Sam Peckinpah

American filmmaker who directed The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia — and who revolutionized the aesthetics of violence in American cinema through slow-motion death sequences — while maintaining a reputation as a difficult, alcoholic genius.

Transformed the visual language of violence in cinema — the slow-motion death sequence in The Wild Bunch was the most influential single technique in 1970s American film — creating a visual style that made violence both beautiful and disturbing simultaneously.