Straw Dogs
Starring: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, David Warner
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Studio: Anchor Bay
Product Type: DVD
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Average customer rating:
- Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps
- A Man's World on Feminist Terms.
- A cruel and hateful masterpiece.
- A deceptive film (Some Spoilers)
- My favorite Peckinpah film....
|
Straw Dogs
Starring: Dustin Hoffman , Susan George , Peter Vaughan , T.P. McKenna , and Del Henney
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
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Similar Items:
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- Dead Ringers
- The Getaway (Deluxe Edition)
- The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (The Wild Bunch / Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid / Ride the High Country / The Ballad of Cable Hogue)
ASIN: B0002KPHZG
Release Date: 2004-10-19 |
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Description
Brace yourself for the extended version of this daring and provocative drama from the director of The Wild Bunch. Starring Dustin Hoffman in a 'superbly realized (Time) performance, this brilliant (Cue), disturbing film charts one man's brutally violent journey from cowardice to courage and delivers one helluva jolt (Playboy)!
Customer Reviews:
Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps.......2007-04-03
Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A Man's World on Feminist Terms........2007-03-22
As an unsettling and draining look into the horrors of fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity, the 1971 film "Straw Dogs" is an emotionally peeling viewing that will bring your own viewpoints to the surface. The film garners the high proverb of being a messed-up western, character study, thriller, war film, action movie, social analysis, and an art house film rolled into one; while its philosophies show its perceived messages as an absolute: yet, one may see a gray area between those apparent viewpoints, ones speculated, and the rest will bring about the viewers own real life feelings into light about the context of the film. All these subtexts inside Straw Dogs are presented in a mature, non-exploitive way, piling on the dimension of its unique central characters, without giving a definite feeling of sympathy.
The plot concerns the nighttime assault by a group of ruffians on a pastoral home in which a man that is suspected of killing a girl is staying. The owners of the house, David and Amy, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, then find a way to fight back and survive the night.
Some may see Straw Dogs as a feminist film, in the way that the stereotypical male hormonal and aggression concepts set forth in the initial two acts of the film, are further acknowledged by the violent and bloody testosterone set pieces in the final "showdown." Yet, there is no female or male character to connect to in the typical cinematic way of them being "purely likeable." The audience will rather connect to the characters of David and Amy more because they are the only marginal likeable characters in the film, and we can agree with many of their actions, even if its often in the form of self-serving, or if the rest of the film depicts them as unsympathetic cowards. This is because the humanistic side of the audience will not want any more violence be committed to any character in the film, because its not "cool violence," rather it is brutal, and nihilistic.
These medieval concepts are shown in David's ascent into a "man" protecting his territory. This is poetic in the way of ultimate truth over the "peace-and-love" beliefs of the time; while Amy, despite some childish antics of young boys, is in many ways the man of the relationship, before going callow for most of the final siege scene. Yet, when the time comes to have her pick up a sword--so to speak-- she obliges. Yet, this absolute truth, also has a definite, antisocial reaction in the way that there is not one glimmer of decency seem to be left in all those who survive-- rather they go off into their own respective roles of "man" and "woman" without a sense of direction for the future.
The final often written about two dialogue lines show this, they are:
Henry Niles-- "I don't know my way home."
David-- " That's ok. I don't either."
It is this dialogue exchange that shows the way that the rest of the cast was either one-noted stock characters, or neanderthalistic sexual and/or violent fix-seekers; and there is no sense of valediction for any of these "animals." Their violent actions, no matter how necessary they seem at the time, only make them more isolated from others. Peckinpah`s real life personality was driven by a lust for alcohol and a clenched fist ready to fight; this educated, but untamed persona seems to bleed through the film, as if it is a demon exertion exercise for Peckinpah, an acknowledgement of who he is, but as if saying this is how all people are when pitted with grave life-threatening obstacles, it thus becomes survival of the fittest, like in the animal kingdom. Yet, at the same time, when we make this choice to go back to our ancestry, it does not come without consequences-- in this case, total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, as if going back to the hunter and gathering civilizations.
It is this philosophy of humans as an animal that makes "Straw Dogs" still so bloody good today. As this is certainly one of the best films of all time, and is a masterpiece of savagery that clearly shows that human horror is the most threatfull thing to our race of all.
***** (Out of 5)
A cruel and hateful masterpiece........2007-03-05
I will start with my thesis, namely that this film is one of the single greatest American films of all time, ridiculously complex psychologically, completely satisfying on an aesthetic level but at the same time hating itself as said success. Not a shot or line of dialogue is unnecessary, and almost every scene is ambiguous enough to be read any number of ways. It is easily more complicated than Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have you believe, and is in my mind a much subtler and more intelligent father to the cinema of satirist Paul Verhoeven.
I don't believe David is the villian, that is too simple of a subversion, nor do I find him to be as unsympathetic as others do, but I think that is the whole point. We are meant to identify superficially with David, to congratulate ourselves on our intelligence and civility, all the while enjoying the inevitable brutish spectacle play out as it does in all genre films, only this film is one of the very few that is aware of the voyeuristic beast that is the audience. Rather than cartoonish villians, I would argue that the villagers should be seen as more overt manifestations of David's personality throughout the film. He is smug and condescending, secure in his intellectual and moral authority, and he is just as much an aggressor as they are, flaunting his money, car, and knowledge as opposed to his drinking, crudeness, and sexual potency, and using it to constantly one-up everyone around him who will bear it (the single scene in that most exemplifies this is his meeting with the reverend). Amy is too often knocked for being a one-dimensional "tease" character, but I would argue against this as well, although I'm not sure I would call her the most sympathetic character in the film as some would. I would instead argue that she expressing herself sexually because it is the only way she can express herself in this microcosm, where every woman is objectified and men are only interested in them for sex and as a symbol of status. In the end no one is right here, though some may be more abused than others. Everyone is fair game for Sam Peckinpah's misanthropy in this great and crude masterpiece.
