Sam Peckinpah

  • Sam Peckinpah – The Deadly Companions (1961)

    1961-1970DramaSam PeckinpahUSAWestern


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    Quote:
    With its small cast, character-driven story, and modest production values, Sam Peckinpah’s first feature film seems very like another of his TV Western dramas–just one that happened to get shot in Panavision. The director’s favorite TV actor, Brian Keith, plays a surly loner named Yellowleg who ventures into Indian country with a dance-hall girl (Maureen O’Hara), the corpse of her little boy, and a pair of marginally human specimens (Steve Cochran and Chill Wills) who more than justify the title. Everybody has, or seems to have, a guilty or shameful secret: Why does Yellowleg keep his hat on? Was Kit (O’Hara) a widow, or a whore? Action, menace, and ethical dialogues come and go pretty much according to TV rhythms, and the visuals and editing are conventional. But there’s enough quirky character work and offbeat mood-making to hint at the singular filmmaker soon to arrive big-time. –Richard T. JamesonRead More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – The Killer Elite (1975)

    1971-1980ActionSam PeckinpahThrillerUSA

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    Overview:
    As steady hands carefully wire a bomb and meticulously set the timer to the eerie sounds of children singing in the background, and as the deadly device explodes, rupturing a building into fragments and splintering the tranquility of the theatre. Elite assassins Mike Locken and George Hansen take on jobs too risky for even the CIA to handle. They’re best friends, superior marksmen and on the A-list when it comes to killing. But when one high-powered hitman betrays another, the intrigue, the violence and the trills become more than just a dangerous game of who-kills-whom first…It becomes a very personal war!Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970)

    1961-1970ComedySam PeckinpahUSAWestern

    Cable Hogue is a prospector who is abandoned in the desert, with no water, by his so-called partners. Nearing death, he discovers a natural spring and he’s soon at the nearest town to register a land claim. There he meets a pretty local prostitute, Hildy. Back at his claim site, he christens it Cable Springs and opens a stagecoach station where the horses can be watered and the passengers fed. Hildy soon joins him but only temporarily as she has dreams of moving to San Francisco and setting herself up there in her own popular line of business. Things are going well for Cable when, to his delight, his former partners show up. This time he’s prepared for them. When Hildy returns after a long absence he’s ready to pack it in and make his life with her but as is so often the case, fate intervenes.Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – Noon Wine (1966)

    1961-1970DramaSam PeckinpahUSA

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    Jason Robards and Olivia DeHavilland star in this 1966 TV play written and directed by Sam Peckinpah.Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – Junior Bonner (1972)

    1961-1970DramaSam PeckinpahUSAWestern

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    Plot Synopsis from Allmovie
    Sam Peckinpah eschews his slow-motion bullet ballets for this quiet character study of ex-rodeo cowboy turned drifter Junior Bonner (Steve McQueen), who returns home to Arizona to reconcile with the family he hasn’t seen in years. Bonner is shocked to see that the solid family he was hoping to come back to is breaking apart. His parents, Ace (Robert Preston) and Elvira (Ida Lupino), have separated, and his brother Curley (Joe Don Baker) has turned into a heartless real estate tycoon, parceling off sections of his parent’s land for quick money. With nowhere to turn and nowhere to run, Bonner has to face himself and try to find a way to regain his self-respect. He is given that opportunity at the town’s Fourth of July Rodeo, where he is determined to mount and ride and unrideable bull.Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – The Westerner: Jeff + Brown (1960)

    1951-1960Sam PeckinpahTVUSAWestern

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    Laconic cowboy Dave Blasingame wanders the Wild West with his faithful dog Brown and the occasional companionship of pal Burgundy Smith.Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – Convoy [+Extras] (1978)

    1971-1980ActionDramaSam PeckinpahUSA

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    SYNOPSIS: While driving through the Arizona desert, Albuquerque based independent trucker Martin Penwald – who goes by the handle “Rubber Duck” – along with his fellow truckers “Pig Pen” and “Spider Mike”, are entrapped by unscrupulous Sheriff Lyle “Cottonmouth” Wallace using a key tool of the trucker’s trade, the citizens’ band (CB) radio. Rubber Duck and Cottonmouth have a long, antagonistic history. When this encounter later escalates into a more physical one as Cottonmouth threatens Spider Mike, a man who just wants to get home to his pregnant wife, Rubber Duck and other the truckers involved, including Spider Mike, Pig Pen and “Widow Woman”, go on the run, figuring the best thing to do being to head to New Mexico to avoid prosecution. Along for the ride is Melissa, a beautiful photographer who just wanted a ride to the airport. As news of what happened spreads over the CB airwaves, other truckers join their convoy as a show of support. Cottonmouth rallies other law enforcement officers …Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia [+2 Commentaries] (1974)

    1971-1980ActionCrimeSam PeckinpahUSA

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    Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Spanish: Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo García) is a 1974 American cult action film directed by Sam Peckinpah and featuring Warren Oates.

    Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Peckinpah claimed that, of all his films, Alfredo García was the only one 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.

    There are two audio commentaries with this posting:
    1) with Writer-Producer Gordon Dawson and Film Historian Nick Redman
    2) with Film Historians Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, David Weddle, and Nick Redman

    SYNOPSIS:
    An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.Read More »

  • Sam Peckinpah – Straw Dogs (1971)

    1971-1980DramaSam PeckinpahThrillerUnited Kingdom

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    Synopsis:
    Upon moving to Britain to get away from American violence, astrophysicist David Sumner and his wife Amy are bullied and taken advantage of by the locals hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house.

    Quote:
    Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The screenplay by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman is based upon Gordon M. Williams’s 1969 novel “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm” Peckinpah’s 1971 film Straw Dogs was one of the most controversial of his legendary career.. The film’s title derives from a discussion in the Tao Te Ching that likens the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog to forms without substance.Read More »

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