Midnight Movie: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I started this feature, as the film is entirely lacking in cheese, but it’s got everything else I love about exploitation films: physical conflict, urgent characters, quick women, and tons of senseless violence. On this dreary cold day, I was simply in the mood for Peckinpah.

When the powerful El Jefe (Emilio Fernández) finds out who impregnated his teen daughter, he puts a million dollar bounty on the man’s head (literally). Months later, a couple of the tie-wearing goons end up in a rundown bar in Mexico City, asking questions about Garcia. It’s there they meet the American piano player, Bennie (Warren Oates), who plays stupid. He really doesn’t know where Garcia is, but he suspects his prostitute girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), just might.

Not only does Elita know where Garcia is, she’s been planning on leaving Bennie for him. Alfredo Garcia has promised to marry Elita, while Bennie remains reluctant to commit. None of that matters, though, as he comes to realize Garcia’s been dead and buried for a few days now. Armed with this new information, Bennie blows off Elita and seeks out the goons in their hotel room. He agrees to bring them the head of Alfredo Garcia in exchange for ten grand, not knowing the original bounty is much, much higher than that. They agree, giving him a deadline of a few days. They probably don’t have to mention it, but they do anyway: if he runs out on the deal, they’ll have his head.

The night before his journey into the Mexican countryside, Elita visits Bennie in the middle of the night to make up. In the morning, he’s merrily disinfecting crabs with bedside booze. Later, he proposes marriage, but neither he or Elita seem entirely convinced by his newfound enthusiasm. Nonetheless, he brings her along for the trip, which proves to be a mistake when they run into a couple of motorcycle-riding rapists, one of whom is played by Kris Kristofferson. If anything illustrates the stark contrast between the gritty realism of 70s and the almost entirely PG-13 rated present, it’s that music/movie stars used to cameo as despicable thugs. Try to imagine Will Smith or Justin Timberlake doing the same for their careers.

My favorite thing about movies like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and crime films in general, is they can take otherwise decent people and put them in soul-altering situations. Bennie, a U.S. Army vet, has no qualms about gunning down criminals, so it’s not taking a man’s life that threatens his soul. No, it’s the moment he digs Garcia up and looms over the corpse with a machete in hand. I believe that’s what plot-heavy screenwriters refer to as an “inciting incident.” Once he crosses that line, there’s no turning back. The descent has begun and the only way out is to continue downward.

Much of the last third of the movie is Bennie justifying his increasingly disturbing decisions to Garcia’s lifeless head, which has begun to draw flies as well as stares from the locals. These monologues, as Bennie continuously unravels, are like something out of an acid western. Warren Oates should’ve been the leading man in a lot more films, which makes Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia more precious. It’s an exhilarating, completely unpretentious joyride with a mad man behind the wheel. And if you’re wondering if “mad man” refers to Peckinpah or the hero, take your pick. It hits hard and kicks ass.

Western Wednesday: Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)

“Everybody’s got a right to be a sucker once.”

A gunslinger stumbles upon a damsel in distress in the middle of the desert. This time the gunslinger is Clint Eastwood and the damsel is Shirley MacLaine. The two of them play Hogan and Sara. After Hogan guns down the group of bad guys, Sara puts her clothes back on. Hogan’s thrown for a loop when he sees the habit and the rosary. He doesn’t feel right leaving a nun all alone in the desert so he agrees to take her with him, even after he discovers Sara’s in deep shit with the French for providing money and support to Mexican revolutionaries.

Two Mules for Sister Sara is primarily a comedy that often forgets it’s a western. Then it overcompensates in its climax, which is jarringly violent considering what came before it. The film is pretty funny, sure, but it must have been disappointing to see it during its original run, only a year after the release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is a lot more evenly cooked.

The running gag: although she’s a nun, Sara says and does some unladylike things. After Hogan helps her climb a tree, he apologizes for touching her bottom. “It’s no sin that you pushed me up the tree with your hands on my ass,” she says. Hogan’s double-take of her language is priceless. But that’s pretty much all this movie is: funny. There’s some amusing dialog, good writing, and a touching moment or two, but overall it’s playing it just a little too safe.

It comes from a time when westerns were like Marvel movies (plentiful) and the studios were just as reluctant to adjust a winning formula as they are today. That so many people seem to consider Two Mules for Sister Sara to be some kind of classic sets the bar for classics just a little too low. It’s a good movie and I’ll probably even watch it again someday, but I don’t know about great.

Midnight Movie: Sonny Boy (1989)

Note: The version I saw is six minutes shorter than the unrated cut, which was only released in the UK. There’s a special place in hell for proponents of film censorship.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie modified for a 4:3 aspect ratio. Unfortunately, VHS or Laserdisc is the only way you can currently see Sonny Boy, a weird little film that never made the leap to modern formats. Pan and scan this terrible is like trying to watch a movie through a telescope. It’s a pain in the ass, but it’s worth watching it this way until the film is given a proper release.

