1971 saw something of a cinematic seismic shift in Britain, with three films seeming to trouble the censors and moral guardians of Britain more than any others before. Arriving in quick succession were The Devils, A Clockwork Orange, and Straw Dogs, three films which seemed to pave the way for a landslide of taboo-breaking and controversy-baiting – hot on the heels of these three landmarks were the likes of The Exorcist and Emmanuelle. While The Devils somehow remains cut in this country, and A Clockwork Orange retains its infamous status despite being a widely-seen and praised film, it’s almost easy to forget that Straw Dogs was as controversial as it was when it first hit screens. Although it’s now a celebrated and canonical film, even remade by the Hollywood machine, on first release Straw Dogs almost brought the BBFC to its feet and proved one of the most controversial films in British cinema history.
Straw Dogs is Sam Peckinpah’s adaptation of Gordon Williams’ novel, The Siege of Trencher’s Farm. It stars Dustin Hoffman as mild-mannered American mathematician, David Sumner, who is spending research leave in Cornwall with his wife, Amy (Susan George), who hails from the area – escaping from the violent climate of America as well as getting away to work on his book. Once there, David very quickly finds himself at odds with the locals, in particular Charlie Venner (Del Henney), Amy’s former flame. As the blissful veneer of Amy and David’s relationship begins to crack, particularly after a violent assault on Amy, the tensions between David and the locals escalate. When David defends a local man accused of murder (David Warner), he must face off in a violent confrontation with Charlie and the other locals.
Is controversy alone enough to merit discussion of a film on ostensibly a horror-focused website? Not in my book – but in the case of Straw Dogs the film was, in the UK at least, very much received and talked about as though it was a horror film. Critics would often refer to the film as a horrific, or compare it to grand guignol or Hammer, and while by today one of the dominant generic points of reference for the film is the Western (particularly given Peckinpah’s filmography) its links to the horror film shouldn’t be forgotten. Much like the critic who coined the term ‘New French Extremity’ took umbrage with ostensible art films borrowing genre conventions, so critics seemed hostile to the outright violence of Peckinpah’s film – particularly having set his film in gloomy ol’ Blighty. Peckinpah could keep his violence and his tropes within the confines of his Westerns and his country, but bring that sort of things to Cornwall and suddenly our cultural guardians draw swords.
The initial critical reception of the film in the UK ranged from indifferent to downright hostile, but where that hostility really ended up being directed was at the BBFC. While Peckinpah was seen as the figure responsible for making such an abhorrently violent film, the real vitriol felt by some critics was directed at the BBFC, an organisation that was supposed to ‘protect’ the British public from films like Straw Dogs. Such was the strength of feeling that 13 film critics signed their name to a letter written to The Times newspaper attacking the BBFC for releasing a film which they believed to be “dubious in its intention and excessive in its effect” (the letter was printed December 17th, 1971). These critics were particularly miffed because the BBFC had refused a certificate to the much artier Trash, a film which, for the BBFC, glorified drug-use, and they had audience research to back up their decisions. While various moral guardians on either side of the argument were furiously to-and-fro-ing in the newspapers, Straw Dogs was racking up big money at the box office, and no doubt the controversy surrounding it helped plenty.
While Straw Dogs is still troubling for its dubious double-rape scene, and in many re-appraisals of the film it’s that which is singled out as the cause of its controversy, it was, in fact, the film’s violent conclusion that really troubled the critics back in 1971. Not that the pivotal scene of Amy Sumner’s assault went without comment, but it was David Sumner’s near-obliteration of the gang of men which attacks his home that really bothered the critics’ sensibilities. Some critics would even over-state the extent of the violence at the end of the film, which was likely not helped by the film’s own marketing doing the same – the UK tagline, “the knock at the door meant the birth of a man and the death of seven others,” is incorrect! Seen now the film’s conclusion might seem mild (even by Peckinpah’s standards) in terms of its violent content, but in the context of the film it’s no less powerful as a devastating close to a damning film. The BBFC actually had more of an issue with the depiction of rape in the film than the conclusion, and their advice during the film’s post-production resulted in a shortening of the second assault on Amy, which caused some issues of its own, notably that the exact nature of Scutt’s attack on Amy became unclear. If the BBFC’s pre-cutting made the scene more ambiguous, the American censors cut the second assault on Amy almost entirely – which makes a huge difference to the way in which the film might be interpreted.
