LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sam Peckinpah: Cable Hogue
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The Peckinpah Collection is now available as a 6-disc DVD set, featuring 4 classic films from legendary director Sam Peckinpah, plus commentaries and featurettes. The Peckinpah Collection includes a newly remastered two-disc special edition of The Wild Bunch, plus three new-to-dvd titles, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Ride The High Country. Sam Peckinpah fans can preview the films in this DVD collection with photos and video clips from legendary westerns, order the films for purchase, and check out classic Peckinpah downloadable content, including wallpapers, buddy icons and screensavers.
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Despite his growing alcoholism and controversial reputation, Peckinpah was extremely prolific during this period of his life. In May of 1971, weeks after completing Straw Dogs, he returned to the United States to begin work on Junior Bonner. The lyrical screenplay by Jeb Rosenbrook, depicting the changing times of society and binding family ties, appealed to Peckinpah's tastes. He accepted the project, at the time concerned with being typed as a director of violent action. The film would be his final attempt to make a low-key, dramatic work in the vein of Noon Wine and The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Filmed on location in Prescott, Arizona, the story covered a week in the life of aging rodeo rider Junior "JR" Bonner (Steve McQueen) who returns to his hometown to compete in an annual rodeo competition.
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Peckinpah enjoyed winding up liberal critics with taboo-trashing exercises in psycho-sexual sadism like Straw Dogs and The Getaway. But his softer side was ... evident in more gentle dramas such as The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner. As the ‘70s progressed, however, he developed a serious cocaine habit, and his film shoots became purgatorial experience for those involved. Not least the boozing, brawling director himself, whose health and reputation began to suffer. When he died from heart failure in Mexico in 1984, aged just 59, he left behind a bruised and bloody legacy.
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Peckinpah's next film, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, suffered editing cuts by producers after more feuding between the studio and the director over its contents. Next, Peckinpah went to England to film Straw Dogs, starring Dustin Hoffman. Released in 1971, it was a brutal story about rape and revenge, filled with what seemed to most critics as gratuitous violence. It was attacked by many for its unflinching portrayal of sexual violence but hailed by Peckinpah fans for its uncompromising attitude.
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Coming as it does just a year later the silly comedy, The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) is an oddity in the Peckinpah canon. Jason Robards stars as a cowboy robbed and left for dead in the desert -- until he stumbles upon a water hole and turns entrepreneur, setting up a waystation for travelers stuck between two dirt-water towns. Hogue meets several odd characters, including a cute prostitute (Stella Stevens) and a randy preacher (David Warner), while waiting to take revenge. Slim Pickens co-stars as a stage driver. Like John Ford, Peckinpah prefers bawdy, rather obvious humor accompanied by dopey music; the "jokes" don't always work. But Robards' warm performance makes the film into a casual delight.
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Down on his luck like many a Peckinpah protagonist, Cable Hogue's luck changes when he discovers a spring of water in an otherwise dry stretch of desert. With the help of a self-styled preacher who alternates between Godliness and bawdiness (a wonderfully oily turn by David Warner), Hogue sets up a homestead in the desert and turns it into a rest stop for folks travelling between two cities via stagecoach. When he meets Hildy on the streets of the town of Gila, he finds himself able to think of little else but her...but she's got her own plans and they don't really include Cable.
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Cable Hogue