Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Alfredo Garcia is in many ways a film which detailed Peckinpah's fights with producers and the industry at large. Warren Oates puts in a towering central performance as Bennie (substitute Sam), a loser who argues that you don't lose all the time.

Like so many people in all walks of life, Bennie is used to life at the bottom but when the chance to rise above the hum-drum arrives and make a little easy money avarice clouds Bennie's judgement as he is given incentive to bring back the severed head of a stud who has deflowered a drug baron's young daughter. The head is regarded as symbolic retribution for this act in the eyes of El Jefe (the drug baron).

Oates mutters, laughs, drinks, screws and method acts his way through the film which wanders a little in the middle, but, for the most part is tight, darkly humourous and, of course, quite violent.

Once again, as in much of Peckinpah's work, an ordinary man is given enough rope to hang himself, reflect on his actions and eventually redeem himself through a bloody climax in which his own life is sacrificed.

The film was universally panned when it was released in 1974 but in the intervening years has acquired cult status. It is regarded by some as Peckinpah's darkest masterpiece and the combination of Oates's brilliant performance and the 1970s penchant for road movies has given it a lasting quality which reflects its era accurately and is further evidence, as if we needed it, that the Seventies were a golden era in terms of American cinema.