unusual at the time. Warren Oates is excellent, as he slowly goes off the rails and ends up becoming a sort of one-man Wild Bunch. Otherwise, the film features a bizarre cast. What are Robert Webber and Gig Young doing in there? Kris Kristofferson has a small cameo role, as do the guy who steals Doc McCoy's bag of money in "The Getaway" and the Generalissimo in "The Wild Bunch". I'm just left wondering if Ben Johnson, Bo Hopkins, LQ Jones, Slim Pickens or Strother Martin aren't lurking in the background, somewhere.

Seemingly a bit rambling and unfocussed in the first part of the film, "BMTHOAG" susequently develops into one of the vital Sam Peckinpahs.

Grime under your skin
Review date: 2007-09-21 Rating: 10 out of 10

Peckinpah's 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' is one of the most under-rated films of the 1970's. Starring Warren Oates as Bennie, a Piano player in a bar who stumbles upon a bounty for Alfredo Garcia. Garcia is responsible for a pregnancy but has not taken responsibility.

In a another filmmakers hands this could easily have been a total disaster, but Peckinpah turns this into one of the greatest road movies ever made. However unlike most road movies this is seriously downbeat. There is a major plot twist half way through that nobody will expect. Metaphorically Peckinpah pulls the rug from under you completely at this point, and it really is quite shocking. I agree completely with a previous reviewer who stated that it appears that Peckinpah had a free-hand with this movie.

Mostly set in Mexico the film has a dirty grubby feel to it. Bennie isn't a particularly nice character himself, being mainly interested in collecting the bounty money on Garcia. After the plot twist mentioned above though I did begin to symapthise with him. That said this is still miles away from a typical Hollywood (espcially these days) movie.

There are a few of Peckinpah's trademark slow motion shooting scenes as well as the inevitable topless women; noteably Isela Vega who gets to show off her impressive figure on a number of occasions!

I've watched the film twice now, and the second viewing only confirmed my view that this is a hugely influential film, that works on many levels.







Peckinpah's Materpiece
Review date: 2006-11-10 Rating: 10 out of 10

Quite simply the most nihilistic film ever made but also one of the best ever made. This is truly Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece - the main character, Benny , played by the amazing Warren Oates at last given a great leading role is basically Peckinpah himself and Oates based his characterisation on him. Where else will you get a film where the lead character wears his sunglasses for practically half the film, where even though he has no redeeming qualities you still route for him at the end as his road journey leads him to the abyss of who he is. This is the only film I think where Peckinpah had little to no interference in making it, and boy does it show. I often wonder if the great man was alive today what kinda films he would have ended up making and what actors he would have worked with. If you like only one of Peckinpah's films, but haven't seen this, then trust me and buy it, it's a true master being let loose of studio chains and making a personal `up yours to the lot of you' style of film. Violent, funny, beautifully shot, downbeat and one of the greatest lead performances in the history of film by Warren Oates, it just doesn't get better than this

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Isela Vega
Warren Oates

Creators:
Warren Oates (Primary Contributor)
Isela Vega (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: MGM Entertainment
Manufacturer: MGM Entertainment
EAN: 5050070028232
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL,
Release date: 2005-06-20
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 108 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1974
Language: French (Subtitled)
Language: Greek (Subtitled)
Language: Italian (Subtitled)
Language: Spanish (Subtitled)
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: French (Dubbed)
Language: German (Dubbed)
Language: Italian (Dubbed)
Language: Spanish (Dubbed)

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