There are several memorable scenes in what is a truly lousy Sam Peckinpah film—Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)—which quickly nosedives with an insane script.

Undeniably, a pretty raw experience is offered in this enterprise—raw enough to be offensive.  Warren Oates engages in a lot of very dopey, mow-’em-down shooting.  Peckinpah strips Isela Vega of her clothes a bit too frequently, and when she confronts Kris Kristofferson . . . well, never mind.  See it for yourself if you want to bother.

By the way, I don’t know who Isela Vega is, but her acting has subtlety and quiet appeal.  She makes the film seem a little less ridiculous than it is.

The director of Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, and The Wild Bunch made THIS?

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Aldo Ray is a mere marionette of an actor in Jacques Tourneur‘s Nightfall (1957) and Anne Bancroft provides little personality in her role.  But the film itself is a knockout, finely directed and savvily adapted from a novel by screenwriter Stirling Silliphant.  It tells of a free-lance artist (Ray) erroneously believed by murderers—and a possible policeman—to have made off with the evildoers’ loot.

There is nothing of a marionette in Brian Keith; he is disturbingly human, engrossingly true as John, one of the killer-crooks.  His character leaves the impression that he should have been a good man.  Thanks to Tourneur, there is a nifty scene inside and outside a shack which emphasizes John’s estrangement, all firearms raised, from his fellow murderer (slimy and played by Rudy Bond).

Nightfall (1957 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)