Los Angeles screenwriter David Sumner relocates with his wife to her hometown in the deep South. There, while tensions build between them, a brewing conflict with locals becomes a threat to them both.
Director:
Rod Lurie
Stars:
James Marsden,
Kate Bosworth,
Alexander Skarsgård
An American barroom pianist and his prostitute girlfriend go on a road trip through the Mexican underworld to collect a bounty on the head of a dead gigolo.
A graduate history student is unwittingly caught in the middle of an international conspiracy involving stolen diamonds, an exiled Nazi war criminal, and a rogue government agent.
Director:
John Schlesinger
Stars:
Dustin Hoffman,
Laurence Olivier,
Roy Scheider
Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.
Upon moving to Britain to get away from American violence, astrophysicist David Sumner and his wife Amy are bullied and taken advantage of by the locals hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house.Written by
Andrew Hyatt <dres@uiuc.edu>
The working titles of this film were "Siege at Trencher's Farm", "The Siege of Trencher's Farm", and "The Square Root of Fear". Some contemporary news items referred to this movie as "The Straw Dogs" or "The Strawdogs". See more »
Goofs
After Amy tells David to get some lettuce, David notices the addition symbol on his chalk board changed to subtract by Amy earlier on. When he draws it back on, the symbol before it jumps from being an addition to a subtraction symbol. See more »
The video version was twice rejected by the British Board of Film Classification in 1999 after the distributors refused to cut forcible stripping and any signs that Susan George was "enjoying" the rape. Video versions were available in Britain before the 1984 law which required all videos to be classified. There were two such releases, one of which was uncut, and one which lost some dialogue due to print damage. As of 1st July 2002, the full version of the film has been passed uncut for video and DVD release by the BBFC. See more »
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!
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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!