Long before Quentin Tarantino made his stamp on celluloid, Sam Peckinpah was Hollywood’s most controversially violent filmmaker. With visceral actioners like The Getaway, war epics like Cross of Iron, and harrowing thrillers like Straw Dogs, Peckinpah made a lasting impression on moviegoers throughout his decades-long career.
Peckinpah tipped his hat to many cinematic genres, but the one that he returned to more than any other was the western. With his rough, gritty, blood-soaked vision of the Old West, Peckinpah deconstructed and reinvented the western genre.
The Deadly Companions (6.1)
Peckinpah’s lowest-rated western on IMDb is his directorial debut, The Deadly Companions. It follows an ex-soldier who accidentally kills a young boy and escorts the funeral procession through treacherous territory in a bid for redemption.
Having previously only worked in television on the canceled series The Westerner, Peckinpah hadn’t quite figured out how to take audiences’ breath away on the big screen when he made his first feature. He’d later go on to revolutionize action cinema, but there was little to no sign of that in his debut movie.
Major Dundee (6.7)
Starring such screen legends as James Coburn and Charlton Heston, Major Dundee tells the story of a Union soldier who illegally crosses the border into Mexico with a ragtag team of commandos to stop the constant Apache raids.
Throughout his career, Peckinpah made a handful of westerns and a handful of war movies. Like his directorial debut The Deadly Companions, Major Dundee is both.
Junior Bonner (6.9)
Starring Steve McQueen as the title character, Junior Bonner follows a middle-aged rodeo rider who returns to his Arizona hometown to reconnect with his family. He’s determined to ride a bull named Sunshine for eight seconds, but family drama threatens to derail his plans.
Like a lot of Peckinpah’s movies, Junior Bonner uses the story of an aging character – in this case, a veteran rodeo rider who’s deemed to be “over the hill” – to contrast with the decline of the American West and the arrival of capitalism on the frontier.
The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (7.3)
Stranded in the desert, The Ballad of Cable Hogue’s title character is ready to give up when he stumbles upon a water spring right in front of the local stagecoach line. Naturally, he turns this spring into a waystation and makes his fortune off of it.
Unlike Peckinpah’s other movies, The Ballad of Cable Hogue has very little violence. It’s more of a comedy than a drama, and it’s the director’s only film that could be classified as a full-blown romance.
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (7.3)
Peckinpah’s only biopic, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid tells the compelling tale of the titular outlaws. Pat Garrett, played by James Coburn, is hired by a group of New Mexico cattle barons to take out his old friend Billy the Kid, played by Kris Kristofferson.
Along with Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid helped to establish the revisionist western in the early ‘70s. These movies left behind the black-and-white morals of classic westerns and instead focused on ethically gray antiheroes. To top it all off, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid has a breathtaking soundtrack by Bob Dylan.
Ride The High Country (7.5)
Peckinpah’s sophomore feature Ride the High Country tells the story of an ex-Union soldier who’s hired by an old friend to help him transport some gold from a mining town across a dangerous stretch of land. Little does the ex-soldier know, his old pal is planning to double-cross him along the way.
After Peckinpah’s debut feature The Deadly Companions came and went without making much of a splash, his second movie Ride the High Country was much more critically acclaimed. It even took home the first prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (7.5)
Set in the present day on a lawless frontier, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a quintessential neo-western. After a wealthy tycoon offers a hefty reward for the severed head of the gigolo who impregnated his daughter, a bar pianist and the prostitute he loves go searching for the bounty.
Thematically, Peckinpah draws from John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the ultimate cinematic portrait of the corrupting power of greed. Both stories focus on a man who goes on a journey seeking fortune and, along the way, loses his soul.
The Wild Bunch (7.9)
Led by such iconic actors as William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, The Wild Bunch focuses on an aging band of outlaws at the end of their road, planning one last big score before calling it quits. Peckinpah sets this story of aging gunslingers against the backdrop of an evolving American West leaving the traditions of western movies behind.
It’s hardly surprising that The Wild Bunch is Peckinpah’s highest-rated western on IMDb, because it’s often praised as the high point of his career and its sharp deconstruction of western tropes helped to give the genre a fitting swansong (along with Once Upon a Time in the West) in the late ‘60s.
