Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Peckinpah’s reputation has grown considerably since his death in 1984. Indeed, in 2005, Leland Poague stated that, unlike contemporaries such as Polanski, Penn and Altman, ‘Peckinpah’s devotees are many, comprising an ad hoc army of loyal outlaws and garrulous misfits dwelling on the frontiers of academic film study’ (2005). In addition to David Weddle’s exhaustive biography “If They Move…Kill ‘Em!” The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah (1994), there have been a number of books published on the man and his work. A glance at some of these titles offers a good insight into the nature of Peckinpah’s cinema: Crucified Heroes, Bloody Sam, Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultra-Violent Cinema, Passion & Poetry, This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah. In addition, there are a number of documentary features focusing on his life and work, including Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron (Paul Joyce, 1992), Sam Peckinpah’s West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade, and Passion and Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah (Mike Siegel, 2005). There are also a number of unrelated films dedicated to the Old Sand Crab: Killer: A Journal of Murder (Tim Metcalfe, 1996), the bizarre Running Scared (Wayne Kramer, 2006) and Death Proof (2007), Quentin Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse double feature, which contains some explicit references to Peckinpah’s work.

Moviedrome (1988–2000) was the BBC2 series of cult movies, which has attained a cult following of its own in recent years: see the video-taped introductions to the show on YouTube and the number of websites that offer both nostalgic reminiscences and gratitude (such as a description of the show as ‘an extraordinary defence of sorts against the ugly, powerful and very ordinary hold of school’ and its ‘mission to educate a generation about the joys of lost or forgotten or once-derided films’ (Collings 2008)). The show’s first presenter was the filmmaker Alex Cox (who had offered his own scrappy homage to Peckinpah and Sergio Leone with Straight To Hell (1987)). In 1994, Alfredo Garcia was screened as part of a Peckinpah double bill (with Major Dundee). In his introduction, Cox confessed to an initial disappointment with Peckinpah’s film, seeing it as a let-down after the high of The Wild Bunch. However, in a journey familiar to many (including this writer), his opinion had changed over time.

This ongoing reassessment has led some to regard Alfredo Garcia as a major work, situated somewhere between his acknowledged artistic successes (such as The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs) and the underwhelming inconsistency of his later films (Convoy and The Osterman Weekend (1983)).

It is also worth considering the substantial cult that has sprung up around the star of the film, Warren Oates. He has been the subject of a documentary feature (the above-mentioned Across the Border) as well as a number of websites dedicated to the man and his films (the best-known being Warren Oates at tedstrong.com). In an essay about the actor, Melissa Holbrook Pierson talks of missing the man and ‘also missing the movies that made Oates what he became, the kind that are painted with a million shades of grey. It’s the kind of loss you never get over’ (1999). For Richard Luck, Oates was a creature of his turbulent times, a kind of Henry Fonda for the cynical, violent 1970s:

Peckinpah, too, is on MySpace with a number of other dead autuers among his friends including Fritz Lang, Yasujiró Ozu and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, while on Facebook, the director has 4,851 fans. These posthumous appearances on popular social networking sites point to the cult appeal of certain dead celebrities while also serving to unite a global community of fans. The fact that both the director and actor died young further boosts that cult appeal, an appeal in no way diminished by the perceived ‘outlaw status’ of these hard-drinking, grizzled men.

It is not too much of a stretch to regard Alfredo Garcia as a ‘cursed film’, the term coined by filmmaker, author and satanist, Kenneth Anger, to describe ‘films that feature stars who died soon after production was completed’ (Brottman 2008). Oates, Peckinpah, Gig Young and Jerry Fielding would all be dead within ten years of making this film, which is so suffused with death. Mikita Brottman also considers the fascination Anger and legions of cult fans have with ‘films involving one or more celebrities who took their own lives, all of which have come to attain an odd kind of cult status of their own’ (2008). She considers the ‘chicken-run’ car race in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) in the light of James Dean’s fatal 1955 crash but Gig Young’s performance as Sappensly is an even better example: it is impossible to ignore the eerie parallels between his role as a gun-toting misogynist killer and his final, real-life role as murderer and suicide.

