Straw Dogs

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!

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.

American scholar David Summer and his wife return to her home village in Cornwall to give him peace and quiet to write his book on astrophysics. However Amy meets up with her old boyfriend and his friends, who offer to carry out repairs on the house for David. He agrees but finds that the locals treat him as an outsider resulting in further pressure on the Summer's already fracturing marriage.

I, like many of the reviews written here by users in the UK, took the opportunity to watch this film when it came on tv for the first time in the UK since it was released. I deliberately taped it and left it for a month or so before watching as I wanted it to be free of the hype and controversy that the network had stirred up with documentaries just before they screened it. Watching it away from all this it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about in some regards. Certainly what is socially acceptable in a film today is far beyond what was passed by censors then.

The plot is a strange mix of relationship drama and western. It is easy to focus on the stand off element of this film and the violence of the second half, but I don't think that that is what the film was about. One user called the first hour or so `a very slow build up', however by saying that, the suggestion is that the film only exists to deliver the concluding part. Rather, I got more from the film as a whole and found the `build up' to be interesting as it showed David's marriage cracking and crumpling, slowing exposing the issues and frustrations that exist just below the surface in their relationship. The fact that the action at the end of the film is relating to the underlying frustration Amy had with her husband's inability to `take a stand', indicates that this is the focus of the film.

Regardless of this, it still isn't a fantastic film. It is very slow at times and not all of it has been as well developed as hoped. Cornish locals are all mistrusting inbred hicks who are shifty says the film, which may or may not be true but it would have been better to have a better mix of local characters. The rape scene itself is difficult because for part of it Amy submits and appears to be enjoying and consenting, before others get involved and it becomes full violent rape. Questions over other issues suggests that the film maybe lingers to long on disturbing scenes but the fact that the film also shows the aftermath of the rape is to it's credit.

Due to the stereotyping, not all the actors get a chance to do good work. Hoffman is OK but I found his character difficult to get into. George is not as well developed as I would have hoped but is improved after her ordeal. The support cast of locals are not allowed to go much further than `get off me land' cliché and give lesser performances as a result.

Overall this was an interesting film as it all seems to be focused on the couple's marriage rather than the detail of who is being sheltered in what house etc. Taken on this level it is still far from perfect. The only thing I'm sure of is that anyone drawn to the film simply because of the hype in the press will probably miss the point altogether.

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.

It is certainly possible to look at STRAW DOGS as nothing more than a simple story of a man defending his house, his animalistic insides unleashed by a group of Cornish hoodlums. On that level alone it is a terrific piece of film-making backed up with highly textured acting from the two principals. But there are layers and layers and layers in this film, and that is what makes it art, and a masterpiece. Peckinpah himself told people that Dustin Hoffman was the heavy, and the movie was a portrait of a bad marriage. Try watching with those two facts in mind, and the film takes on a whole new complexion. The Criterion Collection two-disc set of STRAW DOGS is excellent, from the Peckinpah documentary to interviews with Susan George and the producer, to the audio commentary track. I agree with other reviewers who stressed that Peckinpah wasn't interested in "solving" problems; he wanted us to look at ourselves, and cringe.