Straw Dogs

Dustin Hoffman Director: Sam Peckinpah Sam Peckinpah

Overview

Sam Peckinpah examines the instinctual capacity for violence in his controversial 1971 film, loosely based on the novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm. To avoid the Vietnam-era social chaos in the U.S., American mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his British wife, Amy (Susan George), to the isolated Cornish town where she grew up, but their presence provokes antagonism among the village's men. As the hostilities escalate from routine bullying to the gang rape of his wife, David finds his pacifistic self backed into a corner. When the hooligans attack his house, David finally resorts to the gruesome violence that he abhors.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/27/2017
UPC:	0715515199216
Original Release:	1971
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Color]
Time:	1:57:00
Sales rank:	6,578

Special Features

New, restored 4k digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio Commentary from 2003 by Stephen Prince, author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolet Movies; Mantrap: 'Straw Dogs' - The Final Cut, a 2003 documentary about the making of the film; Sam Peckinpagh: Man of Iron, A 1993 documentary; New conversation between critic Michael Sragow and filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode, one of the editors on the film; New interview with film scholar Linda Williams about the film's controversies; Archival interviews with actor Susan George, Producer Daniel Melnick, and Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons; Behind-the-scenes footage; TV Spots and Trailers; Plus: An essay by scholar and critic Joshua Clover and a 1974 interview with Peckinpah

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dustin Hoffman	David
Susan George	Amy
Peter Vaughan	Tom Hedden
T.P. McKenna	Maj. Scott
David Warner	Henry Niles
Colin Welland	Rev. hood
Cherina Mann	Mrs. Hood
Ken Hutchison	Scutt
Jim Norton	Cawsey
Del Henney	Venner
Sally Thomsett	Janice
Donald Webster	Riddaway
Len Jones	Bobby Hedden
Michael Mundell	Bertie Hedden
Peter Arne	John Niles
Robert Keegan	Harry Ware
June Brown	Mrs. Hedden
Chloe Franks	Emma Hedden

Technical Credits

Sam Peckinpah

David Zelag Goodman

Sam Peckinpah	Director,Screenwriter
Ken Bridgeman	Art Director
John Coquillon	Cinematographer
Garth Craven	Editor
Paul Davies	Editor
Jerry Fielding	Score Composer
Harry Frampton	Makeup
David Zelag Goodman	Screenwriter
Tony Lawson	Editor
Daniel Melnick	Producer
Tiny Nicholls	Costumes/Costume Designer
Peter James	Set Decoration/Design
John Richardson	Special Effects
Ray Simm	Production Designer
Roger Spottiswoode	Editor
Robert L. Wolfe	Editor

Editorial Reviews

No matter which way you slice it, Straw Dogs is not for the squeamish. Only two films after, but light years away from, the elegiac Wild Bunch, the movie upped the ante in director Sam Peckinpah's career. It remains one of his leanest, most brutal movies. Dustin Hoffman is David Sumner, a taciturn mathematician who, with his wife, Amy (Susan George), relocates to her Cornish home village to escape the American rat race. The couple hires four locals to build a garage for their old cottage, and it isn't long before David becomes the object of the crew's resentment and mockery. Led by Charlie (Del Henney), one of Amy's former suitors, the townies shamelessly ogle Amy, who at times seems to encourage their attentions, if only because her husband is more involved in math problems. During a hunting trip, David tries to win over the local boys and lets on that he knows their intentions; but the ruffians leave him behind, return to the cottage, and -- in a brilliantly edited but disturbing scene -- rape Amy. This sets the stage for the film's mind-bending and violent climax, during which, in an attempt to avenge another act of violence, drunken villagers all but destroy the Sumner cottage. The traps, both moral and physical, that David devises implicate the viewer in ways that might even make Hitchcock flinch. Never mind that it borders on nihilism -- this is electrifying stuff. Hoffman's nutty evolution, from mousy gestures straight out of The Graduate to calculated Peckinpah violence, is alone worth the price of admission.

Barnes & Noble - Eddy Crouse

Upon its release (within a month of Stanley Kubrick's similar meditation on ultra-violence, A Clockwork Orange), Straw Dogs sharply divided critics and audiences over whether it exploited and glorified macho bloodshed or commented on the violence that had become a fact of 1960s American life. Peckinpah proclaimed his own distaste for violence, suggesting that Straw Dogs portrays how society fails to eradicate primitive drives, leading to territorial warfare. What cannot be denied is Peckinpah's ability to elicit a visceral response to the onscreen turmoil, leaving a viewer either to cheer on David's descent toward bloody retribution or be repulsed by the evil that men do. With jittery editing and gloomy cinematography, Peckinpah creates an unsettling atmosphere of foreboding; the town's unexplained animosity adds to the suggestion that what drives them all, including the intellectual David, is beyond the bounds of "civilization." True to the complex nature of these issues, Straw Dogs' ending provides no easy answers or reassurances about what transpires in the Sumner home.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola

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