"Liar! Liar! Black Liar!"

During the opening robbery/shoot-out sequence in Peckinpah's masterpiece, "The Wild Bunch", comes a truly bizarre bit of dialogue.

The scene shows us two grizzled, raggedy hired guns arguing over who really shot the man lying on the ground. Both men claim to have shot him. There is prize money involved, naturally. Dirty world and all that. Suddenly, the two break into this conversation:

Man 1: Liar! Liar! Black liar!
Man 2: Don't talk like that to me
Man 1: I'm sorry...

Now why would a brutal shoot-out feature such an exchange? The 35-minute documentary on the DVD explains it. It was a tongue-in-cheek joke planted there by the writers, just to make these 2 men seem, well, a little gay and by that they certainly didn't mean happy.

Yes, even a great, bloody film like "The Wild Bunch" can have such silly, goofy moments. As can be expected, Filmsite has an in-depth analysis of the film.