Product Description
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DVD Special Features:
Expert commentary with Peckinpah biographers Paul Seydor, Garner
Simmons & David Weddle
Commentary with Katy Haber, dialogue director and Peckinpah's
assistant
Isolated O-nominated Jerry Fielding score in stereo
featuring additonal scores
Interview with Peckinpah's biographer Garner Simmons
Interview with Susan George
Info on deleted scenes (via shooting script & stills)
History of Straw Dogs and the Censor
Behind the B&W scenes/on location stills
Original B&W publicity stills
Original colour publicity stills
Original colour lobby cards
Original 1971 film s from around the world
Reviews, views & correspondence (including Peckinpah letters and
BBFC rejection letters)
1971 Television South West on location documentary
1971 Original US Theatrical Trailer
1971 Original US TV and Radio ad spots
From .co.uk
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According to critic Pauline Kael Straw Dogs was "the first
American film that is a fascist work of art". Sam Peckinpah's
only film in Britain is adapted from a novel by Gordon M
Williams called The Siege of Trencher's Farm which Peckinpah
described as a "lousy book with one good action-adventure
sequence". The setting is Cornwall, where mild-mannered US
academic David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) has bought a house with
his young English wife Amy (Susan George) in the village where
she grew up. David is mocked by the locals (one of whom is Amy's
ex-boyfriend) and treated with growing contempt by his frustrated
wife, but when his house comes under violent siege he finds
unexpected reserves of resourcefulness and aggression.
The movie, Peckinpah noted, was much influenced by Robert
Ardrey's macho-anthropological tract, The Territorial Imperative.
Its take on Cornish village life is fairly bizarre--this is a
Western in all but name--and many critics balked at the
transposition of Peckinpah's trademark blood-and-guts to the
supposed peace of the British countryside. A scene where Amy is
raped caused particular outrage, not least since it's hinted she
consents to it. Not for the first time in Peckinpah's movies
there are disquieting elements of misogyny, and it doesn't help
that the chemistry between Hoffman and George is non-existent.
(Impossible to believe these two would ever have clicked, let
alone married.) But taken as a vision of irrational violence
irrupting into a civilised way of life Straw Dogs is powerful and
unsettling, and the action sequences are executed with all
Peckinpah's unfailing flair and venom. Oh, and that title? A
quote from Chinese sage Lao-Tze, it seems, "The wise man is
ruthless and treats the people as straw dogs." The film was long
withheld from home viewing in Britain by nervous censors, but
this release presents it complete and uncut. --Philip Kemp
On the DVD: Straw Dogs is as jam-packed a disc as is possible for
a film made before the days of obligatory "making of" features.
Both the sound and visuals have transferred well, and, like the
script, have aged well. There's a bumbling original interview in
the style of Harry Enfield's Mr. Cholmondley-Warner, along with
stills and original trailers. The new material includes a feature
on the history of the film's censorship and commentaries by
Peckinpah's biographers musing over interesting fan-facts (though
none of the speakers have any first-hand experience of the making
of the film). However, Katy Haber's commentary, and interviews
with Susan George and Dan Melnick, offer a much more in-depth and
portrayal of the man and the making of the film. --Nikki
Disney