I didn’t get to see The Wild Bunch when it first came out, the reason being that I was in love with a woman who had heard about how violent the movie was, and she didn’t want to see it, and that meant I didn’t get to see it either.  The things we do for love.

However, she had a brother who had seen it, and he told me all about it one night while I was over at her house, getting so excited at certain points that he had to stand up and act out the parts.  And so it was that when my girlfriend broke up with me, I was free to see this movie.

My best friend had already seen it with his wife, perhaps because, unlike my girlfriend, she didn’t know what she would be in for.  She subsequently divorced him, though not for that reason, of course.  Since this was about the same time that I lost my girlfriend, the way was clear for my friend and me to go to the drive-in and enjoy the masculine spectacle of wholesale slaughter, bodies flying in all directions in slow motion, with blood and viscera goop spurting everywhere.

I started telling others what a great movie this was, including this one man who had fought in World War II.  He said he didn’t want to see a movie like that because he saw enough men die during that war.  I could see his point.  Fortunately, I had been able to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War, so my enjoyment of this movie was not spoiled by reality.

Although a lot of women saw this movie when it first came out, either out of curiosity or simply because their boyfriends or husbands dragged them to it, when my friend and I went to see the movie again about three years later, the theater consisted mostly of men.  During the intermission, when my friend and I went to the lobby get some refreshments, we overheard a couple of guys talking about a bar they had been to the night before where there had been some kind of altercation.  They looked big enough to be football players, and one of them said to the other, “We ought to go back there tonight and tear that place apart,” the other one nodding in agreement.  My friend and I glanced at each other while we listened to this, as he munched on some popcorn, and I sucked on some soda pop through a straw.  This movie could really get you pumped, although my friend and I knew the importance of distinguishing between video violence and the real thing.

The movie is about a gang of bandits headed by Pike Bishop, played by William Holden, who was about fifty years old at the time.  As movie stars from the classic era started aging, they often played in movies where the West was aging as well, and this movie is set just before the outbreak of World War I.  Toward the end of the movie, Pike and his gang end up in Mexico where General Mapache (Emilio Fernández) is seen to be in cahoots with a high-ranking officer of the German army, so when Pike and his gang go out in a blaze of glory, killing Mapache and the German and then machinegunning a fort full of Mexican soldiers, the mayhem has a patriotic glow.

The movie was made back in the day when scenes were often cut to allow for more showings at a theater.  As this was before the dawn of video cassette recorders, followed by laserdiscs and then DVDs, there were no director’s cuts to restore such scenes.  In fact, just the opposite would often happen, where movies would be further edited for television, the sides cut off to fit the television screen, material cut to get rid of sex, violence, and profanity, and in some cases, to make room for more commercials, with the original version being lost forever.  A good example of this sort of thing was what happened to Darker Than Amber (1970).

Fortunately, a director’s cut of The Wild Bunch did eventually become available about twenty years later, and I got to see several scenes for the first time.  This had the unintended effect of giving those scenes more emphasis than they would have had originally.  The message seemed to be that following a leader like Pike Bishop can cause you a lot of misery, even get you killed.

For example, there is a scene in which Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson) becomes so angry with Freddy Sykes (Edmond O’Brien) that he starts to shoot him, saying that the old man is going to get them all killed.  Pike stops him, saying, “When you side with a man you stay with him.  If you can’t do that, you’re worse than some animal, you’re finished.”

Later, Freddy tells Pike, “That was a mighty fine talk you gave the boys about sticking together.”  Freddy then asks about how his grandson Crazy Lee (Bo Hopkins) did when they robbed the railroad office at San Rafael.  Pike says he did not know that Crazy Lee was Freddy’s grandson.  He tells Freddy that the boy did just fine.  This was one of the scenes cut from the movie when I first saw it.

It recalls the beginning of the movie, which begins with the robbery Freddy is referring to.  After the gang takes over the railroad office, they realize there are bounty hunters in place ready to shoot them when they leave.  Crazy Lee asks Pike, regarding some customers he is watching, “I kill ’em now?”  Pike says to hold them until after the shooting starts.  Crazy Lee says he’ll hold them until Hell freezes over unless Pike says otherwise.  We see a funny look in Pike’s eyes at those words.  He doesn’t like Crazy Lee because his character fits his name, and Pike figures that this will be a good way to get rid of him.

What follows is a massacre, where the bandits shoot their way out of the railroad office just as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union is marching by, singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” many of them being killed in the crossfire as the bandits and bounty hunters shoot it out.  After several minutes of carnage, what is left of the gang rides away.  All except Crazy Lee, that is.  He is still holding the customers in the lobby, forcing them to sing “Shall We Gather at the River,” while marching them around the lobby.  It’s a funny scene because we had completely forgotten about him.  But Pike didn’t forget about him.  He left him there on purpose knowing he would be killed.  So much for siding with a man and staying with him.

Leading the bounty hunters is Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan).  In another scene that had been cut out when I first saw this movie, we see that Deke and Pike used to be partners.  One night at a whorehouse, Deke says they should leave because it’s too dangerous to stick around much longer.  Pike dismisses his concerns, telling him to stop worrying.  Pike is sure that there is nothing to worry about, saying that it is his job to be sure about such things.  But then a deputy sheriff and some other men come in through the door.  Pike escapes while Deke is captured and sent to Yuma where a prison guard regularly whips him as part of his punishment.

