The Visitor (1979)

          There are so many mind-meltingly weird elements in the sci-fi/horror epic The Visitor that it’s difficult to do the film justice with a brief description. Put simply, the movie is a vague rip-off of The Omen, concerning the efforts of a heroic character to prevent a malevolent child from unleashing something terrible. Accordingly, The Visitor has the requisite scenes of a wholesome-looking young girl using her supernatural powers—or simply her bare hands—to inflict violence. And while the true strangeness of The Visitor stems from the chaotic storytelling, maniacal style, and WTF plot complications, even the central premise gets tarted up in a way that ensures audience bewilderment.

          Because, you see, it’s not just that little Katy Collins (Paige Conner) is some sort of devil child who must be killed in order to protect the universe. No, the problem is that Katy’s innocent mother, pretty Atlanta divorcée Barbara Collins (Joanne Nail), has a womb that breeds superkids, so conspirators led by mysterious surgeon Dr. Walker (Mel Ferrer) have positioned Barbara’s boyfriend, Raymond (Lance Henriksen), to push Barbara into marriage and a second pregnancy so she can breed a son, because together with Katy, the son will comprise the demonic equivalent of the Wonder Twins. Got all that? Good, since there’s more!

          Stalking Barbara and Katy is grandfatherly space alien Jerzy Colsowicz (John Huston), who leads a band of bald alien musclemen who spend most of their time doing the equivalent of interpretive dance while standing behind scrims atop an Atlanta rooftop. Interstellar performance-art alert! Jerzy chases Barbara and Katy around downtown Atlanta, even though Katy tries to use her telekinetic abilities to kill him, and Jerzy spends one evening in the Collins home by announcing he’s the babysitter sent by an employment agency because the regular girl is sick. After all, don’t most of us welcome 70-year-old men into our homes to watch over our prepubescent daughters while we’re away? Oh, and we still haven’t mentioned the never-seen aunt who gives Katy a loaded pistol for her birthday, or that Katy accidentally shoots and paralyzes her mother. And then there’s crazed nanny Jane (Shelley Winters), who slaps Katy around because she knows that Katy is evil. Is it even worth noting that the plot also includes an intrepid police detective (Glenn Ford) and a silent longhair who may or may not be Jesus (Franco Nero)?

          The Visitor is gonzo right from the opening scene, a trippy special-effects vignette showing Huston in some otherworldly environment with oddly colored liquid skies. Among the film’s myriad bizarre episodes are the following: Katy uses her telekinesis to sway an NBA game by causing a basketball to explode; Jerzy has some sort of orgasmic interaction with a radioactive space cloud full of birds; a scene of spinal surgery gets intercut with a gymnastics routine; and famed movie director Sam Peckinpah shows up for one scene, in silhouette, to play a medical doctor. Accentuating all of this bizarre content is disjointed editing that makes everything seem hallucinatory, and lots of operatic disco music. You’ve been warned.

The Visitor: FREAKY

Junior Bonner (1972)

          Although it’s a horrible cliché to say that Hollywood success is a double-edged sword, the sentiment is apt when considering Junior Bonner, a lovely dramatic film that probably would have enjoyed broader acceptance had the reputations of the film’s director and star not created inappropriate expectations. The director is Sam Peckinpah, who made this soft-spoken movie as a reprieve from the violent action sagas for which he was famous, and the star is Steve McQueen, whose most popular films involve glossy escapism. As the quiet story of an aging rodeo champ who returns to his hometown with an eye toward resolving longstanding family strife, Junior Bonner is probably the last thing anybody anticipated from Peckinpah or McQueen. Combined with the near-simultaneous release of several other movies about rodeo riders, the disconnect between what audiences wanted from the people behind Junior Bonner and what the picture actually delivers helped ensure a rotten performance at the box office. Happily, critics and fans have elevated the movie to greater notoriety in the years since its original release, because Junior Bonner represents a nearly pitch-perfect collaboration between director and star. (It’s also a damn sight better, in terms of resonance and substance, than the duo’s hit follow-up, 1974’s The Getaway.)

