Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Moderately Trashy

Second part of the Scream triple feature, following Pretty Poison and preceding something else... actually, I think it was Furious Wolfman. I couldn't sell Mr. White on that one.

Anyway, we wanted to watch it coz I thought it was Bring me the Head of Jerry Garcia and I was going 'alright, somebody finally takes that ice cream guy down'.

The film follows a sleazebag (Warren Oates) who is hired to retrieve the head of Alfredo Garcia, I'm not really sure why. I missed the first ten minutes whilst cleaning up cat barf and Mr. White wasn't very helpful filling me in.

That didn't matter all that much, though. It was really more about Warren Oates and his hooker girlfriend (Isela Vega) on some kind of sleazy roadtrip.

About halfway through the movie I started thinking 'this has got to be Sam Peckinpah'. I've only ever seen one other Peckinpah movie (Straw Dogs), but something about the slow motion gun fights really clued me in there. Also, the nearly overwhelming level of grime on every surface.

It was a total guy movie and unbelievably sleazy (not that those two things are in any way related) but in an good sort of way. I did kind of enjoy it (maybe that's my masculine side taking over? Wouldn't be surprised...). Warren Oates was pretty good.

I kept thinking about, like, Quentin Tarantino though. I mean, he 'homages' pretty much every film ever made, but this movie in particular jumped out at me as being like Kill Bill or something.

Well. You know. Whatever. I liked this movie. It was amusing in an unpleasant sort of way. It was horrible and disturbing, actually, but something about a guy carrying a head around in a bag tickles me... just goes to show you how fucked up the North American viewer is.

END

Directed by: Sam Peckinpah. Written by: Sam Peckinpah & Gordon Dawson. Starring: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernandez, Kris Kristofferson.