Like a lot of cult movies (The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1958), Performance (Donald Cammell/Nicolas Roeg, 1970), The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)), the very qualities that led to the film’s initial failure are the ones that underpin its cult reputation. In the case of Alfredo Garcia, what critics saw as incompetence is now regarded by some as integrity. What could once be dismissed as self-indulgence can now be seen as a kind of demented autobiography. Indeed, it’s the scrappy inconsistency of Peckinpah’s film that, for aficionados, raises it above his other, not inconsiderable, cinematic achievements. This ‘low-fi’, dogged quality and the relentless nihilism of the thing make it seem untrammeled and uncompromising, in a way that has become familiar in the decades since (Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1975), punk, the New Queer Cinema, the films of Abel Ferrara). Indeed, one can argue that without Alfredo Garcia, there would be no Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990), no Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), no Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1996). It also has the cult appeal of a number of other works by noted directors that were either overlooked or scorned upon their release, such as Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960), Buffalo Bill and the Indians (Robert Altman, 1976), Eureka (Nicolas Roeg, 1982), King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983). Indeed, David Weddle has suggested that the film could be regarded as ‘a cult within a cult’ (1994: 498), referring to its unique status in the oeuvre of this most divisive of directors. The Internet database Rotten Tomatoes, where English-language film reviews are compiled, gives Alfredo Garcia a ‘Fresh Tomato Rating’ of 80%, reflecting this shift in critical thinking. However, even some of the positive responses will sound off-putting to many: ‘trashy’ (Delapa 2004), ‘bleak, purposely revolting and unsentimental’ (Schager 2005), ‘so much death and spiritual poison’ (Prince 1995: 151). Or how about Entertainment Weekly’s ‘not much of a plot … You feel like you need a delousing after watching Oates slowly lose his mind’ (Nashawaty 2006)? For Terence Butler, the film ‘has the strange distinction of being the worst directed of great American movies’ (1979: 9). The Third Virgin Film Guide regards the film as one of the director’s ‘more daring films’ and ‘one of cinema’s more perversely intriguing experiences’ but also acknowledges the ‘sloppy photography, a few unintentionally humorous scenes and an excess of Peckinpah’s signature slow-motion violence’ (Pallot et al. 1994: 102–3). Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice has looked back at the film twice in recent years, on both occasions offering evocative descriptions: it is ‘a rough-hewn black box of metaphors and existential funk you can never finish unpacking’ (2000) and ‘a violent hope-deprived neo-noir that even the Nixon era couldn’t handle’ from ‘the underworld demon king of masculine genre angst and the world’s first genuine action craftsman’ (2005). For Rick Moody, ‘there’s a desperation‘ to the film although he acknowledges that ‘it is hard to turn away from it. Train wrecks, after all, offer a visceral satisfaction, if only for their scale’ (2009). Critic Elvis Mitchell, in Sam Peckinpah’s West, suggested that the film should be called ‘Bring Me the Diseased Soul of Sam Peckinpah’, while Phil Nugent suggests ‘it gives you a one-of-a-kind heady rush taking the popular idea of not giving a fuck as far as it can go – farther than most people who claim to be attracted to the idea of not giving a fuck would ever dream of going’ (2005).

It is surely fitting that a film as boozy and ramshackle as Alfredo Garcia has no staged events or conventions a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975). It seems perverse to get together and celebrate such a bleak vision of dust and death. It is also by no means rehabilitated, unlike many other ‘problematic’ films, such as Freaks (Tod Browning, 1933), The Night of the Hunter or Performance, that have now taken their place in ‘the canon’. It remains a film that thrills, provokes and bores in equal measure, lionised on obscure websites and referenced by obsessive fans, artists and poets, those whom Leland Poague called ‘outlaws and misfits’.

