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"Straw Dogs" is still an enjoyable and thought provoking film.

WARNING: LARGE PART OF PLOT Reveled Director Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" (1969) was one of the most controversial films ever made for its time and is still be considered violent today. Plot progression was dealt with quickly but the violence was carefully elongated to create full pitched battles with shocking blood letting. Most of the violence was filmed in slow motion, even when civilians were caught up in it. Death was no longer reserved for the "bad-guys" dressed in black. Every character was portrayed in different shades of gray. Also, Peckinpah used great dialogue and characterization so that combined with the performances of excellent actors (William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Ryan) he managed to pull together not a mindless gore-fest, but a picture that spoke of loyalty between friends and honor in death. It was one of the greatest movies of all time.Two years later Peckinpah directed "Straw Dogs". Although it, too, can be considered violent and it was definitely controversial (banned in the UK), "Straw Dogs" is a slight disappointment. It's set in a small town in rural England which becomes the new home of American David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) and his British wife Amy (Susan George). Together they are trying to escape the violence of American society and decide to settle down in Amy's peaceful hometown where David can find the time he needs to write his book on "stellar interiors and their radiation characteristics". The details on what he does are very vague. All that Peckinpah wants us to know is that David is one of society's intellectual elite. Of course, to follow the cliché when it comes to nerds in thrillers, David is portrayed as a coward without a spine. The locals soon begin to dislike David since his mannerisms seem alien to them. The situation deteriorates faster because one of the locals, Charlie Venner (Del Henney) was once Amy's boyfriend and is obviously jealous of David.The Sumner's move into Amy's father's old house and hire several men to repair the roof on their garage. Slowly the men (Charlie among them) begin to harass the two and invade their privacy. It gets worse as their actions become more sadistic and abusive. The tensions finally break one night when David is trying to protect the village idiot from an angry mob. Janice, the daughter of an uncontrollable drunk (also related to Charlie), was seen walking home one night with the idiot (who has a shady past when it comes to the safety of young girls) but then disappears. David, while driving home from a community event, accidentally hits the idiot and finds that it's his responsibility to take care of him at home. The drunk gathers together a mob and tries to manhandle the idiot into telling him where Janice is. David sums up his courage and decides to be a man, taking on a "my house is my castle" mentality. A bloody siege ensues.Similar to "The Wild Bunch", "Straw Dogs" has many of Peckinpah's trademarks. It opens to a scene of children torturing a dog ("The Wild Bunch" opened to the same thing except the dog was a scorpion). Both films end in bloody climaxes. The script for "Straw Dogs" has well developed characters (right up to the last twenty minutes) and there is an excellently created atmosphere that helps deliver a sense of uneasiness with each line delivered by the outstanding cast. The differences between Amy and David, along with the harassment of the locals, all creates an almost unbearable tension. Amy is a lighthearted and beautiful young woman who acts so immature it's childish, and David is a selfish, solitary workaholic afraid of taking risks. The surrounding characters are all stupid, rude farmers with the exception of the local magistrate. All is perfectly set for the climax. Actually, the setup is so simple it's a little predictable. From there the movie goes further downhill. Peckinpah showed his talent for directing violent climaxes in "The Wild Bunch", but in "Straw Dogs" the violence is so long it's silly. The mob circles the Sumner home trying to break in. The doors are thick oak reinforced with steal, so it would seem sensible to go through the windows. No, that would shorten the action so they mill about for a while destroying the property. All is plausible since they're drunk, but a minute before they were sober and on a mission to save a young girl. Plausibility comes into question. It's all for violence's sake, which in the process cheapens the movie.Besides these flaws "Straw Dogs" is an enjoyable motion picture with a different message than that of "The Wild Bunch's". In the latter, criminals past their prime go down with guns blazing to save their friend, proving their honor amongst thieves. It portrayed the "bad guys" as honorable but the "good guys" as greedy railroad barons. It showed that no man can be classified as either "black" or "white". We're all gray and everyone has sinned, it just matters whose shoes you're in whose eyes you see things through. "Straw Dogs", however, is about one man's personal transformation in order to protect his abused dignity. As the tag-line says, "The knock at the door meant the birth of one man and the death of seven others." "Straw Dogs" is still an enjoyable and thought provoking film. 8/10

a classic

Sam Peckenpah was many years ahead of the pack and Dustin Hoffman was brilliant in this movie.

Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps

Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.


Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

UNBELIEVABLE

This i sa great film. I just wonder why it didnt get the recognition or popularity it deserved. I'm a huge fan of mob movies, and films like clockwork orange and taxi driver. If you like films like these, you will love straw dogs, trust me. Dustin Hoffman in this film could hold his own with Al and Robert anyday. The picture on this dvd is great, alot better than some transfers of other older films, but the surround sound is lacking but its such a great movie it doesnt matter. good character depth, great story, a must have in my opinion.

One of Peckinpah's Best

People seem to love or hate this movie. I love it. Dustin Hoffman plays professor on "sabbatical" to write a book on astronomy and computers. There is some allusion to his having been driven to his sabbatical (or from his job) because of his refusal to take a stand over some undefined issue at his place of employment. In any case, he retreats to a farmhouse in rural England with his pretty wife, played by Susan George.

When some of the local underemployed thugs start bullying him--(The script and Peckinpah's direction of the actors hits bull's-eye here; having lived in England, I saw the same sort of behavior--punks all over, I guess, have mannerisms of bullying peculiar to their culture.)

The violent climax to this film is--you hate to say it--beautiful. It certainly isn't gorey by today's standards. This, perhaps, is what makes people so uncomfortable about this movie--their own reaction to the violence. Hoffman conveys wonderfully both the fear and the satisfaction his character is experiencing.

At one level, this film exists as a simple tale of revenge. At another level, the movie affirm's Peckinpah's vision of violence as a rite of manhood. Whether this rite is a regrettable one . . . well, that remains arguable, and this ambiguity is part of what makes this such a watchable, and re-watchable, movie.

A Good statement on a grim reality

Upon first viewing, Straw Dogs seemed a little bit over-hyped to me. I read quite a few reviews and commentaries on it (from the past and present) and so decided to check it out for myself. After I watched it a few more times, concentrating on it more closely and getting more absorbed into the themes, the storyline, the character nuances and pathos, the male/female interactions, etc, and finally deciding that it was indeed a quality film. There has been much said about its depiction of the supposed nature of masculinity and femininity (the latter not well showcased, by Susan George's character or by the sexually adventurous young female local who is accidentally killed by a mentally handicapped man), but it's really the masculine aspect that is focused on in any real depth. The contrast between Hoffman's new age, more gentle, maleness and the rustic and more traditional, brutish, "conscienceless" masculinity displayed by the local men is an often entertaining juxtaposition (and let's not forget the more balanced, level-headed, reasonable yet still tough and authoritative manhood of the local sheriff in the equation). The film is obviously making a statement about the violent nature of humanity and men in particular, showing the viewer different types of masculinity and showing how, supposedly, Hoffman's more new age type doesn't hold up to nature, because ultimately Mr. Sumner (Hoffman's character) proves that he is not so evolved after being constantly harassed and provoked by the more brutish men. This can be taken in many ways: nature overcoming nurture, a man pushed to the brink, a man merely trying to protect his home and wife from invaders,etc; but the film overlooks the very powerful forces of socialization that have a part to play in shaping people, and instead believes that "nature" has all the say, when that is just not true.The violence still stands up to today's films, especially the sexual violence, which actually goes much further than many PC/feminist whipped, cowardly mainstream (or even indie) filmmakers of today would allow or be allowed(almost as if they want to make us believe that rape doesn't exist). Therefore, the film hasn't lost its relevance in that respect, as many might believe. As for it's effect on me, I actually find it indescribably sad that such brutish louts are still around in great number today, but of course this kind of toxic socialization of men hasn't yet stopped, and has almost, very unfortunately, increased slightly since the Reagon/Mulrooney era. I say this because this film, consciously or not, gives us a look at what this kind of socialization of men can lead to: a pack of , disrespectful, thoughtless, malignant 'straw dogs' that leads to irrational and brutal killing sprees that offer no shining light into a more sophisticated way of dealing with situations--but of course that is just a part of reality, and the film dealt with this troubling and dangerous reality quite well. I've read many reviews on this film and, surprisingly, none have commented on this angle. So perhaps even though Hoffman's character may be described as "wussy" or "castrated" (which, of course, he ultimately proves he is not) maybe if the other men were a little more like him (or least like the sheriff) then the world would be a much better, safer, place in which to live.

