Okay I'll admit I'm a little buyist on this one considering I went to school with James Coburn's son and got to see their Bel Air house on occasion and Kris is a good friend of an old sax player in my bands, but first and foremost I'm a Peckinpah fan and this is one of the really great Westerns of all time. Pinewoods Rating System - Five Pinewoods....The Horror!!
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
A critical favorite whose enviable reputation stems from lingering fascination with director Sam Peckinpah and the mystique that attaches to any serious movie altered by studio interference, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid has many virtues that are not immediately apparent-it's like one of those classic novels that makes more sense after one learns about the context surrounding the novel's creation.
The Wildest Western Ever Made
A lot can be said about Sam Peckinpah's western ' Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,' on this, the 40th anniversary of its release, but you have to start with the fact that the story behind this startling, savage movie is just about as startling and savage as the film itself.
Peckinpah would start drinking on the set first thing each morning, and by the afternoon he would be loaded and walking around firing a revolver into the air. At night he'd lie in bed shooting at his reflection in the mirror, a drunken outburst that made its way into the movie when, after killing Billy, Garrett, in a bout of self-hatred and disgust, shoots to pieces his own reflection in a mirror. At one point, "I had to take a pistol away from Sam," says Kristofferson. "He was worrying some people."
THE SHEER HORROR!!
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