Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

This dark and brutal film involves Benny, an American piano player in Mexico (played by Warren Oates) who gets involved with bounty hunters searching for the head of Alfredo Garcia. The head is worth one million dollars, because Garcia got the daughter of a very wealthy and powerful man, pregnant.

The film features plenty of Sam Peckinpah's trademark slow-motion violence in some very well-staged action set pieces. The cast (particularly Oates and Isle Vega, as his Mexican girlfriend) are good, and the film conjures up a powerful atmosphere of despair and casual cruelty and violence.

The film , however, features moments of genuine tenderness between Oates and Vega. Oates plays Benny as a man on the edge. Basically decent but forced to do some pretty horrible things to survive.

Reviled by critics on it's first release, this film will prompt some strong reactions in viewers. While not one of Peckinpah's best films, his enormous talent is still visible throughout this film.

Fmovies: It kills me the way the user comments on the IMDb are so often flooded with basic storyline information and/or outright spoilers. (i.e., "Warren Oates plays Benny, a drunken blah blah blah.") Everybody wants to be the next Roger Ebert (though God knows why.) "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia" is a title custom-designed to SAY ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE SAID. Tell me THAT title, tell me Warren Oates is in it, and I'm there. Granted, it's been a good 30 years, so some of the particulars of the story have leaked out. But read any other comments here, and you risk knowing more than you should the first time out with this one.

This movie flattened me. Desperation and flies, lots of flies. Yes, Peckinpah's films are violent. When I was a little kid in the early 70s, way before I was allowed to see movies like this, I knew of Peckinpah's reputation. Now I see that the violence herein is a total smokescreen, a sign of the times, a way to sell movie tickets. Human emotion is where these films are really at.

Peckinpah was Jim Thompson with a camera, and he told some great stories in a maverick style. Today's pre-fab, "hip" postmodern filmmakers are not worthy of a brutal, bizarre tale such as this. Sure, Kill Bill was a lot of fun - but the viewer hovers safely on the perimeter, like one flipping noncommittally (if enthusiastically) through the pages of a comic book. You will not be able to view Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia with such entertainment-value indifference. You'll be up all night typing (like me), or drinking, or doing whatever it is you do when your head is reeling from a true cathartic viewing experience.

I believe Sam Peckinpah to be one of the most underrated directors in modern American cinema. We praise Scorcese to the sky (albeit deservedly) for ultra-violent work like Taxi Driver, yet tend to dismiss Peckinpah as a shallow director of action film and westerns.

Nothing could be further from the truth. When I watch this movie, it reminds me of what movies are all about, it is instructive, it elevates the consciousness of the form, which tends to be a factor in all great art.

`Alfredo Garcia' actually has more in common with Cocteau's `Orphee' than action vehicles; like it's predecessor, it is an adaptation of the Orpheus myth, albeit more subtle. I'm not going to get exhaustive in analysis, but will highlight some of the most obvious metaphors and references:

The first blatant clue is early in the film, after Benny (Warren Oates) gets the contract to bring back Alfredo Garcia's head, he tells his girlfriend `this is our golden fleece, baby.' Orpheus, of course, was one of the Argonauts who accompanied Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece.

When Orpheus was killed, his head was torn off, yet it continued to sing. In the same way, it is Alfredo's head luring Benny to the sweet tune of $10K, enough to start a new life, enough to find happiness. (Note also, when Benny asks

But Benny is in fact himself Orpheus, Alfredo Garcia simply his double. To wit, Alfredo had been sleeping with Benny's woman; her love is split between the two of them. More obvious is the scene when the two hit men come into Benny's piano bar, showing him the picture of Alfredo and asking if he's knows his whereabouts. Benny's reply is `You got me.' (Note also the thematic foreshadowing in this scene when Benny ask the Gig Young character for his name and he replies `Fred C. Dobbs', the name of Humphrey Bogart's doomed character in `Treasure of Sierra Madre.')

Our introduction to Benny is as a jaded singer in a low rent piano bar in Mexico. However, like Orpheus, he is able to inspire even the pathetic patronage to sing with relish.

