Hmmm Peckinpah, this means.

Lots of violence
Funny looking blood
Lots of close ups and pregnant pauses.
Morally ambiguious characters

And of course always a great film.

Straw Dogs is one of his best, the examination of a weak willed man thrown into a rural malestrom that turns him into a ruthless creature of defense by the end is as hard hitting today as the first time I saw it.

It's one of Hoffman's best performance's, his dougey eye's gradually glazing over the further into the film we go, and the films infamous rape sequence still holds shock value, not nessessarilly because of its explicit nature but more the victims turn toward perverse pleasure by the end.

The final farmhouse attack is probably my favourite scene. Peckinpah extracts maximum tension from the cat and mouse situation, and I could swear the man amplified the shotgun in the editng room to heighten the violent impact.

Yup, a definite 70s classic, in fact I need to watch it again its been a while.

A+

A truly disturbing movie. Hoffman and Susan George both give award worthy performances. The last act in the house is incredible intense. But the whole movie was brilliant filmmaking. I definately should check out more Peckinpah films. Straw Dogs gives you a lot to think about. A+

I dunno, I found it troubling that the only way Hoffman's character can affirm his masculinity is by abusing his wife and killing off his romantic rivals. Is that all masculinity boils down to? I don't doubt Peckinpah intended Hoffman to be the true villain of the film, and for the violence to be abhorrent, not exciting, but he shouldn't have made it so... glorified then. For some reason, it's more of a problem here then in The Wild Bunch - perhaps because of the female presence. At least in Westerns, it's just men killing each other off (for the most part).

Still, it's hard to deny the raw, muscular filmmaking on display here. Peckinpah has a real way of building tension through his roaming camera and rapid-fire montage, and the culmination of that tension, the glorious, orgiastic violence, is almost breathtaking. I only wish it was in favour of less troublesome ideas.

I always saw it as a tale about morality rather than masculinity: Civilization, ironically, has to lower itself to bestiality in order to retain its status, as it were. But can it be the same again thereafter?