A deceptive film (Some Spoilers).......2007-02-12
'Straw Dogs' deceives the viewer by focussing on mild-mannnered mathematical wimp, David Sumner and his bored, restless young wife Amy. What the film does is to give the impression for much of its time that David is a coward, when he fails to stand up to the bullying local workmen fixing his garage roof. That is the main purpose to the long, slow build up of this plot. But it's only in the violent finale when the true nature of David's aggression is unleashed, and presumption of his cowardice is finally shattered.
What starts out as friendly banter and mild teasing by the workmen gradually develops into more sinister taunting as David remains poe-faced and refuses to show any sense of humour or reaction toward these locals. 'They think you're strange' says Amy. 'Is that because I'm an American' asks David? 'No, just strange' she muses.
As the men become more brazen toward David they cross the line when one of them manages to enter the house and strangles Amy's cat. On discovery of this unfortunate event, Amy nags David into confronting the men over this, and he finally, but reluctantly concedes to the idea. He invites them into his house for this purpose, but again he backs away, not even mentioning the cat, and instead is tricked by the men into going on a hunting trip with them, used as a ploy to get him out of the house for a period. David mistakenly takes this as a real opportunity to bond with the men. What follows is one of the most unappetising and controversial scenes of its day, and is still uncomfortable viewing now.
When David is deserted on the shoot and returns home feeling humiliated he finds his wife in bed tearful. We are not told whether Amy ever reveals what happened while he was away, but the grim expression on David's face when he sits down outside, just after firing the men the following day, suggests that maybe he did know or suspected something untoward. It was also the first time in the film that he shows genuine courage in confronting the men and firing them on the spot.
The siege on David and Amy's home is the final chapter when he is pushed over the edge. Like the rest of the film it raises so many questions. Did David use the injured Henry Niles as an excuse to maim and kill his aggressors, or was he genuinely trying to defend the man he had accidentally knocked down earlier in his car? Were the workmen genuinely concerned about the fate of Tom Heddon's daughter, or were they exploiting the situation to bully David? And of course there is the one answer to the question of whether David was ever a coward, as accused by his wife earlier. He said then that he wasn't, and boy did he prove that point in the last half hour or so. It's an exciting climax to a film that seems ponderous for the first hour or so. But the film has a lot more depth and layers to it than revealed in a single viewing, not least the relationship between Amy and David itself. And I've only touched on a few of the connundrums in this story.
Director Sam Peckinpah raised many social issues in this unfortunate tale. The acting is first rate all round, and the film is essential viewing.
My favorite Peckinpah film...........2007-02-08
This is my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. I always loved it as a high schooler, and I still do. To see Dustin Hoffman, a calm, reserved intellecutal type turn into a monster like he does is chilling enough. But you find that you're actually cheering him on at the end of the film. This film, along with A Clockwork Orange (released the same year! What a year 1971 was!), really get into man's darker nature, and tell us some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We really root for Hoffman, even though he's killing people, and he's enjoying it. Even in the quiet, rural, "idyllic" English countryside, there's still human garbage and barbarism. You can't escape life, so to speak. The editing, direction, and performances are first rate, making this one of Peckinpah's most daring films.
Average customer rating:
- Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps
- A Man's World on Feminist Terms.
- A cruel and hateful masterpiece.
- A deceptive film (Some Spoilers)
- My favorite Peckinpah film....
|
Straw Dogs - Criterion Collection
Starring: Dustin Hoffman , Susan George , Peter Vaughan , T.P. McKenna , and Del Henney
Director: Sam Peckinpah , and Paul Joyce
Manufacturer: Criterion
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Similar Items:
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- Dead Ringers
- The Getaway (Deluxe Edition)
- The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (The Wild Bunch / Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid / Ride the High Country / The Ballad of Cable Hogue)
ASIN: B000087EYE
Release Date: 2003-03-25 |
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews:
Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps.......2007-04-03
Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A Man's World on Feminist Terms........2007-03-22
As an unsettling and draining look into the horrors of fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity, the 1971 film "Straw Dogs" is an emotionally peeling viewing that will bring your own viewpoints to the surface. The film garners the high proverb of being a messed-up western, character study, thriller, war film, action movie, social analysis, and an art house film rolled into one; while its philosophies show its perceived messages as an absolute: yet, one may see a gray area between those apparent viewpoints, ones speculated, and the rest will bring about the viewers own real life feelings into light about the context of the film. All these subtexts inside Straw Dogs are presented in a mature, non-exploitive way, piling on the dimension of its unique central characters, without giving a definite feeling of sympathy.
The plot concerns the nighttime assault by a group of ruffians on a pastoral home in which a man that is suspected of killing a girl is staying. The owners of the house, David and Amy, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, then find a way to fight back and survive the night.
Some may see Straw Dogs as a feminist film, in the way that the stereotypical male hormonal and aggression concepts set forth in the initial two acts of the film, are further acknowledged by the violent and bloody testosterone set pieces in the final "showdown." Yet, there is no female or male character to connect to in the typical cinematic way of them being "purely likeable." The audience will rather connect to the characters of David and Amy more because they are the only marginal likeable characters in the film, and we can agree with many of their actions, even if its often in the form of self-serving, or if the rest of the film depicts them as unsympathetic cowards. This is because the humanistic side of the audience will not want any more violence be committed to any character in the film, because its not "cool violence," rather it is brutal, and nihilistic.
These medieval concepts are shown in David's ascent into a "man" protecting his territory. This is poetic in the way of ultimate truth over the "peace-and-love" beliefs of the time; while Amy, despite some childish antics of young boys, is in many ways the man of the relationship, before going callow for most of the final siege scene. Yet, when the time comes to have her pick up a sword--so to speak-- she obliges. Yet, this absolute truth, also has a definite, antisocial reaction in the way that there is not one glimmer of decency seem to be left in all those who survive-- rather they go off into their own respective roles of "man" and "woman" without a sense of direction for the future.
