So, here we are in summer 1969 and the Wild Bunch blasts on to the screen. Slow motion, accelerated motion, rapid fire editing, front and back squibs - complete with meat chunks, an immoral band of heroes, murderous bounty hunters, an incompetent U.S. Army, women used (successfully) as shields and tossed away, scavenger bounty hunters, and a profanity laden script.
Here's a little clip from the Playboy Interview that John Wayne did on how he felt about The Wild Bunch.
Playboy: Don't gory films like "The Wild Bunch" also contribute to that vulgarity?
Wayne: Certainly. To me, The Wild Bunch was distasteful. It would have been a good picture without the gore. Pictures go too far when they use that kind of realism, when they have shots of blood spurting out and teeth flying, and when they throw liver out to make it look like people's insides. The Wild Bunch was one of the first to go that far in realism, and the curious went to see it. That may make the bankers and stock promoters think that it is a necessary ingredient for successful motion pictures. They seem to forget the one basic principle of our business - illusion. We're in the business of magic. I don't think it hurts a child to see anything that has the illusion of violence in it. All our fairy tales have some kind of violence - the good knight riding to kill the dragon, etc. Why do we have to show the knight spreading the serpent's guts all over the candy mountain?
Mark