But, of course, it’s not just controversy that makes Straw Dogs a notable or memorable film. It had huge star power in both Dustin Hoffman and Sam Peckinpah, and boasts arguably the highlight of Susan George’s then-burgeoning career. It was Hoffman’s name which was plastered on all the posters, and the trailer focused entirely on David’s centrality to the film. David Sumner is a wonderful central character – a protagonist who becomes more of an antagonist with every subsequent viewing of the film. He’s a truly complex ‘hero’ for the film, and for all Peckinpah’s macho-authorial posturing, he always insisted that David is a villain. While Susan George’s Amy is often figured as nothing more than a woman to be abused by the men of the film (which she certainly is), she’s at least given the decency of a complex portrayal. It’s never quite clear how the hell Amy and David ended up together, but the power-struggle between them that may well have initially added the spark to the relationship seems already weary at the start of the film, and the proximity of her former life acts as a catalyst to the downfall of their relationship even before the horrific attack on her happens. It’s notable that Amy never tells David of Charlie and Scutt’s attack on her, but what’s more significant is that David never once asks her if she’s alright when she is clearly upset by something. Again, Peckinpah might have spoken about Amy in his macho-bullshit way when talking to the press (he said in an interview that some women are women and some are pussy, and Amy is pussy), he at least had the decency to depict Amy’s trauma in one of the film’s most effective sequences – trauma that her husband either ignores or fails to notice because he’s so wrapped up in his own sense of ego.
That’s the ultimate and complex tragedy at the centre of Straw Dogs – while we might root for David for his defense of Henry Niles, it’s hard to believe that he continues to do so out of belief that Niles is either innocent or diminished of his responsibility, but rather does so out of sheer egotistical pride. Nothing about David suggests that he would defend Niles for any selfless reason, and the confusion with which he leaves the film is entirely of his own making. Of course, David’s shortcomings don’t excuse the fact that Charlie, Scutt, Tom and the others are awful people as well, and the violence they represent on a daily basis in their village truly comes after them in the unlikely shape of a diminutive mathematician. These men destroy each other, but not without leaving casualties in their wake – primarily Amy, but several others in the village as well.
Following its release in 1971 Straw Dogs continued to be associated with controversy: it was double-billed in London cinemas in 1975 with Soldier Blue, and come the home video boom and the eventual introduction of the Video Recordings Act after the whole video nasties debacle Straw Dogs was one of many previously-certified films now effectively ‘banned’ (for home viewing) by the new legislation. Through deprivation the film was certainly reassessed and rehabilitated here in the UK – far from their forebears, critics would now bemoan that an important film like Straw Dogs wasn’t available to the public. It wasn’t until 2002 that Straw Dogs was finally passed uncut, and cemented its rehabilitation: while its first uncut release made the most of its controversial status, with a lengthy documentary even accompanying its first TV airing in 2003, releases since then have rather upped its ‘classic’ status. The 40th anniversary release of the film on DVD and Blu-ray even piggy-backed on the marketing of the remake released the same year, which is a sure-fire of indicator of the mainstreaming and genercising of a film’s reputation.
For all the cleaning up of its reputation, though, there’s no denying that Straw Dogs remains an immensely challenging film and something of a cinematic masterpiece. There’s something to be said for revisiting a film which depicts the destructive outcome of egotism and territorialism in a climate which seems to be raising individuals who fit those sorts of attitudes to positions of horrifying power. If there’s any one character in the film who we can really sympathise with, it’s young Janice Hedden (Sally Thompsett). She ends up dead not because of Henry Niles’ mental illness, but because of the utter failure of the community around her and around him – the Toms, Charlies and Davids of the film’s world let Niles, Janice, and even Amy down. When David defiantly states that he will “not allow violence against this house” – disregarding Amy’s pleas as much as the threat of the men outside – it’s one of the most iconic scenes of the film. The more telling line of dialogue what comes before: “this is my house. This is me.” While on the one hand David fancies himself a moral pacifist throughout the film, what he persistently reveals himself to be is an egotist. For all Peckinpah’s posturing, and his positioning by others, as some sort of sadistic and macho filmmaker, he crafted a film entirely critical of the same traits in his protagonist, and created a classic by doing so.
Much of the information in this piece is drawn from the research I conducted while writing my PhD thesis, where Straw Dogs was once of my case studies. For an excellent and accessible summary of the film and, in particular, its production history and reception in both America and the UK, take a look at Stevie Simkin’s Controversies: Straw Dogs, published by Palgrave-Macmillan.