Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
by Sam Peckinpah
from MGM (Video & DVD)
Some people will do anything for a million dollars even if it means killing anyone who gets in their way! Written and directed by Oscar® nominee* Sam Peckinpah and starring Academy Award® winner** Gig Young Warren Oates Robert Webber Kris Kristofferson and the seductively beautiful Isela Vega Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a gritty classic that vibrates with explosive action and nail-biting tension.When a Mexican land baron puts a million dollars on the head of the man who seduced his daughter two money-hungry men (Young and Webber) recruit a small-town bartender (Oates) to help them do their dirty work. But their tequila-fueled trek across the desolate Mexican frontier grows more intense gruesome and bloody with every savage murder they leave in their wake!*1969: Original Screenplay The Wild Bunch (With Walon Green and Roy N. Sickner)System Requirements: Running Time 112 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 027616920522 Manufacturer No: 1008007
Sam Peckinpah knew he couldn't call a movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and get away with it. That's why he did it. When he undertook this nakedly personal project, in self-exile in Mexico, the director was a deeply bitter man out of favor with critics, the media, and the Hollywood establishment, which had just released his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid in a mutilated version. "Bring Me the Head..." sounded like the parody title of an ultraviolent Sam Peckinpah movie, and he flung it in our faces just as his onscreen surrogate tosses the titular object at the camera.
Thing is, the movie is a masterpiece--raw, shocking, beautiful, and brave--in which Peckinpah confronts his enemies and his own demons. Warren Oates plays a gringo piano-player stuck in Mexico who hears that some powerful men are willing to pay a bounty on a guy he knows. They don't know the guy is already dead, killed in a car accident. It'll be easy to exhume the trophy and collect the money--except that it will cost our seedy hero everything he has and ever wanted.
John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre had always been a key legend for Peckinpah; this film is a subterranean re-imagining of it, with Oates as both the son of Fred C. Dobbs and the carnival-mirror reflection of Peckinpah himself. And Isela Vega's performance as the sainted whore Elita--bruised and worldly one minute, radiant and clear-skinned as a child the next--is an act of grace. --Richard T. Jameson
Barbarosa
by Fred Schepisi
from Lions Gate
Barbarosa (Willie Nelson), a gnarly ex-Texas Ranger turned bandit, lives by his wits and his prowess with a gun. Prowling the lonesome deserts of the Southwest, the wily fugitive meets Karl (Gary Busey), a young, eager farmhand out of his element, forced to run after accidentally killing his brother-in-law. Together, the outlaw and the outcast outwit their bloodthirsty pursuers in this legendary story of betrayal, misunderstanding, honor and dignity. Brought vividly to the screen by director Fred Schepisi ("Roxanne", "Six Degrees of Separation" and "I.Q.").
Munecas de Media Noche
by Rafael Lopez Portillo
from Laguna Films
El Macho Bionico
by Rodolfo de Anda
from Cinema Inc.
Un conocido playboy viaja en su avión, acompañado de su ayudante homosexual y sufren un accidente. Como resultado del accidente el playboy pierde la virilidad. Desesperado el hombre, descubre que ya existen un hombre y una mujer biónicos, y hasta un perro, asà que haciendo uso de su fortuna, viaja a los Estados Unidos y se somete a la operación que lo convierte en el primer macho biónico. Recuperado de la cirugÃa, pide a su ayudante que le organice una fiesta, con las mujeres más guapas, pero el implante no da resultado. Tras el fracaso, viene la averiguación, y ahà se entera que para que el implante funcione, tiene que existir el sentimiento del amor. Comienza la búsqueda desesperada y solo una vez logra sentir amor, y es en un cabaret de mala muerte con una bailarina exótica a la que nunca volverá a ver. Decepcionado se refugia en un convento. Su ayudante para rescatarlo logra que la bailarina exótica se pasee desnuda por los jardines del convento para provocar la tan deseada reacción. A well-known playboy and his gay assistant have an airplane accident. As a result, the playboy loses his virility. Desperate, he learns that science has already produced a bionic man and woman and even a bionic dog, so, using his vast fortune, he goes to the U.S. and undergoes an operation which turns him into the world's first bionic stud. Having recovered from the surgery, he asks his assistant to organize a party with the most beautiful women, only to discover that the implant does not work. His investigation reveals that the implant will work only if and when love is involved. He begins a desperate search but has the stirrings of love only once, in a third-rate night club, while watching an exotic dancer he will likely never see again. Despondent, the playboy takes refuge in a convent. His faithful assistant manages to have the exotic dancer walk naked about the convent gardens to generate the desired reaction.
El Oficio Mas Antiguo del Mundo
by Luis Alcoriza
from Allumination
Las Tentadoras
by Rafael Lopez Portillo
from Laguna Films
Fear Chamber
by Jack Hill
from ELITE ENTERTAINMENT
Lurid but not scary, awful but not bad enough to be good, Fear Chamber is unredeemed even by a late career performance by Boris Karloff, in what has to be the worst and most embarrassing movie of his career. Karloff, who was in his eighties at the time, plays Dr. Carl Mandel, a scientist whose assistants go deep into the Earth's core, where they discover some sort of magic rock ("pure crystallized intelligence," they call it) that the doc believes may be "the source of… the ultimate secrets of the universe." But there's a catch: the rock subsists on hormones that can only be produced by humans in a state of extreme terror. Enter the "fear chamber," in which beautiful young girls (all foreigners, so no one will miss 'em) are scared witless (after they strip down to bra and panties, of course) by way of an elaborate charade involving a spooky dungeon filled with bubbling cauldrons, horrid creepy-crawlies, and such. So far, so bad; but when the rock starts seeking out its own victims and messing with the doc's computers, things really go downhill fast. Not that there's very far to go. Filmed in Mexico in 1968 (producer Luis Vergara made three other movies at the same time) but not released until '72, Fear Chamber boasts cheesy sets, laughable special effects, appalling acting, stilted dialogue, ham-fisted editing, poor cinematography… and those are its better points. DVD extras include commentary by writer-director Jack Hill, who's got a lot to answer for. --Sam Graham
After receiving strange signals on his equipment, brilliant geologist Dr. Carl Mandel (BORIS KARLOFF) sends a team to search the depths of the earth in an effort to learn its origin; what they discover is a lifeform encased in solid rock which can communicate telepathically. Upon bringing the mass to the surface, it is determined that this entity is "pure crystallized intelligence" and is thought to hold many of the secrets of existence. However, the only message this mysterious stone is transmitting is what kind of food it needs to thrive - a particular chemical that can only be produced by bodies of humans which are experiencing pure terror. Faced with this unusual dilemma the good doctor devises the "FEAR CHAMBER" where he has kidnapped subjects frightened to no end with all sorts of satanic rituals and creepy-crawlies so he may obtain this precious chemical. Even though Dr. Mandel and his assistants take care not to physically harm their subjects, the living stone begins evolving. It starts growing appendages and learns how to capture its own prey and extract the fluids it needs. The scientists begin to realize what a dangerous force they have unleashed on the surface of the world...
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