Orpheus was said to be able to tame even the wild beasts with his sweet lyre, and later in the film, when Benny finds himself in great jeopardy, having fallen under the power of two random psycho's in the badlands (great Kris Kristopherson cameo by the way,) he uses the guitar to overcome his captor, first lulling him with song, then bashing him with the instrument.

Like the doomed Orpheus and Euridice, before Benny can marry his true love, she is randomly killed. In the old myth, Euridice is slain by an actual snake, in this film, she it is human snakes, i.e. devious, treacherous men.

(As Benny returns, cracking up over the death of his lover, he beings talking to Alfredo's severed head, now rotting in the heat. Could this be a statement on the rotten reality of the materialistic American dream?) Regardless, the head is clearly `singing' to him, although now it may be a bitter song of regret.

I don't want to spoil the ending (which is far more true romance than Tarantino's screenplay and the subsequent film of the same name, if one is familiar with the Tristan & Isolde paradigm,) but suffice it to say, at `the gates of the underworld,' home free, Benny, like Orpheus cannot resist `looking back' at his departed lover, and bring about his ruin.

The opening to this film is indisputably one of the greatest in cinematic history. As

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia fmovies. At one point Warren Oates's character Bennie asks this, and it may or may not be a rhetorical question at this point in the film. By this time several people are dead, though more on the way, and he's lost the love of his life and any sense of self-worth. Then again, maybe he never had much of it anyway. But the question still stands- what was Alfredo Garcia ("Al" as his head is called by Bennie as he has him in the passenger seat of his car) really in the grand scheme of things?

He's bounty for El Jefe, a wealthy Mexican rancher who sees a scandal in his daughter becoming "involved" with the notorious Garcia, and asks not too bluntly to bring his head, period. This leads to Bennie becoming involved, who is basically a drifter barfly who plays piano and has it in him to want a lot of money really bad. Bad enough, as it turns out, to bring along Elita (Isela Vega) along for the ride to find the grave he's been buried in after a car accident. But, as it's not too surprising to see in a Sam Peckinpah film, a form of hell breaks loose...actually, when it comes down to it, a form of purgatory. The question, as one might gather watching the film, is more directed to the soul than anything; how much is life worth? It's incalculable, is Peckinpah's thesis, I think, and it's this aspect of how life can lose its value in an instant that gives his film allegorical lift.

It's not just a question of the loss of life that brings some of the most extraordinary parts of 'Alfredo Garcia'. This was one of Peckinpah's most personal projects- the only one he had final cut on- and here and there I got the sense that it's as much a nihilistic plunge into the blackest despair in murderous revenge as it is a pulp fiction kind of take on film-making itself. Peckinpah, therefore, is appropriately mimicked through Oates (it's easier to see after watching a documentary on the director, though even without that it's pretty clear this has to be based on someone), as a desperado who at first is fine with selling himself out, as it were, but then as his trip goes darker and more violent and without a slice of hope- with the money turning to moot as the casualties pile up- the worth of a job well done, or what a job entails, comes into question. Peckinpah dealt with a lot of s*** in the movie business, and one could perhaps make parallels to the gun-toting Mexicans on his trail, or even the men who he's supposed to report to with said head, as producers or studio execs.

But without all of this in mind, even as it adds a bit of fascination to how Benny's fate unfolds, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia works on the levels that Peckinpah's work at its best does: it reveals violence and murder as the most unglamorous, frighteningly quick and graphically empty thing known to man. And while Peckinpah isn't quite as successful as in the Wild Bunch of corralling a perfect array of the devastating effects of shoot-em-ups in his brand of subversion, he comes close to that same level of ironic exhilaration with Bennie's path.

