Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

  • 85% of critics liked it
    (20 reviews)

  • 83% of users liked it
    (7,979 ratings)

An American bartender and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a $1 million bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.

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R,
Directed By
Written By
Frank Kowalski, Sam Peckinpah, Gordon Dawson
Genres
Drama, Action & Adventure
In Theaters
Aug 14, 1974 Wide
MGM Home Entertainment

Critic Reviews

  • Nora Sayre, New York Times

    The movie's main problem is that the protagonist -- the dead head -- is a bore.

  • Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

    The movie is some kind of bizarre masterpiece. It's probably not a movie that most people would like, but violence, with Peckinpah, sometimes becomes a psychic ballet.

  • Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews

    Intense gruesome crime melodrama that's set in modern Mexico.

  • Kelly Vance, East Bay Express

    For Peckinpah, nothing is so ennobling as to face death in Mexico for the right reason.

  • Cole Smithey, Daily Radar

    Fermented in a tragic romanticism placed firmly in a no-man's land between liberation and capitalism, Sam Peckinpah's 1974 thriller is a film that sticks in your mind's eye like a lingering sun spot.

Read all 13 critic reviews

See more critic ratings and reviews on Rotten Tomatoes

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

  • Pierluigi P


    Only as dark as Peckinpah's own notions of life. This man's tarnished soul is reflected by a superb Warren Oates, his misogyny, a hopeless "Hobbesian" view of society, but also a strong honor code that always leads his characters to attain lost honor by suicidal… More

  • Tim S


    Not all moments in this film are winners - specifically the first half of the film. It's all spent getting to know Bennie and his friend/girlfriend/whatever she is to him. All of this leads up to the cemetery scene. Everything after that is great. It's just that first… More

  • AJ V


    Another movie I want to see again sometime, I don't remember it well.

  • Michael G


    The first hour of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia was one of the most gruelingly dull movieviewing experiences of my life. Yes, Sam Peckinpah perfectly nailed the daunting grittiness of Warren Oates' (who stole the show, by the way) miserable existence but all I saw was some… More

  • Tsubaki S


    Peckinpah's nihilistic trip is still fresh to this date, and still capable of split opinions as much as in it's time. It's in the vein of Corbucci's "The Great Silence", a bleak and dark story where there is no glory for anyone involved. It's a one… More

Read all 17 featured audience ratings

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Cast

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Trailers & Clips