The final often written about two dialogue lines show this, they are:
Henry Niles-- "I don't know my way home."
David-- " That's ok. I don't either."
It is this dialogue exchange that shows the way that the rest of the cast was either one-noted stock characters, or neanderthalistic sexual and/or violent fix-seekers; and there is no sense of valediction for any of these "animals." Their violent actions, no matter how necessary they seem at the time, only make them more isolated from others. Peckinpah`s real life personality was driven by a lust for alcohol and a clenched fist ready to fight; this educated, but untamed persona seems to bleed through the film, as if it is a demon exertion exercise for Peckinpah, an acknowledgement of who he is, but as if saying this is how all people are when pitted with grave life-threatening obstacles, it thus becomes survival of the fittest, like in the animal kingdom. Yet, at the same time, when we make this choice to go back to our ancestry, it does not come without consequences-- in this case, total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, as if going back to the hunter and gathering civilizations.
It is this philosophy of humans as an animal that makes "Straw Dogs" still so bloody good today. As this is certainly one of the best films of all time, and is a masterpiece of savagery that clearly shows that human horror is the most threatfull thing to our race of all.
***** (Out of 5)
A cruel and hateful masterpiece........2007-03-05
I will start with my thesis, namely that this film is one of the single greatest American films of all time, ridiculously complex psychologically, completely satisfying on an aesthetic level but at the same time hating itself as said success. Not a shot or line of dialogue is unnecessary, and almost every scene is ambiguous enough to be read any number of ways. It is easily more complicated than Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have you believe, and is in my mind a much subtler and more intelligent father to the cinema of satirist Paul Verhoeven.
I don't believe David is the villian, that is too simple of a subversion, nor do I find him to be as unsympathetic as others do, but I think that is the whole point. We are meant to identify superficially with David, to congratulate ourselves on our intelligence and civility, all the while enjoying the inevitable brutish spectacle play out as it does in all genre films, only this film is one of the very few that is aware of the voyeuristic beast that is the audience. Rather than cartoonish villians, I would argue that the villagers should be seen as more overt manifestations of David's personality throughout the film. He is smug and condescending, secure in his intellectual and moral authority, and he is just as much an aggressor as they are, flaunting his money, car, and knowledge as opposed to his drinking, crudeness, and sexual potency, and using it to constantly one-up everyone around him who will bear it (the single scene in that most exemplifies this is his meeting with the reverend). Amy is too often knocked for being a one-dimensional "tease" character, but I would argue against this as well, although I'm not sure I would call her the most sympathetic character in the film as some would. I would instead argue that she expressing herself sexually because it is the only way she can express herself in this microcosm, where every woman is objectified and men are only interested in them for sex and as a symbol of status. In the end no one is right here, though some may be more abused than others. Everyone is fair game for Sam Peckinpah's misanthropy in this great and crude masterpiece.
A deceptive film (Some Spoilers).......2007-02-12
'Straw Dogs' deceives the viewer by focussing on mild-mannnered mathematical wimp, David Sumner and his bored, restless young wife Amy. What the film does is to give the impression for much of its time that David is a coward, when he fails to stand up to the bullying local workmen fixing his garage roof. That is the main purpose to the long, slow build up of this plot. But it's only in the violent finale when the true nature of David's aggression is unleashed, and presumption of his cowardice is finally shattered.
What starts out as friendly banter and mild teasing by the workmen gradually develops into more sinister taunting as David remains poe-faced and refuses to show any sense of humour or reaction toward these locals. 'They think you're strange' says Amy. 'Is that because I'm an American' asks David? 'No, just strange' she muses.
As the men become more brazen toward David they cross the line when one of them manages to enter the house and strangles Amy's cat. On discovery of this unfortunate event, Amy nags David into confronting the men over this, and he finally, but reluctantly concedes to the idea. He invites them into his house for this purpose, but again he backs away, not even mentioning the cat, and instead is tricked by the men into going on a hunting trip with them, used as a ploy to get him out of the house for a period. David mistakenly takes this as a real opportunity to bond with the men. What follows is one of the most unappetising and controversial scenes of its day, and is still uncomfortable viewing now.
When David is deserted on the shoot and returns home feeling humiliated he finds his wife in bed tearful. We are not told whether Amy ever reveals what happened while he was away, but the grim expression on David's face when he sits down outside, just after firing the men the following day, suggests that maybe he did know or suspected something untoward. It was also the first time in the film that he shows genuine courage in confronting the men and firing them on the spot.
The siege on David and Amy's home is the final chapter when he is pushed over the edge. Like the rest of the film it raises so many questions. Did David use the injured Henry Niles as an excuse to maim and kill his aggressors, or was he genuinely trying to defend the man he had accidentally knocked down earlier in his car? Were the workmen genuinely concerned about the fate of Tom Heddon's daughter, or were they exploiting the situation to bully David? And of course there is the one answer to the question of whether David was ever a coward, as accused by his wife earlier. He said then that he wasn't, and boy did he prove that point in the last half hour or so. It's an exciting climax to a film that seems ponderous for the first hour or so. But the film has a lot more depth and layers to it than revealed in a single viewing, not least the relationship between Amy and David itself. And I've only touched on a few of the connundrums in this story.
Director Sam Peckinpah raised many social issues in this unfortunate tale. The acting is first rate all round, and the film is essential viewing.
My favorite Peckinpah film...........2007-02-08
This is my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. I always loved it as a high schooler, and I still do. To see Dustin Hoffman, a calm, reserved intellecutal type turn into a monster like he does is chilling enough. But you find that you're actually cheering him on at the end of the film. This film, along with A Clockwork Orange (released the same year! What a year 1971 was!), really get into man's darker nature, and tell us some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We really root for Hoffman, even though he's killing people, and he's enjoying it. Even in the quiet, rural, "idyllic" English countryside, there's still human garbage and barbarism. You can't escape life, so to speak. The editing, direction, and performances are first rate, making this one of Peckinpah's most daring films.
