9. The Wild Bunch
Sam Peckinpah. Now there is a name synonymous with violence and blood in mainstream cinema. Whether it is the anti-war sentiment of Cross of Iron, the head from Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia or the intellectualised machismo from Straw Dogs, he was never backwards in coming forwards. In The Wild Bunch, however, Peckinpah created perhaps the first bloody mainstream movie. Beginning like an atypical one last job film, William Holdens gang are ambushed after robbing a railroad office by his former partner. From there, Holdens gang end up working for a Mexican Army General and, after a violent confrontation, agree to steal a weapons shipment from a US Army train. Double cross on top of subterfuge on top of shoot-outs follow as the gang eventually face down the Mexicans they were forced to work for. A typical back-stabbing western? Well, not quite. This is the Peckinpah movie and one which, even to this day, has a shocking amount of blood and violence. Whereas Corbuccis Django, made three years earlier, has some extreme violence, Peckinpah takes this lead and runs. The Browning machine gun is central to the later gun fights but it is the way the (anti) heroes get taken down which is both violent and, for the time period, par of the course. The violence shocked many sixties audiences but now the film is constantly placed in Top 100 lists and, more than any other, this is a film which shows Peckinpah at his best. To see a slightly more bloody version, however, just watch Monty Pythons pastiche, Salad Days to see how the film would look from a British standpoint.