Peckinpahs masterpiece

Forget THE WILD BUNCH, personally I found STRAW DOGS to be the crowning achievement of Sam Peckinpah's career. An American mathematician (Dustin Hoffman) and his sexy British wife Susan George are tired of the violence of the US so move to the wife's home town in England. What seems to be an idyllic new beginning is shattered when they find themselves harrassed by several local hooligans. Watching STRAW DOGS is like being subjected to chinese water torture, Peckinpah builds the tension slowly and with such expertise that though everybody knows what is going to happen to the couple it's a matter of WHEN. The violence is not glamorised, nor as graphic as the likes of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. I'm not a huge geek or anything, but I will say that this is the type of movie intellectuals pee their pants over and debate over tiny cups of espresso in arty-farty cafes. As more of a beer and meatball sub kinda guy I'll spare you the varisty style nonsense and say that STRAW DOGS is a definite must-see, with Hoffman giving one of his best performances (which is REALLY saying something considering the likes of LENNY, PAPILLON etc etc). Peckinpah has never been darker (or better).

Powerful and Gut-Wrenching

Director "Bloody Sam" Peckinpah takes a cue from Ernest Hemingway in this visceral and, perhaps, most frank depiction of male hostility ever put on film. The concept is simple: a pacifist professor (Dustin Hoffman) settles with his restless, beautiful wife (Susan George) in the bleak farming village where she grew up. Their marriage as incomplete as the house they share, the mismatched pair live isolated from the world, save for four Alpha-males hired as handymen. They openly mock their employer, testing the professor's masculinity through varying degrees of humiliation while being spurred on by the flirtations of a wife whose sexual longing for them outweighs her fidelity. Hoffman and George give excellent performances, but it is director Peckinpah who is the real star of this gritty film. Refusing to pull punches, he vivisects the complex psychology of male aggression that is so often dismissed as simple and meaningless in society. While the film is violent--including a controversial and graphic rape scene that questions the nature of responsibility--it is the brooding air of tension permeating the film that is the most disturbing. Pay attention to little touches that drive the story, such as George calling not for her husband to rescue her in the film's bloody climax but for one of the rapists. David Mamet would explore similar territory in his own ode to Hemingway, "The Edge," but with less memorable results.

A man's home is his bunker

***SPOILERS*** Extremely violent and gory film about a man David Smuner, Dustin Hoffman, who just wouldn't take it anymore and gave it back with double-digit and compound interest to those who made his life a living hell on earth.Moving with his sexy British wife Amy, Susan George, into her late father's house in the idyllic English countryside transplanted American David Sumner felt that he can now find the peace and quite that eluded him back in his native America. Getting way from the crime and racial tensions in the states David, a professor of mathematics, can now concentrate on his life's work. Doing complicated mathematical formulas-for the US Military-with him not having to fear being attacked robbed or even murdered when going out to the neighborhood bodega to by a pack of smokes or six pack of lite beer.You can just imagine the surprise on David's face when he first saw his new neighbors who besides being just plain rude were also just drunk and sex staved degenerates, for his wife Amy, but about as nutty as a can of Planters Mixed Party Nuts! As for David's wife Amy she, while living in town before she met David, has a reputation of being a bit loose with the local boys in town. There's also Charlie Venner, Del Henney, who was Amy boyfriend and who, seeing how she filled out over the years, eagerly wants to restart his relationship with her! Even though Charlie knows that she's a married woman and wants absolutely nothing to do with him! Still Amy teases and entices Charlie & Co, the boys in town, by going around bra-less and even flashing her will developed breasts at them just to get her nerdy husband David to square off and slug it out with Charlie and the boys. Amy is suspicious, with good reason, that Charlie and his friends, who are doing construction work at the house, killed her cat in an effort to intimidate both her and David and force then to leave town.David for the most part wants to be just one of the boys and goes out drinking at the local bar, even picking up the tab, as well as on hunting trip with them just to be sociable. Charlie uses that occasion, the hunting trip, to sneak back to David's house and together with his friend "Stormin' Normen" Scott, Ken Hutchison, gang rape Amy who's left traumatized by the event! What turns David, like Clark Kent changing into Superman, around is not that his wife was raped, he as far as I could see never found that out, but an incident he had with the local village idiot Henry Niles, David Warner.It was Henry who had accidentally killed teenager Janice Hedden, Sally Thomsett, earlier that evening while the two were making out in a deserted barn. Janice who had the hots for Henry threw herself at him with Henry, during all the excitement, ending up strangling her when the action, or sex, started to get out of control. Henry now on the run from the police ended up getting hit by David's car as he and Amy were driving home from a church banquet. David taking the injured Henry home to recuperate until help, the town doctor, arrives in the morning is just trying to do the right thing not interested, or knowing, what he just did. With the word out that Janice is missing, her body wasn't found yet, and her being last seen with that pervert Henry Niles her almost dead drunk dad, he seems to spend more time in the saloon then at home, Ted Hedden, Peter Vaughan, rustles up a lynch mob of outraged townspeople, including Charlie Venner & "Stormin' Normen" Scott, to first capture Henry and then string him up without a trial! ***SPOILERS*** Gut crunching final with David taking on all comers-the Hedden lynch mob-in a mind boggling slug-fest at the barricaded Sumner farmhouse. Having been kicked around and humiliated in his being a gutless wimp by everyone, including his wife Amy, in the movie David finally let all, boiling oil fireplace pokers lead pipes and even bear-traps, his frustrations out with shattering results! And those results turned out to be a bloodbath of such enormous proportions that even that blood thirsty psycho "Jack the Ripper" would envy!

