David Samuel Peckinpah was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic The Wild Bunch received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute's top 100 list. His films employed a visually innovative and explicit depiction of action and violence as well as a revisionist approach to the Western genre.
The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.
Warren Mercer Oates was an American actor best known for his performances in several films directed by Sam Peckinpah, including The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Another of his most acclaimed performances was as officer Sam Wood in In the Heat of the Night (1967). Oates starred in numerous films during the early 1970s that have since achieved cult status, such as The Hired Hand (1971), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), and Race with the Devil (1975). Oates also portrayed John Dillinger in the biopic Dillinger (1973) and as the supporting character U.S. Army Sergeant Hulka in the military comedy Stripes (1981). Another notable appearance was in the classic New Zealand film Sleeping Dogs (1977), in which he played the commander of the American forces in the country.
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road movie directed and edited by Monte Hellman, written by Rudy Wurlitzer and starring singer-songwriter James Taylor, the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird.
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a 1973 American revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah, written by Rudy Wurlitzer, and starring James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Richard Jaeckel, Katy Jurado, Chill Wills, Barry Sullivan, Jason Robards, Slim Pickens and Bob Dylan. The film is about an aging Pat Garrett (Coburn), hired as a lawman by a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid (Kristofferson).
The Shooting is a 1966 American Western film edited and directed by Monte Hellman, with a screenplay by Carole Eastman. It stars Warren Oates, Millie Perkins, Will Hutchins, and Jack Nicholson, and was produced by Nicholson and Hellman. The story is about two men who are hired by a mysterious woman to accompany her to a town located many miles across the desert. During their journey, they are closely tracked by a black-clad gunslinger, who seems intent on killing all of them.
Gerald Francis "Jerry" Harvey was an American screenwriter and film programmer, best known for his work on Z Channel, a pioneering cable station in Los Angeles from 1974 to 1989.
Major Dundee is a 1965 American Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Jim Hutton, and James Coburn. Written by Harry Julian Fink, the film is about a Union cavalry officer who leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners, and Indian scouts on an expedition into Mexico during the American Civil War to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding United States bases and settlements in the New Mexico territory. Major Dundee was filmed in various locations in Mexico. The movie was filmed in Eastman Color by Pathécolor, print by Technicolor.
The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a 1970 American Technicolor Western comedy film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Jason Robards, Stella Stevens and David Warner. Set in the Arizona desert during a period when the frontier was closing, the film follows three years in the life of a failed prospector. While unmistakably a Western, the movie is unconventional for the genre and for the director. It contains only a few brief scenes of violence and gunplay, relying more on a subtly crafted story that could better be characterized as comedic in nature.
Monte Hellman was an American film director, producer, writer, and editor. Hellman began his career as an editor's apprentice at ABC TV, and made his directorial debut with the horror film Beast from Haunted Cave (1959), produced by Gene Corman, Roger Corman's brother.
The Hired Hand is a 1971 American Western film directed by Peter Fonda, with a screenplay by Alan Sharp. The film stars Fonda, Warren Oates, and Verna Bloom. The cinematography was by Vilmos Zsigmond. Bruce Langhorne provided the moody film score. The story is about a man returning to his abandoned wife after seven years of drifting from job to job throughout the Southwestern United States. The embittered woman will only let him stay if he agrees to move in as a hired hand.
Four of the Apocalypse is a 1975 Italian spaghetti Western film directed by Lucio Fulci and starring Fabio Testi, Tomas Milian, Lynne Frederick and Michael J. Pollard.
Cockfighter is a 1974 drama film by director Monte Hellman, starring Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and featuring Laurie Bird and Ed Begley, Jr. The screenplay is based on the 1962 novel of the same title by Charles Willeford.
Return of the Seven, later marketed as Return of the Magnificent Seven, is a 1966 American-Spanish Western film, and the first sequel to The Magnificent Seven (1960). Yul Brynner, who reprises his role as Chris Adams, is the sole returning cast member from the original film, while Robert Fuller, Julián Mateos and Elisa Montés replace Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz and Rosenda Monteros as Vinn Tanner, Chico and Petra respectively.
Fabio Testi is an Italian actor. After growing up witnessing film work done around Lake Garda, Testi entered the sets of the film and began work as a stuntman and a double on set, where he worked as a stuntman on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Testi continued stunt work and getting roles in low budget genre films until he was cast in Vittorio De Sica's film The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Following this film, Testi became a star in Italy, appearing in some artistic films by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and Claude Chabrol. Testi also continued to work in poliziotteschi genre films in the 1970s as well as a few gialli, and gained infamy for his publicised relationships with actresses Ursula Andress and Charlotte Rampling.
Robert Golden Armstrong Jr. was an American character actor and playwright. A veteran performer who appeared in dozens of Westerns during his 40-year career, he may be best remembered for his work with director Sam Peckinpah.
Acid Western is a subgenre of the Western film that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s that combines the metaphorical ambitions of critically acclaimed Westerns, such as Shane and The Searchers, with the excesses of the Spaghetti Westerns and the outlook of the counterculture of the 1960s, as well as the increase in illicit drug taking of, for example, cannabis and LSD. Acid Westerns subvert many of the conventions of earlier Westerns to "conjure up a crazed version of autodestructive white America at its most solipsistic, hankering after its own lost origins".
God's Gun, also known as Diamante Lobo, is a 1976 Italian-Israeli Spaghetti Western cowritten and directed by Gianfranco Parolini and starring Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, Leif Garrett, Richard Boone and Sybil Danning. Palance plays the head of a malicious group of bandits and Van Cleef plays a double-role of brothers: a priest and a reformed gunfighter. Leif Garrett plays the main character in the film as Johnny, a fatherless kid who brings the reformed gunfighter to town to avenge his brother's murder.
Tom Thurman is an American filmmaker.
Iguana is a 1988 American adventure crime film directed by Monte Hellman and starring Everett McGill in the main role. It is based on the novel by Spanish author Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, itself based on the life of a real Irish sailor called Patrick Watkins. The film was mainly shot on location in Lanzarote. Monte Hellman won Bastone Bianco Award for this movie on the Venice Film Festival in 1988. Iguana premiered in theaters on April 1, 1988, and was released on DVD on January 30, 2001, via Anchor Bay Entertainment. The film ends with the titles "For Warren" as Hellman dedicated the film to his friend Warren Oates.
