Made in Mexico on a low budget after the commercial failure of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), Alfredo García was, so Peckinpah claimed, the only one of his films released as he had intended.

In Mexico City, a pair of business suit-clad, dispassionate hit men, Sappensly and Quill, enter a saloon and encounter Bennie, a retired U.S. Army officer who makes a meagre living as a piano player and bar manager.

Bennie goes to Sappensly and Quill in the hotel room of the man who hired them, El Jefe's business associate Max, and makes a deal for $10,000 for Garcia's head, plus a $200 advance for expenses.

Bennie talks to 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.

After attending the baptism for his new grandchild, El Jefe greets Bennie as a hero in his hacienda, and gives him a briefcase containing the million-dollar bounty.

They approach the entrance gate and Bennie says goodbye to Teresa, departing the scene with the words: "You take care of the boy.

Director Sam Peckinpah was working on The Ballad of Cable Hogue when screenwriter and long-time friend Frank Kowalski told him an idea for a film: "I got a great title: 'Bring Me the Head of...,' - and he had some other name - 'and the hook is that the guy is already dead'.

[7] While scouting locations, he relied extensively on his gut instinct and desire to portray a gritty, realistic vision he had of Mexico.

[8] Mexican members of the crew told him that the bar's owner had an infamous reputation and it was rumored that he once killed a woman there, serving very little jail time because he bribed the right people in positions of power.

[9] Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia went into production in late September 1973, and Peckinpah was quoted in an October issue of Variety magazine as saying, "For me, Hollywood no longer exists.

[10] This upset the Motion Picture and Television Unions and they openly censured the director for his statement at their National Conference in Detroit.

[15] Nora Sayre of The New York Times wrote that the film started off well but "disentegrates rapidly," explaining: "Without Garcia as a victim, the plot has almost nowhere to go.

"[18] Michael Sragow of New York magazine called it "a catastrophe so huge that those who once ranked Peckinpah with Hemingway may now invoke Mickey Spillane".

[20] Conversely, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded his highest grade of four stars and called it "some kind of bizarre masterpiece," concluding that "'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia' is Sam Peckinpah making movies flat out, giving us a desperate character he clearly loves, and asking us to somehow see past the horror and the blood to the sad poem he's trying to write about the human condition.

Peckinpah is also effective in portraying present-day Mexico as a place of wild contrasts; seedy bars and modern airports, peasants in rags and streamlined tour buses.

"[23] Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "The hints of Gothic horror and romantic tenderness fitfully apparent in Peckinpah's earlier work here bloom in superb union.

[25] Despite the film's harsh reception at the time of release, it has since found a contemporary audience, maintaining a 78% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 32 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.3/10.

The critical consensus reads: "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia adds a quirky -- but still thoroughly entertaining -- outlier to Sam Peckinpah's pulpy filmography.

"[26] In the comedy film Fletch (1985), Chevy Chase (after fainting in an operating room) asks a nurse, "do you have the Beatles' White Album?

"[27] In his 1993 stand-up special No Cure for Cancer, Denis Leary says the line "Here's ten bucks, bring me the head of Barry Manilow".

Jim Reardon's cartoon Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown (1986) parodies both the title and Peckinpah's violent slow-motion style.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins cited Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia as a visual inspiration for No Country for Old Men, among other Peckinpah films.

English space rock band Hawkwind released a 1985 live album entitled Bring Me the Head of Yuri Gagarin, referencing both the film and the famed Soviet cosmonaut.

[29] Industrial rock band Chemlab sampled a shootout scene from the movie on their 1998 album East Side Militia via the opening track "Exile on Mainline".

In Futurama episode 113 "Overclockwise" (2011), Mom tells the Hoverfish "Bring me the clock of Bender Rodriguez" in reference to the film.

In True Detective’s season 2 finale ("Omega Station", 2015), a scene in a set photographer's home features a poster for the movie.

In an out-of-office email reply Ryan Reynolds apologized to "The Head of Alfredo Garcia" after the sale of Aviation American Gin.