Silly violent but entertaining film Hoffman did for the power and the money

This was indeed a very powerful and controversial film for the time but totally implausible. Dustin Hoffman is an American Academic that moves into a English country cottage with his very attractive , sexually demure wife played by Susan George. The very tough and sexist builders renovating the cottage ridicule Hoffman's character and leer at his wife. Susan George's character panders to the leers of the builder and actually knows one of them. She appears to very open to the builder she knows and she easily gets seduced and despite some initial resistance is seen enjoying sex with him until one of his mates joins in. In legal and moral terms it would be debatable if she was initially raped as consent appears to have been given from my recollection. Interwoven with this event is the wrongful accusation of a retarded man of rape of a young lady. Finally Hoffman's character comes under siege from the Town's folk and the alleged rapists and has to fend them off with fatal force. Not a very pleasant film and has a highly unlikely ending.But hey some people enjoy these sort of films and think that they have great qualities in their depiction of graphic violence.

Retains the power to shock and disturb.

A mild mannered American Mathematition and his English wife move into her remote Cornish farmhouse where she grew up. The locals resent his presence and the fact that he has married one of 'their girls'. While driving home one foggy night, the couple hit a local retarded man who has accidentally suffocated a girl from the village. Not aware of this, they take him to the farmhouse for help. Before long the local roughnecks are laying seige to the house, demanding that the couple turn the man over to them for 'questioning' about the girl's dissappearance. The American refuses, knowing what will happen if he hands over the suspect, and the situation descends into all out violence. I watched this last night as it had its UK television premiere on Channel Four. Along with 'A Clockwork Orange' it was banned for many years here, only seeing the light of day on DVD late last year. The previous evening Channel Four screened an excellent documentary on the troubled history of the film, presented by Film Critic Mark Kermode. My appetite duly whetted, I sat down expecting either a masterpiece or a total letdown. The result lay somewhere between the two. The film builds slowly and menacingly, before finally exploding into violence near the end. However, so accustomed have we become to graphic on screen violence that its effect is lessened compared to what it would have been 32 years ago. The transformation of Dustin Hoffmann's character remains interesting nevertheless. The real problem with the film is of course the attitude to Susan George's character. From the outset Peckinpah depicts her as a tease and a flirt, so by the time we get to the double rape we are almost supposed to think 'she was asking for it'. This is compounded by her reaction to the first rape. These are dangerous messages for filmmakers to send out to society and one must question Peckinpah's agenda here. At his best (The Wild Bunch, Cross Of Iron) Sam Peckinpah was a truly gifted Director. 'Straw Dogs' is no classic but it remains interesting and challenging. I'm glad I took the time to see it and I would probably watch it again. However, it can be an unsettling veiwing experience, but perhaps that was the point, that violence is distressing and ugly.

an intense, thrilling, and controversial film.

