1914 was the year. The Temperance union was protesting against
alcohol and sexual promiscuity. Automobiles and airplanes were
popping up, and the desperado, that wild, swearing, wandering,
beer-sucking, whore-screwing, bank-robbing, six-gun shooting outlaw,
was going to be the bedfellow of the dinosaur. Proper civilization
and soulless corporations emerge and kicked barbarism and humanity
(most of it, really) out of the big picture.
But there were scrappy holdouts, the kind who would be cold before
they were tamed. They called them…The Wild Bunch.
After a bad fall with “Major Dundee” (a likable rough draft of
“Bunch” in my view), being fired from the Steve McQueen vehicle “The
Cincinnati Kid” (Norm Jewison took over as director) and
work-scrounging in TV, maverick filmmaker Sam Peckinpah came back
into theatrical film with a gun in one hand, a machete in the other,
a blowtorch behind his back and a sense of honor in his heart, in
the summer of 1969. Six men make up the gang: stern leader Pike
Bishop (William Holden), gentlemanly Dutch Engstrom (Ernest
Borgnine), raucous siblings Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector Gorch
(Ben Johnston), tempestuous but gallant Angel (Jaime Sanchez) and
old, dirty, desert rat Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien). A botched
robbery of a railroad company, earning “a dollar’s worth of steel
holes”, forces the men into Mexico, pursed by ex-pal Deke Thorton (a
world weary Robert Ryan), who freed from jail but manipulated by
money-minded railroad magnate Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker of the
sci-fi cult film, “Dr. Cyclops”) into leading a band of ad hoc
bounty hunters, who used to be railroad hobos from the look of them
and are willing to kill for cash or junk. The wanted and unwanted
aren’t safe from them, and you’ll wonder who the good guys are
really.
There’s more trouble: the vile, delusional, drunk-as-a-skunk Mexican
army general Mapache (Mexico-based filmmaker Emilio Fernandez) hires
the bunch to steal sixteen cases of guns and firepower from an
Army-guarded train to fight the Mexican Revolutionaries, led by the
iconic Pancho Villa.
In an interview for Playboy magazine, Western film star John Wayne
despised the film because it sinisterly twisted the genre. He wasn’t
alone. Critics and moviegoers deplored the film’s unflinching
violence, misogynism (women were either chaste white Christians or
voluptuous Mexican whores) and misanthropism, However, other than
the film’s financial jackpot, they couldn’t be any more wrong about
it. Sure, “Bunch” is book-ended by two beautiful, ballet-like gun
plays, encrusted in blood, sweat, steel and fire, but the middle
shows humanity, albeit flawed, in the killers. Pike holds loyalty to
his heart, but is a hypocrite because (Spoilers) he left Thorton to
get caught by the law in a bordello. Dutch (Borgnine, who’s out of
place yet fits because of his happy-go-lucky sitcom role of Lt.
Cmdr. Quinton McHale of “McHale’s Navy”), is a boy scout in terms of
women, but in the end, he does the unthinkable. The Gorch brothers
are “good old boys”, Tector being superior over Lyle due to age, but
both barely have the sense of a mule. Angel dreams of a free Mexico,
but gets over his head and Freddie, a profane parody of Western
character actor George “Gabby” Hayes, is a fun-loving, reminiscent
codger, but he forgets his age and stamina, and dooms either his
fellows or himself in heated situations.
This is why the film matters a lot: a group of men whose era has
passed them by, but they struggle to keep their individualism and
humanity intact, even if they have to kill to retain them. How
intriguingly, ironically and magnificently noble.
Oscar-nominated for best original screenplay (It lost to the more
friendly “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”), the story’s
unconventional for a Western, breaking out of the genre, thanks to
Sam, Walon Green (he co-wrote “Robocop 2” with Peckinpah
student/comic book visionary Frank Miller, and is currently an exec
producer on “Law and Order”) and Roy N. Sickner (a stuntman who
worked on the film). The Oscar-nominated music score (lost to Butch
and Sundance, too) by Jerry Fielding (blacklisted for hiring
African-American musicians) ran around the emotional spectrum; the
photography of Lucien Ballard echoes John Ford’s work and the quick
cuts and slow-action shots of editor Lou Lombardo (produced by the
first Cheech and Chong film, “Up In Smoke”) perfectly note a
connection between film and comic books (Sam was slated to direct
the first Superman film, but his rep went south at the time). The
actors and their characters, big and small, are glorious, from the
bunch to Mapache’s two underlings, Zamora (Jorge Russek) and Herrera
(Alfonso Arau, who later directed the Oscar-winning foreign film
“Like Water For Chocolate”) and to Thorton’s sleazy companions,
particularly Coffer (Strother Martin) and T.C. (Peckinpah stock
actor L.Q. Jones, who directed the cult classic, “A Boy and His
Dog”). As for Sam, he’s subtle as a chainsaw with allegorical
imagery (ants devouring scorpions in the beginning, suggested by
Fernandez from a childhood memory and kids playing a mock gunplay
after a real one) and silent facial stares (Pike looking at the
Gorches firmly before the group‘s last stand). He would have been a
king in the silent movie area.
