The hard-luck auteurof American film, director Sam Peckinpah (1925-1984) perennially battled with studios and producers, with some of his best work shredded in the editing room. Carelessly typed as a purveyor of horrific violence (although a director of Tennessee Williams plays in his student days), Peckinpah retained throughout his work his strong personal code of honor. A stylist without peer in the montage tradition of Sergei Eisenstein, he was also capable of the most tender and poignant of romances. With his heretofore butchered works now restored to acclaimed re-evaluation, Peckinpah can finally be fully experienced as one of the world's greatest directors of action, and a unique American master.

THE WILD BUNCH

In the Götterdamerung of the West, William Holden's outlaw band takes half of Mexico with them in the final hecatomb. Peckinpah's use of blood spurts and slow-motion made headlines and revolutionized screen violence, producing an American classic in the process.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Walon Green and Peckinpah; PROD Phil Feldman. US, 1969, color, scope, 145 min. RATED R

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY

Peckinpah's autumnal elegy for the end of the West. Steve Judd and Gil Westrum, en route to picking up a gold shipment at Coarse Gold, must carry a bride there first. The end of one tradition and the beginning of another: Western icons Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott, in the final film for each, play former gunfighters uneasily teamed up one last time.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR N.B. Stone, Jr.; PROD Richard E. Lyons. US, 1964, color, scope, 94 min. RATED APPROVED

THE GETAWAY

Ex-con Steve McQueen tells wife (and real-life love interest) Ali Mac- Graw to "punch it, baby" while firing his pump action shotgun out the back window. Furloughed from prison to pull a job for a corrupt politico, when things fall apart McQueen heads for the Mexican border with MacGraw, followed by thugs and the law. Archival Print.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Walter Hill, from the novel by Jim Thompson; PROD Mitchell Brower and David Foster. US, 1972, color, 122 min. RATED PG

JUNIOR BONNER

Rodeo rider Steve McQueen, back in his hometown for 4th of July Pioneer Days, just wants to stay on that bucking Brahma bull but falls right back into the family troubles he abandoned long ago: real estatecrazed brother Joe Don Baker wants to sell off the family land, while mom Ida Lupino is estranged from perennially dreaming dad Robert Preston. Practically violence-less Peckinpah, with the tenderest of love scenes as Preston and Lupino reconcile. Archival Print.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Jeb Rosebrook; PROD Joe Wizan. US, 1972, color, scope, 100 min. RATED PG

STRAW DOGS

Perhaps Peckinpah's most controversial film. Math geek Dustin Hoffman's a fish-out-of-water in wife Susan George's British Cornwall village, where they've moved to get away from the turbulent US of A. Big mistake-as George's horrific encounter with her ex-boyfriend and simpleton David Warner lead to what may be Peckinpah's most violent climax. Archival Print.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR David Zelag Goodman and Peckinpah; PROD Daniel Melnick. US, 1971, color, 118 min. RATED R

THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE

Perhaps Peckinpah's gentlest work, and his one real love story. Left for dead, but saved when he finds a desert spring, Jason Robards's Cable Hogue soon sets the place up for business as a stagecoach rest stop, even achieving domesticity when he finds romance with hooker Stella Stevens. But then that newfangled motor car shows up.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR John Crawford and Edmund Penney; PROD Phil Feldman. US, 1970, color, 121 min. RATED R

Newly Restored 35mm Print!
MAJOR DUNDEE

Legendarily shredded in the editing room by the producer, Sony Pictures has now restored all but six minutes of Peckinpah's preferred cut. Charlton Heston's Dundee offers his Confederate prisoner Richard Harris a deal: continue rotting in a Civil War prison camp or join with hated Union jailers in pursuit of children kidnapped by Apache raiders. And a landlocked Moby Dick begins, across the Rio Grande, to contend with the Apaches, Emperor Maximilian's French lancers-and each other. See it at last as Peckinpah intended.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Harry Julian Fink; PROD Jerry Bresler. US, 1965, color, scope, 145 min. RATED PG-13

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

Newly appointed sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) visits old pal Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) to warn him "times have changed." And then the long chase begins, underscored by Bob Dylan's unconventional songs, with the emotional highlight the farewell of Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado. But it's all in Garrett's flashback, between the brilliantly edited prologue and epilogue, restored after studio cuts.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Rudy Wurlitzer; PROD Phil Feldman. US, 1973, color, scope, 122 min. RATED R

"Some kind of bizarre masterpiece."
-ROGER EBERT

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA

Village strongman Emilio Fernandez bellows the words of the title when he learns Alfredo has impregnated his daughter. And piano-playing bartender Warren Oates decides to go for the million-dollar reward when bizarre bounty hunters drop in (knowing his lover Isela Vega loved Alfredo too.) Peckinpah straightwith- no-chaser, as greed, a lover's anguish and a hissed "kill him" lead Oates (imitating Peckinpah himself throughout) to a final tragically romantic decision.

DIR Sam Peckinpah; SCR Gordon Dawson and Peckinpah; PROD Martin Baum. US, 1974, color, 112 min. RATED R