          When the movie begins, Junior (McQueen) trots into Prescott, Arizona, after a grueling and unrewarding rodeo ride. While recuperating in preparation for another shot at the bull that threw him, Junior wades into the fraught relationship of his parents, hard-drinking carouser Ace (Robert Preston) and no-bullshit survivor Elvira (Ida Lupino). As Junior tries to help mend fences, he also must contend with the crass ambitions of his little brother, Curly (Joe Don Baker), who wants to raze old homes (including his parents’ house) in order to build a cookie-cutter development. The contrast between Junior’s old-fashioned independence and his brother’s ultra-modern avarice allows Peckinpah to channel one of his favorite themes—the passing of the West, and the values it represents—through the tidy narrative of Jeb Rosebrook’s screenplay.

          McQueen proves once again that there was more to him than just an impressive macho image, using precision of language and movement to express his character’s inner life as efficiently as possible. McQueen is loose when he needs to be, as during scenes of barroom rowdiness, and tight when he needs to be, as during vignettes illustrating subtle family tensions. Preston channels his charming boisterousness into the character of a loveable rascal, and Lupino is believable as a woman who’s been put through the wringer by a challenging marriage. Baker and costar Ben Johnson contribute two different types of manly energy, with Baker conveying winner-takes-all selfishness and Johnson tight-lipped toughness. For the most part, Peckinpah eschews his signature excesses—the trademark slow-motion shots are used sparingly—so Junior Bonner is a great reminder that before he was a provocateur, Peckinpah was a storyteller. If only by dint of lacking mythic characterizations and over-the-top violence, Junior Bonner is probably the simplest Peckinpah feature, and that’s a good thing.

Junior Bonner: GROOVY

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

          A quasi-comedic character study of a loner who builds a tiny empire in a barren stretch of Old West frontier, The Ballad of Cable Hogue would seem to be director Sam Peckinpah’s gentlest film. Yet beneath the amiable surface of the movie lurk some of the dark themes that permeate all of Peckinpah’s work. This may be a ballad, but it’s played in a minor key.

          Jason Robards stars as Cable Hogue, a schemer who gets separated from his partners in crime while traversing a grim American desert. After wandering the wastelands for several days, Hogue stumbles across a tiny reservoir that marks an underground water source. Replenished, Hogue stakes a claim on the water, traveling into a nearby town to christen his finding Cable Springs—the only stop for refreshment between two remote wagon-trail posts. As the movie progresses, Hogue forms a bizarre surrogate family. Hogue’s first new friend is the Rev. Joshua Duncan Sloane (David Warner), a priest unaffiliated with any formal church and unencumbered by vows of celibacy; like Hogue, Sloane is a self-made maverick. Hogue also bonds with Hildy (Stella Stevens), a prostitute. Especially after she’s shunned by disapproving townsfolk and seeks refuge with Hogue, Hildy grows to love her ragged companion.

          Much of the picture comprises cutesy domestic scenes of the couple playing house in the wilderness. These peculiar sequences mine unlikely (and sometimes ineffective) humor from the juxtaposition of scruffy Robards and sexy Stevens. And while Hildy may be one of the most deeply explored female characters in Peckinpah’s oeuvre, it’s hard to overlook the leering way the director films his leading lady—not only is Stevens repeatedly nude as she pops in and out of bathtubs, but Peckinpah pulls jackass moves like zooming into closeups of Stevens’ cleavage. Yes, the camerawork is meant to mimic Hogue’s male gaze, but restraint would have helped.

          The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a strange movie, bouncing from slapstick to tragedy, and the talent differential between the leading actors results in herky-jerky storytelling. Every time Robards locks into a groove of poetic melancholy, Stevens intrudes with the numbing normalcy of her one-dimensional screen persona. Yet one could argue that Stevens’ limitations suit Peckinpah’s theme of Hogue being a soulful man for whom there’s no real place in the cruel world; perhaps Hildy’s vapid beauty is meant to represent the only type of happiness an eccentric like Hogue can reasonably expect. Warner’s elegant oddness—closer on the talent spectrum to Robards’ vibe than Stevens’—complicates the experience further.

