Dis­cov­er the strange lega­cy of this cross-bor­der ​’70s classic

It begins with a still life – a sta­t­ic image of water fowl on a pond, accom­pa­nied by the gen­tle strum­ming of a Mex­i­can folk gui­tar. The image comes to life as both birds and cam­era move, and a slow zoom out reveals a young, heav­i­ly preg­nant woman reclin­ing on the bank. The image is fur­ther dis­rupt­ed as first a maid and then some armed horse­men arrive insist­ing (in Span­ish) that the woman go see her father.

Her father, wealthy crime lord El Jefe (Emilio Fer­nán­dez), wants to know who made his daugh­ter a woman, and is will­ing to tor­ture her to find out. See­ing a lock­et with a head­shot of his daughter’s secret beloved, El Jefe (lit­er­al­ly ​‘the Boss’) com­plains, with an absur­di­ty so nuanced that it takes a few sec­onds to reg­is­ter, ​“He was like a son to me,” before promis­ing, ​“I’ll pay a mil­lion dol­lars to who­ev­er brings me the head of Alfre­do Garcia.”

Much as Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfre­do Gar­cia begins – and ends – with freeze-frames, it is also pre­oc­cu­pied with that strange lim­i­nal space between life and death. In a lat­er scene, sly­ly repris­ing that first Edenic image, War­ren Oates’ pro­tag­o­nist (if not quite hero) Ben­nie will take ran­dom pot­shots from his pass­ing car at road­side fowl (“Din­ner for the pot!”, he shouts). Here death, hang­ing over every­one, is as arbi­trary as it is inevitable.

Although nobody ever men­tions this in the film, there’s a cer­tain resem­blance between Alfre­do and Ben­nie. Both bear a sim­i­lar mous­tache (as seen in that lock­et head­shot), both share a love for local singer Eli­ta (Isela Vega), and if Alfre­do, unbe­knownst to his pur­suers, is already dead and buried, Ben­nie him­self has one foot in the grave. A US Army vet­er­an, he has end­ed up play­ing piano in dives South of the Bor­der, drink­ing away and bid­ing his time – a stranger in a strange land – until the end final­ly comes. And with his rigid facial expres­sion half-hid­den behind dark shades, Ben­nie even looks like the liv­ing dead – and he will soon, along with his old friend Alfre­do, be return­ing, zom­bie- (or Christ-)like, from the grave.

Ben­nie is gal­vanised by the arrival of vio­lent men. A pair of boun­ty hunters (Robert Web­ber, Gip Young) enters his Mex­i­co City bar look­ing for Alfre­do. Armed with knowl­edge of Alfredo’s where­abouts, Ben­nie spots an oppor­tu­ni­ty to emerge from his sta­sis and, with Eli­ta, to ​“go some­where new” – even if that involves dis­in­ter­ring Alfre­do, and los­ing every­thing that Ben­nie holds dear.

The rest of the film rep­re­sents an exis­ten­tial quest to paint val­ue onto an appar­ent­ly amoral and chaot­ic land­scape. In this respect, it is not unlike a west­ern – an impres­sion main­tained by the pres­ence of vaque­ros, or by the oater-inflect­ed line, ​“Well, my friend, one must do what one must do.” At first Ben­nie is dri­ven to action mere­ly by the price on Alfredo’s head – a price dra­mat­i­cal­ly depre­ci­at­ed for bot­tom feed­ers like him­self – but soon this dead man walk­ing will find him­self dri­ven by oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions: vengeance, jus­tice, redemp­tion, even friendship.

For while Bring Me the Head of Alfre­do Gar­cia is cer­tain­ly a memen­to mori, replete with inti­ma­tions of its char­ac­ters’ cor­po­re­al nature and mor­tal­i­ty, it is also, ulti­mate­ly, a bizarre bud­dy pic, with Alfredo’s dis­em­bod­ied, fly-blown head the last con­fi­dant and com­padre remain­ing to the increas­ing­ly unhinged Bennie.

As such, Bring Me the Head of Alfre­do Gar­cia comes with a strange lega­cy, its influ­ence pal­pa­ble on films as dis­parate as Bas­ket Case, Week­end at Bernie’s, Bar­ton Fink and – espe­cial­ly – Swiss Army Man. Lit­tle sur­prise, per­haps, that con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and audi­ences were caught off guard by the bizarre tonal shifts of its cross-bor­der jour­ney into lim­bo. Upon its release in 1974 this low-bud­get work, the only film in Peckinpah’s long career over which he was allowed final cut, tanked at the box office – and mere­ly invok­ing its title has since become a kind of joke, whether in Michael Ritchie’s 1985 film Fletch or BBC Radio’s ​‘I’m Sor­ry I Haven’t A Clue’.

Yet it is now high time to reassess the film, with its spe­cial blend of melan­choly, fatal­ism and necro­man­cy, as a sin­gu­lar clas­sic of 1970s cinema.

Bring Me the Head of Alfre­do Gar­cia is released by Arrow in a brand new 4K restora­tion on a lim­it­ed edi­tion Blu-ray from 23 January.