straw dogs

Director: sam peckinpah

Actor: dustin hoffman,susan george,peter vaughan,t.p. mckenna

Data Published: Thu Dec 23 1971

Genres: Crime,Drama,Thriller

Key Words: rape,sexual desire,home invasion,outsider,hanged cat

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067800/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Dogs_(1971_film)

Description: Straw Dogs is a movie starring Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, and Peter Vaughan. A young American and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment.

Plot: After securing a grant to study stellar structures, American applied mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his glamorous young British wife Amy (Susan George) to her natal village of Wakely in the Cornish countryside. Amy's ex-boyfriend, Charlie Venner (Del Henney), and his cronies Norman Scutt (Ken Hutchison), Chris Cawsey (Jim Norton) and Phil Riddaway (Donald Webster), immediately resent that the meek outsider has married one of their own. Scutt, a former convict, is also privately jealous of Venner's past relationship with Amy. David meets Venner's uncle, local drunkard Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan), whose flirtatious teenage daughter Janice (Sally Thomsett) seems attracted to Henry Niles (David Warner), a mentally deficient man hated by the entire town. The Sumners rent an isolated farmhouse, Trenchers Farm, and hire Venner, Scutt, Cawsey and Venner's cousin Bobby (Len Jones) to repair its garage. Tensions in their marriage soon become apparent. Amy criticizes David's condescension towards her and his escape from the volatile, politicized campus, thereby suggesting that cowardice was his true reason for leaving the US. He responds by withdrawing 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 even struggles to blend in with the educated locals, as shown in conversation with the vicar, Reverend Barney Hood (Colin Welland), and the local magistrate, Major John Scott (T. P. McKenna). When their dead cat appears hanging in their bedroom closet, Amy claims Cawsey or Scutt are responsible. She presses David to confront the workmen, but he is too intimidated by them. The men invite David to go hunting the following day. They take him to a remote location and leave him there with the promise of driving birds towards him. Having lured David away, Venner goes to Trenchers Farm where he initiates sex with Amy. She resists, but is slapped and eventually relents to the rape. By the end of the scene, she appears to be at least partially consenting. As they lie together, Norman Scutt enters silently, motions Venner to move away at gunpoint and rapes Amy, this time unambiguously, while Venner reluctantly holds her down. When David returns, Amy says nothing about what happened, except for a double entendre that escapes his attention. The next day, David, still seemingly unaware of Amy's ordeal, fires the workmen for having ditched him during their hunting trip. Later, the Sumners attend a church social where Amy becomes distraught after seeing her rapists. They leave the social early, drive through thick fog and accidentally hit Henry Niles. They take him to their home and David phones the local pub to report the accident. Unbeknownst to him, minutes earlier Niles had accidentally strangled Tom Hedden's daughter after she tried to seduce him. Hedden, now searching for her, learns she was last seen with Niles, and is alerted by David's phone call to Niles's whereabouts. Soon enough Hedden, Scutt, Venner, Cawsey and Riddaway are drunkenly pounding on the Sumners' door. Inferring their intention to lynch Henry, David refuses to let them take him despite Amy's pleas. The standoff seems to unlock a territorial facet in David: "I will not allow violence against this house." Major Scott arrives to defuse the situation, but is accidentally shot dead by Hedden during a struggle. Realizing the danger in witnessing this homicide, David improvises various makeshift traps and weapons, including boiling oil, to fend off the siege. He tricks Hedden into shooting his own foot and bludgeons Cawsey to death with a poker. Venner holds him at gunpoint, but Amy's screams alert both men when Scutt assaults her. Scutt suggests Venner join him in another gang rape, but Venner shoots him dead. David disarms Venner and in the ensuing fight snaps an ornamental mantrap around Venner's neck, killing him. Watching the mayhem around him and surprised by his own violence, David mutters to himself, "Jesus, I got 'em all." Riddaway then brutally attacks him, but is shot by Amy as he tries to break David's spine. David gets into his car to drive Niles back to the village. Niles says he does not know his way home. David says he does not either.