And always that title. It provides a running joke on the Radio 4 panel game, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue (1972–present), inspired the title of pap such as the lame Brit-com Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis (John Henderson, 1997) and the television show Bring Me the Head of Light Entertainment (1997).

In recent years, a number of critics have challenged the conventional notion that Peckinpah went into terminal decline after Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Mark Crispin Miller, Steven Prince and Gabrielle Murray have all written persuasive defences of late Peckinpah in general and Alfredo Garcia in particular. Paul Seydor called it ‘the grimmest, the bleakest, the funniest, and the most horrifying of his films. People will look back on us and wonder how we failed to understand Alfredo Garcia’ (in Weddle 1994: 498).

However, this revisionist view is not one shared by everyone and a number of critics still seem to regard the film as the point at which Peckinpah came undone. Gene Shalit, when asked by Time magazine to name the worst film he had ever seen, suggested the Pauly Shore comedy Encino Man (Les Mayfield, 1992) or Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, adding ‘I had to go to the emergency room after each one’ (in Orecklin 1998). Halliwell’s Film & Video Guide calls it a ‘gruesome, sickly action melodrama with revolting detail: the nadir of a director obsessed with violence’ (in Walker 2001:114). Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide 1999 considers it ‘a sub-par bloodbath [which] doesn’t even have the usual Peckinpah fast pace’ (1998: 175). Even Weddle seems ambivalent about the film. In his biography of Peckinpah, he acknowledges the growing cult around Alfredo Garcia but doesn’t seem to belong to it himself: he devotes seventy pages to the making and reception of The Wild Bunch and six-and-a-half to Alfredo Garcia (in a chapter titled, appropriately enough, ‘Into the Abyss’; see 1994: 307–77, 492–8). Interviewed for Sam Peckinpah’s West, he suggests that the film ‘seems to sail way beyond definitions of good or bad, [it’s] a genuine work of art, a completely demented movie’.

In January 2009, the film was given a limited theatrical re-release in the UK, the centrepiece of a BFI Peckinpah retrospective. This time, the reviews were largely positive, although tempered with characteristic ambivalence, possibly as a result of the film’s growing cult reputation. John Patterson in the Guardian, for example, talks of ‘the narrative slackness …lazily directed scenes and no shortage of evidence that Peckinpah just didn’t care anymore’ while acknowledging that ‘the film’s power is undeniable: stark, nihilistic, overbearingly macho and undeniably misogynistic’ (2008). Edward Porter in the Sunday Times states that it combines ‘maudlin, drunken self-pity’ with ‘all the sleazy virtues of a good 1970s exploitation flick’ (2009), while in its sister paper, the Times, long-time Peckinpah admirer Kim Newman dubs it ‘the essence of cinematic pulp … a ragged, not-for-everyone masterpiece’ (2009). Electric Sheep magazine summed it up as ‘like Peckinpah himself, a mixture of the very, very good and the very, very bad’ (Long 2009) while for Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times, it ‘makes Peckinpah’s early benchmark essay in violence, The Wild Bunch, look like a mild stroll in an abbatoir’ (2009).

The Internet is a boon to those studying film reception, making, as Mike Chopra-Gant suggests ‘fans’ activities and discussions … more available for analysis’ (2008: 19), allowing ‘fans across the world to communicate with each other’ (Jancovich et al. 2003: 4) as part of ‘a large niche audience’ (ibid.) The fan-sites and talk boards that proliferate on the web offer, for the first time, access to a wide range of opinions, hyperbole, bile and bad grammar, in large part due to the (relative) lack of gatekeepers and tastemakers found in the ‘traditional’ media. However, there is some equivocation about the way new technologies such as the Internet affect cult fandom. For Mark Jancovich et al., the web ‘threatens the sense of distinction and exclusivity … on which cult movie fandom depends, and threatens to blur the very distinctions that organise it’ (2003: 4) while for Michael Z. Newman, the easy access to films offered by video, DVD and the Internet ‘makes the cult mode of film experience much more typical, more available to more viewers’, rendering that which was once marginal ‘more of a mainstream practice’ (2008). Writing about the role played by the Internet in promoting The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick/Eduardo Sanchez, 1999), J. P. Telotte discusses Paul Virilio and his notion of ‘glocalization’, wherein ‘the electronic experience … with its tendency to bring together many and different places … also leaves us without a real place – decentred and lost’ (2003: 272).

