BA_Harrison Mild-mannered mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) and his sexy wife Amy (the delectable Susan George) move to the rural English village where Amy grew up. With her nipples proudly on display, Amy soon attracts the attention of the rough and ready locals, especially her old fling Charlie Venner (Del Henney), who is quick to reacquaint himself. Wrapped up in his equations, David repeatedly fails to assert himself as Venner and his loutish pals carry out a campaign of harrassment, much to the frustration and disappointment of Amy, who obviously regards her husband as less than a man.Things go from bad to worse when David, keen to appease the yokels, agrees to go on a shooting trip. While David is left standing on the moors, Venner pays a visit to Amy, forcing himself on her. Amy resists at first, but Venner's bold masculinity-in contrast to David's meek nature-wins her over and she acquiesces. To Amy's horror, a second man turns up and joins in the fun, but she is unable to stop him. When David returns home, Amy pretends that nothing has happened, ashamed by her behaviour yet angry at her husband.In the film's final pivotal act, David and Amy, driving home from a church social, accidentally run down village idiot Henry Niles (David Warner). They take the injured man to their home, unaware that he has inadvertently strangled local strumpet Janice Hedden (Sally Thomsett), and that a drunken vigilante group, led by thug Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan) and including Charlie and his pals, is out for Niles's blood. After David refuses to allow the gang into his house, the angry locals try to force their way in. Local magistrate Maj. John Scott (T.P. McKenna) tries to reason with the men, but is shot dead by Tom during the altercation. With David and Amy witness to the murder, the scene is set for a brutal showdown, David rising to the occasion to protect his home and his wife.Director Sam Peckinpah's controversial thriller Straw Dogs is a film designed to appeal to the viewer's basic instincts, and it does so brilliantly. As soon as we clock bra-less George brazenly flaunting herself in front of the slack-jawed yokels, we desperately want David to speak up, either to his wife, who clearly has little respect for her husband, or to the drooling menfolk, who do nothing to hide their lustful gaze. When David keeps shtum, the frustration is palpable. Peckinpah slowly but carefully cranks up the tension, with David's repeated inaction making the viewer sympathetic to Amy's plight. When David is finally pushed over the edge and fights back, there is an immense feeling of release, the orgy of violence that follows satisfying at the most primal level. A smile from David in the closing moments reveals that he himself is proud to have finally stood his ground.Hoffman is absolutely brilliant as the pacifist pushed too far, George is effortlessly sexy, and an excellent supporting cast ensures that there are no weak links (my hat is off to Jim Norton as ratcatcher Chris Cawsey, a more irksome villain you'll be hard pushed to find). Peckinpah's direction is perfectly paced, slowburn at first, carefully building to the crescendo of graphic brutality, with bloody shotgun blasts, boiling oil in the face, and a mantrap to the head all guaranteed to please his fans.

yougottrumpedshow At the time this movie came out it was very controversial, violent and nihilistic. But it is still worth watching today even though it is dated. Dustin Hoffman gives an incredible performance as a man possessive of his wife, insecure, jealous, and simultaneously frightened hunted and aggressive, excessively violent hunter. This movie should be watched by all film fans, not to guarantee you will like it but you will at least see a very different film with a unique point of view and some questionable morals.

ElWormo I try and remove as much external context from any movie I watch as possible. If a movie was controversial or groundbreaking in some way at the time of release, then fine, but the more important factor to me will always be the 'is it actually any good though?' factor. In the case of Straw Dogs I don't see much more than an earnest yet somewhat creaky and slow-paced tale of rural torment, that ultimately ends up looking like a 70s western with added sex + violence. It didn't strike me as anything that original or re- watchable, and I can't imagine sitting through it again.Without giving any spoilers (to a 45 yr old film that everyone's seen) there were moments here that apparently shock to this day which I found to be fairly routine, rather than shocking. And it's not because I'm some hardened cinema tough guy whose seen it all (for example the stick-fight between Keith and Finger in Mike Leigh's Nuts In May gives me a nervous breakdown every time I watch it), but there just wasn't enough zing here to make anything jump out of the screen. The characters were well acted but barely beyond two-dimensional, the script was okayish but nothing spectacular, the incidental music was alright but sometimes clumsily applied.Ultimately Straw Dogs is a film that takes itself very seriously and as such everything that happens has a kind of morose inevitability about it (similar to a lot of old westerns, hence the earlier comparison). It's not a -bad- movie, but I can't help thinking the notoriety factor seems to have impacted on how a lot of people perceive the film on its own terms. I can't give it more than a 5/10.

J M I saw this movie when I was in my teens and decided to watch it again after I heard there has been a remake (which I have chosen not to see--I have always been suspicious of remakes. Ha ha).This movie is basically a social comment on the lower-middle class of Britain (or shall I say of England, since the movie is set in Cornwall, England), how vulgar, primitive, and uncouth the values and mores of average lower middle class there had been in the late 1960' and early 70's, under the veneer of apparent civility. The townspeople including the reverend, taunt the protagonist (played by Hoffman)who is an American, with remarks on the racial tension or the nuclear bombs of the U.S. (insinuating 'moral hazard' and the threat the U.S. posed to the humankind, with the implication that they the British people were morally superior relative to the Americans.) Well, actually the Britishers turn out to be not so morally superior as the plot develops--they murder, rape, steal, cheat and harass people from outside. (The movie had been banned in Britain until 2002. I suspect the supposedly 'controversial' rape scene was not the real agenda for the ban.)Britain has been and is basically a class society, probably even more so than the pre-1917 revolution Russsia. The lower class live vulgar and the 'upper class' live pretending to be not so vulgar--however they are all the same--as Sam Peckinpah portrays the 'reverend.' The English are dangerous people to trust--They are treacherous, under veneer of civility. If you are stranded in a lifeboat with them. They will kill and eat you. Do not trust them just because they sing opera aria.