          Still, even if the middle of the movie is undisciplined, thanks to episodic storytelling and mismatched elements, The Ballad of Cable Hogue gets points for ending well, because Peckinpah eventually brings the narrative around to a favorite theme—the passing of the Old West upon the arrival of crass modernity. Therefore, if nothing else, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is an interesting example of an artist experimenting with new techniques. The picture may not work, per se, but it was a bold movie—and, of course, the fact that it actually got made demonstrates Peckinpah’s incredible tenacity.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue: GROOVY

Straw Dogs (1971)

          Director Sam Peckinpah liked to play rough, whether he was bombarding viewers with slow-motion bloodshed or defying good taste by showcasing the terrible behavior of evil characters, but in many ways he never put audiences through more abuse than he did with Straw Dogs. A complicated movie with a simple story, the picture is frequently misunderstood as a revenge tale, but a close examination of its storyline reveals something more devious; the motivation for the horrific violence the protagonist commits during the film’s climax is ambiguous, layered, and provocative.

          Dustin Hoffman stars as David Sumner, an American mathematician who receives a grant to work in a remote English village that happens to be the hometown of his wife, Amy (Susan George). We meet the Sumners at the same time we meet the residents of the strange little village, so in just a few moments, Peckinpah and co-writer David Zelag Goodman establish how woefully out of place David is in a clannish, working-class enclave. Amy, meanwhile, is quite literally right at home; she’s also young and unsophisticated enough to think she can get away with flirtatious behavior around local young men who drink themselves stupid at the neighborhood pub every night. Out of boredom and a childish desire to be the center of attention in her household, Amy wears revealing clothes and even, at one point, parades naked in front of local men who are working on the remote farmhouse she and David have rented.

          Meanwhile, an adult simpleton named Henry Niles (David Warner) lurks around the village, taunted by everyone because of some past offense in which he menaced a young girl. As the film progresses, these divergent elements—combined with a running trope of hyped-up young men, led by Charlie Venner (Del Henney), lusting after Amy and openly mocking David—come together during a bloody siege that comprises nearly the entire last half-hour of the movie.

          Often cited in academic studies of cinematic violence, Straw Dogs is ostensibly a meditation on the idea of a civilized man pushed to savagery by circumstance, but it’s the nature of those circumstances that makes the film so thorny. It’s giving nothing away to say that Amy is assaulted partway through the movie, since the attack is foreshadowed almost from the first scene. However, people who talk about Straw Dogs often suggest the violence David subsequently commits is a response to his wife’s violation. It’s not, because Amy never tells her husband about the crime. Instead, David’s descent into brutality is triggered by random events. The implication, then, is that David was churning with animalistic fury all along, and that he was, psychically speaking, waiting for an excuse to unleash his inner demons.

          This nuance helps define Straw Dogs as a deeply cynical film, because if Peckinpah had simply told a story about a man responding to an unspeakable crime, the picture would have become something like Death Wish (1974). Straw Dogs is entirely different. It’s an unpleasant film to watch, of course—there’s nothing fun about two hours of abuse, murder, rape, and excruciating tension—and the film has been debated and dissected so many times that whether it actually delivers meaningful insights is best left for individual viewers to decide. What’s beyond question, though, is that Straw Dogs represents Peckinpah’s artistry at its most forceful—and perverse.

          Plus, the movie contains one of Hoffman’s nerviest performances, a meticulous balancing act in which Hoffman charts tiny, moment-to-moment changes in his character’s psyche while also giving himself over to scenes in which his character loses control. Leading lady George is hopelessly outclassed by Hoffman (a talent disparity that actually serves the story), and the English players portraying the locals all contribute salty flavors. Warner, whose performance is uncredited, stands out with his disquieting mixture of innocence and menace.

Straw Dogs: GROOVY

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

          Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia represents director Sam Peckinpah’s worldview at its most unforgiving—instead of presenting violence alongside his usual themes of honor and masculine identity, Peckinpah uses this movie to present violence as its own unique force of nature, an insidious virus that destroys everyone it touches. Even the very texture of the film seethes with hatred and malice, because Peckinpah eschews the macho lyricism of his other work for a style as down-and-dirty as that of any low-budget exploitation film. Watching the picture, viewers can smell the sweat on every character’s skin, just like the rank odor of death permeates the grisly storyline.

