Straw Dogs

In the same year as Clockwork Orange, at the height of the Vietnam War, Peckinpah tried to bring his message into the present. Behind the thin veneer of civilization lies a monster worse than the barbarians of the hill country. By refusing to meet each challenge and take the consequences, the protagonist, like Western Civilization, allows the conflict to escalate to the point where extreme horror appears justified. The inevitable march to the macabre resolution, leaves lots of room for speculation about who the villains are and how much of the world around us is our own doing. This movie, like its Kubrick contemporary, was major ratings controversy because the sex and violence was "disturbing" - unlike the real thing which seems like so much fun on TV.

So you think movies are violent today, huh? Think again. Sam Peckinpah's highly charged, extremely intense, brutally violent 1971 pic is an underrated masterpiece, in my opinion, that redefined cinema violence forever (as if "The Wild Bunch" wasn't enough). It is one of the best directed, most fluidly edited pictures that I've seen in recent years. Today's films don't even come close.

Allegedly banned in the U.K. to this very day, "Straw Dogs" came to me out of nowhere. I had heard good things about it, but never really caught onto it, until one day when I was at a video store browsing around for no apparent reason. I had absolutely no money and wasn't planning to buy anything when all of the sudden, I saw it . . .

WIDESCREEN - UNCENSORED,RESTORED - COLLECTOR'S EDITION

I had never even seen the movie and I wanted to buy it! I mean, hey, it WAS the last one left.

So I took a huge risk, got a loan from my mother, used all the two-dollar bills I had been saving to pay her back, and bought it right out. And then, I viewed it later on that night, praying I hadn't wasted my time. AND: I was floored. The film literally knocked me out, kept me peeled to the screen at every instant, left me disturbed for days to come. I mean, let me tell you, go out and rent this, buy this, anything, just see it! Although it is moderately paced, the film remains intense the whole way, and takes an unexpected turn into extreme violence towards the legendary ending, a showdown worthy of multiple viewings (watch "Fear" to see an amateur retread).

So it goes like this: Hoffman plays a wimpy mathematician who flees with his wife George to the peaceful countryside (to get away from violence!), only to be ravaged by the locals who just wanna start trouble. It is the ultimate test of manhood, showing us (in a somewhat biased manner) that it takes aggression to get what you want and keep what you have. You'll be amazed at Hoffman's "transformation" (we all know deep down that EVERYONE'S got it in them somewhere), but it makes you think, especially when Hoffman has to defend his home from several large armed men WITHOUT USING ANY WEAPONS, only his brains and some household appliances.

I'm surprised that this is such a forgotten film. There aren't enough people who can actually claim to have seen this picture or even know what it's about. I find that hard to ingest, being that it was one of the most controversial films of its day. But it IS very brutal, especially the once trimmed rape scene, restored on my copy, a scene that I find to be the most intense. However, today's moviegoers may not agree.

So see "Straw Dogs," the movie that single-handedly turned me into a Peckinpah fan. The editing is Oscar-worthy, the acting is magnificent, the situations are well thought out, and the characters are fleshed to the bone (sometimes literally). I promise you won't leave disappointed.

#5 on my Top 200 List, **** outta **** on my personal scale.

Straw Dogs is an intense thriller that shows what can happen when you push even the most mild mannered man too far. Dustin Hoffman plays a mathematician who temporarily moves to a house in a rural village in England with his wife, a former resident of the town, played by Susan George. The two withstand incessant needling from several of the townsfolk until George is raped and assaulted and Hoffman is pushed over the edge.

Incidentally, right after watching this film I found a documentary on cable about filmmakers from the late '60s to late '70s and one of the directors profiled was Sam Peckinpah. I had always considered his films to be violent and vaguely shocking, which never surprised me, knowing that he was a hard-living maverick who did things his way - an element that is resplendent in most of his films. A brief mention of Straw Dogs was included in this documentary, where they described it as a "sexist film". There are obvious scenes in the film that could support this criticism, but I think that is overanalyzing the film with a political correctness that is out of place. While the two female characters are both victimized, Susan George also has her moments of empowerment. I may be a female, but I don't consider Peckinpah's tendency to make testosterone-driven films any more sexist than anything that Tarantino puts out, and I'm a big fan of his work as well. It's a dangerous line to draw when one labels a film due to what is *not* included in a film.

What this film does contain is much more stellar - Hoffman is beyond incredible in this film. His character development is amazing to experience. One criticism of the film that I heard from a friend who saw it before me was that it "dragged." I couldn't disagree more. The development of the story until the extremely violent climax is a perfect pace because it made me feel like I was sitting in a dentist chair, knowing that this low boil could explode at any time. After the dust settles, the viewer is left to decide whether Hoffman's character made the right decision, and left to speculate on the ramifications of the choices made. This is by far one of the best films I've seen in recent months and plan to seek out the newly released Criterion edition in my quest to find out as much about this film as I can.

--Shelly

Home Watching Straw Dogs proves to be a haunting experience, one where brutal and graphic scenes of violence shock as much as the psychological tension and emotional imbalance presented by all the recurring characters. In a seemingly peaceful village in England horrible incidents occur one after another, and the thin line between good and evil becomes blurry, as the transitions that the characters go through change the way the audiences perceive the whole unnerving intrigue.

David Summer (Dustin Hoffman's most sinister role), an American mathematician, moves to the isolated town of Cornish along with his gorgeous, young wife Amy. Shortly after their arrival, all the citizens begin to show their dark natures, harassing and assaulting the two newcomers. In the film's most climatic and disturbing sequence, David decides to fight back against the oppression, and realizes that the only way to fight violence is to do it with even more violence. In a most suggestive manner,

Straw Dogs plays with the viewer's imagination, fiercely suggesting that David might actually be the antihero of the movie, and the source of all-evil in himself. His strangely unemotional attitude towards all the horrifying occurrences and – even more – towards the tragedy of his wife ironically makes him the antagonist of the film, and sort of a brutal animal that won't stop till he does too much damage.

The film became famous for its controversial rape scene, which is by far one of the most unsettling scenes of sexual harassment ever filmed. The bestiality and mockery that permeate the film almost all the time makes Straw Dog an emphatic affair where physical bloodbath must give way to deeply psychological struggles between the id and all its counterparts. Sam Peckinpah created a truly gory and forcible tale about bullying, in which man's worst nightmares suddenly turn into the realizations of his most ferocious ideas and dreams.

Peckinpah's post- 'Wild Bunch' movies were a mixed bag. Frequently battling studios, censors and/or his own demons, some are genuine classics ('..Alfredo Garcia'), some are entertaining potboilers ('The Getaway'), and some like 'Straw Dogs' are in between. I could never argue that this movie is his best work, but it is far from his worst, and whatever you can say about his movies, they are ALWAYS interesting.

'Straw Dogs' is the closest he came to making a genre horror/thriller movie. If you enjoy 'Rio Bravo'-inspired siege movies such as Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' or Carpenter's 'Assault On Precinct 13', check this one out. But it is more than "just" a thriller - it features strong character development, and morally ambiguous situations among the tense build up to the explosive climax.

In these P.C. times 'Straw Dogs' offers no simple answers, but plenty of issues for discussion, and it is to be commended for that. "Right" or "wrong"? YOU decide!