It always felt to me as though I was looking in one direction while everyone else was looking in the opposite direction as I just never "got" one of his movies. They seem to be loaded with meaning and sub-text but it just totally passes me by. His technique was poor (bad super fast editing, lots of zooms and bad framing of the shots) and his scripts weak.

Wild Bunch was okay if a bit boring.

Straw Dogs was boring and very badly made.

Cross Of Iron seemed like a bunch of random scenes poorly strung together.

I gave up on The Getaway within about ten minutes.

As I said, everyone else appear to be watching different films to the ones I saw.

Peckham-Power (as I once saw his name written in an essay) directed Major Dundee, which - together with Hitchcock's Marnie and John Ford's The Searchers - was among the most revered flicks of all time on the BFI-ish/Sight & Soundy/Pseuds Corneresque film-studies courses I did in the Seventies (don't ask).

And Loud's right; they were badly made. The actual noggin of Alfredo Garcia looked like something that had been snatched off a dummy in the window at Tracey's Modes on Darlington High Street. (I could never figure out whether Tommy Lee Jones was paying a sort of postmodern homage to Peckinpah with the equally risible corpse that he dragged about from set to set, like an XXL-sized Lord Charles, in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, or whether the truth was that he too had to do the best he could with a $4.99 special-effects budget.)

The man knew how to make a western but often ballsed up elsewhere. Ride the High Country is magnificent, with Pat Garrett, Wild Bunch, Cable Hogue and to a lesser extent Major Dundee not far behind.
Elsewhere he was rarely dull but never great. He was also truly crap towards the end: Osterman Weekend or Convoy anyone?

Major Dundee is indeed a mess but it was butchered by the studio so no arguments there even if there are great passages. Try the restored version not the crap you saw in the 1970s.

Straw Dogs I agree is a very difficult view and showed the misogynistic streak he had.

Osterman, Convoy and Killer Elite are indeed poor although he was very much at a low at the time of making them and wanted a way back into the industry so was happy to take on hack jobs. They were all very successful films financially.

The Wild Bunch is boring and badly edited!? I have never heard anyone refer to it as boring but you have your opinion. I think it is exciting, lyrical, sad, repellent, emotional, relentless, atmospheric and brilliantly acted. The one thing the Wild Bunch is not is badly edited and indeed one needs to bear in mind that the slo-mo style of editing action scenes originated with Peckinpah and has been used ad infinitum in so many films since (Matrix being the obvious one), that it is not suprising that the style is seen as tedious now.

Alfredo Garcia is not for everyone given the rather grimy feel to it but Oates is magnificent and there is a wonderful Tequila soaked sense of 1970s Mexico.

Orson Welles thought Cross of Iron was the greatest war film ever made but hell, what did he know?

Pat Garrett is one of the more beautiful films out there and any film that inspired Knocking on Heavens Door can't be all that bad.

The Z channel version - cruelly sabotaged by a terrible print on the currently available 2 disc DVD - is, in my opinion, not just Peckinpah's best film but one of the three greatest post 1960 westerns ever made (Once Upon A Time In the West and Unforgiven, since you ask). All of Peckinpah's films interest me in some way. Having read good biographies of him and of Warren Zevon, there are some strong similarities; and I don't believe that either, revered though they are, get nearly enough credit.

It might be my favourite film of all time, I can't recommend it highly enough.

"Damn near perfect".

"Sheriff Pat Garrett. Sold out to the Santa Fe ring. How does it feel?"

"It feels like... times have changed."

"Times, maybe. Not me."

...has to be one of the best first ten minutes of any film ever. One of many disservices done to Peckinpah's serially abused masterpiece is that the 'definitive' cut of the film - which Peckinpah had nothing whatsoever to do with - is currently given near-regal treatment on DVD and destroys this sequence completely. Shame the formatting is off in this YouTube clip, but everything else is in place.

(Optimally pronounced "war notes"; practise in front of the mirror)

Has any actor ever been more Word?

Still noone else has mentioned this. A remarkably mature and moving film for someone who was still only in his mid 30s when he made it and who'd only directed for TV before.
Easily one of the best westerns ever made.

Best of all it was the screen farewell for both Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. The ending gets me every time.

I felt that I had to post on here, as Sam Peckinpah is probably my favourite film director. He's an acquired taste, but his best films are remarkable. I don't even think that Convoy or The Osterman Weekend are that bad. I've seen The Wild Bunch on the big screen a few years ago, and that's the best way to see it. I love Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia too. Alex Cox and Moviedrome introduced me to it, and it is one hell of a film. Warren Oates is also my favourite actor and deserving of a Word article, and maybe even a front cover. Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is outstanding too, and the scene where Bob Dylan reads what's on some tins is something you owe to it yourself to see. No one's mentioned Junior Bonner or The Ballad of Cable Hogue, but they're 2 more Peckinpah classics, and John Cale and Calexico both named songs after the latter film. Oh, and Major Dundee is pretty good too.

There is an article in the Guardian today on Peckinpah by someone called Rick Moody...I can only assume this is the bloke who wrote "The Ice Storm". Don't agree with his views on Pat Garrett but a good article nonetheless:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jan/09/sam-peckinpah-retrospective