There is, of course, a considerable irony about Peckinpah’s presence on the web. His films are full of a hatred for the new: the director once stated that he detested machines: ‘The problem started when they discovered the wheel’ (quoted in Seydor 1980: 250). Think of the way the automobile is used as a torture device in The Wild Bunch, or the way it puts Cable Hogue first out of business and then in the ground. Consider the wacky satire of television and the surveillance society in The Osterman Weekend. This hatred of all things new went way beyond the Luddite: Peckinpah frequently presents children as possessors of a lack of innocence bordering on the malign: burning the scorpion and ants in The Wild Bunch, swinging on the hangman’s noose in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and, in Alfredo Garcia, flocking round the bounty-hunters who buy them ice cream, picking up the gun next to El Jefe’s corpse and watching blankly as the guards pump bullets into Bennie.

The large amount of online material on Alfredo Garcia is illuminating, partly in the way it highlights a disconnect between print media and web resources. The Internet material is almost exclusively provided by men, unlike the published work by writers including Kathleen Murphy, Pauline Kael and Gabrielle Murray. It is also frequently aggressively partisan, emphasising the ‘purity’ of Peckinpah’s film over the work of other, more celebrated directors while rejecting textual analysis in favour of evocative analogies (tomatoes, toothache and, unsurprisingly, booze). But, as in the case of the mainstream media, the film retains its ability to provoke, upset, bore and ultimately divide audiences.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a good indicator as to both to the enduring appeal of Peckinpah’s film and its aforementioned divisive nature. At the time of writing (summer 2008), there are 81 user reviews. Some are glowing: ‘it sits at the same table as the greats, perhaps across the way from Citizen Kane or Raging Bull’ (sothisislife, Southern CA); some are damning: ‘I haven’t been able to make it all the way through, but its been a painful experience so far. I’ll bet that most people seeing this movie won’t make it past the first half hour. Its [sic] that unwatchable’ (eman6101, USA); some are off-beat: ‘reminds me of biting into a ripe tomato -- messy and intensely satisfying (if you like tomatoes)’ (Jason Forestein, Somerville, MA). Taken as a whole, these comments offer a useful glimpse into the aforementioned mindset of the online cult film audience: passionate, aggressive, committed and insulting. Other directors (Paul Verhoeven, Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Rodriguez) are compared to Peckinpah and found wanting. Some of the descriptions are poetic: ‘the screen practically sweats’ (Flixer1957, Columbia County, NY); ‘This movie flattened me. Desperation and flies, lots of flies’ (sinistre1111, Kasparhauser, NJ); ‘this scuzzy, squirrelly road movie looks less like self-parody than self-autopsy … Each cut is like a dying man’s blink’ (Superfly-13). Peckinpah is compared to Jean Cocteau (mikenuell, El Dorado, USA) and Shakespeare (KFL, Bloomington, IN).

