
I find the films of Sam Peckinpah fascinating and Straw Dogs (1971) is no exception. This is Peckinpah's mediation on violence in man and society. A mathematician, David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) is escaping the violence of the 60s in America to retire in a small Scottish village with his newly-wed nubile bride, Amy (Susan George). There is strife in their marriage as she doesn't get as much attention form her husband as wants and taunts her sexuality to the roughnecks working on the roof of their garage. The climax of the film is a controversial rape in which Amy is not completely unpleasurable to her. Most of the violence takes place at the end of the film as David tries to defends his wife and home from a mob of drunken villagers. Pauline Kael has called it "the first American film that is a fascist work of art." The Criterion treatment includes: audio commentary from 2003 by Stephen Prince, author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies, Mantrap: Straw Dogs The Final Cut, a 2003 documentary about the making of the film, featuring cast and crew, Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron, a 1993 documentary about the director featuring actors Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards, Ali MacGraw, and many others, new conversation between film critic Michael Sragow and filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode, who worked as one of the editors on the film, new interview with film scholar Linda Williams about the controversies surrounding the film, archival interviews with actor Susan George, producer Daniel Melnick, and Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons, behind-the-scenes footage, TV spots and trailers, and an essay by scholar and critic Joshua Clover.
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