(Please forgive the odd formatting below; I lost my original "text" file that I saved, and had to pull this from a "sent" email that I posted to a friend.)

The following is a "review" of arguably Peckinpahs greatest film, STRAW
DOGS, by one Gary Johnson from the "Images Journal" website
(http://www.imagesjournal.com/2003/reviews/strawdogs/). The website
typically contains intelligent and well thought-out reviews/analysis of
films, but I consider what appears below to an exception to the rule. For
the most part, the review is fairly solid, and the critic makes some valid
points, but any headway Mr. Johnson made toward the enigmatic center of this
film was lost - at least for me - with the following statement:

"Straw Dogs isn't in the same category as Peckinpah's best work, for the
movie is seriously flawed by its unsophisticated attitude toward women. But
nonetheless, it's a powerful, haunting meditation on the relationship
between manhood and violence."

Now, I'm not going to go into the many details and subtleties of this film
here (if you've seen it, you understand the point of contention here; if
not, you really need to see STRAW DOGS soon). Johnson was actually quite
apt in his observation that the film draws no easy conclusions. Both David
and his wife, Amy, are frustratingly ambiguous in their alignment; they do
as many things "wrong" as they do "right", and both are equally responsible
for the breakdown of their relationship and the circumstances brought upon
them. To boil it down, David lacks conviction, frequently appearing as
ineffectual and weak. Amy lacks maturity and an understanding of how her
childishness has repercussions.

Much has been written about David Sumner's shortcomings and how those
deficiencies result in horrific consequences, yet David's radical change
from pushover to avenger is treated with equal - arguably more - contempt by
the director by letting the audience know that the accused child-murderer
that Sumner is defending so ferverently is actually quite guilty (though the
killer is a simpleton with the mind of a child who killed out of ignorance
and not malice). Nonetheless, as ambiguous as the ending may be, I think
that most folks will walk away feeling that David Sumner is on a more solid
path than he was at the beginning of the film. It is also worth noting that
we see David driving off with the simpleton child-killer at the end, and not
his wife (who is presumably left at home).

Perhaps a more accusatory tone might have been taken toward Amy's character
by critics, if not for one particular - and significant - plot point. Amy
complains to her husband about the leering local laborers that David has
hired to make repairs on their cottage, but we frequently see her flirting
with the workers (one of which who is established early on as a previous
love interest), culminating in Amy consciously exposing herself to the
workers through an open window. Amy's motives are not so explicit, though
it's probably a good guess that her actions are meant to result in
motivating a jealous and protective reaction from her husband, and not
intended to bring on her rape - though this is precisely what happens.

It's absurd that the male gender can be bashed so publicly and frequently
with such abandon, while any criticism which involves any negative
generalized commentary on female gender behavior is immediately labeled
"mysogonistic" and subsequently invalidated. This attitude has been
predominate since the 70's, and it's time for it to END. When an entire
evaluation of a classic film is reduced with a glib comment like Johnson's
("Straw Dogs isn't in the same category as Peckinpah's best work, for the
movie is seriously flawed by its unsophisticated attitude toward women. But
nonetheless, it's a powerful, haunting meditation on the relationship
between manhood and violence."), I take immediate issue with such comments.
This yahoo even discounts his evaluation in the next breath by stating that
this is a "haunting meditation on the relationship between manhood and
violence", though this too is an extreme simplification of the story's
themes. However, let's look at his comment. I agree that the story and
it's themes are most relevent to the male psyche (as are most of Peckinpah's
films - but none so much as STRAW DOGS), and women in the film are
represented only in-as-far as they impact the primary story and themes.
There is nothing unfair or untoward about this practice, and I believe that
Amy's character is treated with much more complexity and has a greater
dimension than is immediately called for by the demands of the script. It's
the very implication that Amy's conscious actions led directly or indirectly
to her physical assault that sets off feminists everywhere. This thesis is
supported further during the very attack itself; at one point during the
rape, we see Amy's defensive posture relax and a definitive look of
enjoyment appears on a closeup of her face. This temporary moment of
release soon gives way to horror when Amy sees that her initial attacker
(her former lover) will not be the last, when another local who has been
watching steps up for his "turn".