Sonny Boy opens on a secluded motel where a young couple are being spied on by a desert thug named Weasel (Brad Dourif from the Child’s Play movies). Weasel murders the couple and takes off in their convertible, which he tries to sell to the local crime boss, Slue (Paul Smith, who played Bluto in Robert Altman’s Popeye). Slue lives in a junkyard with his wife, Pearl (David Carradine, who also sings the theme song of the film). As Slue and Weasel are negotiating the price of the stolen convertible, Pearl notices there’s a baby in the backseat who she immediately adopts as her own.

So what happens when a baby is raised by a trio of monsters? First, they give him “the gift of silence” by cutting out his tongue. Then, in a montage of Sonny Boy’s formative years, we see how Slue and Weasel physically torture the boy in order to toughen him up for the real world. These games of abuse culminate in Sonny Boy’s rite of adulthood, in which Slue ties the boy to a stake and Weasel lights a ring of fire around him. You’ll see Pearl desperately trying to put the fire out with a tiny bucket of water. She merely shakes her head as if to say, “Oh, boys will be boys.”

I know this sounds horrific, but it’s kind of sweet within the surreal, dark comedy context of the film. The director makes no excuses for the way his characters behave, but it’s clear this is the only way this group of people know how to raise a kid. You begin to wonder if the reason they lack a moral compass is the same reason Sonny Boy lacks one: perhaps they were raised like animals, too. Anyway, one day Sonny sees himself in the mirror for the first time, face covered with the blood of Slue’s enemy, which inspires the man-boy to begin the long, difficult process of deprogramming himself.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with the film (such as an overly explanatory voiceover, a cheat of an ending, and a hamfisted message about tolerance, acceptance, yatta, yatta, yatta), but it’s clear the movie is a labor of love. There’s creative cinematography, a great cast, and an unwillingness to make the film something it isn’t in order to satisfy more commercial audiences. According to some sources on the internet, the subject matter of Sonny Boy was so disturbing, theaters pulled it from showings within days of its release. I don’t buy that at all because the film simply isn’t that disturbing. I think the real reason it was pulled is couldn’t have been a crowd-pleaser in 1989, which was probably the biggest year for blockbuster films up until that point.

Ultimately, what’s most satisfying about Sonny Boy is its unusual restraint. You would expect crass comedy when the star of Kung Fu appears in a dress, but it doesn’t treat the crossdresser like a joke. Sure, there are people who get thoroughly blown to bits by artillery shells, but if you’re looking for a raunchy exploitation film to show a rowdy crowd, Sonny Boy isn’t it. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth a watch, though.

2016 Update: an unrated cut of the film has finally been made available on Blu-Ray by Shout Factory.

Western Wednesday: Django (1966)

Django begins with the titular gunslinger (Franco Nero) dragging a coffin through all manner of terrain. Later, when he finally makes it to a saloon, someone asks him if there’s a body in the box. Django replies, “Yeah. His name is Django.” I won’t tell you who’s actually in the box. You’ll find out about a third of the way into the picture.

Seconds after the opening credits, Django happens upon a gruesome scene: a gang of bandits are preparing to bludgeon a prostitute to death. You expect Django to intervene, but he doesn’t. Instead, he watches from afar as a second gang swoops in and lays waste to the first. You think the prostitute’s life has been spared until you realize they’re only untying her to retie her to a cross, which they intend to torch. “Burnin’s a lot better than getting beaten to death,” they assure her. (Is it, though?)

You get the feeling Django has been hoping he doesn’t have to get involved. Then it’s clear it’s no longer his decision to make; he’s operating on autopilot when he approaches the men and says in his dubbed voice, “If I bothered you, would you accept my apology?” A split second later his pistol comes out, blazing hellfire, and drops five men in the blink of an eye.

After saving the prostitute’s life, Django takes her to town, finds a room, and meets the leader of the local Klan, Major Jackson. Jackson gets his rocks off on hunting innocent Mexicans for sport. After gunning down over forty of Jackson’s men, Django finds himself at the center of a war between Jackson’s gang and bandits.

It sounds a lot more clichéd than it is. Django’s the real deal—a character of such popularity and charm he’s been portrayed by a dozen different actors in dozens of movies following this one. Like a lot of legends, the details change depending on who’s telling it, but overall the important stuff remains the same. Sure, it’s mostly style over substance, but Django is tragic, shamelessly entertaining, and absurdly violent for its time. If you’ve never seen it before, be prepared to get amped.

Midnight Movie: The Visitor (1979)

The Visitor opens on a plane of unreality in which a force of good (John Huston) comes face to face with a force of evil. When the evil flings off its sacramental robe, it reveals it has taken the form of a little girl. Cut to a different plane of existence: Italian actor Franco Nero, in Christ-like garb, tells a group of bald disciples the mystical backstory concerning these warring forces. My eyes glazed over at this long, dull explanation, which is probably why I had so much trouble following the rest of the movie.

