The Wild Bunch (1969) was the definitive film, and only true epic, by one of Hollywood's greatest directors, Sam Peckinpah; and when it came to movie violence, it set the bar higher than it had ever been set before. Earlier Westerns had good guys and...

The Wild Bunch is a controversial 1969 Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sánchez, Ben Johnson, Strother Martin, L.Q. Jones, Bo Hopkins and Dub...

Simple ideas lead to sensational centrepieces at Paula Pryke's flower-design course, says Pattie Barron THERE is no such thing as a fresh flower. So says London's leading floral decorator Paula Pryke, and she should know. "People say, 'Will they travel OK to Leeds?'...

Todd Bodine leads a group of diverse characters that will take the series by storm By Lee Spencer Three stories to watch in 2006: * An all-Toyota top five just might happen. Given that Todd Bodine won 20 percent of the races...

When a director has been as condemned and lionized as Sam Peckinpah has, it’s inevitable that the legend obscures the work. So rather than add to the heap of writing that already exists about Peckinpah’s balletic violence, or about the stunted career and mangled movies...

When a director has been as condemned and lionized as Sam Peckinpah has, it’s inevitable that the legend obscures the work. So rather than add to the heap of writing that already exists about Peckinpah’s balletic violence, or about the stunted career and mangled...

"The Wild Bunch is simply," says director Sam Peckinpah, "what happens when killers go to Mexico." And in the beleaguered career of Sam Peckinpah Mexico has become increasingly the place to go. It is a land perhaps more savage, simple, or desolate, but definitely more expressive. Sam Peckinpah's Mexico is a spiritual country similar to Ernest Hemingway's Spain, John London's Alaska, and Robert Louis Stevenson's South Seas. It is a place where you go &#...

[The Wild Bunch is] an important bad film, avoidable by people who want genuine art, but recommended to all those interested in the faltering steps by which the American cinema might titubate into maturity. There is no doubt that Peckinpah has a nice sense of time and place; that his locations and groupings, as well as the faces and peripheral activites that fill a shot have the right look and feel about them. But he is much less sure about the staging of the main action in a scene, except where seedy debau...