Taglines: Why is his head worth one million dollars and the lives of 21 people?
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia movie storyline. A family scandal causes a wealthy and powerful Mexican rancher to make the pronouncement–‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia!’ Two of the bounty-hunters thus dispatched encounter a local piano-player in their hunt for information.
The piano-player does a little investigating on his own and finds out that his girlfriend knows of Garcia’s death and last resting place. Thinking that he can make some easy money and gain financial security for he and his (now) fiancée, they set off on this goal. Of course, this quest only brings him untold misery, in the form of trademark Peckinpah violence.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Spanish: Tráiganme la Cabeza de Alfredo García) is a 1974 Mexican-American neo-Western[4] film directed by Sam Peckinpah, co-written by Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson from a story by Peckinpah and Frank Kowalski, and starring Warren Oates and Isela Vega, with Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernández and Kris Kristofferson in supporting roles.
Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Alfredo García was, so Peckinpah claimed, the only one of his films released as he had intended. The film was a box office and critical failure at the time, but has gained a new following and stature in the decades since.
About the Story
Teresa, the pregnant teenage daughter of a powerful Mexican crime lord known only as El Jefe (Spanish for ”The Boss”), is summoned before her father and interrogated as to the identity of her unborn child’s father. Under torture, she identifies the father as Alfredo Garcia, whom El Jefe had been grooming to be his successor. Infuriated, El Jefe offers a $1 million bounty to whoever will “bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia”.
The search progresses for two months. In Mexico City, a pair of business suit-clad, dispassionate hit men, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), enter a saloon and encounter Bennie (Warren Oates), a retired U.S. Army officer who makes a meager living as a piano player and bar manager. The men ask about Garcia, believing they will have more luck getting answers out of a fellow American. Bennie plays dumb, saying the name is familiar but he doesn’t know who Garcia is.
It turns out that everyone in the bar knows who Garcia is; they simply don’t know where he is. Bennie goes to meet his girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), a maid at a ghetto motel. Elita admits to having cheated on Bennie with Garcia, who had professed his love for her, something Bennie refuses to do. Elita informs him that Garcia died in a drunk-driving accident the previous week.
Excited by the possibility of making money by simply digging up the body, Bennie goes to Sappensly and Quill in the hotel room of the man who hired them, El Jefe’s business associate Max (Helmut Dantine), and makes a deal for US$10,000 for Garcia’s head, plus a US$200 advance for expenses. Bennie convinces Elita to go on a road trip with him to visit Garcia’s grave, claiming that he only wants proof that Garcia is in fact dead and no longer a threat to their relationship.
En route, Bennie proposes, promising that their future will soon change, and she can retire from her cleaning job. Elita warns Bennie against trying to upset their status quo. While having a picnic, Bennie and Elita are accosted by two bikers, who pull guns and decide to rape Elita. Bennie seems unsure how to react. Elita agrees to have sex with the bikers if they spare Bennie’s life, then goes off with one of them (Kris Kristofferson). He rips off her shirt, lets her slap him twice, slaps her back, then walks away; she follows. Bennie knocks the second biker (Donnie Fritts) unconscious, takes his gun and finds Elita about to have sex with the first biker. Bennie shoots him dead and kills the second biker as well.
Bennie confesses to Elita his plan to decapitate Garcia’s corpse and sell the head for money. A disgusted Elita, still shaken from what has just happened, begs Bennie to give up this quest and return to Mexico City, where they can be married and live a modest life of relative peace. Bennie again refuses, although he agrees to marry Elita in the church of the town where Garcia is buried. They find Garcia’s grave, but when he opens the coffin, Bennie is struck from behind with his shovel by an unseen assailant. He wakes up to find himself half-buried in the grave with Elita, who is dead. The corpse of Garcia has been decapitated.
Bennie learns from villagers that his assailants are driving a station wagon. He catches up with the men after they blow out a tire. Bennie shoots them, searches their car, and claims Garcia’s head. Stopping at a roadside restaurant, he packs the sack containing the head with ice to preserve it for the journey home. Bennie begins addressing the head as if Garcia were still alive, first blaming Alfredo for Elita’s death and then conceding that both of them probably loved her equally.
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
Directed by: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernández, Kris Kristofferson, Enrique Lucero, Chalo González, Janine Maldonado, Tamara Garina
Screenplay by: Gordon Dawson, Sam Peckinpah
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Álex Phillips Jr.
Film Editing by: Garth Craven, Robbe Roberts, Sergio Ortega, Dennis E. Dolan
Art Direction by: Agustín Ituarte
Makeup Department: Rosa Guerrero
Music by: Jerry Fielding
MPAA Rating: R fdr adult situations/language and violence.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: August 7, 1974 (Los Angeles)
Views: 197