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Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on a novel. It follows an American mathematician named David Sumner who moves with his wife Amy to a remote village in Cornwall, England. David struggles to fit in with the locals, including Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner. Tensions rise after Amy is raped by two of the workmen David hired. This leads to a violent confrontation at David and Amy's home as the workmen seek to lynch another man. David arms himself and ends up killing or injuring the majority of the attackers in self-defense.

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215 views3 pages

Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah, based on a novel. It follows an American mathematician named David Sumner who moves with his wife Amy to a remote village in Cornwall, England. David struggles to fit in with the locals, including Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner. Tensions rise after Amy is raped by two of the workmen David hired. This leads to a violent confrontation at David and Amy's home as the workmen seek to lynch another man. David arms himself and ends up killing or injuring the majority of the attackers in self-defense.

Uploaded by

arnold
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Straw Dogs is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Sam

Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. The


screenplay, by Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman, is based upon
Gordon M. Williams's 1969 novel, The Siege of Trencher's Farm. The
film's title derives from a discussion in the Tao Te Ching that likens
people to the ancient Chinese ceremonial straw dog, being of
ceremonial worth, but afterwards discarded with indifference.

The film is noted for its violent concluding sequences and two
complicated rape scenes, which were censored by numerous film
rating boards. Released theatrically in the same year as A
Clockwork Orange, The French Connection, and Dirty Harry, the film
sparked heated controversy over a perceived increase of violence in
films generally.[6][7]

The film premiered in the UK in November 1971. Although


controversial at the time, Straw Dogs is considered by some critics
to be one of Peckinpah's greatest films, and was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Music (Original Dramatic Score).[8][9] A
remake directed by Rod Lurie and starring James Marsden and Kate
Bosworth was released on September 16, 2011.

After securing a research grant to study stellar structures, American


applied mathematician David Sumner moves with his attractive
young wife Amy to a house near to her home village of Wakely on the
Cornish moorland. Amy's ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner, along with his
friends Norman Scutt, Chris Cawsey, and Phil Riddaway,
immediately resent the fact that an apparently meek outsider has
married one of their own. Scutt, a former convict, confides in
Cawsey his jealousy of Venner's past relationship with Amy. David
meets Venner's uncle, Tom Hedden, a violent drunkard whose
teenage daughter Janice flirts with Henry Niles, a mentally deficient
man despised by the entire town.

The Sumners have taken an isolated farmhouse, Trenchers Farm,


that once belonged to Amy's father. They hire Scutt and Cawsey to
re-roof its garage, and when impatient with lack of progress add
Venner and his cousin Bobby to the workforce. Tensions in their
marriage soon become apparent. Amy criticizes David's
condescension towards her and his escape from a volatile,
politicized university campus in America, suggesting that cowardice
was his true reason for leaving. He withdraws deeper into his
studies, ignoring both the hostility of the locals and Amy's
dissatisfaction. His aloofness results in Amy's attention-gathering
pranks and provocative demeanor towards the workmen,
particularly Venner. David also struggles to be accepted by the
educated locals, as shown in conversations with the vicar Reverend
Barney Hood and his wife, and the local magistrate, Major John
Scott.

When David finds their cat hanging dead in their bedroom, Amy
believes that Cawsey or Scutt is responsible. She presses David to
confront the workmen, but he is too intimidated. The men invite
David to go hunting; they take him to the moors and leave him there
with the promise of driving birds towards him. With David away from
home, Venner goes to Trenchers Farm and pressures Amy sexually;
after a time she submits. While they are still together, Scutt enters
silently, motions Venner to move away at gunpoint and rapes Amy,
with Venner holding her down. David returns much later, smarting
from the men abandoning him. Amy says nothing about the rape,
apart from a cryptic comment that escapes his attention.

David fires the workmen for their slow progress. Later, the Sumners
attend a church social evening where Amy becomes distraught on
seeing her rapists. Janice invites Henry to leave with her and, in a
building hidden away from the crowd, she begins to seduce him.
When Janice's brother notices that she is missing, he is sent to
search for her, and as he calls out for her, Niles panics and kills
Janice. The Sumners leave the social early, driving through thick
fog, and accidentally hit Henry as he is escaping the scene. They
take the injured Henry to their home and phone the pub to report the
accident. The locals, who in the meantime have learned that Janice
was last seen with Henry, are thereby alerted to his whereabouts.
Soon, Hedden, Scutt, Venner, Cawsey and Riddaway are drunkenly
pounding on the Sumners' door. Deducing their intention to lynch
Henry, David refuses to let them take him, despite Amy's pleas. The
standoff seems to unlock a territorial instinct in David: "I will not
allow violence against this house."

Scott arrives to defuse the situation, but is accidentally shot dead


by Hedden during a struggle. Realizing the danger to him in
witnessing this killing, David improvises various traps and weapons
to fend off the attackers. He inadvertently forces Hedden to shoot
himself in the foot, knocks Riddaway unconscious and bludgeons
Cawsey to death with a poker. Venner holds him at gunpoint, but
Amy's screams alert both men when Scutt assaults her again. Scutt
suggests Venner join him in another rape, but Venner shoots him
dead. David disarms Venner and in the ensuing fight snaps his neck
with a mantrap. Reviewing the resulting carnage and surprised by
his own violence, David mutters to himself, "Jesus, I got 'em all." A
recovering Riddaway then brutally attacks him, but is shot by Amy.

David gets into his car to drive Henry back to the village. Henry says
he does not know his way home; David says he does not either.

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