Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (18)

First released in 1974, this marks the beginning of Sam Peckinpah's late slide into nihilism. And yet, as so often with this director, it's a film paradoxically marinated in a desperate sense of honour. Warren Oates plays Bennie, a pianist who gets wind of a bounty: a million dollars has been put on the head of Alfredo Garcia for impregnating the daughter of a Mexican plutocrat. In the course of his ghoulish, tequila-fuelled quest, Bennie falls in with Garcia's old girlfriend (Isela Vega), but the most significant relationship is that between the anti-hero and the eponymous head, which he keeps in a bag on the seat of his car. You could see all this as Peckinpah's sick joke on greed. His best work was behind him – The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid – but this bizarre thriller contains reminders of what made him great.