• Synopsis: A young American and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.• Director: Sam Peckinpah• Writers: Da...

Straw Dogs is one of those movies where the filmmaker sets out to make a specific point (or points) but his skills and intelligence are so muddled that it's a bit voyeuristically embarrassing. Let's set up a dweeby liberal and see how he has to react to real danger!

Straw Dogs is his vitriolic reaction to both. It is a protest/reaction to his perceived emasculation and to what he sees as an assault/ invasion on rugged individualism. I couldn’t disagree with his ideas and attitudes more–not even remotely in my wheelhouse of ideology.

I first saw Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs in February and it shook me. Rattled me to my core. Never had I experienced a film whose message felt like blunt trauma to my psyche.

In “Straw Dogs,” montage is used to suggest the chaotic aftermath of rape as Amy (Susan George) tries to hold onto life after being attacked by her former lover and his friend. Her relationship with her husband David ( Dustin Hoffman ) is already so strained that she can’t communicate her experience, and only further resents him for his ...