The two-disc DVD set is a more than appreciated apology for the
pathetic “flip” disc which cut the masterpiece in half. It’s Sam’s
cut all right, in both DVD versions, after Warner Bros. Pictures
restored the film to its’ initial running time (145 minutes) for
its’ 25th anniversary re-release. However, I first saw the film on
broadcast TV, when I was fifteen, with the cut scenes intact. Though
topless nudity and mild profanity were exoricised from that print
(thanks FCC, you rum bums), I fell in love with both Sam and the
film, which is polished, visually and soundly, on Disc One. The
audio commentary by biographers/fans/experts, Nick Redman, Paul
Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle (I dub them “The Bloody
Four”) is all over the place, but it’s fun to listen to. A trailer
gallery, including “Bunch” and other Peckinpah plays, “The Getaway”
(Sam’s make-up tryst with McQueen, along with "Junior Bonner"), “The
Ballad Of Cable Hogue”, “Ride The High Country” and “Pat Garrett and
Billy The Kid” (the last two were part of Ted Turner’s cinematic
booty from MGM). These other films are on DVD. I’ll get them all!!!
Disc Two is a treat with three documentaries. “The Wild Bunch: An
Album In Montage” is an Oscar nominee, composed by Redman (who
narrated it) and Seydor. It’s loaded with rare, black-and-white,
behind the scenes footage of the film and audio quotes from the cast
and crew, some read by actors, like Ed Harris who does Sam, who left
the world in 1984. It’ll make a strong man cry.
The second is a sweet one from Starz’s Western Channel. “Sam
Peckinpah’s West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade” has interviews of
those who worked with Sam (Kris Kristofferson of “Garrett“, who
narrated this featurette, Jones, and Stella Stevens of “Hogue”,
among others), those related (kid sister Fern Lee, son Matthew, who
had bits parts in “Bunch” and “Hogue”, and daughter Lupita, whose
mother, Begonia Palacios, played a nurse in “Dundee”), those who
worked with his behind the scenes and those who admired his work
(some of “The Bloody Four”, film critics Elvis Mitchell and Roger
Ebert and actors Michael Madsen, Benicio Del Toro and Billy Bob
Thornton). Interesting that Madsen and Del Toro co-starred in the
avant-garde love letter addressed to Sam, “Frank Miller’s Sin City”,
based on Miller’s graphic crime novels and co-directed by the man
himself and fellow Peckinpah students, Robert Rodriquez (the El
Mariachi and Spy Kids films) and Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”,
the “Kill Bill” films). Also interesting is Thornton's resemblance to
Sam. A bio film in the creative stew, perhaps?
Though short, a clip from “A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah,
Mexico and The Wild Bunch”, a film by Redman, has him, his fellow
Peckinpah pals, Lupita and an old writer friend of Sam’s visit the
locales of where “Bunch” was filmed in Mexico. It’s like a National
Geographic special, but I wanted to see more.
When it was re-released, the Motion Picture Association of America
gave “Bunch” a NC-17. (Mitchell mistakenly refers it as its’ former
rating X in “West” ) Warner Bros rightfully appealed for a R and won
it, but the fact it could get a rating that’s usually given to
rarely made, sexually graphic film only proves “Bunch’s” impact on
the senses is still haunting to this day. Yet some of the pieces
have blood, gunplays and nothing else, Sam’s students made a mighty
homage of films to him. My favorite “teacher’s pets” are Miller,
Rodriquez, Tarantino, the Brothers Wachowski, Brian Helgeland, John
McTiernan, Shinichiro Watanabe and Stephen J. Cannell.
If anything, “Bunch” is a ballistic but romantic tale of honorable
men in a dishonorable world, fighting to save alive spiritually. The
aforementioned “Sin City” (I’ll review the SE DVD soon) comes very
close to this Western that jumps out from being a Western like a
jackrabbit on heroin, and, to quote Mr. Bishop, “I wouldn’t have it
any other way.” Watch it while eating ketchup-drenched fried
chicken, will ya?
