Alfredo Garcia is in BIG TROUBLE and he doesn't even know it. Note to self: DO NOT EVER GET A MEXICAN GODFATHER'S DAUGHTER Preggo!! It will end badly. Very badly. Very, Very badly.
After breaking his pregnant daughter's arms, the Mexican Godfather gets the truth out of her. Alfredo Garcia knocked her up and hit the road. And now he has a million dollar bounty on his head. Literally. Mexican Godfather wants just that. Alfredo Garcia's head. Sending out four of his best hit men, they embark on a quest to location the gigolo.
Ending up in a dive bar in the heart of the Mexican underworld, the hit men run across an American piano player with the best sunglasses ever. Learning that the piano player MIGHT know where Alfredo Garcia is, they give him a promise of ten thousand dollars, a dream of a better life and four days to bring them the head of Alfredo Garcia. Greed overtakes all logic and the plot is set in motion.
I couldn't believe it. Fucking Warren Oates AGAIN! Oates plays, Bennie the piano player with a mission. After learning that his prostitute/girlfriend had a fling with Alfredo Garcia, he basically beats her until she tells him the truth about his whereabouts. Alfredo Garcia is dead and buried! OH SHIT!!! But if all you need is the head, you can totally buy a shovel and a machete and dig the asshole up and chop it off, right? RIGHT?! It seems simple enough, but Bennie has never had good luck and why should he start having it now. The movie turns from a gritty character study into a chase film, with the hit men and the Garcia family after him. Everyone loves a good head!
Did you know being left for dead and buried alive, will make you CRAZZZEEE!!! Bennie, completely nutso, decides that he will deliver the head himself to the Mexican Godfather and demand to him to tell why he wants the head so bad. GREAT IDEA! Alfredo Garcia's head becomes a major supporting character in the last act, with Bennie making conversations with him and taking care of the him. Packing him with ice and giving him a good shower. Oates has some problems and ends up killing the entire cast or they die because of him. Always a charmer.
If you hate women, then this movie is for you. All the women in the film are treated like garbage. There is not one postive moment for any of the ladies of BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA. Bennie's prostitute/girlfriend, Elita is yanked around, stripped naked and almost raped by Kris Kristofferson, then has to see a bunch of dead bodies, but Bloody Sam (who wrote the screenplay) thinks that a lady would love to have a little sexy time after all this. I mean, I know she is prostitute in the seedy Mexican underworld, but i can't imagine her wanting to even make out after the day she has. Maybe a nice relaxing shower or a a tender hug, but sex? Come on.
A quote from Peckinpah. "I don't want to hear it said that I don't like women! I tried to show in [Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)] that I adore them. They represent the positive pole of the film, the life force and instinct." FOR REAL? I don't see it.
BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA has got to be one of the best titles to a movie ever though! I finished the film feeling kinda like just yuck and had a yearning to watch OUTRAGOUS FORTUNE.
I absolutely ADORE what I've seen of this movie (which was the final hour). It is absolutely amazingly hilarious and one of the early pitch black comedies that went for broke. A precursor to some of the more modern dark comedies like 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, but with a tone more resembling the aggressive Very Bad Things where absurdity and violence go head to head leaving the character's morals in the dust.
ReplyDeleteI need to put this at the top of my queue because I keep forgetting about it until it's on Encore or whatever. Bloody Sam was never this hilarious before or after...and most movies work hard to make you feel this dirty.