Though not necessarily for cerebral reasons, this slightly mangy but mythic film may be the first to have a severed head as a central character. Warren Oates plays Bennie, a ruined pianist languishing in a gin joint in what David Thomson calls “the special Mexico of Peckinpah's mind.” When Bennie moseys, it's to hunt down a local lothario with a $10,000 bounty on his head. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia unfolds like a fable, throwing testy obstacles before our scruffy knight in sunglasses and a denim jacket with “Viva Zapata” on the sleeve. Tangling with a swarm of bounty hunters along the way, Bennie draws on an unexpected reserve of greed and desperation to overcome the competition. The glaring sun and churning dust of Peckinpah's borderland seem like the very presence of death itself-dire, irrefutable, and violent. Driving through this arid 'scape, Bennie is oblivious as he relentlessly babbles to his speechless companion ripening in the front seat. It's the ultimate head trip!