Average customer rating:
- Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps
- A Man's World on Feminist Terms.
- A cruel and hateful masterpiece.
- A deceptive film (Some Spoilers)
- My favorite Peckinpah film....
|
Straw Dogs
Starring: Dustin Hoffman , Susan George , Peter Vaughan , T.P. McKenna , and Del Henney
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Manufacturer: Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
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Similar Items:
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- Dead Ringers
- The Getaway (Deluxe Edition)
- The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (The Wild Bunch / Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid / Ride the High Country / The Ballad of Cable Hogue)
ASIN: 6305297282
Release Date: 1999-01-19 |
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews:
Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps.......2007-04-03
Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A Man's World on Feminist Terms........2007-03-22
As an unsettling and draining look into the horrors of fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity, the 1971 film "Straw Dogs" is an emotionally peeling viewing that will bring your own viewpoints to the surface. The film garners the high proverb of being a messed-up western, character study, thriller, war film, action movie, social analysis, and an art house film rolled into one; while its philosophies show its perceived messages as an absolute: yet, one may see a gray area between those apparent viewpoints, ones speculated, and the rest will bring about the viewers own real life feelings into light about the context of the film. All these subtexts inside Straw Dogs are presented in a mature, non-exploitive way, piling on the dimension of its unique central characters, without giving a definite feeling of sympathy.
The plot concerns the nighttime assault by a group of ruffians on a pastoral home in which a man that is suspected of killing a girl is staying. The owners of the house, David and Amy, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, then find a way to fight back and survive the night.
Some may see Straw Dogs as a feminist film, in the way that the stereotypical male hormonal and aggression concepts set forth in the initial two acts of the film, are further acknowledged by the violent and bloody testosterone set pieces in the final "showdown." Yet, there is no female or male character to connect to in the typical cinematic way of them being "purely likeable." The audience will rather connect to the characters of David and Amy more because they are the only marginal likeable characters in the film, and we can agree with many of their actions, even if its often in the form of self-serving, or if the rest of the film depicts them as unsympathetic cowards. This is because the humanistic side of the audience will not want any more violence be committed to any character in the film, because its not "cool violence," rather it is brutal, and nihilistic.
These medieval concepts are shown in David's ascent into a "man" protecting his territory. This is poetic in the way of ultimate truth over the "peace-and-love" beliefs of the time; while Amy, despite some childish antics of young boys, is in many ways the man of the relationship, before going callow for most of the final siege scene. Yet, when the time comes to have her pick up a sword--so to speak-- she obliges. Yet, this absolute truth, also has a definite, antisocial reaction in the way that there is not one glimmer of decency seem to be left in all those who survive-- rather they go off into their own respective roles of "man" and "woman" without a sense of direction for the future.
The final often written about two dialogue lines show this, they are:
Henry Niles-- "I don't know my way home."
David-- " That's ok. I don't either."
It is this dialogue exchange that shows the way that the rest of the cast was either one-noted stock characters, or neanderthalistic sexual and/or violent fix-seekers; and there is no sense of valediction for any of these "animals." Their violent actions, no matter how necessary they seem at the time, only make them more isolated from others. Peckinpah`s real life personality was driven by a lust for alcohol and a clenched fist ready to fight; this educated, but untamed persona seems to bleed through the film, as if it is a demon exertion exercise for Peckinpah, an acknowledgement of who he is, but as if saying this is how all people are when pitted with grave life-threatening obstacles, it thus becomes survival of the fittest, like in the animal kingdom. Yet, at the same time, when we make this choice to go back to our ancestry, it does not come without consequences-- in this case, total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, as if going back to the hunter and gathering civilizations.
It is this philosophy of humans as an animal that makes "Straw Dogs" still so bloody good today. As this is certainly one of the best films of all time, and is a masterpiece of savagery that clearly shows that human horror is the most threatfull thing to our race of all.
***** (Out of 5)
A cruel and hateful masterpiece........2007-03-05
I will start with my thesis, namely that this film is one of the single greatest American films of all time, ridiculously complex psychologically, completely satisfying on an aesthetic level but at the same time hating itself as said success. Not a shot or line of dialogue is unnecessary, and almost every scene is ambiguous enough to be read any number of ways. It is easily more complicated than Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have you believe, and is in my mind a much subtler and more intelligent father to the cinema of satirist Paul Verhoeven.
I don't believe David is the villian, that is too simple of a subversion, nor do I find him to be as unsympathetic as others do, but I think that is the whole point. We are meant to identify superficially with David, to congratulate ourselves on our intelligence and civility, all the while enjoying the inevitable brutish spectacle play out as it does in all genre films, only this film is one of the very few that is aware of the voyeuristic beast that is the audience. Rather than cartoonish villians, I would argue that the villagers should be seen as more overt manifestations of David's personality throughout the film. He is smug and condescending, secure in his intellectual and moral authority, and he is just as much an aggressor as they are, flaunting his money, car, and knowledge as opposed to his drinking, crudeness, and sexual potency, and using it to constantly one-up everyone around him who will bear it (the single scene in that most exemplifies this is his meeting with the reverend). Amy is too often knocked for being a one-dimensional "tease" character, but I would argue against this as well, although I'm not sure I would call her the most sympathetic character in the film as some would. I would instead argue that she expressing herself sexually because it is the only way she can express herself in this microcosm, where every woman is objectified and men are only interested in them for sex and as a symbol of status. In the end no one is right here, though some may be more abused than others. Everyone is fair game for Sam Peckinpah's misanthropy in this great and crude masterpiece.
A deceptive film (Some Spoilers).......2007-02-12
'Straw Dogs' deceives the viewer by focussing on mild-mannnered mathematical wimp, David Sumner and his bored, restless young wife Amy. What the film does is to give the impression for much of its time that David is a coward, when he fails to stand up to the bullying local workmen fixing his garage roof. That is the main purpose to the long, slow build up of this plot. But it's only in the violent finale when the true nature of David's aggression is unleashed, and presumption of his cowardice is finally shattered.
