Mercenaries hunt for the elusive Alfredo Garcia, intending to deliver his severed head as proof that he's been eliminated in order to collect a million dollar bounty...
Sam Peckinpah — often referred to as "Bloody Sam" by fans and detractors alike — was in a peculiarly precarious position when he made this deeply personal film. Having been nominated for an Academy Award for The Wild Bunch (curiously, only for the script; his direction went without a nod), he secured a top spot in the film industry as a major filmmaker, but his difficult personality and struggles with alcohol, drug addiction and paranoia started to become more noticeable. His next film, the U.K.-lensed thriller Straw Dogs (1971), created a huge stir upon its release, but quieter vehicles like Junior Bonner and The Ballad of Cable Hogue went more or less unnoticed; an increasingly cynical Peckinpah came to the conclusion that audiences just wanted slow motion violence from him, and he may even have been right. The commercial and critical failure of his heavily compromised Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (an epic recut and basically rendered incomprehensible by its studio) embittered Peckinpah to such a degree that he decided to work outside the studio system in an attempt to regain creative control. Alfredo Garcia allowed him such control, though the peculiar, bordering-on-surreal end product left audiences cold and critics of the time shaking their fists with righteous indignation.
As one might gather from the title, the film is as close to a horror film as Peckinpah ever created. Lurid moniker to one side, however, the film isn't anywhere near as vicious or graphically gory as some of his other films. Instead, it wallows in an atmosphere of such seediness and squalor that one is ready to take a shower after viewing it. The story works as something of a pastiche of film noir conventions, with its put-upon protagonist (a brilliant turn by Warren Oates) subjected to one indignation and calamity after another. Along the way, he meets with a variety of bizarre characters, ranging from a pair of gay hitmen (Robert Webber and Gig Young) to a pair of motorcycle-riding rapists (one of them played by Kris Kristofferson), and is ultimately reduced to holding rambling, confessional conversations with a severed head. While the early section of the film derives from fun in its depiction of Oates as a wannabe tough guy, the narrative ultimately forces him to be more decisive and single-minded in his purpose, ultimately carrying himself with the steely determination of, say, William Holden's Pike in The Wild Bunch. Oates, in a rare leading role, gives an Oscar caliber performance here — he covers an amazing range of emotions in the space of less than two hours, effectively retaining a human edge to the character throughout. He makes for one of the most endearing protagonists of any of Peckinpah's movies, making one regret that the late actor hadn't been given more such opportunities in his all-too-short career. The supporting cast is impressive. Isela Vega is seductive and sympathetic as Oates' love interest. There's a believability and realism to Vega's performance that helps to give the film a human core. Robert Webber and Gig Young, surprisingly cast as gay assassins, play their roles with great strength and presence, resisting the urge to transform the characters into camp stereotypes. Kris Kristofferson also does a nice job in his cameo, though his sequence feels like an unnecessary digression.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a deeply personal project for Peckinpah. Those close to the director have remarked that Oates is basically playing Peckinpah — he mimics the external characteristics (mustache, dark glasses, mannerisms) while embodying something of the director's mercenary, nihilistic attitude. The film reflects a bitter and melancholy disposition, something which was by all accounts very much a part of its maker's psyche at the time. It is also something of a last hurrah for Peckinpah — a brooding, darkly humorous, deeply felt portrait of obsession that stands in stark contrast with the mostly indifferent work that would follow it (with the exception of the World War II drama Cross of Iron starring James Coburn, Maximilian Schell and James Mason, his remaining films never really hit the mark).