( my comments are based on the recently restored anchor bay release of the uncut 118 min. version)Sam Peckinpah ranks up there with all the other great directors in my opinion. The Wild Bunch is my favorite western of all time and this film, Straw Dogs, is one of my favorite thrillers ever made as well.Dustin Hoffman gives a brilliant performance as a timid professor who is pushed from being a pacifist to a man using extreme acts of violence to defend himself, his wife and his home.Susan George is perfectly cast as his wife (and is stunning as far as her looks are concerned). all the other characters are great as well.the movie has a unique pace which builds to an ending as shocking, brutally violent, and debatable as i've ever seen. Sam Peckinpah shows once again how extreme violence can gain a powerful and effective tool if used correctly and artistically.a fantastic film!rating:9.5

PEACENIK HOFFMAN GOES BONKERS

In 1971 Sam Peckinpah's controversial STRAW DOGS was censored by the British Board of Film Classification. The cuts made it even more provocative than Peckinpah intended. Consequently, Straw Dogs was labeled by the media as an obscene, misogynistic piece of filmmaking. Regarding the uncut American version, even the esteemed Pauline Kael said it's "the first American film that is a fascist work of art."

"Straw Dogs" stands as one of Peckinpah's best, and a reminder of the ongoing struggle between an artist's freedom and suppression by the powers that be. But more than that, it's a brilliant and harrowing exploration of man's primitive animal nature and its implied, inherent violence.

The transfer's clean and sharp. Extras include an 80 minute look at Peckinpah's films and a new interview with Susan George, who talks about her daring, controversial performance of a woman who for a few brief moments seemed to enjoy being raped.

What does "Straw Dogs" mean? Is it from the saying: Behind every coward's eyes burn straw dogs? If so, what does that mean? What are "straw dogs"?

Another thing. Recently (of this writingt) Dustin Hoffman has made a point of speaking out about certain military operations to free brutalized, oppressed people. Personally, I'd rather not know what an actor thinks and feels about politics. However, in "Straw Dogs" Hoffman shows what it takes to fight evil aggression. His screen performance will outlive his words.

Recommended.

...in the west of England one summer...

What makes the violence so powerful is the source of it. And the source of it all is Susan George. She is a beautiful and sexy blonde who all the rural lads remember from her youth and they are all jealous of Dustin Hoffman who is the American who has won her. Susan George and Dustin Hoffman seem a hopeless mismatch and she seems to know it before he does. She is just an English country girl and she resents that he is trying to make her in to a female version of himself, ie a more intellectual, responsiblespectacle wearing chess player. What she has that he underestimates the worth of is sensual appeal. And when he doesn't pay attention she advertises to any man near by just to prove she has it.
The way Peckinpah sets up the Hoffman/George relationship it is almost assured to lead to trouble. Instead of having Hoffman and George fight it out between themselves Peckinpah has them wage their war through the hired hands which are little more than hoods recognizing the opportunities when they present themselves.
George has a past with one of the lads and she does not exactly resist his advances and this is just more proof that things are not all well in her marriage. Though things go much much further than she had perhaps anticipated.
The atmosphere of the movie is great. The village is tiny, just a pub and a few houses. And the stone English country house that Hoffman and George rent for the year is like a small castle and decorated with weapons. The final confrontation is country manor warfare at its most intense. The final result is cathartic but feels more like an exhilerated confusion than a clear resolution.
Acting wise Hoffman is magnificent but George is also great displaying a wide range of moods and motivations.
Other movies have shown more violence than this one but still the violence in this one is of a very particular type, the type that Peckinpah suggests is seething below the surface of many man/woman relationships. Whether you agree with Peckinpahs assessment or not the movie is a charged and memorable one.

Disturbing, even today

The first contemporary film made by Sam Peckinpah, whose five previous movies were all westerns, STRAW DOGS, in its study of how one seemingly mild-mannered man (in this case Dustin Hoffman) can be driven to defend himself through extreme violence, can, in my belief, be classified as a sociological and psychological horror film.

Released in late 1971, at the same time as Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STRAW DOGS caused an enormous amount of debate on both sides of the Atlantic concerning not only its violence, but also the horrific rape scene involving Hoffman's wife (Susan George), which got the film banned in England, where Peckinpah made it. Both Kubrick's and Peckinpah's films differ from each other, in that Kubrick's is a more political allegory and Peckinpah's is philosophical--and yet both films are, in their own ways, masterpieces.

Peckinpah, in a stroke of pure genius, with the exception of the hideous rape scene, holds off on his typical slow-motion violence until the climactic siege, where Hoffman has to protect a mental patient (David Warner) from a band of drunk hooligans. This sequence is still nerve-shattering and violent, brilliantly edited, shot, and acted, with Peter Vaughan making for one of the most frightening heavies ever.