What starts out as friendly banter and mild teasing by the workmen gradually develops into more sinister taunting as David remains poe-faced and refuses to show any sense of humour or reaction toward these locals. 'They think you're strange' says Amy. 'Is that because I'm an American' asks David? 'No, just strange' she muses.
As the men become more brazen toward David they cross the line when one of them manages to enter the house and strangles Amy's cat. On discovery of this unfortunate event, Amy nags David into confronting the men over this, and he finally, but reluctantly concedes to the idea. He invites them into his house for this purpose, but again he backs away, not even mentioning the cat, and instead is tricked by the men into going on a hunting trip with them, used as a ploy to get him out of the house for a period. David mistakenly takes this as a real opportunity to bond with the men. What follows is one of the most unappetising and controversial scenes of its day, and is still uncomfortable viewing now.
When David is deserted on the shoot and returns home feeling humiliated he finds his wife in bed tearful. We are not told whether Amy ever reveals what happened while he was away, but the grim expression on David's face when he sits down outside, just after firing the men the following day, suggests that maybe he did know or suspected something untoward. It was also the first time in the film that he shows genuine courage in confronting the men and firing them on the spot.
The siege on David and Amy's home is the final chapter when he is pushed over the edge. Like the rest of the film it raises so many questions. Did David use the injured Henry Niles as an excuse to maim and kill his aggressors, or was he genuinely trying to defend the man he had accidentally knocked down earlier in his car? Were the workmen genuinely concerned about the fate of Tom Heddon's daughter, or were they exploiting the situation to bully David? And of course there is the one answer to the question of whether David was ever a coward, as accused by his wife earlier. He said then that he wasn't, and boy did he prove that point in the last half hour or so. It's an exciting climax to a film that seems ponderous for the first hour or so. But the film has a lot more depth and layers to it than revealed in a single viewing, not least the relationship between Amy and David itself. And I've only touched on a few of the connundrums in this story.
Director Sam Peckinpah raised many social issues in this unfortunate tale. The acting is first rate all round, and the film is essential viewing.
My favorite Peckinpah film...........2007-02-08
This is my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. I always loved it as a high schooler, and I still do. To see Dustin Hoffman, a calm, reserved intellecutal type turn into a monster like he does is chilling enough. But you find that you're actually cheering him on at the end of the film. This film, along with A Clockwork Orange (released the same year! What a year 1971 was!), really get into man's darker nature, and tell us some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We really root for Hoffman, even though he's killing people, and he's enjoying it. Even in the quiet, rural, "idyllic" English countryside, there's still human garbage and barbarism. You can't escape life, so to speak. The editing, direction, and performances are first rate, making this one of Peckinpah's most daring films.
![Straw Dogs [Region 2]](http://www.germanelectronics88.com/noimage.gif)
Average customer rating:
- Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps
- A Man's World on Feminist Terms.
- A cruel and hateful masterpiece.
- A deceptive film (Some Spoilers)
- My favorite Peckinpah film....
|
Straw Dogs [Region 2]
Starring: Dustin Hoffman , Susan George , Peter Vaughan , T.P. McKenna , and Del Henney
Director: Sam Peckinpah
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
Thrillers
| Mystery & Suspense
| Genres
| DVD
| Video
Arne, Peter
| ( A )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
George, Susan
| ( G )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Hoffman, Dustin
| ( H )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Vaughan, Peter
| ( V )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Warner, David
| ( W )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Peckinpah, Sam
| ( P )
| Directors
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
( S )
| Titles
| Features
| DVD
| Video
Similar Items:
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- Dead Ringers
- The Getaway (Deluxe Edition)
- The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (The Wild Bunch / Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid / Ride the High Country / The Ballad of Cable Hogue)
ASIN: B00006JI4P |
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews:
Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps.......2007-04-03
Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A Man's World on Feminist Terms........2007-03-22
As an unsettling and draining look into the horrors of fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity, the 1971 film "Straw Dogs" is an emotionally peeling viewing that will bring your own viewpoints to the surface. The film garners the high proverb of being a messed-up western, character study, thriller, war film, action movie, social analysis, and an art house film rolled into one; while its philosophies show its perceived messages as an absolute: yet, one may see a gray area between those apparent viewpoints, ones speculated, and the rest will bring about the viewers own real life feelings into light about the context of the film. All these subtexts inside Straw Dogs are presented in a mature, non-exploitive way, piling on the dimension of its unique central characters, without giving a definite feeling of sympathy.
The plot concerns the nighttime assault by a group of ruffians on a pastoral home in which a man that is suspected of killing a girl is staying. The owners of the house, David and Amy, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, then find a way to fight back and survive the night.
Some may see Straw Dogs as a feminist film, in the way that the stereotypical male hormonal and aggression concepts set forth in the initial two acts of the film, are further acknowledged by the violent and bloody testosterone set pieces in the final "showdown." Yet, there is no female or male character to connect to in the typical cinematic way of them being "purely likeable." The audience will rather connect to the characters of David and Amy more because they are the only marginal likeable characters in the film, and we can agree with many of their actions, even if its often in the form of self-serving, or if the rest of the film depicts them as unsympathetic cowards. This is because the humanistic side of the audience will not want any more violence be committed to any character in the film, because its not "cool violence," rather it is brutal, and nihilistic.
These medieval concepts are shown in David's ascent into a "man" protecting his territory. This is poetic in the way of ultimate truth over the "peace-and-love" beliefs of the time; while Amy, despite some childish antics of young boys, is in many ways the man of the relationship, before going callow for most of the final siege scene. Yet, when the time comes to have her pick up a sword--so to speak-- she obliges. Yet, this absolute truth, also has a definite, antisocial reaction in the way that there is not one glimmer of decency seem to be left in all those who survive-- rather they go off into their own respective roles of "man" and "woman" without a sense of direction for the future.
