American motion-picture director and screenwriter known for spectacular, violent westerns.

Peckinpah began his career in television, writing for and directing such western programs as “Gunsmoke,” “The Westerner,” and “The Rifleman.” He made his debut as a film director with The Deadly Companions (1961). Ride the High Country (1962) and Major Dundee (1965) set the formulas for which he became famous: magnificent landscapes, embittered characters drifting in a West that has lost its code of honour, and—most notably—gruesome, realistically choreographed gunplay. The Wild Bunch (1969), considered his finest film, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) were especially bloody Peckinpah productions. The violence spilled over into such nonwesterns as Straw Dogs (1971), The Getaway (1972), and Cross of Iron (1977).

The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) and Junior Bonner (1972), plaintive evocations of the modern West, showed another side of Peckinpah.