Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia - Plot

Plot

Teresa, the pregnant teenage daughter of a powerful man known only as "El Jefe" (Spanish, "The Boss") (Emilio Fernández), is summoned before her father and interrogated as to the identity of her unborn child's father. Under torture, she identifies the father as Alfredo Garcia whom El Jefe had been grooming to be his successor. Infuriated, El Jefe offers a $1 million reward to whoever will "bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia".

The search progresses for two months. In Mexico City, two of El Jefe's personal henchmen, a pair of business-suit clad dispassionate hitmen, Sappensly (Robert Webber) and Quill (Gig Young), enter a saloon and encounter Bennie (Warren Oates), a retired United States Army officer who makes a meager living as a piano player and bar manager. The two men ask about Garcia, believing that they will have more luck getting answers out of a fellow American. Bennie plays dumb, saying that the name is familiar but that he doesn't know who Garcia is.

It turns out that everyone in the bar knows who Garcia is; they simply don't know where he is. Bennie goes to meet his girlfriend, Elita (Isela Vega), a prostitute at a bordello. Elita admits to having cheated on Bennie with Garcia, who had professed his love for her, something Bennie refuses to do. Elita informs him that Garcia died in a drunk driving accident the previous week.

Bennie is excited by the possibility of making money by simply digging up the body. He goes to Sappensly and Quill, in the hotel room of their boss, Max, and makes a deal for US$10,000 for Garcia's head, plus two hundred dollars in advance for expenses. Bennie convinces Elita to go on a road trip with him to visit Garcia's grave, claiming that he only wants proof that Garcia is in fact dead and no longer a threat to their relationship.

En route, Bennie proposes, promising that their future will soon change, and she can retire from prostitution. Elita is cautious, and warns Bennie against trying to upset their status quo.

On the road, Bennie and Elita are accosted by two bikers (one played by Kris Kristofferson), who pull guns and decide to rape Elita. Bennie seems unsure how to react. Elita agrees to have sex with the bikers if they spare Bennie's life, and goes off with the biker played by Kristofferson. He rips off her shirt to look at her breasts, lets her slap him twice, slaps her back, then walks away: she follows. Bennie knocks the first biker unconscious while he's playing Elita's guitar. He takes the gun and seeks the other biker and Elita. She is now passionately kissing the biker, and ready to make love with him. Bennie finds them together; then shoots him dead, as well as the first biker. The murder cycle has opened.

He confesses to Elita his plan to decapitate Garcia's corpse and sell it for money. Elita is disgusted, and, still shaken from what has just happened, begs Bennie to give up this quest and return to Mexico City, where they can be married and live a modest life of relative peace. Bennie again refuses, but agrees to marry Elita in the church of the town where Garcia is buried.

They find Garcia's grave, but when he opens the coffin, Bennie is struck from behind with his shovel by an unseen assailant. He wakes up to find himself half-buried in the grave with Elita, who is dead. The corpse of Garcia has been decapitated.

Bennie learns from villagers that his assailants are driving a station wagon. He catches up with the men after they blow out a tire. Bennie shoots them, searches their car and claims Garcia's head. Stopping at a roadside restaurant, he packs the sack containing the head with ice to preserve it for the journey home. Bennie begins addressing the head as if Garcia were still alive, first blaming Alfredo for Elita's death and then conceding that both of them probably loved her equally.

Bennie is ambushed by members of Garcia's family. They re-claim the head and are about to kill Bennie when they are interrupted by the arrival of Sappensly and Quill. The hitmen pretend to ask for directions. Quill produces a sub-machine gun and murders most of Garcia's family, but is fatally shot by one of them. As Sappensly sorrowfully looks at Quill's corpse, Bennie asks: "Do I still get paid?" Sappensly turns to shoot but Bennie kills him, takes Garcia's head, and returns to Mexico City, "arguing" with Garcia's head all the while.

At his apartment, Bennie gives Garcia's head a shower and then brings the head to Max's hotel room, feigning willingness to surrender the head for his $10,000, but then revealing that he is no longer motivated by money; rather, he blames Elita's death on the bounty and intends to kill everyone involved. Several men pull guns but Bennie manages to evade fire and kill them all. He takes a business card from the desk with El Jefe's address on it.

El Jefe greets him as a hero and gives him a briefcase containing the promised million-dollar bounty. Bennie calmly relates how many people died for Garcia's head, including his beloved. El Jefe responds apathetically, telling Bennie to take his money and throw Garcia's head to the pigs on the way out. Infuriated that the object responsible for Elita's death is viewed as nothing more than garbage, Bennie first wounds El Jefe and then guns down all of his bodyguards.

Teresa enters with her newborn son as Bennie points a gun at El Jefe's head, but hesitates to shoot. She tersely urges Bennie to kill her father, and Bennie obliges, taking along the head as he leaves the scene with the words: "I'll look after the father, and you look after the son." Bennie makes a mad dash to escape, but is gunned down at the gates to El Jefe's estate.