The final often written about two dialogue lines show this, they are:
Henry Niles-- "I don't know my way home."
David-- " That's ok. I don't either."
It is this dialogue exchange that shows the way that the rest of the cast was either one-noted stock characters, or neanderthalistic sexual and/or violent fix-seekers; and there is no sense of valediction for any of these "animals." Their violent actions, no matter how necessary they seem at the time, only make them more isolated from others. Peckinpah`s real life personality was driven by a lust for alcohol and a clenched fist ready to fight; this educated, but untamed persona seems to bleed through the film, as if it is a demon exertion exercise for Peckinpah, an acknowledgement of who he is, but as if saying this is how all people are when pitted with grave life-threatening obstacles, it thus becomes survival of the fittest, like in the animal kingdom. Yet, at the same time, when we make this choice to go back to our ancestry, it does not come without consequences-- in this case, total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, as if going back to the hunter and gathering civilizations.
It is this philosophy of humans as an animal that makes "Straw Dogs" still so bloody good today. As this is certainly one of the best films of all time, and is a masterpiece of savagery that clearly shows that human horror is the most threatfull thing to our race of all.
***** (Out of 5)
A cruel and hateful masterpiece........2007-03-05
I will start with my thesis, namely that this film is one of the single greatest American films of all time, ridiculously complex psychologically, completely satisfying on an aesthetic level but at the same time hating itself as said success. Not a shot or line of dialogue is unnecessary, and almost every scene is ambiguous enough to be read any number of ways. It is easily more complicated than Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have you believe, and is in my mind a much subtler and more intelligent father to the cinema of satirist Paul Verhoeven.
I don't believe David is the villian, that is too simple of a subversion, nor do I find him to be as unsympathetic as others do, but I think that is the whole point. We are meant to identify superficially with David, to congratulate ourselves on our intelligence and civility, all the while enjoying the inevitable brutish spectacle play out as it does in all genre films, only this film is one of the very few that is aware of the voyeuristic beast that is the audience. Rather than cartoonish villians, I would argue that the villagers should be seen as more overt manifestations of David's personality throughout the film. He is smug and condescending, secure in his intellectual and moral authority, and he is just as much an aggressor as they are, flaunting his money, car, and knowledge as opposed to his drinking, crudeness, and sexual potency, and using it to constantly one-up everyone around him who will bear it (the single scene in that most exemplifies this is his meeting with the reverend). Amy is too often knocked for being a one-dimensional "tease" character, but I would argue against this as well, although I'm not sure I would call her the most sympathetic character in the film as some would. I would instead argue that she expressing herself sexually because it is the only way she can express herself in this microcosm, where every woman is objectified and men are only interested in them for sex and as a symbol of status. In the end no one is right here, though some may be more abused than others. Everyone is fair game for Sam Peckinpah's misanthropy in this great and crude masterpiece.
A deceptive film (Some Spoilers).......2007-02-12
'Straw Dogs' deceives the viewer by focussing on mild-mannnered mathematical wimp, David Sumner and his bored, restless young wife Amy. What the film does is to give the impression for much of its time that David is a coward, when he fails to stand up to the bullying local workmen fixing his garage roof. That is the main purpose to the long, slow build up of this plot. But it's only in the violent finale when the true nature of David's aggression is unleashed, and presumption of his cowardice is finally shattered.
What starts out as friendly banter and mild teasing by the workmen gradually develops into more sinister taunting as David remains poe-faced and refuses to show any sense of humour or reaction toward these locals. 'They think you're strange' says Amy. 'Is that because I'm an American' asks David? 'No, just strange' she muses.
As the men become more brazen toward David they cross the line when one of them manages to enter the house and strangles Amy's cat. On discovery of this unfortunate event, Amy nags David into confronting the men over this, and he finally, but reluctantly concedes to the idea. He invites them into his house for this purpose, but again he backs away, not even mentioning the cat, and instead is tricked by the men into going on a hunting trip with them, used as a ploy to get him out of the house for a period. David mistakenly takes this as a real opportunity to bond with the men. What follows is one of the most unappetising and controversial scenes of its day, and is still uncomfortable viewing now.
When David is deserted on the shoot and returns home feeling humiliated he finds his wife in bed tearful. We are not told whether Amy ever reveals what happened while he was away, but the grim expression on David's face when he sits down outside, just after firing the men the following day, suggests that maybe he did know or suspected something untoward. It was also the first time in the film that he shows genuine courage in confronting the men and firing them on the spot.
The siege on David and Amy's home is the final chapter when he is pushed over the edge. Like the rest of the film it raises so many questions. Did David use the injured Henry Niles as an excuse to maim and kill his aggressors, or was he genuinely trying to defend the man he had accidentally knocked down earlier in his car? Were the workmen genuinely concerned about the fate of Tom Heddon's daughter, or were they exploiting the situation to bully David? And of course there is the one answer to the question of whether David was ever a coward, as accused by his wife earlier. He said then that he wasn't, and boy did he prove that point in the last half hour or so. It's an exciting climax to a film that seems ponderous for the first hour or so. But the film has a lot more depth and layers to it than revealed in a single viewing, not least the relationship between Amy and David itself. And I've only touched on a few of the connundrums in this story.
Director Sam Peckinpah raised many social issues in this unfortunate tale. The acting is first rate all round, and the film is essential viewing.
My favorite Peckinpah film...........2007-02-08
This is my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. I always loved it as a high schooler, and I still do. To see Dustin Hoffman, a calm, reserved intellecutal type turn into a monster like he does is chilling enough. But you find that you're actually cheering him on at the end of the film. This film, along with A Clockwork Orange (released the same year! What a year 1971 was!), really get into man's darker nature, and tell us some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We really root for Hoffman, even though he's killing people, and he's enjoying it. Even in the quiet, rural, "idyllic" English countryside, there's still human garbage and barbarism. You can't escape life, so to speak. The editing, direction, and performances are first rate, making this one of Peckinpah's most daring films.
