Reassessing Sam Peckinpah*

Always a pleasure to see Katie's personal box make an appearance.

 

Ok...

 

The Getaway is classic.

One of my fav. films of the 70's.

 

It's an excellent restoration and worth picking up. It's a transitional western for him but has marvelous performances particularly from Joel McCrea.

 

I just realized I've never seen Convoy, but I remember the song. It was during the whole CB radio craze. What a strange thing for Peckinpah to be involved with, no wonder he called himself a name reserved for a certain class of ladies on the street. He makes me laugh even though it's probably really sad.

 

I've seen these:

The Wild Bunch
Straw Dogs
Junior Bonner
The Getaway
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Killer Elite
Cross of Iron
The Osterman Weekend

 

You have some catching up to do.

Don't anyone forget Peckinpah's 1960 TV series, The Westerner. 13 episodes fully restored with commentaries by the Posse :

Amazon.com: Westerner: The Complete Series: Movies & TV

 

What's in it?

 

Bloody Sam. For a while, anyway.

 

Got it on pre-order.

This has already been a great year for Peckinpah fans, and there is more to come with the Criterion BD of Straw Dogs and the Kino Lorber BD of Junior Bonner. Mike Siegel also mentions a German mediabook of The Killer Elite.

 

One sad revelation in several of the books about Peckinpah was he was offered a chance to restore or complete both Major Dundee and Pat Garrett the way he envisioned them. He refused, his motivations open to all sorts of speculation. In the case of Major Dundee, I've never discerned whether that simply included restoring his original 3 hour cut, or if necessary footage that was never shot and the offer only meant from available footage. I doubt anyone was going to pay for a return to Mexico. With Pat Garrett, he probably held more cards and simply chose not to play them.

In each case, it's interesting to note there were unresolved issues in the script, operhaps moreso with Major Dundee. I guess it takes a lot of nerve or presumption or something to green light and mount a major production when the script is still not finished.

 

Pretty strong meat there from,Sam Peckinpah.

*gets shot to death*

 

The credit sequence was so good that Soderbergh basically stole it for Out of Sight, which is very good in its own right.

 

It has already been available for a couple of months at Walmart, if you don't feel like waiting another two weeks for Amazon's retail window:

https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Westerner-The-Complete-Series-Full-Frame/55192701

 

I no longer live in the United States. Could have gotten a friend to pick me up a copy and mail it to the U.K., but I was happy to wait for a wide release.

My girlfriend is in Canada next week, so she may spin by Walmart at some point. If she finds a copy, I'll cancel my Amazon order.

 

I've had zero luck with finding any obscure catalog titles like this one in-store at the Walmart locations in my area. The Sam's Club warehouse stores are a different story (or at least were the last time I was in one a year or so ago) - they tend to carry lots of old TV series and classic films on DVD.

 

Great talent. I've enjoyed many of his films.

 

I watched "The Wild Bunch." I was wrong: It's a great film. So I've re-assessed.

 

I don't understand your answer. What's in Katie's Personal Box?

 

Katie's personal possessions.

I presume Katie is Peckinpah's personal assistant, Katherine Haber.

 

I've seen all his films at least once (regretfully including 'Convoy', which is akin to witnessing Rembrant or Kadinsky being hired to paint a garage), except 'Deadly Companions', which I just tracked down. Just finished 'Killer Elite' and it's not as entertaining as I remember. The entire first hour has very little action, and dwells on a wet noodle plot of James Caan recovering from a shooting. And recovering some more. Then he continues to recover. Really this could have been handled with a five montage compressing the time and would have been somewhat cinematic. Some of the dialogue is cynically wry, but the direction is actually quite pedestrian. Really, any hack tv director could've done this. The film ignites with the shoot out set piece half way through, then sort of gets lost again on a long followup on the boat, meandering rather than building tension. If someone told me Peckpinah only directed ( or cared about) the shoot out sequence I'd believe it.

Plus Bo Hopkins is totally underutilized. Unforgiveable!

 

The great films are masterpieces. Even the screwed over ones like Dundee and Pat Garrett.
The good ones all have something truly memorable and fascinating. And while I think Cross of Iron is severely flawed by the production difficulties it has many strengths.

And then there are the sellout films and the declining artistry that gets far too painful for me to watch very often.

I'm glad that the critical reappraisal happened because Peckinpah is truly one of the greats and chiefly for his masterpieces:
Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Pat Garrett, and Alfredo Garcia.

I plan to check out the Westener series and Deadly Companions finally..and great news about a Junior Bonner BD release!

 

Okay I like Osterman Weekend.
And I think The Getaway would have been better if Peckingpah was permitted to use his usual music scorer for the film

 

For those considering watching The Deadly Companions, be sure to track down a decent DVD of the film. There are an awful lot of faded, pan-and-scan, public domain releases out there. I'm not sure what's available in North America these days, but caveat emptor.

My go-to version is still the 2004 Japanese DVD (2.35:1, anamorphic, in theatrical running time, with lovely colours). There's also a nice two-disc Spanish edition, which is worth having for the extras.