Satanists, gangsters, Winnebagos, severed heads and the late Warren Oates, the single most baddest mofo American cinema has ever produced — The Belcourt hits ramming speed this weekend with possibly the finest pairing since rubber met road in their high-octane, full-throttle "Road Movies of the 1970s & '80s" series. That's a flyblown double feature this Saturday and Monday of 200-proof Oates: Sam Peckinpah's grimy 1974 character study Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and Jack Starrett's creepy 1975 drive-in fave Race With The Devil. We're always excited when an Oates classic hits the big screen — we basically camped out at the theater when it showed Monte Hellman's Cockfighter this spring, and you can expect to see us all through Labor Day weekend when Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop pulls in for a few days — but two of his most unhinged, batshit-crazy movies in one weekend? That's cause for some serious celebration.
Warren Oates isn't like other movie heroes — even at his best he's one of the least heroic men to ever hit the silver screen. A bundle of psychosis and neurosis, peering out at the world through a scowl that signifies pain, disappointment, bloodlust, thwarted hopes or some combination thereof, the Kentucky-born Oates doesn't have the dashing good looks and muscular build that Hollywood has taught us to expect from the guy in the driver's seat. Hell, even when Oates takes the lead in a film, he's probably not going to save the day. He might salvage it, he might emerge from the flaming wreckage relatively unscathed, but you can almost always count on him to get his ass kicked and his soul crushed on the way there — if he lives to see the credits.
Take Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. As Bennie, a piano-playing ex-pat lounge lizard in a Mexican tourist town, regular Peckinpah stock player Oates dives without a tank into the abysmal life of the second biggest loser in film history (after Alfredo Garcia). A small-time grifter who couldn't catch a break with oven mitts, Bennie usurps a bounty from two professional hitmen — the detached noggin of the title, decomposing in a burlap sack — and hits the road with his prostitute girlfriend (Isela Vega) to make the big cash score that'll get him out of El Podunk before the shit hits the fan. Alas, since the shit entails rape-y Kris Kristofferson, menacing Donnie Fritts, murderous rivals and the obligatory Peckinpah hail of bullets — and since he's played by Warren Oates — Bennie ends up with a faceful.
Oates' appeal lies in the fact that when his characters have bad luck that borders on the biblical, he faces it not with the patience of Job but the surliness of Abraham. Even when he starts out strong — beautiful wife, good friends, awesome vacation — as he does in Race With The Devil, his luck goes south. Way, way South. Imagine: There you are, married to Loretta Swit and riding through Texas with Peter Fonda in a pimped-out RV, and suddenly you're being hunted by small-town Satan worshippers who've pegged you for their next ritual sacrifice. It's a shit deal, frankly, and one that is not sewn up with a smiling, aw-shucks ending either. In fact, Oates' oeuvre is practically a checklist of all the muck character after character can wade through, yet emerge as a man. The antiheroes of these movies suffer like hell — and through it — but the actor playing them stands tall.
Singer, songwriter, actor and musician Donnie Fritts will host the 1 p.m. Saturday show of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia at The Belcourt, with a talkback to follow. Admission for the double feature is $10.
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