STACK July 2016 Issue 141

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Consequently, when Major Dundee
premiered in New York in February 1965,
it was lambasted by the critics, with the
director taking the brunt of the criticism. An
incensed Sam launched a blistering attack in
the film press that denounced the studio and
repudiated the film, stating that "...the studio’s
unwanted edits took out the thread lines of
the story that made it fall apart. Major Dundee
is a film so massacred I do not recognise
it from the one I made.” He then wrote a
scathing letter to Bresler, of which the final
line read "Jerry, you’re a treacherous well
poisoner."
His wrathful outburst swiftly gained
Peckinpah a reputation of being an
uncooperative, belligerent maverick. This
proved extremely detrimental to his career
Bresler gave scoring duties
to Columbia’s resident musical
director Daniele Amfitheatrof,
who composed a bombastic
martial theme actually sung by
Mitch Miller’s Sing-Along
Gang. The jaunty song
incongruously played over
dozens of massacred bodies
shown during the opening
credits.
Bresler had discarded
the extra ten minutes that
Peckinpah had intended to add
to his first cut, without even
viewing the scenes.
He then axed another
twenty-five minutes
and later still, the
studio would remove a
further thirteen minutes.
Thus, a total of forty-
eight minutes was
excised from Peckinpah’s
original planned running
time. The brutal hatchet
job completely
unravelled the
already complicated
storyline, which had
now fragmented into
undeveloped sub-plots
that lacked continuity.
visit EXTRAS
24 JULY 2016
F ollowing Sam Peckinpah’s dismissal
from Columbia Pictures, producer
Jerry Bresler now took over post-
editing of Major Dundee.
Two of his previous productions had been
the insipid, surf-crazy Gidget teen movies,
therefore one might reasonably ask whether
he was the right man to edit Peckinpah’s
complex western. Nonetheless, with the
exhibitors quote of “too violent” still foremost
in his mind, he proceeded to excise practically
all of what he considered to be the ultra-
violent and sadistic scenes from the film.
Peckinpah was an ardent admirer of the slow
motion fight scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s 1954
production Seven Samurai. Whilst shooting
the final river battle between Dundee’s men
and the French lancers, Sam experimented by
mixing slow motion sequences with live
action. But unfortunately all of
these experimental scenes also ended up on
the cutting room floor.
Major Dundee (1965) Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Release &aftermath
Part 5:
The brutal [editing] hatchet job completely
unravelled the already complicated storyline
The death scene of Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris),
cut from the film for being “too violent”
One of Peckinpah’s experimental slo-mo
scenes cut from the movie