Alfredo Garcia is an extremely dark picture which I would claim is a man's journey through Purgatory on a quest for quick redemption, a journey that damns him even more. The portrait of an empoverished Mexico is almost hallucinatory (especially the bright day-for-night scenes), at once beautiful and decrepit. Pictures of landscapes and various locations are pasted to every wall, an impossible escape. Warren Oates plays the doomed hero of this buddy movie in which the buddy in question is a disembodied head, and there's even a scene where Oates rises from the grave. It all ends in a shoot-out in God's house.

A lowish-budget 70s Mexi-western that pushes the envelope in terms of gore and kitsch. Not my kind of movie, and yet I liked it. But why?

Sam Peckinpah had one true labor of love in his career, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was it. It might not be the kind of movie I would have made with a couple of million dollars and no studio interference, but it sure was a hell of a premise. The most admirable quality of the script is that it does not go where you think it’s going to go, nor does it end where you think it’s going to end. The shoot-em-ups and tough guy zingers may not be for me, but the setting, characters, and plot definitely were.

For a memorable journey, I’ll give Bring Me the Head… a 7.3/10.

Masterpiece!