Editing Sam Peckinpah (section)

===''Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia''===
{{main|Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia}}
In the eyes of his admirers, ''[[Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia]]'' (1974) was the "last true Peckinpah film." The director himself claimed that it was the only one of his films to be released exactly as he intended it. A project in development for many years and based on an idea by Frank Kowalski, Peckinpah wrote the screenplay with the assistance of Kowalski, Walter Kelley and Gordon Dawson. An alcohol-soaked fever dream involving revenge, greed and murder in the Mexican countryside, the film featured Bennie ([[Warren Oates]]) as a thinly disguised self-portrait of Peckinpah, and co-starred a burlap bag containing the severed head of a gigolo being sought by a Mexican patrone for having impregnated his young granddaughter. Bennie is offered a reward of ten thousand dollars for Alfredo's death or proof thereof, and Alfredo's head is demanded as proof the contract has been fulfilled. The macabre drama was part [[black comedy]], [[action film]] and [[tragedy]], with a warped edge rarely seen in Peckinpah's works. Most critics were repulsed, and it was listed in the book ''[[The Fifty Worst Films of All Time|The 50 Worst Films of All Time]]'' by Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss.{{sfn|Medved|pp=51–55}} One of the few critics to praise the film was [[Roger Ebert]], and the film's reputation has grown in recent years, with many noting its uncompromising vision as well as its anticipation of the violent black comedy of [[David Lynch]] and [[Quentin Tarantino]].{{sfn|Ebert review}} A failure at the box office, the film now has a cult following. In 1991, the [[UCLA]] film school's festival of great but forgotten American films included ''Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia''.{{sfn|Weddle|pp=492–498}}{{sfn|Simmons|pp=189–208}} It is reportedly [[Takeshi Kitano]]'s favorite film.