          Set in Mexico, the movie begins with a crime lord (Emilio Fernandez) torturing his own daughter to find out who impregnated hear. Learning that the culprit is the crime lord’s protégé, Alfredo Garcia, the villain issues the horrific command featured in the movie’s title. Eager for the reward the crime lord is offering, two white mercenaries (played by Robert Webber and Gig Young) begin searching for Garcia, eventually landing in a seedy bar where retired U.S. Army vet Bennie (Warren Oates) works as a manager and piano player. Bennie learns about the bounty on Garcia and confronts his lady, Elita (Isela Vega), a prostitute who’s been two-timing Bennie by sleeping with the elusive Garcia. Elita says Garcia recently died in a car wreck. His craven lust for money and revenge surging, Bennie invites Elita for a road trip without explaining that he plans to exhume Garcia’s body, remove the head, and collect the crime lord’s bounty.

          This being a Peckinpah film, things get complicated and ugly once Bennie embarks on his mission—a miserable cycle of betrayal, murder, rape, and theft leads Bennie inexorably toward a bloody standoff with the crime lord, whom the twisted Bennie identifies as the source of his misery.

          Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is Peckipah unleashed, a vicious story without heroes or victims, just schemers who pay horrible costs for crossing other schemers. Since Peckinpah was a self-destructive man who battled with nearly everyone in his life, from close friends to the many enemies he made, it’s impossible not to see the parallels between the subject matter of this relentless movie and Peckinpah’s bleak outlook on his own doomed life. And just as the filmmaker made a mess of his offscreen existence, he keeps Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia loose, constructing a storyline with co-writer Gordon Dawson that meanders from one low-down vignette to the next; the implied message is that no matter how bad life gets, it can always get worse.

          Delivering this message with perfect clarity is Peckinpah favorite Oates, giving the best performance of his singular career. Dishonest, fidgety, volatile and yet somehow weirdly human, Oates’ Bennie is an unforgettable figure—his slovenly pursuit of crazed “justice” dramatizes what happens when a man’s better angels get strangled by greed, jealously, and other petty impulses. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a chaotic movie marred by rampant misogyny, script irregularities, and technical imperfections—but in a strange way, these flaws amplify the movie’s vision of a world without moral order.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia: RIGHT ON

Convoy (1978)

          A sad spectacle representing the near-end of a once-glorious career, Convoy was not director Sam Peckinpah’s final film, but it might as well have been. (He only made one more picture, the lifeless ’80s espionage flick The Osterman Weekend.) Virtually a lampoon of every theme and visual device Peckinpah used in his previous films, Convoy is as vapid as the director’s other pictures are meaningful, so watching the movie is like seeing a faded singer struggle through greatest hits he can no longer perform with the proper energy. Exacerbating its lack of artistic worth, Convoy was the production that finally destroyed Peckinpah’s fragile reputation in Hollywood, since substance abuse often left him so debilitated that his friend James Coburn had to step in and direct several scenes. Even with the extra help, Convoy came in over-budget and over-schedule, guaranteeing no reputable producer would hire Peckinpah for years.

         Providing the final insult, Convoy became Peckinpah’s biggest box-office success.

         Yes, despite making provocative classics like The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Peckinpah wasn’t fully embraced by American moviegoers until he helmed a trucker flick that was adapted from a novelty song. The song, of course, was C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” the 1975 hit in which McCall narrated the tale of a rebel trucker’s adventure while cheesy music composed by future Mannheim Steamroller leader Chip Davis grooved underneath. Screenwriter B.W.L. Norton translated the song quite literally, presenting the idiotic story of badass trucker Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) forming a giant convoy of 18-wheelers to battle corrupt Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (Ernest Borgnine).

