Through the use of biographical criticism, historical criticism and myth criticism, the study established that Peckinpah does in fact work out his theses on the human condition through examination of actual traditional family groups such as the ones found in Junior Bonner; through examination of marriages, as can be seen in Straw Dogs or The Getaway; and through examination of the unsocialized "bunch, " as reflected in The Wild Bunch, or Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. More than one variety of "family, " moreover, may appear in a single film: a situation which the director uses for purposes of comparison.

The study also dealt with the loss of faith in family which seems, for the director, to inevitably accompany the passage of time from the nineteenth to the twentieth century and then, in a concluding chapter, the study examined ways in which the director has returned to the theme of family in a recent film, The Osterman Weekend, after a five-year absence from the screen.

This was an auteurist study of the films which American director Sam Peckinpah made beginning with The Wild Bunch in 1969 through Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia in 1974. The attempt was made to bring these films together as a sequential body of work through the unifying theme of family, actual and surrogate.