The entire sequence - hell, the entire FILM - is quite disturbing; it asks
some difficult questions and probes some very sensitive areas. In the end,
STRAW DOGS provides no direct answers, but rather questions the audience.
I'm just sick and tired of hearing STRAW DOGS described in terms of how
David's actions bring about the end results, when it should be obvious to
anyone paying attention, that the unfortunate circumstances that create the
plot are a result of BOTH David's and Amy's actions, and the explosive
combination of these disparate personalities. Both are equally to blame,
and - yes, I'll say it - Amy was also partially responsible for her rape.
I'm sure I'll get skewered by left extremists for my statement, but in terms
of the story, there's NO WAY to get around this fact. I'm not making a
value judgement, I'm not saying that Amy deserved to be raped, and I'm
certainly not saying that women who behave like Amy deserve anything
similar, but the downfall of our society is coming from our complete
absolution of all personal responsibility, and this is - in part - some of
the content of STRAW DOGS themes.

Eric
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Sam Peckinpah is usually associated with the excellent Westerns that he
directed (The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, Major Dundee, etc.), but he
also directed several non-Westerns. Straw Dogs is the best of that bunch.
It's a disturbing movie that erupts in a harrowing final half hour of
violence--as disturbing and brutal as anything ever captured on film. Now
available on DVD from The Criterion Collection, this new,
digitally-mastered, letterboxed release gives us a new opportunity to assess
the impact of this much heralded movie in the Peckinpah canon. The disc even
includes footage that was deleted from the original American theatrical
release.

In the years that have passed since it first hit theaters in 1971, some of
the luster has worn off of Straw Dogs. Upon its initial release, it received
rave reviews from many big name American publications, such as Time and
Newsweek. But the movie won't appeal to many audience members: the movie
contains just two women in major roles and both women are abused by men. In
both cases, the movie argues that the women were largely to blame for the
violence against them. That's not an attitude that will endear this movie to
many feminists in the audience. However, while Peckinpah's depiction of
female characters lacks sophistication, Straw Dogs is still a remarkable
movie.

Dustin Hoffman plays a mild-mannered mathematician named David Sumner who
moves to a Cornish village along with his sexy young wife Amy, played by
Susan George (in the best performance of her career). While David spends his
days making notations on a blackboard and checking his calculations, Amy
acts bored. Like a little girl with nothing better to do, she erases symbols
from the blackboard when his back is turned. She wants his attention, but he
is obsessed with his work. This situation becomes complicated when David
hires a crew of workers to repair the roof of an adjoining building. Amy
complains about the workers' leers, but later she stands naked in the
hallway, clearly exposed to the workers through a window. A recipe for
disaster is in the making.

David Warner plays a supporting role as a simple-minded man named Henry
Niles from the nearby village. After he disappears with a local girl, her
family is ready to tear the countryside apart in order to find her. These
stories converge at the mathematician's farm, as David takes in Niles and
protects him. Previously, David wasn't prepared to fight for his wife's
honor or for the sanctity of their home, but in an ironic twist with strong
tinges of misplaced bleeding-heart liberalism--it's the movie's
masterstroke--David is willing to risk everything to protect a man who may
in fact be a murderer.

At this point, the movie erupts in a vicious spasm of violence. While the
missing girl's angry brothers and father smash the farm house's windows and
throw their bodies against its front door, Amy argues with her husband to
hand over Niles. But after he gives sanctuary to Niles, David becomes a
bulldog who won't back down.

Hoffman clearly isn't playing a hero. For most of the movie, David looks
foolish--as when the workers convince him to go hunting and he ends up
participating in a British version of a snipe hunt. And when the family cat
is killed, his wife urges him to ask the workers about the cat, but he
doesn't say anything, insisting that he must wait until the time is right.
But the time is never right. In his wife's eyes (and in the eyes of the
workers), David is an impotent and absurd figure of a man.

