If They Move . . . Kill 'Em!

“What Citizen Kane was to movie lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969," critic Michael Sragow wrote in the New Yorker. “Its adrenaline rush of revelations seemed to explode the parameters of the screen."
If They Move . . . Kill 'Em! is the first major biography of David Samuel Peckinpah. Written by the film critic and historian David Weddle, this fascinating account does critical justice to an important body of cinema as it spins the tale of Peckinpah's dramatic, overcharged life and the turbulent times through which he moved.
Sam Peckinpah was born into a clan of lumberjacks, cattle ranchers, and frontier lawyers. After a hitch with the Marines, he made his way to Hollywood, where he worked on a string of low-budget features. In 1955 he began writing scripts for Gunsmoke; in less than a year he was one of the hottest writers in television, with two classic series, The Rifleman and The Westerner, to his...