Average customer rating:
- Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps
- A Man's World on Feminist Terms.
- A cruel and hateful masterpiece.
- A deceptive film (Some Spoilers)
- My favorite Peckinpah film....
|
Straw Dogs
Starring: Dustin Hoffman , Susan George , Peter Vaughan , T.P. McKenna , and Del Henney
Director: Sam Peckinpah
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD
Thrillers
| Mystery & Suspense
| Genres
| DVD
| Video
Arne, Peter
| ( A )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
George, Susan
| ( G )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Hoffman, Dustin
| ( H )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Vaughan, Peter
| ( V )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Warner, David
| ( W )
| Actors & Actresses
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
Peckinpah, Sam
| ( P )
| Directors
| Stores
| DVD
| Video
( S )
| Titles
| Features
| DVD
| Video
Similar Items:
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
- Dead Ringers
- The Getaway (Deluxe Edition)
- The Wild Bunch - The Original Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition)
- Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection (The Wild Bunch / Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid / Ride the High Country / The Ballad of Cable Hogue)
ASIN: B0000AV3GK |
Amazon.com essential video
One of Sam Peckinpah's most controversial efforts, this film came out at a critical moment in the early 1970s, released in the same month as both Dirty Harry and A Clockwork Orange, causing a furor over film violence. Based on a little-known British novel, the film casts Dustin Hoffman as a bookish American mathematician on sabbatical in rural England, in the town where his young bride (Susan George) grew up. He finds himself forced to defend his home against an assault by local toughs, and discovers a frighteningly feral and vicious side to himself. Though Straw Dogs has a reputation for graphic violence, it actually looks tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the violence is psychological, and the suspense and shocks are induced by the editing--you're more terrified by what you think you see than by what you are actually shown. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews:
Young Hoffman dustin' some hooligans with wolf-traps.......2007-04-03
Dustin Hoffman was young then, young and slightly mellow, maybe even plump. In this film he has a delicate role and he is learning the trade. He has to be both a mathematician immersed in his maths and a husband reacting to his wife's feeling of insecurity. When the local neighbours become aggressive, killing their cat and hanging it in their closet, then raping the wife, then attacking them at night because they are harbouring the local simpleton who was going to be lynched by the villagers, the father of the girl who had provoked him at the head of them with a fire-gun, he loses his calm and yet keeps his head. That makes an explosive cocktail that brings the local "authority" down dead, and then all the members of the lynching gang down dead or not far from it. Of course the beautiful renovated Irish farm does not have one window left and has suffered heavy damage. But the scientist-husband has managed to have the last word with these drunk hooligans and also with his wife, though she never said two of them raped her in the afternoon. But she is the one who uses a lying-about gun to kill the last assailant. She finally finds some courage instead of waiting for her dear husband to do it in her place. The film is quite bizarre though because it seems to show the Irish as being more or less whisky-bags or beer-bags, if we can use these words, and at the same time, the American wife is vain and seems to believe that her being married is going to make these men forget she had been mooching around with them during her vacations before being married. The American husband is both an intellectual engrossed in his own thinking, easily fooled by these locals who take him on an expedition hunting the snark on the heath, and an extremely cold-thinking defender of his home and wife, as well as of simple principles that make lynching an out of question solution to any situation. Dustin Hoffman cuts a very credible character in spite of his youth or because of his youthful naivety.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A Man's World on Feminist Terms........2007-03-22
As an unsettling and draining look into the horrors of fascist and territorial ideas breed out of masculinity, the 1971 film "Straw Dogs" is an emotionally peeling viewing that will bring your own viewpoints to the surface. The film garners the high proverb of being a messed-up western, character study, thriller, war film, action movie, social analysis, and an art house film rolled into one; while its philosophies show its perceived messages as an absolute: yet, one may see a gray area between those apparent viewpoints, ones speculated, and the rest will bring about the viewers own real life feelings into light about the context of the film. All these subtexts inside Straw Dogs are presented in a mature, non-exploitive way, piling on the dimension of its unique central characters, without giving a definite feeling of sympathy.
The plot concerns the nighttime assault by a group of ruffians on a pastoral home in which a man that is suspected of killing a girl is staying. The owners of the house, David and Amy, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, then find a way to fight back and survive the night.
Some may see Straw Dogs as a feminist film, in the way that the stereotypical male hormonal and aggression concepts set forth in the initial two acts of the film, are further acknowledged by the violent and bloody testosterone set pieces in the final "showdown." Yet, there is no female or male character to connect to in the typical cinematic way of them being "purely likeable." The audience will rather connect to the characters of David and Amy more because they are the only marginal likeable characters in the film, and we can agree with many of their actions, even if its often in the form of self-serving, or if the rest of the film depicts them as unsympathetic cowards. This is because the humanistic side of the audience will not want any more violence be committed to any character in the film, because its not "cool violence," rather it is brutal, and nihilistic.
These medieval concepts are shown in David's ascent into a "man" protecting his territory. This is poetic in the way of ultimate truth over the "peace-and-love" beliefs of the time; while Amy, despite some childish antics of young boys, is in many ways the man of the relationship, before going callow for most of the final siege scene. Yet, when the time comes to have her pick up a sword--so to speak-- she obliges. Yet, this absolute truth, also has a definite, antisocial reaction in the way that there is not one glimmer of decency seem to be left in all those who survive-- rather they go off into their own respective roles of "man" and "woman" without a sense of direction for the future.
The final often written about two dialogue lines show this, they are:
Henry Niles-- "I don't know my way home."
David-- " That's ok. I don't either."
It is this dialogue exchange that shows the way that the rest of the cast was either one-noted stock characters, or neanderthalistic sexual and/or violent fix-seekers; and there is no sense of valediction for any of these "animals." Their violent actions, no matter how necessary they seem at the time, only make them more isolated from others. Peckinpah`s real life personality was driven by a lust for alcohol and a clenched fist ready to fight; this educated, but untamed persona seems to bleed through the film, as if it is a demon exertion exercise for Peckinpah, an acknowledgement of who he is, but as if saying this is how all people are when pitted with grave life-threatening obstacles, it thus becomes survival of the fittest, like in the animal kingdom. Yet, at the same time, when we make this choice to go back to our ancestry, it does not come without consequences-- in this case, total isolation from the rest of the civilized world, as if going back to the hunter and gathering civilizations.