          Yet Norton should probably be held blameless for the incoherent weirdness of the final film, since Peckinpah rewrote the script before and during production, even taking the extreme of letting his cast contribute material whether or not the material actually fit the overall storyline. Worse, Peckinpah dug into the tropes of his earlier movies, layering in endless scenes of property destruction, slow-motion violence, and sweaty men stirring up trouble. Whenever Convoy enters a sloppy montage of barroom brawling or cars crashing through buildings, the movie becomes a parody of Peckinpah’s wild-man style.

         Had the filmmaker demonstrated any discipline or restraint, Convoy could easily have become a fun B-movie about outlaws fighting the man. Certainly, the casting of the lead roles pointed the way toward something unpretentiously enjoyable. Singer-turned-actor Kristofferson, at the height of his beardy handsomeness, exudes rock-star cool, so he cuts a great figure steering an 18-wheeler while wearing aviator shades and a wife-beater. Borgnine, his gap-toothed swarthiness in full bloom, personifies redneck villainy. Yet Peckinpah puts so much crap between these characters—driving montages, explosions, pointless scenes featuring Kristofferson’s love interest, played by Ali MacGraw with her usual ineptitude—that the basic story gets bludgeoned to death. Convoy ends up feeling like a fever dream instead of a narrative, so it’s fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

Convoy: FREAKY

The Getaway (1972)

          Beloved by many action-movie fans for its intense mixture of double-crosses, sexual intrigue, and violent showdowns, The Getaway was a significant box-office hit for director Sam Peckinpah and star Steve McQueen, both of whom were at commercial crossroads after indulging themselves with financially unsuccessful passion projects. The Getaway is not, however, among the best movies either man made. Convoluted, sleazy, and sluggish, the picture has a few memorable moments, but events on the periphery of the main storyline often distract from the principal narrative.

          McQueen plays “Doc” McCoy, a career criminal whom we meet while he’s imprisoned. Realizing he’s unlikely to earn parole, Doc asks his wife, Carol (Ali MacGraw), to contact Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson), a businessman/criminal with political connections. Benyon gets Doc released in exchange for Doc’s promise to pull an elaborate job. Predictably, the minute Doc performs the crime, Doc and Carol realize they’ve been set up, so the bulk of the film comprises their attempts to escape Benyon’s ruthless minions and exact revenge.

          Peckinpah stages action in his usual style, blending frenetic cuts with lyrical slow-motion interludes, so scenes of guns-a-blazin’ mayhem have power; furthermore, screenwriter Walter Hill, adapting a novel by crime-fiction legend Jim Thompson, keeps things terse. Yet it’s hard to settle into the rhythms of the movie, partially because the lead characters are awful people—when Doc finds out Carol slept with Benyon to expedite Doc’s release, for instance, Doc slugs her—and partially because Peckinpah gets distracted by nonsense. In particular, the director wastes a lot of screen time on a subplot in which one of Benyon’s goons, Rudy (Al Lettieri), kidnaps a veterinarian and his wife, then seduces the wife in full view of the veterinarian, thereby deriving erotic glee from humiliating a nobody. (The wife is played by Sally Struthers, of All in the Family fame, in a screechy performance.)

          Perhaps the moment that best captures the excess of The Getaway is the bit during which Doc and Carol are dumped out of the back of a garbage truck—Peckinpah lingers on the image of two glamorous stars surrounded by junk as if it’s the height of cinematic irony. Were the entire movie not suffused with sludge, literally and metaphorically, this dramatic moment might have meant more; as is, it’s just one more unpleasant scene in a disposable movie. The Getaway was remade in 1994 with then-married stars Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger taking over the leading roles, but even with steamy sex scenes and a vivacious supporting performance by James Woods (as Benyon), the 1994 picture is no more a classic than the Peckinpah film.

The Getaway: FUNKY

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)

          A critical favorite whose enviable reputation stems from lingering fascination with director Sam Peckinpah and the mystique that attaches to any serious movie altered by studio interference, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has many virtues that are not immediately apparent—it’s like one of those classic novels that makes more sense after one learns about the context surrounding the novel’s creation. Thus, Pat Garrett on its own merits might seem merely a somewhat pretentious Western drama offering a bleak riff on the last days of a notorious outlaw. Seen through the prism of Peckinpah’s career, however, it becomes something more.