Some of the users seem to take what they perceive as the film’s shortcomings personally: ‘beware, this film is slow, boring and at times just plain stupid. I’m surprised that there are so many scholars and authors out there who examine each Peckinpah film in such in-depth detail when the film is just plain bad and has no cinematic quality to it whatsoever’ (James_Bond_007_218, Wellington, New Zealand); ‘Only for people who think they see things in movies other [sic] don’t or provide subtext and symbolism which they pretend the director intended to show to satisfy their elitist egos. I am a director too. Cinema is visual. Directors don’t try to hide things. We are subtle but not evasive. I hate this movie and I loved Convoy’ (Raskimono). The cult movie audience is often regarded as a boy’s club and this, when combined with the ’macho’ tag that is often attached to Peckinpah’s films, leads to Isela Vega being frequently judged on her appearance, far more than any of the male performers: ‘Isela Vegas [sic] playing the female lead, added only two things to the film: her breasts, which she wasn’t shy about showing’ (ccthemovieman-1, Lockport, NY); ‘a [sic] aging, crab infested girl friend’ (manchesteruk, Manchester, UK); ‘the choice of a looking-next-door-girl [sic] [Vega] to play a professional prostitute is a flaw of the movie’ (pzanardo, Padova, Italy). The talk boards of the IMDb have seven pages of comments on the film, from discussions of DVD aspect ratios to repeated questions about Bennie’s/Sam’s glasses: ‘where can I get sunglasses like those in the film?’ (pr0fessional@hotmail.com) and ‘what kind of sunglasses was Warren Oates wearing?’ (Nostalgiadrag).

The boards also, unsurprisingly, spend a lot of time arguing the merits of this still-contentious film. It is described as ‘a masterpiece’ (narliecharlie) and ‘a boring piece of shit movie’ (who_wants_a_pony); ‘the ultimate Sam Peckinpah film’ (teejay6682) and ‘the worst film ever made’ (Mar-cinema). There are also posts on subjects ranging from costume (gigyoung11 notes how ‘Benny [sic] accidentally pulls off his clip-on tie when tucking away the fronted money into his off-the-rack-leisure jacket’) to Isela Vega (deleted user asks ‘anyone else think the girl was beautiful?’) and that nemesis of Peckinpah admirers, Michael Medved (‘a prissy, obnoxious, self-righteous asshole’ according to Irving-Joey while to kimberleymhn, he’s ‘a joke’). Self-explanatory threads include ‘Was Alfredo Garcia really the baby’s father?’ (clive-ihd); ‘CINEMA PSYCHOSIS’ (uscmd); ‘were Quill and his partner gay?’ (will the redneck); and ‘Greatest Drinking Movie Of All Time’ (originaltbyrd).

It’s much the same story on the Amazon website. Out of eleven user reviews, five like the film, six don’t. As is par for the course, even some of the positive reviews sound like bad ones: ‘Best enjoyed with a bottle of Jack Daniels … the grimmest vision of humanity ever created’ (Stephen B. Hughes, Merrimac, USA, 12/08/2003); ‘an alcoholic suicide note found in a sleazy motel bed … It will not make you feel good’ (Eric Krupin, Salt Lake City, Utah, 01/03/01); ’you may feel a little queasy placing this video on your shelf alongside your Lawrence of Arabias or your Seventh Seals. It is not only not a classic (and will never be one), it is informed by one of the most disgusting visions of life since Sade … A black, bitter movie to be savored late at night with the poison and people of your own choosing’ (A Viewer, 3/07/2000). There are unqualified raves, however: ‘My favorite Peckinpah film. Yeah, you heard me right. This is the one where we can clearly perceive Sam flying of [sic] the deep end, and yet it is still some kind of graceful ugly crazy masterpiece’ (newmanmonster999, Berkeley, CA, USA, 20/02/2006); ‘This is a brilliant & riveting movie with terrific acting, terrific pace, terrific ending, terrific everything … as real as a toothache or a dying best friend … There are so many amazing layers & textures & details in this great film, you’ll watch it many times, believe me’ (inframan, the lower depths, 16/10/2005).

