BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

Out 8 july / CERT 18 / 112 mins

An opening scene of great pastoral beauty — a pregnant girl watches ducks on a lake while dipping her feet in the water — is immediately disrupted as she’s dragged before her tyrannical father and tortured to reveal the name of the runaway cowboy who knocked her up. the wrongness factor is strong throughout Sam Peckinpah’s divisive pulp masterpiece, where everything is at once off-key and perfect — from a preponderance of weird day-for-night scenes, to Warren Oates’ shambling, mumbling star turn as (of course) a romantic alcoholic trash artist (piano player in a Mexican hooker bar) maddened with grief by the loss of his earthmother hooker lover (Isela Vega), and talking to the rotting severed head he plans to deliver for an absurdly huge bounty. A gothic Western road movie, which winds up with several of Bloody Sam’s trademarked slo-mo massacres.