Sam Peckinpah — Happy Place — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #100 Cross of Iron (1977)

Our patron-funded exploration of the complete filmography of Sam Peckinpah comes to an end with 1977’s Cross of Iron, an even grimmer than usual bloodbath pitting Nazis against Russians at the end of World War II.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #86 The Osterman Weekend (1983)

Sam Peckinpah’s gloriously checkered career as a filmmaker ended with a convoluted but reasonably engaging adaptation of a Robert Ludlam novel featuring a murderer’s row of great character actors, including Burt Lancaster, Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon and an exquisitely mustached Craig T. Nelson.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0Nathan RabinMarch 5, 2020Sam Peckinpah, Dennis Hopper, John Hurt, Rutger Hauer, Film

Control Nathan Rabin #76 The Killer Elite (1975)

It’s the Sam Peckinpah movie with ninjas and shit!

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0Nathan RabinNovember 7, 2019Robert Duvall, James Caan, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young, Gig Young, Sam Peckinpah

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #75 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Warren Oates is positively majestic in this achingly beautiful and sad romance/character study from the great Sam Peckinpah.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0Nathan RabinOctober 30, 2019Warren Oates, Sam Peckinpah, fatalism, neo-Noir

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #66 Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

One of you kind souls paid me to see all of Sam Peckinpah’s movies. We’re up to 1973’s troubled, mesmerizing Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, which brought together a young Bob Dylan, a 36 year old Billy The Kid, a whole bunch of dead chickens and James Coburn enjoying the simultaneous sexual services of four beautiful prostitutes.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #63 The Getaway (1972)

One of you generous souls paid me to write about every Sam Peckinpah movie, including this brutal Jim Thompson adaptation written by a young Walter Hill and starring real-life lovers Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #60 Straw Dogs (1971)

Our ongoing, patron-funded exploration of the films of Sam Peckinpah reaches Bloody Sam’s problematic and deeply troubling 1971 provocation Straw Dogs.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #49: Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)

Sam Peckinpah’s curious, curiously satisfying follow-up to The Wild Bunch is a strange, strangely fascinating combination of haunting elegy for the old west and Benny Hill-style wacky sex comedy

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #45 The Wild Bunch (1969)

A half century on, Sam Peckinpah’s incendiary 1969 masterpiece The Wild Bunch remains as magnificent and deeply troubling as ever.

Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #41/Peckinpals #3 Major Dundee (1965)

One of you kind souls paid me to watch and write about ALL of Sam Peckinpah’s movies, including 1965’s Major Dundee, a sort of dry run for The Wild Bunch starring Charlton Heston as an obsessed soldier out for redemption and vengeance.