Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Bring me the head of Alfredo garcia

Great movie, as I expected; the price was right and the vendor's service excellent. I won't hesitate to buy from this vendor again.
Thanks! nelson Lozano November 4, 2008

Gross, but Engrossing

I just recently watched this again on DVD, surely one of the strangest movies ever released by a major studio and by a major American director. Shot on what appears to be a shoestring budget, Peckinpah delivers a story set in a hellish landscape, where drunken killers compete for a bounty on the head of a Don Juan named Alfredo Garcia. Garcia's a marked man for having knocked up a Mexican millionaire's daughter, and we meet some very unsavory characters who want him dead. Watching this movie, which becomes a revenge tale, you can see where Quentin Tarantino got his chops (particularly the scene where Bennie gets buried alive). This movie predates Kill Bill by 30 years, and one can also see where No Country for Old Men came from.

Much of Bring Me the Head is great--the Mexican locations, Warren Oates (Stripes, the Wild Bunch, Dillinger) playing his character Bennie in a white suit and perpetual shades, the existentialist absurdity-of-the-human-condition narrative, and the slow motion and poetic justice of the killing scenes. What bothers me about the movie is puzzling character motivation. The middle scene, in which Bennie's Mexican "wife" befriends her rapist, is odd to say the least, but so too is Bennie's decision not to simply walk away after he's accomplished his mission. I guess it's Peckinpah's vision that no one here lives happily ever after, that destructiveness leads inevitably to self-destructiveness.

Probably my biggest problem with the DVD was the sound quality. There are very often strange echoes when the action gets loud. Hopefully they'll remix the sound for future DVDs.
June 28, 2008

Bizarre and entertaining

This film is so weird that it's completely entertaining. I never could figure out, however, whether this movie is supposed to be serious or is a comedy. That's what makes it so much fun. It's kind of a blood-soaked "Mad, Mad, Mad World". Alfredo Garcia has impregnated the young daughter of a wealthy Mexican hacendado. The rich man puts one million dollars on his head. Criminals and reprobates from all over Mexico converge in a lethal competition to put Garcia's head in a sack.

It's truly bizarre--Warren Oates driving along with his car full of houseflies feeding on Garcia's moldering head. I won't go on because I don't want to spoil it for you. Pardon the pun.

Still I didn't give the film a full five star rating because of one scene involving Kris Kristopherson that I thought was gratuitous sex and nonsense. Otherwise the film is a winner---for me, anyway.

Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

May 25, 2008

Peckinpah's dark Mexican road trip.

"I think I can feel Sam Peckinpah's heart beating and head pounding in every frame in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia"--Roger Ebert.

Sam Peckinpah's 1974 low budget film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo García), followed his 1973 western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It is often referred to as his "darkest" work. Certainly, Peckinpah's demons are evident in this film. Alcohol. Despair. Defiance. Warren Oates plays Bennie, an American gringo piano player living a dead-end existence in a Mexican brothel, who decides to collect a million dollar bounty set by a Mexican land baron (El Jefe, played by Emilio Fernandez) on the head of Alfredo Garcia, the man who seduced and impregnated his daughter. Although the gritty film was universally panned (or perhaps the more accurate word is "reviled") by critics upon its release, it has since become a Peckinpah cult favorite. Much of the film consists of a desolate Mexican road trip on which Benny talks to a severed head he calls "Al." He carries it with him in a gunny sack. Beautiful Isela Vega plays Benny's whore/girlfriend, Elita, who is world weary in one scene, and then as innocent as a child in the next. There is no happily-ever-after in this film; it ends in a violent rampage. Not a film that will change your life, but it is nevertheless recommended as a rare, bizarre, extraordinary film experience.

G. Merritt November 13, 2007

Grime under your skin

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.
November 12, 2007

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