Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Too much of everything

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Great Film overall

Expected more

"Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" was one of the few films in which Sam Peckinpah had complete artistic control and is all the better for it. Warren Oates delivers another great performance as a slightly over-the-hill crook who is given the task of presenting the head of the title character to a powerful Mexican family after liasoning with American gangsters to initate the deal. The action is brutal as you would expect and Peckinpah doesn't disappoint.A masterpiece of filmmaking.

Warren Oates delivers the best performance of his cinematic career in director Sam Peckinpah's melodrama "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," co-starring Emilio Fernández, Helmet Dantine, Robber Webber, Gig Young, Kris Kristofferson, and Isela Vega. According to the Internet Movie Database, this R-rated, 112-minute, masterpiece represented the only film that Peckinpah ever possessed the distinction of final cut. Of course, like most Peckinpah parables, "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" is bloody, violent, and unintentionally funny. A suave gigolo—Alfredo Garcia—impregnates the daughter of a wealthy patron named El Jefe, and the scandalized father demands that somebody do as the title indicates. Everybody is suddenly on Garcia's trail, including a sleazy nightclub musician, Benny (Warren Oates of "Return of the Seven"), who fallen in love with a prostitute Elita (Isela Vega of "Barbarosa") who knew the person of interest. Meantime, El Jefe has authorized a group of Americans, headed up by Max (Helmut Dantine of "The Killer Elite"), to find that noggin. Max has two trigger-happy gay killers, Sappensly (Robert Webber of "10") and Quill (Oscar winning actor Gig Young of "They Shoot Horses, Don't They") to handle the business of getting the head. Eventually, Bennie finds out of the interest in Alfredo and persuades Elita to help him find the gigolo. Things turn out easy at first because Alfredo is already dead. Nevertheless, things suddenly turn complicated when Bennie is robbing Alfredo's grave and he is knocked unconscious by a shovel. As it turns out, two other Mexicans are going to claim the 'head' and take it back to El Jefe. When Bennie recovers with a headache, he discovers that he has been buried where Alfredo's grave is and Elita has suffocated to death because she had been buried alongside him. Later, Bennie tracks down these two dastards and kills them in a roadside shoot-out that Max's two bounty hunters Sappensly and Quill participate in and both die.Nothing about "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" is glorious. This is a personal film for Peckinpah, and he doesn't resort to the usual Hollywood bravura. During the first half of it, Bennie is pretty much a milquetoast musician, but he turns into a killer later on and handles himself well in a gunfire. Now that Bennie has gotten the head, he wants to know why prompted El Jefe to have it. Our Bennie gets nowhere. He shoots it out with Max and his bodyguards, and then he visits El Jefe to ask him the big question. When he doesn't get a response, Bennie drills the father and tries to careen out the gates, but he is brought down by an small army of riflemen. Initially, Peckinpah had asked James Coburn to portray Bennie, but Coburn turned him down. Warren Oates gives a soulful performance. Robert Webber and Gig Young as quietly sadistic as the two homosexual hit men. "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" is a strong, realistic film that is for the squeamish. Kris Kristofferson appears in a cameo as a rapist who barges in on Bennie and Elita when they are sitting down to a picnic.

Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is one the bleakest, most violent, and most depressing movies I have ever seen. It chronicles a cycle of violence and destruction that kills all who are sucked into it. There is no hero in this story, and no one remotely likable, with the exception of a middle aged whore. It was hated by critics and audiences upon its release, and I can't blame them. But I don't agree with them either. This is a good movie.It's not a good movie because it's easy to watch, or because we like the people in it, or because it carries some important message. If it even has a message, it's that nothing matters and everybody dies. It's a good movie because it is one of the most powerful expressions of disillusionment and nihilism ever produced. It's a good movie because it has no illusions about itself. It knows that it's about rotten people and wretched deeds, and refuses to shy away from the ugliness or make excuses for the things that happen. And it's a good movie because it's absolutely fascinating.The reason that anyone wants Señor Garcia's head is that he had the poor judgment to impregnate the daughter of a wealthy crime boss, who now offers a million dollars to the man who will deliver his head. There are many who wish to claim the bounty, but no-one knows where he is. No-one except Benny, a poor bartender who learned from his girlfriend that Alfredo is already dead and buried after a fatal car accident. Now all he has to do to claim part of that reward is dig up his old friend and cut off his head. Or so he thinks.At this point, the sheer futility and pointlessness of everything that will happen should be perfectly clear. A million dollars is being offered so that an evil old man can have his revenge, but what's the point if he's already dead? And it only becomes bitterer and more cynical from there. Benny never had anything against Alfredo. His girlfriend once loved the man. But if desecrating an old friend's grave will get him $10,000 then he'll do it. Because that head is his ticket out the slums. He's been stuck in a dead end existence without prospects, without hope, far too long to let anyone or anything stop him.And there will be many who try. Lots of people want that head. Some are driven by the same greed as Benny. Others have more personal reasons. But none of them will back down, and none of them have anything resembling scruples, or the slightest bit of mercy. And so the bullets will fly, and the body count will rise. And the fighting and killing will continue long after there's any reason for it, past the point where money is on the line, until anger and killing have become ends unto themselves.And that is what fascinates me. Most of the people who die in this movie didn't have to die. Benny didn't have to fight them. But he doesn't know how to stop fighting. He's lost too much, and his anger has consumed him utterly. When he started out he was already desperate, impatient, and unhappy, and as his journey becomes ever more miserable he's gotten closer to the edge, until killing is the only thing left to him.There's a section in the middle where he's retrieved the head and is driving back alone in his battered car. And the head is sitting in the car next to him, wrapped in bloody cloth and surrounded by files. And he's talking to it, almost shouting at it, telling it how none of this was worth it and it's his fault that so many have died. It's like the Wilson scenes in Castaway, only a hundred times more demented. And it stands out because it so perfectly sums up the madness, desperation, and sense of decay that permeate the entire film. It's just hard to believe that there can be a world that is so devoid of happiness or meaning, where so few people have so few morals, where the 'hero' will shoot a dead man "Just because it feels so good." And that Peckinpah can make it so engaging, and achieve such purpose out of futility, is the most amazing thing of all.

After the catastrophic production of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID, Sam Peckinpah finally got total autonomy from United Artists with the most unusual movie on his filmography.BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA is one hell of an alcohol-soaked, blood-drenched joyride through the beautiful countryside of Mexico. Believe it or not, this is a film that dares to be unapologetic and different for a personal reason. Unsung character actor Warren Oates delivers an outstanding performance as the shades-sporting piano player Bennie. The down-and-out American is hired by two eccentric hit men (Gig Young & Robert Webber) to do a murderous dirty deed for them: By delivering a slain gigolo's severed head to a wealthy land baron (Emilio Fernandez) for a cool million dollar bounty.Mexican actress Isela Vega is an earthy presence as the curvaceous songstress Elita. Kris Kristofferson is awesome as always in his all-too-brief role as an unnamed hippie biker. Morbid, repulsive and melancholic in its own passionate way of mixing dark comedy, buddy movie clichés and Shakespearian tragedy which mirrors Peckinpah's downward spiral. Considered by many admirers as one of his last true works, ALFREDO GARCIA is an iconoclastic work of not only American cinema but visceral cinema indeed.