The bad reviews, however, are really bad, most of them every bit as vitriolic as the critical response that initially greeted the film: ‘Easily Peckinpah’s worst film and one of the worst American movies of the seventies. It marked the beginning of the director’s decline into booze-and-drug self-absorption from which he never emerged’ (A Viewer, 3/05/2004); ’It’s been 30 years since I’ve seen this film on cable. I decided to re-visit this obscure film and see if I missed anything in the initial viewing. As it turned out, I didn’t miss anything … It’s also a long, tedious film that is not one of his best’ (smooth-jazzandmore, Clay, NY, USA, 29/01/2007); ‘It totally failed my expectations … What I got was a farce. The plot is basic and uninteresting, no real hooks and horrible characterization. What a joke of a plot. I think Peckinpah just wanted an excuse to throw in as much violence as possible, albeit violence which has no cause, rhyme or reason’ (Garth, Columbus, OH, 9/01/2006); ‘This movie is BAD. Very, very BAD. It’s like real life: long, boring, and pointless. I wish I could find something nice to say about it, but … Geez, is it dull … It’s just a bunch of mean, ugly people doing mean, ugly things to each other. Pointless. Dumb characters. Dumb story. Dumb climax. Dumb movie’ (Mojo Jojo 26/12/2006); ‘As bad as the title sounds. Very bad photography, acting, cheap nudity and dialogue with plenty of bad effects of shootings and killings. I sure can say that this is one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time’ (W. Noshie, 15/12/2005); ‘Possibly the worst film ever made. This film was made when Peckinpah was stoned while on the set most of the time, and it shows … Basically, this film is a waste of the viewers’ time, as all Peckinpah spends his time doing is figuring out different ways to disrobe the female lead. Forget the plot, as there really isn’t one. Suffice to say, if you watch this film, you’ll see why Peckinpah had the final cut taken away from him on all his other films. BTW, the only reason I give this film one star is that it’s the lowest I could go’ (M. Fisher, Yukon, Oklahoma, USA, 3/12/2005).

Even self-confessed aficionados of cult films demonstrate considerable ambivalence towards Peckinpah’s film. On the Internet discussion forum alt.cult-movies, one poster says ‘I watched this film again the other night for about the fifth time and I still dont [sic] know whether it is a good movie or not … some of the film just doesn’t make sense (mnbc6jeh, 1996), while another agrees: ‘I don’t know whether I like it or not either. It works very well on a technical level and it does have a nice plot line, but its [sic] just a bit difficult to watch and very hard to truly understand’ (D. Fresko, 1996). Other posters describe it as ‘bleak. That’s the word, bleak’ (Mary Virginia Burke, 1998) , having the ‘best “omigod, I want out” feel this side of Italiozombie flicks … Existential subtext to spare’ (Christopher M. Stangl, 1998) and being ‘very very seedy. If you prefer your cinema violent and ugly then this is your cup of tea’ (Karl Lyons, 1998).

There are dozens of reviews on film websites and they are almost uniformly positive, reflecting both the ongoing critical re-evaluation of the film and the fact that a large number of film e-zines and fan-sites celebrate the off-beat, the cult and the non-mainstream: witness, for example, the Abel Ferrara Virtual Library, at least four Harmony Korine fan-sites and a fan-site for and numerous interviews with Monte Hellman, all figures not particularly well-served by traditional print media. While these specialised reviewers often take great pains to contextualise Peckinpah’s film, invoking such disparate figures as Lyndon Johnson, Brian De Palma and Jesus Christ, their comments are no less impassioned or impressionistic. It is striking how, like the user comments quoted above, so many of these writers resort to visceral imagery: shit, pain, grime, sleaze.