          The story is deceptively simple. Graying outlaw-turned-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) reunites with his old comrade-in-crime, William “Billy the Kid” Bonney (Kris Kristofferson), in New Mexico. Garret advises Billy to leave the country because authorities are planning to hunt Billy. Appalled at the way corporations and politicians are constricting the frontier, Billy remains at large until he’s captured by lawmen including Bible-thumping deputy Ollinger (R.G. Armstrong). Gunning his way free of his captors, Billy starts a tragic cycle leading to a confrontation with his friend Garrett.

          Much has been made of this picture’s metaphorical heft, since the idea of a former robber betraying his lawless friend can be interpreted as a statement on the way greed changed the maverick spirit of the Old West. And, indeed, some dialogue and imagery emphasizes that exact reading, like the bit in which Peckinpah appears onscreen as a coffin maker. (See, he’s burying the Old West.) Taking the metaphor further, the picture can also be viewed as a rumination on individual-vs.-the-establishment themes that were prevalent in the national conversation at the time the film was made.

          The problem with over-praising this movie is twofold. First, Peckinpah expressed the same themes, with greater clarity and power, in earlier pictures like The Wild Bunch (1969). Second, Pat Garrett gets mired in lots of distractions, like the pointless scenes with Billy’s young sidekick, Alias (Bob Dylan), or the extended sequence of a female gunslinger (Katy Jurado) mowing down a group of opponents. This being a Peckinpah flick, there are also long vignettes of sweaty men drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and screwing whores in filthy rooms, plus a fair amount of slow-motion bloodletting.

          To be fair, the song score by costar Dylan adds a melancholy vibe (Dylan’s great song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was introduced here), and any assessment of Pat Garrett must take into consideration the fact that the picture has been released in several versions. For instance, a so-called “Director’s Cut” was released in 2001, nearly 20 years after Peckinpah died, so it’s anybody’s guess which version of the picture represents Peckinpah’s original intentions. Still, any film must ultimately be appraised based upon its content, and the two hours comprising the currently available “definitive” version of Pat Garrett feature flashes of brilliance in the service of a thoughtful but murky narrative.

          Like Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), another counterculture-themed picture written by Rudy Wurlitzer, Pat Garrett is a uniquely ’70s endeavor that makes for a great discussion piece, even if it somehow provokes viewers to invest the material with more meaning than is actually present. But then again, one of Peckinpah’s great gifts, both onscreen and in his private life, was stirring up trouble; therefore, perhaps the secret genius of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is that it smashes signifiers together and lets the audience sort out the chaos.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: GROOVY

The Killer Elite (1975)

          Part action picture, part conspiracy thriller, and part revenge epic, The Killer Elite is a mess. As directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose creative decline was rapidly underway at this point, the picture boasts a handful of exciting scenes and several vivid performances, but its intentions are as vague as its storyline. James Caan and Robert Duvall star as a pair of gunmen who work for a private espionage group that’s hired by the CIA for covert operations like securely transporting international political figures who’ve been targeted for assassination by foreign governments. For reasons that are never particularly clear, Hansen (Duvall) shoots Locken (Caan) after a successful operation, betraying his buddy and leaving Locken a near-cripple thanks to wounds to his elbow and knee. The movie then devotes about 30 minutes to methodical scenes showing Locken’s recovery. As soon as Locken’s back in fighting shape, Hansen conveniently surfaces with a contract to kill an Asian dissident (Mako), so Locken recruits a driver (Burt Young) and a sniper (Bo Hopkins) to help protect the dissident and, with any luck, confront Hansen. Also layered into the story are a series of double- and triple-crosses involving Locken’s bosses (Arthur Hill and Gig Young). Oh, and there are ninjas, too. Lots of ninjas.

