Tarantino owes that scene to Sam Peckinpah.

In Peckinpah's 1969 western "The Wild Bunch," the bunch walk toward the camera, armed to the teeth, facing slaughter. But their walk is in real time—the slow motion comes later.

Tarantino would never deny he owes his career to Peckinpah. Most directors who comment on violence from Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to Walter Hill and the Hughes Brothers would glad-hand Sam Peckinpah for the doors he opened.

But Peckinpah's films don't exploit violence—they culminate in violence as an expression of, or excursion into, a new societal "system." The best artists reconsider or revise old systems and parlay them into new worlds of existence.

Peckinpah's career started with TV. He wrote almost exclusively for westerns. He freelanced for major (at the time) shows like "Gunsmoke" and quickies like "Tales of Wells Fargo" and Ê"Boots and Saddles." His coup was landing a gig writing a number of half-hour episodes of "The Rifleman"—a show that starred Chuck Conners as a single father trying to raise his son morally in the lawless west.

By 1960, Peckinpah created and produced a short-lived show called "The Westerner" starring Brian Keith. The series allowed Peckinpah to touch on themes he would later expand in his films:

• Psychological and existential questions of character
• Violent confrontations pitting old against new
• Redemption by blood

One of Peckinpah's prevalent themes was addressed in "Ride the High Country" (1962). In that film, two old guard gunslingers played by Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott—actors known over the years as career cowboys —are confronted with their old age and impending irrelevance in society. But as society was changing in the 1960s, so was cinema and, subsequently, so was the western. McCrea and Scott deal with the end of their lives riddled with disillusionment and, worse, compromise. ÊFor Peckinpah, the western was ripe for revising and, unlike most Cowboys and Indians movies that invaded Hollywood ad nauseum during the 1940s and 1950s, the director busted cliches and made his men human.

The masculine ethos, according to writer Norman Mailer, is dictated by the senses. New life experience is opened up by action—creating a psychological and physiological vibrancy accentuated by a sort of personal and redemptive violence. Again, according to Mailer, death is the one reality that nobody can dodge. The pivotal moment in 1969's "The Wild Bunch" is when the bunch goes into Mapache's villa knowing they are going to get blown to bits. Armed with a gattling gun, they spew fire with masculine exuberance and glee.

The decision to go into the firestorm reiterates Pike's (William Holden) need to purge his violent and depraved past. He and his gang dive head long into oblivion and we, as spectators, see how horrific bullets ripping flesh really is. In light of the escalating war in Vietnam, violence seethed all around us in 1969.

But, in "The Wild Bunch," violence was placed resolutely under a microscope and shot in balletic slow motion. Peckinpah, at the time, denounced violence and hoped that his ballet of blood would repulse people so much that peace was the only alternative. Ironically, Peckinpah became pigeonholed as a purveyor of violence and was erroneously given the nickname Bloody Sam. The extreme violence didn't repulse audiences; it supercharged them. "The Wild Bunch" set new standards of violence in film and, some 30-plus years later, the film's final frames have been imitated over and over by the new Hollywood regime.

Damning his reputation, Peckinpah pushed the accepted boundaries of society even further with his film "Straw Dogs" (1971). A movie that expands the maelstrom of violence pitting one man against a raging gang of seven. Dustin Hoffman plays David Sumner as weak until he's forced into a bloody and cathartic redemption and not, as some viewers think, revenge. The film becomes a crimson trial where being a man means giving in to baser instincts and refusing to conform to a mechanized, brutal society.

In 1972 Peckinpah gave us a double shot of Steve McQueen in "Junior Bonner" and "The Getaway." But, of the two, "Junior Bonner" is more important in the director's canon. McQueen plays a rodeo bull rider who's too old for the game but can't give it up. His father, Ace Bonner, drinks too much, screws around too much and dreams too much. "Junior Bonner" is possibly Peckinpah's saddest film because it shows the ravages of alcohol and men refusing to grow up.

Where alcohol plays a role in every one of Peckinpah's films, nowhere is it more reflected in "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" (1974). With a title that tells it all and a plot that defies description, the film plays like a woozy hangover that never ebbs and drunkeness that comes in like the tide.

"Alfredo Garcia" was probably Warren Oates' finest moment on screen—he plays Bennie, a washed up piano player stuck in a Mexican saloon looking to make easy money. When two bounty hunters come into his bar looking for the elusive Garcia, Bennie decides to search for Garcia himself. Garcia, it seems, has gotten a wealthy Mexican rancher's daughter pregnant and the rancher wants his head. ÊWhen Bennie finds his "loot," he stashes it in a burlap bag where it oozes on the floor of his beat up Caddy convertible under the hot Mexican sun. Bennie carries the bag around like a penance looking to cash in.

"Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" solidified the studio system's appraisal of Peckinpah—that he was unstable and unable to make a sellable product. But "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" is a morbid hallucination and a sultry Peckinpah classic. Its also Peckinpah's last great film, although legions consider his World War II dissertation "Cross of Iron" (1977) to be one of the director's best.

In 1978, Peckinpah inexplicably jumped on the C.B. radio, truckin' craze with "Convoy." The film was based on the mid-'70's hit single of the same name recorded by C.W. McCall—a non-existent singer that was actually a record label shill. "Convoy," starring Kris Kristofferson and 1970s fox Ali MacGraw, has recently achieved cult status because of its unavailability on video or DVD.

Peckinpah's last film was the convoluted spy thriller, "The Osterman Weekend" (1983). But, by that point, Peckinpah had succumbed to alcoholism and drug abuse (he had a penchant for cocaine—a habit he picked up while filming 1975's "The Killer Elite").

Peckinpah's final work has an ironic twist—after filming "The Osterman Weekend", the director went back to TV. Only this time it was for MTV. Two months before his death, and the only work he could get, Peckinpah directed a pair of music videos for John Lennon's son, Julian.

In 1984, all but forgotten and largely unknown, Peckinpah died of a stroke at the age of 59.

Director Filmography:
The Osterman Weekend	1983
Jinxed!	1982
Convoy	1978
Cross of Iron	1977
The Killer Elite	1975
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia	1974
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid	1973
The Getaway	1972
Junior Bonner	1972
Straw Dogs	1971
The Ballad of Cable Hogue	1970
The Wild Bunch	1969
Major Dundee	1965
Ride the High Country	1962
The Deadly Companions	1961
"The Westerner" TV	1960
"The Rifleman" TV	1958
"Gunsmoke" TV	1955
Full IMDb Filmography