I went to see the mothball tubs, now moldering aquatical
Mess. Peckinpah used them; I saw “Killer Elite”[0]—part nautical,
Sure not his best and unimpressed was I with it in general—
Late-career flick, not near my pick of Peckinpah essenti-al.

In other words, most have concurred, it skirts the work canonical.
Here comes one now, a bad pun, ow! It’s without doubt Caanonical.

But to this day I would not say that the “Elite” is laughable.
When it was shot, Sam’d gone to pot—sopped up all that was quaffable.
Often proved drunk as the prov[erbial] skunk, the man pumped down a lot o’ booze;
When his “Weekend”[1] rears head, I wend my way to bed and gotta snooze.

When his “Weekend” rears head I bend my elbow. . .drenched in lotta booze,
When his “Weekend” is presented, I wend my way to Godard views[2].

He was the guy who caught our eye; changed cinematic calculus
Of how to show, that when guns blow a hole, a guy or gal can bust.
In short, when folks were shot, they shattered; the result, bloodbathical.
He was the very model of the modern movie radical.

In short he often shot in short takes, shattered cinematical
Conventions with edit inventions radical, emphatical.

In “High Country”[3] you’re gonna see two geezers; one is Randolph Scott;
The guy who plays his pal: McCrea[4] is blown away—the man’s all shot.
The guy who shot this film[5] was hot; his body of work, fabulous.
He cam’d the “Bunch”; it packed a punch. The editing: fantabulous.[5a]

In the “Bunch” cast, a man who’d blast most any anyone—that’s Hopkins, B.[6]
Again we’d meet him in “Elite.” Sam never worked with Hopkins, T.[7]
In many flicks, men get their kicks with guns, and there is din galore.
He took us to where we could view places we’d never been before.

There’s din galore, less in the score; Jerry Fielding did flicks encores.
Beyond “The Bunch” he did a bunch; the numbers crunched sum up to four.[7a]

In quality the work we see, certainly far from uniform.
To Mexico he’d trek, and so la meteo. was truly warm.
In short, he shot where it was hot, not back lots in San Fernando;
Concerning booze, discerning views: “There no doubt, that man sure can stow!”

In short, of shots, there were a lot—both booze and what the camera shows;
Location shots where it was hot—to Churubusco camera goes.[8]

Increasingly we’d find that he with studios was cavilin’,
And his career was in arrears and then started unravelin’.
When he was plowed, it was avowed that he could be one scary cat.
By Hollywood standards he stood with budgets that were rarely fat.

One must admit that in such hits as “Wild Bunch,” there’s much gunnery—
Though they were wild, certainly mild when compared to a Hunnery.
So at the end, Pike[8a] and his friends end up against a battery;
The bullets fly and many die; the gore outpour is splattery.

“Butch Cassidy” at the fini was similarly drenched, but he—
That is, George Roy,[9] did not deploy such gore, edit so trenchantly.
’twas Arthur Pen first got the yen to show slomo bloodbathicals.
“Bonnie and Clyde” critics deride[10]. Penn, too, one of the radicals.

In short, in matters cinematical, those guys were radical.
I hope that you ain’t found this to border on the didactical.



[0]Part of “The Killer Elite,” starring James Caan, 1975, was shot on one of the ships in Suisun Bay’s mothball fleet. http://aliveeastbay.com/archives/overview-of-the-suisun-bay-%E2%80%9Cmothball%E2%80%9D-fleet/
[1]“The Osterman Weekend,” Peckinpah’s last film, a mess
[2]Jean-Luc Godard, director of “Week End,” 1967
[3]“Ride the High Country,” 1962, selected in 1992 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
[4]Joel McCrea
[5]Lucien Ballard—his other work for Peckinpah: “High Country”; “The Ballad of Cable Hogue,” 1970; “Junior Bonner,” 1972; “The Getaway,” 1972. In his review of “True Grit” Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: “Anyone interested in what good cinematography means can compare Ballard's totally different contributions to ‘The Wild Bunch’ and ‘True Grit’. In the former, the camera work is hard and bleak and largely unsentimental. The images of ‘True Grit’ are as romantic and autumnal as its landscapes, which, in the course of the story, turn with the season from the colors of autumn to the white of winter.'”
[5a]Edited by Lou Lombardo, who also cut “Cable Hogue,” as well as several Robert Altman films
[6]Bo Hopkins, also in “The Getaway”
[7]Anthony Hopkins
[7a]Jerry Fielding also wrote the scores for Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” (1971), “Junior Bonner,” “Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974), and “Elite.”
[8]”Garcia” was shot at Estudios Churubusco outside of Mexico City. (Parenthetical note: I spent part of the summer of 1974 in Mexico and was one of about 40 extras in a VW commercial shot at Churubusco).
[8a]Role played by William Holden
[9]Director George Roy Hill
[10]The end of New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's career was marked by his disdain for “Bonnie and Clyde”: “It is a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy that treats the hideous depredations of that sleazy, moronic pair as though they were as full of fun and frolic as the jazz-age cut-ups in Thoroughly Modern Millie. Such ridiculous, camp-tinctured travesties of the kind of people these desperadoes were and of the way people lived in the dusty Southwest back in those barren years might be passed off as candidly commercial movie comedy, nothing more, if the film weren't reddened with blotches of violence of the most grisly sort. This blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste, since it makes no valid commentary upon the already travestied truth. And it leaves an astonished critic wondering just what purpose Mr. Penn and Mr. Beatty think they serve with this strangely antique, sentimental claptrap.”