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Bukowski has a poem, "Shot in the eye / Shot in the brain / Shot in the ass..." Parodic prettiness launches the ugly fable, swans in a lake yield to El Jefe (Emilio Fernández) interrogating the deflowered princess (Janine Maldonado) in his baronial hacienda, the name of the man who's impregnated her follows the crack of her twisted arm. A cool million for the Lothario's head, the cantina pianist (Warren Oates) gets wind of the bounty courtesy of a pair of assassins (Robert Webber, Gig Young). "I'm gonna find a golden fleece, baby," the first thing he does after the negotiation is purchase a machete. The quarry is already dead, graveside decapitation is the kind of mercenary desecration that's become the norm, to the horror of the searcher's lover (Isela Vega). "There's nothing sacred about a hole in the ground or the man that's in it... or you or me!" Grunge pushed to transcendent limits, a pure distillate of folly and rue and pain, Sam Peckinpah at his most naked. Under the Mexican sun with the director's shades, the gringo face to face with the Todestrieb. The rape after the picnic, clawing rebirth in the cemetery and empty retribution on the road. The severed noggin in the stained sack is a romantic rival, the other half of a perverted lampoon of the buddy picture, a decomposing talisman of wrath. "Sure had a nose for shit." Tanguy's jagged desert, Lewis' lavender hitmen (The Big Combo). The lost beloved's echoing canción, muzak in a business office littered with bodies, a biker's taunting ditty ("Hey that jelly jelly jitter / Ain't it drivin' you insane?"). Grace has crabs and the ogre is a happy grandfather, illumination is a storm of bullets. "I got nothing to celebrate." Peckinpah signs his confession over a spent gun barrel, perpetually at the junction of courage and madness. Cinematography by Alex Phillips Jr. With Kris Kristofferson, Helmut Dantine, Chano Urueta, Jorge Russek, Donnie Fritts, Chalo Gonzalez, Don Levy, and Enrique Lucero.
--- Fernando F. Croce |