          None of it makes very much sense, but the journey is still somewhat interesting because Caan is so charismatic and because Peckinpah knows how to shoot action scenes. (Extensive San Francisco location photography is another plus.) When The Killer Elite clicks, it delivers visceral moments like a shootout in a crowded street that expands into a nasty high-speed car chase. When the movie doesn’t click, it delivers spastic sequences like the climactic confrontation, during which Locken’s crew takes on an army of ninjas aboard a decommissioned warship, all of which leads up to a big swordfight between two supporting characters. Whatever. Luckily, the picture knows better than to take itself seriously, so sarcastic humor is woven into nearly every scene. Caan’s buddy-movie shtick with his sidekicks is terrific (Young is consistently amusing and Hopkins is memorably twitchy), and it’s also entertaining to watch Caan’s character get exasperated whenever the dissident spouts Eastern philosophy. “I understand now,” Caan opines bitchily at one point. “He wants to go back and die on his native soil. It’s that salmon-up-the-river shit.”

The Killer Elite: FUNKY

Cross of Iron (1977)

          Gonzo filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was already starting to lose his creative way when he made the World War II actioner Cross of Iron. By the mid-’70s, he had become such a substance-abusing hellraiser that his productions were nightmares for nearly everyone involved, and Cross of Iron represents his last hurrah as a serious filmmaker. (He cranked out two more features before his death, but both were embarrassments.) As chaotic and overindulgent as the man who made it, Cross of Iron is also clever, disturbing, and provocative, a flawed psychological drama that could have become a masterpiece had it been executed with more discipline.

          Based on a novel by Willi Heinrich and penned by a trio of writers including Hollywood veteran Julius Epstein (Casablanca), the picture follows the adventures of Sgt. Rolf Steiner (James Coburn), a valiant German soldier fighting on the bloody Russian front. Brave, smart, and respected by his men, Steiner would be officer material if he didn’t have a problem with authority, so he quickly gets into a battle of wills with his new commander, Capt. Stransky (Maximilian Schell). A pompous Prussian aristocrat who lacks combat experience, Stransky is an ambitious monster determined to win an Iron Cross by any means necessary. When Stransky tries to claim credit for a heroic charge that was actually led by another man, Steiner emerges as the only eyewitness who can disprove Stransky’s boast, so Stransky abandons Steiner’s platoon in enemy territory when the Germans call a general retreat from the front.

          And that’s just one of the threads in this complex movie: There’s also a subplot about Steiner adopting a young Russian boy as his platoon’s ward, an intense sequence in which Steiner convalesces after suffering shell shock, and a sensitively depicted relationship between cynical Col. Brandt (James Mason) and his idealistic right-hand man, Capt. Kiesel (David Warner). As with most Peckinpah pictures, Cross of Iron unfurls as a bloody phantasmagoria. The dramatic scenes are tight and controlled, with Peckinpah drawing consistently interesting work from his gifted cast, and by contrast the action scenes are disjointed and surreal; during the shell-shock sequence in particular, Peckinpah employs impressionistic editing techniques to replicate Steiner’s fragmented state of mind. There’s also plenty of the director’s signature slow-motion violence, so be prepared for shots of viscera exploding in lingering detail.

          As a result of this multifaceted storytelling, Cross of Iron is dense and uneven. At one extreme there’s an excruciating scene of Stransky goading two soldiers into confessing their homosexual proclivities, and at the other extreme there’s an over-the-top sequence of Steiner’s platoon taking a group of female Russian soliders captive; the level of sexual violence in the latter sequence is predictably gruesome.

          Yet even with all of this transgressive material, the film’s strongest element is a running commentary on the nature of war. By dividing the military mind into a group of sharply individualized characters, the story illustrates how the battlefield both invites and nurtures insanity. Steiner is a strange sort of noble anarchist, bound by a deep sense of loyalty to his men but disdainful of everyone in the upper ranks and virtually oblivious to the politics driving the war. Stransky is a self-serving opportunist not only willing but sadistically eager to make others die for his greater glory. The conflict between these two men becomes more and more heated as the film advances, until finally they’re thrown together in a darkly ironic climax.

          That the picture ends on an ambiguous note, instead of definitively resolving the story, says as much about Cross of Iron’s virtues as it does about the film’s failings. The film raises a hundred probing questions even as it piles on lurid war-movie thrills, then dumps all of this information onto the audience so viewers can sort through the muck and find whatever they find. Cross of Iron is a fascinating mess.

Cross of Iron: GROOVY