You can see hints of the director that Sam Peckinpah would eventually become in his first film, 1961’s The Deadly Companions. There are images early on, like a shot of children fighting with sticks in the street, or a hypocritical parson holding a church service in a saloon, that eerily foreshadow similar scenes in The Wild Bunch. The Deadly Companions doesn’t offer the visual pyrotechnics or crackling atmosphere of his later classics, but it has a weird, almost nightmarish quality that makes it well worth watching despite its many flaws. — Bryan Byun