Friday, December 17, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia

Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) was a huge box office and critical flop at the time it premiered. However it's now a cult classic.

Regardless, it's still an ugly nihilistic little film about a Mexican drug lord who offers to pay $1 million for the decapitated head of the man who impregnated his daughter.

Naturally when word of this gets around, it attracts all sorts of uglies out of the woodwork, filtering down to grizzled Benny (Warren Oates), a retired military man who is now a bar manager and piano player at a Mexican dive.

It just so happens that Benny finds out from his girlfriend that Alfredo Garcia is already dead, the victim of a car crash. So all that's left to do is dig up his grave and collect his head.

Easy money, right? Wanna bet.

This film was partly created and totally directed by the late Sam Pecknipah, a filmmaker renowned of his grittiness, realism, and umcompromising view of the world. And if you ever saw any of his other films (particularly The Wild Bunch), then you just know that Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia will be an orgy of violence, blood, and unsavory characters pushed by their greed to unhappy endings.

And for the purpose of this blog, let's talk about two of these characters; two of the Mexican bandit's hitmen who just happens to be a gay couple. Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young) are brutal, hateful characters as the following scene demonstrates. But at least their being gay is an incidental thing to their nastiness. (Editor's note - if you hate extreme violence, do not watch this scene):



Past Know Your LGBT History Posts

Know Your LGBT History - Dirty Laundry

Know Your LGBT History - The Willie Witch Project

Know Your LGBT History - Spartacus

Know Your LGBT History - Caged

Know Your LGBT History - The Birdcage

Know Your LGBT History - Maude

Know Your LGBT History - That Certain Summer

Know Your LGBT History - Boat Trip

Know Your LGBT History - Staircase

Know Your LGBT History - Beautiful Thing

Know Your LGBT History - Armed and Dangerous

Know Your LGBT History - The Proud Family

Know Your LGBT History - Suddenly Last Summer

Know Your LGBT History - Gay TV Now

Know Your LGBT History - Stewardess School

Know Your LGBT History - Up the Academy

Know Your LGBT History - Don't be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood

Know Your LGBT History - A Different Story

Know Your LGBT History - Victim

Know Your LGBT History - The Color Purple

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love

Know Your LGBT History - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

Know Your LGBT History - Noah's Arc

Know Your LGBT History - Ode to Billy Joe

Know Your LGBT History - Adorable Adrian Adonis

Know Your LGBT History - The Night Strangler

Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family

Know Your LGBT History - Tongues Untied

Know Your LGBT History - The Celluloid Closet

Know Your LGBT History - Querelle

Know Your LGBT History - Theatre of Blood

Know Your LGBT History - Strange Fruit

Know Your LGBT History - Designing Women

Know Your LGBT History - The Children's Hour

Know Your LGBT History - Sylvester

Know Your LGBT History - Once Bitten

Know Your LGBT History - The Boys in the Band

Know Your LGBT History - Christopher Morley, the crossdressing assassin

Know Your LGBT History - Midnight Cowboy

Know Your LGBT History - Dracula's Daughter

Know Your LGBT History - Blacula

Know Your LGBT History - 3 Strikes

Know Your LGBT History - Paris Is Burning

Know Your LGBT History - The Women

Know your LGBT History - Soul Plane

Know Your LGBT History - The Player's Club

Special Know Your LGBT History - Fame

Know Your LGBT History - Welcome Home, Bobby

Know Your LGBT History - Barney Miller

Know your lgbt history - The Jerry Springer Show

Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Know your lgbt history - The Ricki Lake Show

Know your lgbt history - Which Way Is Up

Know your lgbt history - Gays in Primetime Soaps

Know your lgbt history - Boys Beware

Know your lgbt history - The Boondocks

Know your lgbt history - Mannequin

Know your lgbt history - The Warriors

Know Your LGBT History - New York Undercover

Know Your LGBT History - Low Down Dirty Shame

Know Your LGBT History - Fortune and Men's Eyes

Know your lgbt history - California Suite

Know your lgbt history - Taxi (Elaine's Strange Triangle)

Know your lgbt history - Come Back Charleston Blue

Know your lgbt history - James Bond goes gay

Know your lgbt history - Windows

Know your lgbt history - To Wong Foo and Priscilla

Know your lgbt history - Blazing Saddles

Know your lgbt history - Sanford and Son

Know your lgbt history - In Living Color

Know your lgbt history - Cleopatra Jones and her lesbian drug lords

Know your lgbt history - Norman, Is That You?

Know your lgbt history - The 'Exotic' Adrian Street

Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys

Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy

Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George

Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda

'Know your lgbt history - Cruising

Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones

Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up

Know your lgbt history - Fright Night

Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil

The Jeffersons and the transgender community   


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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:47 AM

    lol that counts as extreme violence? they didn't even shoot the old guy at the end.

    ReplyDelete