There are Alfredo Garcia pieces on a number of evocatively-titled sites: for Not Coming to a Cinema Near You, it is ‘a graphic spin on the road movie … we’re also given a strong study in the workings of a human mind’ (Balz 2006), while Crushed by Inertia considers it:

Combustible Celluloid calls it ‘dreamy, dreary … one of the director’s best … Oates’ antihero is among the loneliest men in the cinema, and one of its greatest performances’ (Anderson 2005), while for LazyBastard.com it is ‘sweet, sweet, sweet … bizarre, beautiful and savage. Comparing the film to an imaginary film noir collaboration between David Goodis and Charles Bukowski and Oates to ‘Tom Waits at his booziest’, Jeff Lester concludes ‘you couldn’t have paid me to hang around Peckinpah while he was alive but I sure wish there was someone around who could make ‘em like this’ (1998). This Savage Art has a Sam Peckinpah blog-a-thon and their piece on Alfredo Garcia is good on the fan response, undoubtedly hyperbolic (casting the director as a kind of Christ figure, no less) but also sincere: ‘I don’t think there is another director living or dead who actually personified every frame of the films they directed. He was a Hollywood legend and he suffered both physically and mentally because of it. It didn’t matter, what was on the screen was everything. That is with us forever’ (Speruzzi 2007). The Spinning Image emphasises the ambivalent response to the film, calling it ‘obsessively sleazy … the action moves at a snail’s pace’ and concluding ‘it’s a wild-eyed, staggering ramble of bloodshed; some have found bleak, grimy poetry in the film, but the presentation is so unfriendly that only Peckinpah true believers need apply’ (Clark 2008). On The High Hat, Phil Nugent borrows a striking analogy from a former US President:

There is also a lengthy article on the film by Stephen Boone on the blog Big Media Vandalism, which is significant for the way it seeks to reclaim the film for what it calls ‘minority filmmakers’. Describing it as ‘the saddest, strangest hood movie ever made’, Boone suggests that while Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983) is a recurring motif in the work of many hip-hop artists and filmmakers, it ‘hasn’t a tenth as much to say about the festering (North) American dream as Alfredo Garcia’. He considers the representation of women and Mexico, describing the film as an ‘unintentional time capsule full of lessons for future generations of genre-loving, nihilism-baiting underclass auteurs’. His case for the film’s relevance is worth quoting in full:

YouTube, the video-sharing site, contains a number of Peckinpah-related clips, some official (film clips, trailers) and some amateur, made by fans. These clips offer fans a chance to ‘personalise’ a favourite film: sometimes re-editing and re-scoring it in much the same way as authors of ‘slash fiction’ have done in print for years. At the time of writing (October 2008), visitors to the site can see the trailer, the opening, the gun battle with the Garcia family, the shoot-out at the hotel and the end of the film. One can even watch the film, downloading it in ten-minute segments. There is also a homemade music video featuring clips from Peckinpah films including Alfredo Garcia, set (somewhat incongruously) to the music of Linkin Park.

The impenetrable (at least to this writer) net-based educational art project, Cosmic Baseball Association, have based a virtual game on Alfredo Garcia, setting characters against actors. The website reports that the game ‘was devoid of violence, misogyny, and nihilism, all words used to describe the film’. The game notes report that the actors won and concludes that ‘No doubt the romance with Peckinpah will continue’ (2007). Just as Peckinpah’s film is often considered to have poetic aspirations, so, conversely, we can find poetry that aspires to Peckinpah’s film: ‘What we need in american [sic] poetry is a poet who can bring us the rotting head of Alfredo Garcia which is really the rotting head of american [sic] poetry covered with all of its stink and all of its scum and all of its shit. Someone who can bring back the rotting head of american [sic] poetry so that it can receive a decent burial’. That is Todd Moore from his 2006 Outlaw Poetry page. It comes as no surprise that the divisive nature of Alfredo Garcia even affects outlaw poets, as Karl Koweski’s posted reply demonstrates: ‘Sam Peckinpah hated people and his raging ego didn’t allow him to collaborate with people very long. And Bennie was machine-gunned to death shortly after delivering Alfredo Garcia’s head’ (2006). The Fauxhunter site, set up to expose Internet scams, was set up by an Alfredo Garcia: ‘my father was called Garcia and he thought it was a good joke to name me from [sic] a dumb movie that I haven’t even seen yet but everyone keeps shouting ‘bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia’ at me. Haha’ (2004–06).