STRAW DOGS d: Sam Peckinpah
Straw Dogs (1971)
Direction: Sam Peckinpah
Screenplay: David Zelag Goodman and Sam Peckinpah; from Gordon Williams’ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm
Cast: 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
Dustin Hoffman, Susan George in Straw Dogs
By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
If there has ever been a more over-interpreted and stolidly misinterpreted film than director Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 Straw Dogs, I’ve yet to encounter it. Films like Citizen Kane and 2001: A Space Odyssey have had more ink spilled over them, but most of the ideas tossed about are on the money and far less is read into them. Also, those two classics have one big thing going for them that Straw Dogs does not. They are great films.
While Straw Dogs is neither as good a film as its hagiographers claim — for Peckinpah had all the subtlety and psychological depth of a sledgehammer — nor as irredeemable a bit of pornography as it detractors insist, it is above all a dull and mediocre work. Dull is not a word that has likely ever appeared in a review of Straw Dogs, but what else can one call a film that telegraphs its ending in the first twenty minutes and that has all the realistic character development of a Warner Bros. Road Runner cartoon? Excuse me: Let me rescind that. Wile E. Coyote, at least, plumbs some true existential angst.
By contrast, the nearly two-hour-long Straw Dogs is not even that innovative and it’s certainly not ‘naturalistic,’ for the ultra-violence it depicts was done better (and more realistically) in Stanley Kubrick’s deeper and darker-humored A Clockwork Orange — released that same year — and earlier by Peckinpah himself in The Wild Bunch and by Arthur Penn in Bonnie and Clyde. Additionally, the Straw Dogs scenes of cretins trying to break into the lead characters’ home are pale echoes of both George Romero’s masterful low-budget Night of the Living Dead and the Vincent Price horror classic The Last Man on Earth (and its remake, the Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man).
The revenge theme, for its part, was done more engagingly in Wes Craven’s campy debut film Last House on the Left and with more depth in the film that inspired Craven, Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. Straw Dogs, however, was the effort that acted as a springboard for other films showing increasingly stylized violence, among them Deliverance (1972), Death Wish (1974), and Taxi Driver (1976), all with different styles and artistic merits.
As well, the politics and psychology found in Straw Dogs are badly dated. This is especially true of the infamous ‘double rape’ scene. Compared to Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy, released a few months later, Peckinpah’s motivations seem downright silly, which is especially noteworthy since Hitchcock built a career on Freudian pseudo-scientific motivations for his criminal characters, but abandoned all that for realism in his underappreciated 1972 gem.
Not surprisingly, the misinterpretations of Straw Dogs start with the title. It is commonly assumed that Peckinpah took the title from a passage from the Tao Te Ching:
Heaven and Earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs.
The straw dogs referred to were tiny effigies used in ceremonies that were burnt and discarded at the end. But if this is the true source, the title is rather lame for none of the characters in the film serve any vital role in any ritual. Also, linking mediocre art to greater source material is a standard way for many artists try to cover their failures with a patina of depth. A more likely provenance for the title comes from the simple colloquial American slang that a straw dog is a seemingly frightening thing that turns out to be not all that frightening — i.e., a dog whose proverbial bark is worse than its bite. This interpretation gives the title an added irony that seems more in keeping with Peckinpah’s temperament. After all, the film’s bespectacled lead character, a mathematician named David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman), ends up having a bite far worse than his almost nonexistent bark.
Yet, even if the title can be seen in a deeper and more ironic light than most critics give it credit for, Straw Dogs fails because Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman’s screenplay — based on Gordon Williams‘ novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm — is much too sloppily written. The tale is larded with one-dimensional caricatures — especially the cretinous male townsfolk who sing songs of sex with sheep and are fascinated with rats — implausible action, and a male fantasy character in the form of David’s big-breasted, blonde, nubile English wife Amy (Susan George).
Worse, the acting does absolutely nothing to liven up the bad writing, as Dustin Hoffman turns in what may well be his worst performance until the ridiculously bad Rain Man. As the story goes, Hoffman loathed Straw Dogs and took the part only for the money; that seems quite apparent on-screen. Susan George is just another blonde bimbo, despite some critics’ attempts to make her performance seem notable. While watching Straw Dogs, ask yourself this: Is there any scene in which George appears that one could not imagine any other actress doing as well or better?
The actual plot is very slight: The Sumners have left the U.S. for Amy’s Cornish hometown, but he is resented by the xenophobic locals; the ostensible reason is that he is a nebbish American who has bagged a local goddess who had spurned a former beau, Charley Venner (Del Henney).
Amy is a terminal flirt who wears no bra, struts her stuff in front of the local troglodytes, going as far as flashing her lovely breasts out a window at Venner’s workmen pals. But since she is a local, should she not know that they are lustful monsters? Does this not suggest that she wants both their attention and the violence concomitant with it? Or is she really as dumb as she seems?
David seems to be a wimp who has no convictions on politics — such as the Civil Rights movement or the Vietnam War — which the locals query him on. Those locals include Venner’s cretinous pals Cawsey (Jim Norton), Riddaway (Donald Webster), and Norman Scutt (Ken Hutchison), in addition to the patriarch of a sick family, Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan), whose teen son Bobby (Len Jones) and teen daughter Janice (Sally Thomsett) are incestuously involved and enjoy voyeuring on the Sumners. Janice also apes Amy’s over-the-top sexuality by showing off her younger charms and trying to seduce the local idiot, Henry Niles (an unbilled David Warner), who was once guilty of molesting young girls, and whose brother John (Peter Arne) has avoided institutionalizing him.
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Tags: Classic Movies, David Zelag Goodman, Dustin Hoffman, Film Reviews, Oscar 1971, Oscar Movies, Psychological Drama, Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs, Susan George
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She says ‘no’ but her body says ‘yes’? You know I’ve heard that before. When a rapist is trying to defend their actions. When they use physical reactions that no victim has no control over for manipulation. Sure some woman like it rough but rape is rape and no means no. Had that been picked up on this could have been the best review about ‘Straw Dogs’ I read.