It is this philosophy of humans as an animal that makes "Straw Dogs" still so bloody good today. As this is certainly one of the best films of all time, and is a masterpiece of savagery that clearly shows that human horror is the most threatfull thing to our race of all.
***** (Out of 5)
A cruel and hateful masterpiece........2007-03-05
I will start with my thesis, namely that this film is one of the single greatest American films of all time, ridiculously complex psychologically, completely satisfying on an aesthetic level but at the same time hating itself as said success. Not a shot or line of dialogue is unnecessary, and almost every scene is ambiguous enough to be read any number of ways. It is easily more complicated than Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert would have you believe, and is in my mind a much subtler and more intelligent father to the cinema of satirist Paul Verhoeven.
I don't believe David is the villian, that is too simple of a subversion, nor do I find him to be as unsympathetic as others do, but I think that is the whole point. We are meant to identify superficially with David, to congratulate ourselves on our intelligence and civility, all the while enjoying the inevitable brutish spectacle play out as it does in all genre films, only this film is one of the very few that is aware of the voyeuristic beast that is the audience. Rather than cartoonish villians, I would argue that the villagers should be seen as more overt manifestations of David's personality throughout the film. He is smug and condescending, secure in his intellectual and moral authority, and he is just as much an aggressor as they are, flaunting his money, car, and knowledge as opposed to his drinking, crudeness, and sexual potency, and using it to constantly one-up everyone around him who will bear it (the single scene in that most exemplifies this is his meeting with the reverend). Amy is too often knocked for being a one-dimensional "tease" character, but I would argue against this as well, although I'm not sure I would call her the most sympathetic character in the film as some would. I would instead argue that she expressing herself sexually because it is the only way she can express herself in this microcosm, where every woman is objectified and men are only interested in them for sex and as a symbol of status. In the end no one is right here, though some may be more abused than others. Everyone is fair game for Sam Peckinpah's misanthropy in this great and crude masterpiece.
A deceptive film (Some Spoilers).......2007-02-12
'Straw Dogs' deceives the viewer by focussing on mild-mannnered mathematical wimp, David Sumner and his bored, restless young wife Amy. What the film does is to give the impression for much of its time that David is a coward, when he fails to stand up to the bullying local workmen fixing his garage roof. That is the main purpose to the long, slow build up of this plot. But it's only in the violent finale when the true nature of David's aggression is unleashed, and presumption of his cowardice is finally shattered.
What starts out as friendly banter and mild teasing by the workmen gradually develops into more sinister taunting as David remains poe-faced and refuses to show any sense of humour or reaction toward these locals. 'They think you're strange' says Amy. 'Is that because I'm an American' asks David? 'No, just strange' she muses.
As the men become more brazen toward David they cross the line when one of them manages to enter the house and strangles Amy's cat. On discovery of this unfortunate event, Amy nags David into confronting the men over this, and he finally, but reluctantly concedes to the idea. He invites them into his house for this purpose, but again he backs away, not even mentioning the cat, and instead is tricked by the men into going on a hunting trip with them, used as a ploy to get him out of the house for a period. David mistakenly takes this as a real opportunity to bond with the men. What follows is one of the most unappetising and controversial scenes of its day, and is still uncomfortable viewing now.
When David is deserted on the shoot and returns home feeling humiliated he finds his wife in bed tearful. We are not told whether Amy ever reveals what happened while he was away, but the grim expression on David's face when he sits down outside, just after firing the men the following day, suggests that maybe he did know or suspected something untoward. It was also the first time in the film that he shows genuine courage in confronting the men and firing them on the spot.
The siege on David and Amy's home is the final chapter when he is pushed over the edge. Like the rest of the film it raises so many questions. Did David use the injured Henry Niles as an excuse to maim and kill his aggressors, or was he genuinely trying to defend the man he had accidentally knocked down earlier in his car? Were the workmen genuinely concerned about the fate of Tom Heddon's daughter, or were they exploiting the situation to bully David? And of course there is the one answer to the question of whether David was ever a coward, as accused by his wife earlier. He said then that he wasn't, and boy did he prove that point in the last half hour or so. It's an exciting climax to a film that seems ponderous for the first hour or so. But the film has a lot more depth and layers to it than revealed in a single viewing, not least the relationship between Amy and David itself. And I've only touched on a few of the connundrums in this story.
Director Sam Peckinpah raised many social issues in this unfortunate tale. The acting is first rate all round, and the film is essential viewing.
My favorite Peckinpah film...........2007-02-08
This is my favorite Sam Peckinpah film. I always loved it as a high schooler, and I still do. To see Dustin Hoffman, a calm, reserved intellecutal type turn into a monster like he does is chilling enough. But you find that you're actually cheering him on at the end of the film. This film, along with A Clockwork Orange (released the same year! What a year 1971 was!), really get into man's darker nature, and tell us some uncomfortable truths about ourselves. We really root for Hoffman, even though he's killing people, and he's enjoying it. Even in the quiet, rural, "idyllic" English countryside, there's still human garbage and barbarism. You can't escape life, so to speak. The editing, direction, and performances are first rate, making this one of Peckinpah's most daring films.
DVD:
- Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold
- Us Seals
- The Tai Chi Master
- La Banda Del Carro Rojo
- The Giants Of Thessaly
- Puppet Princess
- Death Dimension
- The Sweeper
- Bloodfist 3: Forced to Fight
- Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, Vol. 2
DVD List
DVD
DVD
Ten Days' Wonder
Kate And Leopold
Flashback [1989]
DVD: Hard Labour
Monk - Series 1