He even does his best to fit in a depressing love story between Benny and Elita, as they can't leave one another but all the same Elita just can't understand why he needs to get that head. It doesn't help matters that she almost gets raped- in a one-of-a-kind scene involving Kris Kristofferson in a role unlike any other I've seen him in- and is ready to call off their engagement...until there's the i

First, I'm sure everyone commenting on this film has seen the documentary on Peckinpah, and the comments made by the film critics regarding this film. If I may quote one of the critics, and I'm sure you all agree "It's the one film of Peckinpah's that everyone tries to imitate". Even Tarantino does to some degree. I have issues with Quentin Tarantino from a cinematic and artistic point of view, but that is another review. Warren Oates' performance was flawless, as he actually assumes the identity Of Sam Peckinpah as a gesture of appreciation for gracing him with his first starring vehicle.

Warren Oates was taking Sam's journey for him, as Sam looked from behind the lens. This movie was Peckinpah at his best and his worst at the same time. The old Peckinpah themes are there; Mexico is the final frontier, where one can continue to be what he once was in a changing world, but eventually Mexico begins to change as well. As I said in my review of "Junior Bonner" (be sure to check it out, and get back to me)progress is the main antagonist in the lives of Peckinpah's characters.

Junior Bonner and Bennie (Oates' Character) have a common foe, the twentieth century, which is why we find Bennie in Mexico. The chance to improve his situation, and establish a solid relationship with his hooker girlfriend (played with tough sincerity by Isela Vega) arrives at a time in Bennie's life when he least expects it, but it's not as easy as it is set out to be. All he has to do is bring this head to "El Hefe", and at the last minute BAM!! Bennie grows a conscience. Along the way he loses his woman, and then just goes nuts, thus revealing "The Diseased Soul of Sam Peckinpah".

My favorite scene is actually the picnic, where Elita and Bennie discuss their future. Elita begs Bennie to ask her to marry her, he does and she begins to weep. The simple fact that he says it is a tender moment, and shows how the slightest thing can arouse a woman's emotions. Jerry Fielding's musical score, which successfully created the mood and atmosphere for "Straw Dogs" (my all time favorite Peckinpah film) is present, but very muted. Still, this may be the best scene of the film.

Sam Peckinpah finally had complete control to dictate the direction of this film; Free from the money men, and left to his own devices in Mexico where he felt at home. A lot of people say that Pat Garret and Billy the Kid was the last Peckinpah masterpiece, but I think Alfredo Garcia was the last one. It throws you off at the beginning with the horses, then all of a sudden a Corvette screeches by; This is the paradox that really signifies that "The West" is over, bringing Sam Peckinpah and his love for the west full circle.

The critics literally hated this film, but 30 years later because of it we have a Martin Scorcese, a Robert Rodriguez, and a Quentin Tarantino (yeah) to name a few, as well as achieving underground cult status. I'm proud to call "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" one of my favorite films.

I have to comment on this film, although I don't know how well I am able to address my feelings relating to it. I guess you can't blame me: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a bizarre, not-so-literate film. But the minute I saw the poster of the blood-stained hand holding a pendant, the title and Warren Oates in the headlining, I knew I was going to love this film. Now having seen it, I have only superlatives to say about it.

What makes Peckinpah's films so good in the first place is that even though they have a lot of graphic violence, it's not self-serving, brainless entertainment like Tarantino's or Rodriguez's films (not that I don't like them as well). Peckinpah makes a point with it all, especially in Straw Dogs and The Wild Bunch, and Al Garcia is no exception to that. Here Warren Oates is a man whose morals are challenged by greed and corruption around him, who loses everything he has and thus takes his shots on the bad guys who try to capitalise things they bear no emotional relationship to. Not that I could make sense everything of it; as said, this film is bizarre and surreal from start to finish, but somehow it grabs you and doesn't let go. Just as Ebert said, there's hidden meaning even in a severed, rotting head. Considering this film was made when Peckinpah was losing his credibility among Hollywood studios, I would say he wanted this film to be an allegory of a maverick director surviving in the Hollywood system.

How this film has remained only a film buffs' favorite, I don't know. I mean, come on, it has everything to be a crime/thriller classic: Peckinpah in the director's chair, Warren Oates at his best, truckloads of attitude and some jet-black comedy in lines such as "you guys are definitely on my s**t list now." A truly brilliant, brilliant film.