Just wondering if there are any Peckinpah fans here. At the moment he’s my favorite director, and I consider The Wild Bunch one of the greatest movies ever, if not the greatest.
The Wild Bunch remains my favorite western (Mann’s The Man from Laramie coming a close second), but Sam also did the masterpiece Ride the High Country, the vastly underappreciated Junior Bonner, and the one-of-a-kind Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, all well-worth viewing. I’ve never seen The Ballad of Cable Hogue but that has its champions as well (though I can’t say I’m a much an admirer of Pat Garrett as some are)
Oh, and welcome to the SDMB! 
The Ballad Of Cable Hogue is a nice change of pace from his more violent films. Funny, tender, sentimental even; not what most people would expect from Peckinpah. It’s not quite as good as Junior Bonner, but it’s certainly worth seeing. I do have to agree with ArchiveGuy about Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, to me it always felt disjointed and cobbled together.
And welcome aboard!
Anyone seen Straw Dogs? Dustin Hoffman, set in a backward and remote community in England. The movie is interestingly paced, getting gradually more and more menacing, and ultimately - and more quickly - more and more violent. (In that structural respect, perhaps a little bit like Kubrick’s The Shining.) Not a video for the kids on Christmas Day, let’s put it that way.
Also Monty Python’s “Salad Days directed by Sam Peckinpah” (Salad Days being an old corny play often performed by amateur dramatic groups - a bunch of young people playing tennis and playing piano.) The MP “Peckinpah” version has people losing their hands to crashing piano lids and being impaled on tennis rackets, blood everywhere.
The Getaway.
For those who didn’t like Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, did you see the original theatrical cut, or the 12 min. directors cut. Because I recently saw the director’s cut and thought it was great. (If your not sure which you saw, I think the director’s cut opens with editing going back and forth between Pat Garrett’s death in 1908 and Fort Summner in 1880. btw one of the best openings ever).
Cross of Iron!
I think someone once called him the “poet of violence.” I’ll fully agree with anyone who steps up and says that John Woo is an apt student of Peckinpah.
What they both have in common is unusual pacing, a prescient eye for star talent, both emerging and declining, and a willingness to go completely over the top on violence. One can mark the end of the original Western with William Holden using some poor woman as a human shield.
You want to see the warped vision of Peckinpah? Look no further than the scene where Gloria from All in the Family taunts her husband, Howard Sprague from The Andy Giffith Show in The Getaway. Fucking wrong, man, especially then.
toptoptop
I’ve read about the different versions of Pat Garrett in Peckinpah: The Western Films. IIRC, the version I saw on TV years ago had some of the scenes that the book said were cut from the theatrical version, but not all of them.
I saw Straw Dogs in high school, a very unnerving and disturbing movie. And that’s why it’s great.
I would have liked Cross Of Iron more if I had not already read the book, it was so much better, IMO.
Osterman Weekend, The (1983) Sucked.
Convoy (1978) Ungodly bad.
Cross of Iron (1977) Quite Decent.
Killer Elite, The (1975) Bleh.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) Ug.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) Duller than dull.
Getaway, The (1972) Boooooorrrrrrrrrring.
Junior Bonner (1972) Made CONVOY look like MASTERPIECE THEATER
Straw Dogs (1971) Very Good
Ballad of Cable Hogue, The (1970) Good
Wild Bunch, The (1969) Unspeakably slow and lame
Major Dundee (1965) Not bad
Ride the High Country (1962) Quite dull
I guess you can post two a nearly four year old thread …
I’ve been watching the recently released “extended” versions of a couple of his films that have commentary by 3 Peckinpah scholars.
I had never seen Cable Hogue before… it was different and quite good.
I had only seen parts of Major Dundee and it wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I had remembered.
Until I saw Convoy on cable a few weeks ago, I thought Peckinpah could do no wrong. I was wrong.
Convoy has the double threat of Kris Kristofferson and Ali McGraw. I doubt any movie could survive that, even with a good script, and Convoy didn’t have a good script. “You really love this truck, don’t you?”
On the other hand, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was named in that stupid golden turkey book as one of the worst films ever made, but it’s one of my favorites. (It also suffers from Kris Kristoffersonness, but thankfully in a small role. Also, it benefits from Warren Oatesness.)
Along with Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, it’s one of the finest deconstructions of the Western genre, and an exciting film in its own right. The ultra-cool opening scene, the shootout in the town with its precocious snap-cutting, the hijacking, the bridge demolition, and the pentultimate facedown in the General’s arena–with a Mexican standoff moment that Quentin Tarantino would give his left testicle to own–contrast nicely with the quite introspective moments between Holden and Borgnine. Michael Mann essentially retooled this film (as well as conflating a few elements from his first feature, Thief) in order to make his masterpiece of crime, Heat. If you watch the films one after the other the similarities, whether intentional or otherwise, are glaring–the opening scene, the back and forth play of DeNiro and his crew, his intricate planning, the way he sneaks in under the noses of the cops to do the bank job, and especially the way that both Holden and DeNiro’s characters have their end-of-career heist and the ability to walk away, clean, yet throw it away for one last nihilistic showdown.
I think you misread. He said The Wild Bunch, not The Brady Bunch. 
Stranger
Well, until this zombie gets shot in the head, I’ll chime in.* Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia* is in my lifetime topten list. *The Wild Bunch *is definitely a masterpiece, but it’s just not my favorite movie. I still need to see Pat and Billy.
Ride The High Country is, to me, an almost perfect movie. I was so glad it finally made it to DVD. Perfect cast, perfect performances, beautiful scenery…it has it all.
The Wild Bunch is right up there. Major Dundee is flawed, but interesting as a precursor to Bunch.
Funny anecdote about Dundee: Charlton Heston offered to give up his salary if Sam would get the funding and time to finish and cut the film his way. The studio took it. When asked if he thought this gesture would set a precedent in Hollywood, Chuck replied “Hell, it isn’t even going to set a precedent with me!”
Further to that anecdote… apparently despite taking Heston’s salary they still didn’t fulfill their end of the bargain.