Adapted from a novel, Gordon M. Williams’ THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER’S FARM, Sam Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS continued the themes of desperate violence and perspective that had personified his 1969 Western THE WILD BUNCH.
David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) and his wife Amy (Susan George) move back to the Cornish village from whence she came, where she reacquaints herself with old friends and relations, among them her ex-boyfriend Charlie Venner (Del Henney) and his uncle Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan)
Their marriage is under strain and the rural setting appears to be designed to try and help them overcome their problems. They live at Trencher’s Farm, a family residence from Amy’s father and other acquaintances, Norman Scutt (Ken Hutchison) Chris Cawsey (Jim Norton) and Phil Riddaway (Donald Webster) help out fixing the roof on a barn.
The men decide to take David on a hunting trip and use it as a ruse to humiliate him, Venner returns to the Sumner homestead and imposes himself on Amy by attempting to assault her.
In the town, Henry Niles (David Warner) is mentally ill, but strikes up a bond with Hedden’s daughter Janice (Sally Thomsett), much to his anger. David returns home and fires the men from doing work, but there is more conflict awaiting for them….
Along with several other films that came out around the same time, including THE DEVILS and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STRAW DOGS still proves a very angry and potent cocktail of sex and violence which has now become more embraced as an experience and a key cinematic moment from that period when there was concern about on-screen acts of extremity.
It was remade four decades later with Kate Bosworth (SUPERMAN RETURNS) in a more faithful adaptation of the original source material)