Date and Time
- Friday, Mar 28, 2025 7pm
Details
Badly burned by MGM’s mishandling of PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID, Sam Peckinpah decamped to Mexico to make the low-budget, madcap mindblower BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA — according to Peckinpah, the only one of his films with a final cut to his liking. Local crime lord “El Jefe” (legendary Mexican filmmaker Emilio Fernández) issues the titular demand, offering a $1 million bounty, after discovering that his former protégé Garcia has impregnated his teenage daughter Theresa. Ex-U.S. Army officer Bennie (Warren Oates), slumming it as a piano player in a Mexico City dive bar, decides to pursue the bounty, motivated less by the cash than the fact that his lover Elita (Isela Vega) was also involved with Garcia. What follows is a surreal quest, punctuated by hallucinatory interludes and whiplash reversals of fortune, nihilistic violence, pitch black comedy and obsessive romanticism. Oates’ steely performance and sardonic humor are imbued with a shabby charisma — a characterization reputedly modeled on Peckinpah himself.
