# Any Sam Peckinpah fans here? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 23, 2002, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244 "2002-04-23T23:55:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DaPearl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@DaPearl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaPearl)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2002, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/1 "2002-04-23T23:55:11Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/2 "2002-04-24T00:06:23Z")
_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! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/3 "2002-04-24T00:42:54Z")
_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! ---
**Author:** ![Hemlock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Hemlock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hemlock)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/4 "2002-04-24T01:02:01Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/5 "2002-04-24T01:09:47Z")
The Getaway. ---
**Author:** ![DaPearl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@DaPearl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaPearl)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/6 "2002-04-24T03:47:58Z")
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). ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2002, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/7 "2002-04-24T03:52:19Z")
_ **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. ---
**Author:** ![DaPearl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@DaPearl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaPearl)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2002, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/8 "2002-04-25T00:27:00Z")
toptoptop ---
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2002, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/9 "2002-04-25T01:32:43Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8baadc/32.png) [@Kang\_and\_Kodos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kang_and_Kodos)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/10 "2002-05-01T08:21:56Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2006, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/11 "2006-02-20T11:39:57Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2006, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/12 "2006-02-20T12:02:10Z")
Until I saw _Convoy_ on cable a few weeks ago, I thought Peckinpah could do no wrong. I was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2006, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/13 "2006-02-21T02:20:38Z")
_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.) ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2006, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/14 "2006-02-21T02:43:11Z")
> [@DaPearl](#): > > 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. 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. > [@Kang and Kodos](#): > > Wild Bunch, The (1969) Unspeakably slow and lame I think you misread. He said _The Wild Bunch_, not _The Brady Bunch_. 😛 Stranger ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2006, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/15 "2006-02-21T02:48:04Z")
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._ ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2006, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/16 "2006-02-21T03:03:26Z")
_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**!” ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2006, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-sam-peckinpah-fans-here/105244/17 "2006-02-21T10:19:11Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > - > > 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.