Besides the acting, the other fine points of STRAW DOGS are the ominous cinematography of John Coquillon, who also shot the low-budget 1968 British horror film THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL, and a brilliantly haunting Stravinsky/Herrmann-influenced music score by Peckinpah's favorite composer Jerry Fielding. STRAW DOGS is not an easy movie to watch or to like, but for those so inclined, it is very much worth seeing.

One of the best!

While SD was/is banned in the UK, it wasn't always so. I saw the movie in Airdrie (Scotland)when it was first released there. It was pulled shortly afterward. However, I saw it on a wet, Sunday afternoon in an almost empty cinema. Couldn't convince my girlfriend (now wife of 25 years) to go. I'd taken her to see A Clockwork Orange and was in her 'bad books'! Watch it every few months or so. Lived for a while in the area depicted in the movie. Peckinpah was right on with his depiction of local life. So, watching the movie is a little of a nostalgia trip - minus the violent stuff thank goodness.

Wrong place, any time

You can take the Western setting out of a Sam Pechinpah movie, but you can't take the discomforting and gratuitous violence. Gordon Williams' novel sourced this exercise in intestinal fortitude.The 'we don't want you around here' mantra is taken to extreme when an American wimp(professor) repairs to a rural British village with his new wife. There the locals are mostly thugs who do things their way, which is not anyone else's way, which is the way it always has been done. Their way includes rape, terrorism, intimidation, and forced submission. Take it or leave it.That Professor David Sumner(Dustin Hoffman) is ill-equipped to deal with anything but differential equations fuels this improbable set of circumstances. That his lovely, immature wife Amy (Susan George) plays the coquette for everyone within eye-shot is the spark. The following combustion is predictable, just add the signature Pechinpah touch of violence heaped on violence.Maybe this film is an ancestor to David Cronenberg's Crash, another film from a 'controversial' book, which wanders, and wanders, and wanders, tending to go for 'shock value' over substance.This movie has an incredible following, for me it does nothing, the premise so ludicrous I can't get past it to any of the psychology. The violence for me seems almost appropriate to the setting (man is that ever a horrible thought), there is no shock value. The unspoken subtext is that 'they are asking for it, and they are getting it', and when they get it we are to be surprised? Outraged? How can I be? Each new scene reaffirms those feelings in me.

Better DVDs Make This Better, Too

I didn't really appreciate this movie until several viewings. Oh, I remembered it as one of the shocking "new" movies of the period in which nudity and graphic violence were being shown on screen for the first time...but in a later viewing on VHS in the '90s, I thought it was so-so.A few years ago, with a good DVD print I was more than impressed. The movie, which I had thought was a little slow by the second viewing, was not on the third (and fourth and recent fifth). I have to admit: watching Susan George is one of the big enjoyments of this movie. She is hot! In reality, it's doubtful someone like her would marry a nerd like the character played by Dustin Hoffman. Nonetheless, as all of you who have seen this know, that "nerd" comes out of his shell in the suspense-filled last half hour.There are still a few things I didn't like here, such as a too-sympathetic viewpoint of a child molester; a quick cheap shot at Christianity by Hoffman (no surprise) and a film that has mostly unlikeable people. However, the story is so involving it more than makes up for the negatives.....and it gets better and better with each viewing (and each improved DVD offering widescreen and a clearer print).

Wild bunch of Brits

A key film in launching the "Death Wish" era,"Straw Dogs" nonetheless deals with its subject in a much more thoughtful manner than subsequent formula pics of the genre. Dustin Hoffman is in top form as the nebbishy urban American who moves to the native countryside of his English-born wife,shagadelic 70's sex kitten Susan George. Sam Peckinpah quickly precedes to take this "Green Acres" scenario and turn it into "Village of the Damned". This sleepy little hamlet claims an inordinate number of inbred thugs as residents, including several who appear to share a seedy history with Hoffman's bride. The resulting intimidations and confrontations escalate to the inevitable, much-discussed "Taxi Driver"-ish baptism of blood finale. Curiously, the popularity of 1999's "Fight Club" makes "Straw Dogs" suddenly seem less dated, as it is a similar attempt to deconstuct the eternally conflicted definitions of "masculinity". Look for an early, memorable performance by David Warner as a "Mice And Men" Lenny-type character. An unsettling but worthwhile film.

"This is where I live. This is me. I will not allow violence against this house."

Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs' begins peacefully enough, offering only a few subtle hints of the graphic rape that would form the centerpiece of the film, and unbridled violence that would comprise the harrowing final act. David Sumner (a brilliant Dustin Hoffmann, 'All The President's Men'), an American mathematician, arrives in a quaint Cornwall town to be met with a certain level of hostility. He and his British wife, Amy (Susan George), have moved back into Amy's hometown to escape violence and crime in the United States. The irony of this motivation, even at the beginning of the film, is not lost.David is very much an introvert. The job of a mathematician requires hours of quiet time to think and ponder, something he just can't get. His wife Amy is immature and disruptive, though we can't blame her; David has little time for her amidst all his mathematical calculations, and he treats her cries for attention as one treats a child, at one point telling her "you act like you're fourteen years old." As days go by, David and Susan face increasing levels of harassment from the local residents, most particularly the four young local men who have been employed to build their garage. The harassment begins quite modestly, with David – the outsider – becoming the butt of local jokes, whether it be because he has trouble trying to start his battered old car, or because he tries to enter it from the wrong side. On his first visit to the pub, David requests "any American brand of cigarettes," an unwise move if you wish to make friends amongst the fiercely patriotic country folk of Cornwall. He would later buy the stone-faced men around him a round of drinks, but doesn't sit around to enjoy it with them.After a somewhat leisurely opening thirty minutes, we suddenly recognise that things are getting serious when Susan's cat goes missing. This event in itself is not particularly ominous, since the cat goes missing all the time. However, when David pulls on the light switch in his bedroom closet, he is understandably startled to find his strangled cat dangling limp from the cord. Despite his insistence that "it could have been anyone passing by," we already know who murdered "kitty." David vows to confront the four local men, endeavouring to "catch them off guard" and force a confession. However, given David's typically shy and pacifistic nature, he subsequently loses his courage and backs down.David's "confrontation" invariably ends in his accepting an invitation to go hunting the following day. Whilst David takes pot-shots at the passing birds (with little result), one of the men, Charlie Venner (Del Henney), a former lover of Susan, drops into the house. Susan demands that he leave, but he casually casts aside her pleas and starts to kiss her. Susan resists at first but, shockingly, at times she appears to return his affection. Nevertheless, the rape scene is difficult to watch, and Peckinpah masterfully intercuts the quickly-cut scene with images of David standing obliviously amongst the scrub, still actively trying to shoot down ducks. Another of the men arrives at the home, and a second uncomfortable rape scene follows. Once it is all over, we find David finally shooting down a bird, only to find that it isn't a duck. Disappointed that he has made such a careless mistake, he drops the dead bird into a bush, no doubt assured that the worst thing to happen today was his inability to hunt. When he next sees Susan, she says nothing to him; and she never will.When a mildly mentally-challenged local man, Henry Niles (David Warner, who was uncredited due to insurance complications), also a convicted child molester, accidentally murders a teenage girl who made advances towards him, the drunken father of the girl wants his retribution. Niles, stumbling through a heavy onset of fog, finds his way in front of David and Susan's car, and they bring him to their home until medical assistance can arrive. However, the murdered girl's father and the four men who had been building David's garage turn up outside his house with only one thing on their minds: getting inside that house and getting to Niles. The previously mild-mannered David, on the other hand, has alternative plans for these men.The title of the film is drawn from a common translation of 'Tao Te Ching', an ancient Chinese philosophical treatise: "Heaven and Earth are impartial; they see the ten thousands things as straw dogs. The wise are impartial; they see the people as straw dogs." Many ancient Chinese ceremonies included the use of grass-woven dogs, which were revered and respected during the ritual, but afterward discarded and burnt. Perhaps the title symbolises David's underlying attitudes towards human lives as the men begin to invade his home – we are all straw dogs, made only to be destroyed.Whilst David's moral reasoning for defending his home is to prevent Niles' bloody death at the hands of the mob, he appears to take grim satisfaction in murdering the intruders himself. Once all are good and dead (the most nasty mode of death involving a fully-sprung bear trap), David stands aside, a peculiar grin evident upon his face, exclaiming to himself, "Jesus. I got 'em all!" He is not disgusted or sickened by the deaths he has forced himself to orchestrate – he is actually satisfied, invigorated. He is proud of his achievements.What could have possibly precipitated this sudden change in David's character? From a logical, mild-mannered, peaceful man arose a methodical killing machine, who shockingly takes pleasure in his multiple kills. Then we suddenly realise. These qualities were within David the entire time. Indeed, they subconsciously inhabit the hearts of all men. He just required the horrific circumstances of that night to bring about the alarming conversion.