Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

In 1974, The Wall Street Journal called this movie &quote;grotesque, sadistic, irrational, obscene, incompetent,&quote; while New York Magazine declared it &quote;a catastrophe.&quote; Upon its initial release, Sam Peckinpah's notorious work took a critical and commercial nosedive, but in later years, the work was heralded as a demented masterpiece--a violent, hallucinatory autobiography and a brilliant example of &quote;pure Peckinpah.&quote; This study revisits the making of this controversial film, as well as its original reception and subsequent reassessment. It reads the project as an auteur work, a genre film, a confession, and a bizarre self-parody.