The violence in Straw Dogs works as a cathartic release that allows David to
discover his own strength and masculinity. But what are we to make of
David's discovery? Many critics in the '70s saw this discovery as a profound
revelation. The reviewer for Newsweek said, "Peckinpah works with such power
and artistry that we accept his totems and taboos and even find ourselves
cheering like willing barbarians at Hoffman's brutal battle to the death.
What he does for his hero, he does for us: he puts us in touch with our
primal feelings. He allows his audience to ventilate without guilt its
frustrations and hatreds." These comments sound like hyperbole nowadays.
While some people might cheer at the violence in Straw Dogs, the movie
provides few easy answers. Peckinpah gives us a universe of ambiguous
morality: this is the movie's strength--its unwillingness to make simple
equations. When David drives away at the end of the movie, he quite
literally drives into fog, unsure where he's going and what he will do. His
smile tells us that he has chosen a preferable route, but his future is
unknown.

Straw Dogs isn't in the same category as Peckinpah's best work, for the
movie is seriously flawed by its unsophisticated attitude toward women. But
nonetheless, it's a powerful, haunting meditation on the relationship
between manhood and violence.

For their DVD release of Straw Dogs, the Criterion Collection has pulled
together an impressive collection of supplements that examine not only the
film but also the career of Sam Peckinpah. If you want to better understand
who Peckinpah was and why his career ground to a halt in the early '80s,
this two-disc DVD set is an excellent place to start. You'll find an
excellent 82-minute documentary titled Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron that
examines his career and provides interviews with many people that he worked
with, including Kris Kristofferson, R.G. Armstrong, L.Q. Jones, Susan
George, Daniel Melnick, James Coburn, and many others. From their first-hand
recollections, a detailed picture of Peckinpah emerges. He was a tyrant on
the movie set. He knew how to push buttons to get what he wanted. He knew
how to manipulate and cajole, how to intimidate and coerce. If, for example,
R.G. Armstrong wasn't delivering the intensity that Peckinpah desired in a
key scene in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, he insulted Armstrong until he
received the appropriate rage. Then he called out "roll 'em." If he wanted
Susan George to feel isolated and vulnerable in Straw Dogs, he treated her
kindly early in the production and then he withdrew all affection (with
method actor Dustin Hoffman already taking a similar approach). This maybe
was Peckinpah's genius: the ability to get what he wanted through the sheer
force of his character. But he took a destructive journey, plied with drugs
and alcohol. Ultimately, paranoia engulfed him and made him incapable of
handling the demands of directing a motion picture.

The Criterion Collection's DVD also contains an interview with Dustin
Hoffman from the set of Straw Dogs, as well as more recent interviews with
Susan George and producer Daniel Melnick. In addition, the DVD contains a
sampling of correspondence that Peckinpah wrote to critics and viewers
following the release of Straw Dogs. For example, the word "fascist" struck
him very hard in Pauline Kael's otherwise very favorable review and he wrote
to her explaining why the word was horribly inappropriate. While Straw Dogs
has been previously offered on DVD (by Anchor Bay Entertainment), the
Criterion Collection's DVD is much more than just a movie. It provides a
window into the dark, tortured soul of a remarkable filmmaking talent.



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Straw Dogs is now available in a new high-definition digital transfer of the
uncut version, enhanced for widescreen televisions. This is a two-disc set.
Special features: audio commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince; isolated
music and effects tracks; Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron, a documentary of
reflections by members of Peckinpah's family, his friends, and his
collaborators; On Location: Dustin Hoffman, a 26-minute documentary filmed
on the set of Straw Dogs; behind-the-scenes footage; video interviews with
actress Susan George and producer Daniel Melnick; select written responses
by Peckinpah to critics and viewers; and a theatrical trailer and TV spots.
Suggested retail price: $39.95 each. For more information, check out the
Criterion Collection Web site.