Deke is eventually released in exchange for a promise to lead the bounty hunters to capture Pike, hired by Pat Harrigan (Albert Dekker), a railroad executive.  Pike tells Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine) that Harrigan has a grudge against him because of all the times he robbed the railroad and because he made Harrigan realize that his way of doing things wasn’t any good.  Pike says that a lot of people just can’t stand to be wrong, and their pride won’t let them learn from their mistakes.  While he is saying all this, we see the flashback of the whorehouse where Pike was so sure there was nothing to worry about.

A third scene that had been cut is when Pike recalls the woman that he loved and wanted to marry.  Unfortunately, she was already married.  He says that he should have killed her husband, but he wasn’t around, so Pike became careless.  One night her husband showed up unexpectedly, entering the bedroom while she and Pike were in flagrante delicto.  The husband starts shooting and his wife is killed.

In retrospect, these scenes made me think of other scenes in the movie that had not been cut but nevertheless showed that it was dangerous to trust a man like Pike, that following him could bring you to a bad end.  In a similar way, I have to wonder what happened to those two guys in the lobby that were planning on going back to that bar to really kick some ass, perhaps allowing Pike to lead them, figuratively speaking, into a situation they would come to regret.

My girlfriend’s reluctance to watch this movie was based on all the violence she had heard about.  Had she actually watched it, she might have also been put off by some of the scroungy characters and the way they like their women.  For example, Freddy has rotten teeth and a beard stained with tobacco juice, but he says, “I’m a delight with a pretty girl.”  And then there is Tector and his brother Lyle, played by Warren Oates.  They seem to enjoy having sex with whores while in the same bed together.  Whether there are two whores they are having sex with, “in tandem,” as Dutch says, or with just one whore, taking turns, the main thing is that the two brothers like it better when they are both in the same bed.  All right, that’s kinky enough.  But they also seem to enjoy it better when they don’t have to bathe first.

One of the interesting things about Westerns is the frequency with which bathing comes up.  In other genres, bathing is typically intended to have an erotic function, which is why it is usually a woman that is bathing, such as when Jean Harlow bathes outside in a rain barrel in Red Dust (1932).  Even when a man is bathing, it is likely to have sexual significance, but in that case, it is homosexual, as in Spartacus (1960), in the scene with Laurence Olivier and Tony Curtis.

But Westerns are different.  In this case, it is mostly the men that bathe, and there is nothing sexual about it.  Instead, the bathing serves the purpose of allowing the man to be clean, the normal purpose of bathing, as in The Searchers (1956).  In that movie, Jeffrey Hunter is embarrassed when Vera Miles walks in while he is in the bathtub, but she is not aroused by his naked body.

Although bathing has always been necessary for the sake of cleanliness, it is primarily Westerns where bathing is depicted for that purpose.  Perhaps it is the fact that Westerns are often set in the desert, where men ride around outdoors in the hot sun, so it is felt necessary to reassure the audience that a romantic couple, like Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles, will be nice and clean when they eventually make love.

Strictly speaking, Sam Peckinpah, the director of The Wild Bunch, is not the first to make a Western in which a dirty, smelly character wants to have sex without bathing first.  I believe that honor goes to Marlon Brando in his One-Eyed Jacks (1961).  In that movie, Ben Johnson makes the following remark to his companion, as they arrive in Monterrey, California, where they plan to rob a bank: “You know, I think of the money waiting in that bank, just makes me wanna cry.  Harv, you gonna have diamonds in your teeth.  And you ain’t never gonna have to take that bath.”

The idea seems to be that with all the money Harvey will soon have, women will be willing to have sex with him without his having to take a bath first.

On the other hand, I have read that Sam Peckinpah wrote an early script for this movie, which ultimately was not used.  Could it be that this element of not bathing before having sex was Peckinpah’s contribution and was retained by the screenwriters that took his place?

In any event, Ride the High Country (1962) is another movie by Peckinpah about aging gunfighters in a West that is coming to an end.  In that movie, James Drury is planning on marrying Mariette Hartley.  His brothers are all looking forward to gangbanging Hartley on the night of the wedding, since that seems to be a family tradition.  One of the brothers is played by Warren Oates.  Drury asks him if he is planning on taking a bath first, saying, “Hate to get married with one of my brothers smelling bad enough to gag a dog off a Gut Wagon.”

Oates is not planning on bathing, saying, “Didn’t wash when cousin was wed back home.”  And then with a big grin says, “Didn’t seem to bother his bride none.”

In The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah employs Oates to the same end.  After Pike and his gang have agreed to do a job for Mapache, Pike says, “With your permission, I need a bath.”

An assistant to Mapache says, “With my permission, you all need a bath.”

At this point, Lyle (Oates) says to that assistant, “I don’t need no bath.  What Tector and me need is a couple of them women you’re hogging.”

And so it is that while Pike, Dutch, and Freddy have the normal kind of bath in a Western, for the sake of cleanliness, Lyle and Tector get themselves three whores to have sex with, in tandem, and without taking a bath.

Depending on your sense of humor, the scroungy characters in these two Peckinpah movies, especially the ones played by Warren Oates, could be good for a few laughs, and some would argue that they made the movies more realistic.  Of course, these movies would have been even more realistic if they had been filmed in Smell-O-Vision, but once again, we don’t want reality to spoil our enjoyment of a movie.