Rent Straw Dogs (1971)
3.5 of 5 from 174 ratings
1h 53min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- David Summer (Dustin Hoffman) is a quiet American mathematician who has moved with his wife Amy (Susan George) back to a remote Cornish farmhouse near the village where she grew up. The couple have relocated to rural England in an attempt to flee the violence of America but their placid life is brutally interrupted when the savagery and violence they sought to escape engulfs them and threatens to destroy their lives.
- Actors:
- Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, Del Henney, Jim Norton, Donald Webster, Ken Hutchison, Len Jones, Sally Thomsett, Robert Keegan, Peter Arne, Cherina Schaer, Colin Welland, Michael Mundell, David Warner
- Directors:
- Sam Peckinpah
- Producers:
- Daniel Melnick
- Writers:
- David Zelag Goodman, Sam Peckinpah, Gordon Williams
- Others:
- Jerry Fielding
- Aka:
- Los perros de paja
- Studio:
- Fremantle
- Genres:
- Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- Cinema Paradiso's 2023 Centenary Club: Part 1, Cinema Paradiso's 2023 Centenary Club: Part 2, Cinema Paradiso's 2025 Centenary Club: January - March, Films to Watch If You Like..., Films to Watch if You Like: Get Carter, People of the Pictures, Remembering Donald Sutherland, A Brief History of Film..., The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Stanley Kubrick, What to Watch Next If You Liked Chariots of Fire, What We Were Watching in 1971
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 24/10/2011
- Run Time:
- 113 minutes
- Languages:
- English Dolby Digital 2.0
- Subtitles:
- English
- DVD Regions:
- Region 2
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.78:1 / 16:9
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- (0) All
- Bonus:
- 1971 Original US theatrical trailer
- 1971 3 x US TVspots
- 1971 2 x US radio spots
- Commentary from Sam Peckinpah Biographers: Garner Simmons, David WeddLe& Paul Seydor
- Commentary from close friend and PA of Sam Peckinpah Katy Haber Interview with Susan George
- Interview with Producer Dan Melnick
- Interview with Sam Peckinpah Biographer Garner Simmons
- Isolated Jerry Fielding score in Stereo with additional cues
- On location stills
- Original publicity stills
- Original film posters & lobby cards
- History of Straw Dogs and the Censors
- Reviews, filmographies, facts & fascinating correspondence
- Before and After: Restoring a classic
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Reviews (5) of Straw Dogs
Violent - Straw Dogs review by SB
Very seventies, very violent film set in rural Cornwall. There are some inconsistencies of characterisation and plot, but on the whole this is a straightforward tale of envious have-nothings taking what they believe is their due from people they resent.
The locale and society in primitive, brooding western Cornwall are convincingly shown. The issues of justification for violence and the nature of sexual consent are not dealt with in a complex way, but the film does raise legitimate questions about them.
Hoffman is good as a man who is very intelligent but apparently tone-deaf to emotional matters , and Susan George makes the best of her role as his bored wife torn between two cultures. A very young Sally Thomsett plays the unwitting catalyst of tragedy, a teenage provocateuse, quite well.
1 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Misunderstood Masterpiece. - Straw Dogs review by GI
This was director Sam Peckinpah's first film outside the western genre and it remains a strange and interesting addition to his work. It's also one of the key films of the 70s and one that has carried the taint of controversy ever since it was refused a home classification for video by the British Board of Film Classification until 2002. Whilst it's a dark crime drama there are the hallmarks of a paganist horror to it and Peckinpah creates a vision of Cornwall that is completely at odds with the beautiful holiday county that most people know. Dustin Hoffman and Susan George (in her first major role) are married couple David and Amy. He is a maths professor and they have come to Cornwall from the US so David can conduct his research for a thesis. They live at Amy's former family home near a quaint village where the villagers view David as bizarre and mock him at every opportunity. Some of the local men including one of Amy's former boyfriends take an unhealthy interest in her and when a girl goes missing and a local man is suspected events take an ugly turn. When David decides to help the suspected man Henry (David Warner) he and Amy find their home besieged by the local menfolk and David decides to make a stand. This film is often very misunderstood. Whilst this is a study of violence it is often thought to be one where a gentle man is pushed to his limits whereas it's more about the awakening of suppressed violence harboured by Hoffman's character, in that sense he's really the bad guy here. There's a controversial double rape scene that's used to highlight this but the point is often lost due to the emotional impact of how the rape scene plays out. In hindsight Peckinpah perhaps pushed his point too far although as screen violence goes this film isn't anywhere as graphic as other films since but it remains a powerful and nuanced study of a man unleashed into terrible violence and a relationship that balances on the edge of crisis. From the start you get the impression that David is fighting to keep his dark violence at bay. This is an important film, much respected today and definitely one I recommend if you've never seen it.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Straw Film. - Straw Dogs review by NC
'Straw Dogs' is remembered as being one of the films which tested the limits of the old X certificate. The violence and (especially) the lingering rape scene were the talk of the pubs and the sixth-form playground of 1971. There is precious little else in the film to talk about.
Peckinpah may have a point that people are just as nasty, and just as prone to extreme behaviour in rural England as they are in urban America, and he has a very serious point in depicting humiliation being one of the drivers of conflict, but he needs characters who are much more than cardboard stereotypes, he needs a script that isn't laughably banal, and he needs actors who do not look as if they wish they were anywhere but on the set.
Peckinpah has Hoffman one minute standing up and acting the lad in an open top car, passionately kissing Susan George in full view of local workers, the next minute he's a repressed fuddy-duddy, interested in nothing but work. His wife, of course, wants all of the former and none of the latter. Told you this was a film of stereotypes. Everything is just a perfunctory prelude to the rape and the bloodbath.
Hoffman gives his usual nervy, mumbling performance. George could easily win many awards for beauty, but absolutely none for acting - though she is unfairly given the worst, most excruciating lines from a writer who presumably had never heard a woman open her mouth before. The suggestion that women may actually enjoy rape is the lowest point of this crass, nasty piece of work.
The film only becomes remotely watchable when the two greats Peter Vaughan and T.P. McKenna come on the screen. How they must have regretted appearing in such tripe.
1 out of 2 members found this review helpful.