Sam Peckinpah

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American film director and screenwriter, born in 1925. After years writing and directing television westerns, he made his feature debut with The Deadly Companions (1961) and went on to Ride the High Country (1962), The Wild Bunch (1969), and Straw Dogs (1971). His elegiac, violent westerns redefined the genre. He died in 1984.

Directed

5.61961·1h 33mPD

Western

Sam Peckinpah's feature directing debut, made after years of television westerns. When drifting gunfighter Yellowleg (Brian Keith) accidentally kills the son of dance-hall hostess Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara), he insists on escorting her across Apache country to bury the boy beside his father — a journey the whole town considers madness. Steve Cochran and Chill Wills play the outlaws who tag along for a bank payroll. The film already shows Peckinpah's fixations: guilt, obsession, and violence that solves nothing. Shot in CinemaScope on Arizona locations, it flopped on release but is now watched as the first chapter of one of the great western careers. The film is in the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Western

The Deadly Companions

1961 - Western