Maybe I would have been lost anyway, but a great deal of The Visitor suddenly made sense in the end. I hoped to be taken on a cosmic trip, but with exposition like Nero’s, the film is like winning a free vacation, but finding out you have to listen to a timeshare pitch first. I’m not saying it’s a bad movie because it’s actually quite good for borrowing so heavily from so many different sources. (Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen came to mind for me. Others have compared it to everything from The Exorcist to Star Wars.) Despite its obvious influences, you’ve never see anything like it.

Following its dreamlike prologue, the audience is whisked away to a basketball game in Atlanta, Georgia. When the away team nearly turns the score over in the final seconds, a little girl in the front row uses her supernatural powers to make the basketball explode in the player’s hands. (No one seems to think it’s weird that the basketball blew up like a Tannerite-stuffed piñata.)

The eight year old girl responsible is accompanied by her mother, played by Joanne Nail (Switchblade Sisters). Nail’s character is being courted by Lance Henriksen, the owner of the basketball team. Henriksen proposes to the girl’s mother, who refuses his offer despite creepy persistence. We soon learn Henriksen is an agent of evil when we see him in the boardroom of rich and powerful Illuminati types. The mysterious figures, led by Mel Ferrer, remind Henriksen that their evil plot hinges on Nail getting pregnant again.

Meanwhile John Huston’s character arrives on Earth. He can freely hop between realms, but requires a commercial airliner to take him to Atlanta. When the little girl discovers her arch-nemesis is now on Earth, she angrily uses her Omen-like powers to turn a birthday gift into a loaded gun and promptly shoots her mother in the spine. This “accident” leads to a couple more surprisingly high-profile talents: Shelly Winters and Glenn Ford, who play the new nanny and a police detective. Eventually the film will introduce Nail’s ex-husband, a doctor played by Sam Peckinpah.

The problem with The Visitor (and I’m nitpicking here because the more I think about it, the more I like it) is it has too much plot for what it wants to be. And it’s a plot that will be just a little too familiar for fans of pre-Halloween horror. I usually love movies like this and I’m no stranger to psychedelic journeys, but no one’s asking the directors of acid films to stitch their visual exercises together with coherent—but ultimately pointless—plots. I just feel The Visitor would work a lot better if it didn’t try to be so damned routine in between its short bursts of wonderful lunacy.

Midnight Movie: Masters of the Universe

Here’s one I haven’t seen since I was a kid. I didn’t really watch Saturday morning cartoons as I was never a morning person, so the extent of what I know about He-Man comes from this movie. I hope I don’t offend the die hard fans with my ignorance because, frankly, you guys kinda scare me. So let’s not pretend this stuff is Shakespeare. The extremely bad attempts at comic relief make that perfectly clear.

The mighty warrior He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) lives on planet Eternia, home of Castle Grayskull. The castle, which holds a plethora of magic secrets, has just been seized by the villainous Skeletor (Frank Langella) and the commander of his hellish army, a witch named Evil-Lyn (Meg Foster). There the villains have taken “The Sorceress of Grayskull” hostage with the help of a “cosmic key” which rips holes in the space-time continuum. This plot device will conveniently usher the characters to Earth, probably because Cannon Film Group was unwilling to raise enough money to shoot entirely on Eternia sets.

It’s on Earth that a duplicate of this cosmic key is lost and He-Man must recover it before Skeletor’s minions do. Joining him are a character named Man-At-Arms, a troll, and a female warrior known as Teela, played by Chelsea Field. This band of heroes cross paths with the most insignificant characters in the film: a couple of teenagers played by Courtney Cox and TV actor Robert Duncan McNeill.

I’m gonna take a wild guess that Cox and McNeill’s characters weren’t part of the original mythos. They feel like an afterthought, added by misguided screenwriting logic: “We should give audience members someone they can relate to!” The film wastes so much time on these white bread teenagers, it’s a cheat to everyone who came to see swords, sorcery, and cheesy action. If, like me, you thought Masters of the Universe was going to be set almost entirely in a fantastical world like Flash Gordon, you’re going to be disappointed.

Masters of the Universe desperately wants to be the next Star Wars film, and although Bill Conti’s music and most of the camerawork are up to snuff, most scenes will have you wondering if you’re watching the first take. During a panoramic of Skeletor’s army marching across a battlefield, one of the extras trips and has trouble standing back up. In an action sequence, He-Man is heroically holding off the bad guys as his friends flee through a doorway; the door, which is supposed to be propped against a wall, keeps falling down and distracting Lundgren from his acting. Later, when being lashed by one of Skeletor’s henchmen, Lundgren’s reactions to the whip are hilariously out of sync.

Despite its many flaws, Masters of the Universe just isn’t bad enough to enter “so bad it’s good” territory. And despite some wonderful costume creations, it isn’t quite good enough for anyone else, either, unless they’re fans of the source material. The film looks pretty good in HD and roughly half of the special FX are actually kind of impressive, but Frank Langella’s skull makeup restricts his performance instead of enhancing it.