release in 1974, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García was savaged by many critics and bombed at the box office. Nora Sayre of The New York Times wrote that the film started off well but "disentegrates rapidly," explaining: "Without Garcia as a victim, the plot has almost nowhere to go. Therefore, random episodes are slung into the narrative, including one of the silliest near-rape scenes I've ever seen ... But even this gratuitous garbage can't prevent the movie from dragging." Arthur D. Murphy of Variety panned the film as "turgid melodrama at its worst ... Considering the vast carnage, it is a measure of the film's nothing impact that the bloodletting fails to stir much emotional reaction." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times stated, "For all the violence, the movie is a very, very long two hours. The bodies shot at close quarters crumple in slow motion, but the motion is slow even when it isn't." Michael Sragow of New York magazine called it "a catastrophe so huge that those who once ranked Peckinpah with Hemingway may now invoke Mickey Spillane". John Simon called Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia "a all-out preposterous horror horror, except for a fine performance by Isele Vega and the clever way in which the protagonist is sneaked into our consciousness". Conversely, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded his highest grade of four stars and called it "some kind of bizarre masterpiece," concluding that "'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' is Sam Peckinpah making movies flat out, giving us a desperate character he clearly loves, and asking us to somehow see past the horror and the blood to the sad poem he's trying to write about the human condition." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and wrote that although Peckinpah's films were noted for their violence, "What Peckinpah does much better, and what distinguishes his film The Ballad of Cable Hogue as his best work, is to portray a lyrical mood between society's outcasts. A hooker and a prospector hook up in 'Cable Hogue,' the pairing of Bennie and Elita in 'Alfredo Garcia' is equally affecting. Peckinpah is also effective in portraying present-day Mexico as a place of wild contrasts; seedy bars and modern airports, peasants in rags and streamlined tour buses." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post declared, "For better and