Passion & Poetry - Sam's Killer Elite

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Күн бұрын

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@chrishoward4432 2 жыл бұрын

The original footage is quite good with James Caan and co being put through their paces by director Sam Peckinpah and is a treat to watch. Narration by Monte Hellman captures the spirit of the whole venture with a kindly tone. Intercut with that footage is stills and voice overs from Sam Peckinpah himself and one cannot help but feel a certain nostalgia for the man who tragically burned himself out at the age of 59. The late Bo Hopkins, always a treat to watch reminisces about times that he appeared in Peckinpah films (3 in total) with total honesty and eye-rolling, facepalm humor. The lovely Katy Haber recounts her regrets at being unable to halt the self-destructive helter-skelter that Peckinpah placed himself on and often-used footage of the late James Coburn who saw Peckinpah as “A seeker of the truth”. Ernest Borgnine also remembers Peckinpah with both sadness and great admiration. Rounding it off is a clip from Kris Kristofferson who worked for Peckinpah on 3 movies. Something a little more uncomfortable to watch was when the piece was over, and the credits rolled. “Written, produced and directed by Mike Siegel” was altogether both farcical and dishonest. Siegel was 8 years old when The Killer Elite was being made and the interviews with Miss Haber, Coburn, Hopkins and Kristofferson came from 2003. Perhaps, Siegel would have you believe that he produced the whole thing himself which was not the case.

@crustdisplacement 2 жыл бұрын

Without Mike Siegel you dont get any of this. He has scoured through archives for years to gather this footage for us to watch. I'll always be grateful for the work that Mr. Siegal has put in and so might i say should you (assuming youre a fan of Sam's work). Documentarians often use footage that they might use that they personally didnt shoot or record, it still has to be arranged, financed and written to form a structured piece. Mike Siegel's documentary -Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah 2005 - is quite simply the definitive word on all things Peckinpah, you should check it out, Monte Hellman narrates. Every single Blu Ray release of Peckinpah's work has excerpts from the aforementioned Doc or exclusive shorts like the one for The Killer Elite included and they are all Mr. Siegel's work. I appreciate you commenting on this but without Mike Siegel you wouldn't be . PS I just checked out your channel and youre doing good stuff on Sam (sorry for doubting you)

@chrishoward4432 2 жыл бұрын

@@crustdisplacement Here’s where we differ, Crustdisplacement. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Sam Peckinpah fan and have been for over 50 years. You appear to be a Mike Siegel fan. Siegel and I got on alright for a few years but when he reneged on fulfilling his part of our agreement, he became lower than pond slime in my eyes. (Scorpios are the worst people in the World to double-cross because we never forget and hardly ever forgive). I am not the only person Siegel has screwed over or treated shabbily. Perhaps he thinks that he embodies the spirit of Sam Peckinpah, going so far as to wear a blue rag around his head a-la Peckinpah. Blue rag plus camcorder does not equal film director, does it? Granted, the interviews that he made with Coburn, Borgnine and co were interesting enough but in Hollywood Siegel is regarded as a pariah. He never paid any of the actors, he just wore down their resistance. The Palace Bar in Prescott, AZ would not allow him to film there. Perhaps he told them that by being in his “film” that it would firmly put them on the map. Maybe he even tried to get money from them, who knows? If your funding comes from selling photos on eBay there has to be a time when those funds will quickly evaporate. If you want to see how a professional documentary is produced, I recommend Peckinpah Suite. No camcorders or scorpions in jam jars.

@crustdisplacement 2 жыл бұрын

@@chrishoward4432 Hi Chris I know very little about Mike Siegel other than he’s the guy who has produced a lot of material about Peckinpah, which I might not have been able to see otherwise. That’s where my interest in Mike Siegel as a person begins and ends. You and he obviously have a personal issue which I don’t want to get in the middle of. Thank you very much for your recommendation of Peckinpah Suite, I will seek it out immediately. Keep up the good work on Sam.

@tommyboy1653 5 ай бұрын

Before CGI ,The best movies ever made.😎💯👍

@Ax18NY 3 жыл бұрын

Love Peckinpah.

@davidscott3820 4 ай бұрын

Thanx. Wish it was on youtube😅

@scottmcintire8634 Жыл бұрын

Always loved the original The Killer Elite, which was a very good action and intrigue movie in my opinion. The Chinatown shootout was very cool, it being an often-visited neighborhood of San Francisco for me. It struck me as quirky that an AR-7 .22 LR ‘survival rifle’ with a suppressor would be used by a ‘Killer Elite’ to perform a hit, unless he was using subsonic ammunition, and I was intrigued that his partner used a Danish Madsen M-50 SMG, which together with the MAC-10 and standard Uzi SMG’s were among the assortment of full-auto weapons that I had fired at rental firing ranges in NV and MD. The Uzi used on the mothballed fleet shootout looked odd to me, and I would later read that cheaper and more readily available MAC-10’s were modified with cut/reclaimed Uzi SMG parts to simulated the more rare and harder to obtain (at the time) than the transferable Uzi’s. The Vietnamese martial arts actress (who apparently studied under Bruce Lee) was a good addition to the story/movie, though it would have been better if she had employed some of the traditional Vietnamese Vovinam martial arts fighting style moves, such as the classic female-employed ‘flying scissor thighs around the neck’ takedown move that, in my opinion, is both very impressive and vaguely erotic/sensual to observe. The movie has perhaps one of James Caan’s most memorable performances in my opinion, up there with Cinderella Liberty, the TV movie Brian’s Song and the excellent City of Ghosts (shot on location in Cambodia).

@TheLolapuff 8 ай бұрын

“Thief” is Caans best movie