Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs": C or D? (SPOILERS!!)

'Course what a mathematician's protecting is the r00l 0v 14W. Which makes sense for y'know, a mathematician -- & the theme really is that ethics are only worth as much as the savagery backing them up.

I saw RING last week and noticed that the ex-husband's student does the opposite on his chalkboard. and I couldn't remember what it was like. and then I did.

I think the rape scene is pretty much Peckinpah being Peckinpah. He was a sexist fellow, as women who worked on his set have testified over the years. He did not like having a woman Asst. Director or having women on his sets, and Susan George herself said he wanted to have her character sodomised in the scene in question. Why? Because that's Peckinpah for you. At a university lecture one female student approached Sam and asked for career advice and he told her to make the coffee - that's what women do on sets.

In light of this documentation of Sam Peckinpah it never fails to amaze me that people still ponder about his true motivation for the rape scene in Straw Dogs. It's titilation - Susan George is beautiful and I find it deeply troubling that she is presented as a fuck object from the beginning of the film onwards. I also think you're skating on very thin ice when you show a woman enjoying this violation. Surprisingly, the BBFC will let Straw Dogs through uncut but still insists on cutting The Last House on the Left and the admitedly inferior I Spit on your Grave, though both of these films present rape in a far more believeable and honest manner (I'd advise the more interested party to read feminist author Carol Clover's discourse on the representation of women in the horror genre: "Men Women and Chain Saws"). I'm glad Straw Dogs is available uncut - Peckinpah may be a misogynist but why deny him his voice - but I retain my right to be repulsed by it.

I also think Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch is an offensive film because of the use of real horses which you can quite clearly see falling and breaking their necks in choice scenes. Really, I don't enjoy his cinema at all.

one of the things peckinpah does which almost no mainstream directors do is show you strongly dislikeable characters as protagonists who he wants to get you to face and understand and think about, rather than just easily side with (or against): so when calum says he found this particular aspect of this film "troubling", my guess wd be that peckinpah WANTED viewers to be troubled by this, and to look into themselves and work out the nastiness of their own feelings as well as the easyreach pat-yrself-on-the-back goodness — ie that calum saying this wd mean peckinpah wd say "hooray it worked, be troubled, you should be!!", rather than "oh no! i thought everyone agreed w.me that all women are sex-robots!"

(on the other hand, like i say, i never saw SD, so maybe it *is* just deliverance in the west country — there does always seems to be super-hokey stuff cut into the difficult stuff in peckinpah) (i kind of like deliverance but it is SO easy-option in respect of yr allegiences, like UGLY YOKELS ARE BRAINLESS and INTERBRED and EVIL shout shout, while the hunting party are cookie-cutter nice guys forced to be admirably tuff zzz zzz)

I'll say as an example of directing skill, Classic. Story, dud.

the basic point stands though, because it's common sense: if someone is known to be highly intelligent and an ornery troublemaker violently unwilling to make the films the studios want him/her to make, and s/he makes a film you the viewer find troubling, then you have to consider the possiblity that s/he WANTS you to be troubled, and if you just shrug it off as trivial prejudice on their part, then you're making things far too easy for yourself, sentimentalising your own taste, as it were (not that we don't all do this: pauline kael certainly did)

unusually for a hollywood director, peckinpah made films about fairly horrible people (well, the men, anyway), and he took them seriously as people: i think that's interesting in itself, even though i tend to end up feeling "what the hell am i doing watching all these horrible people?"

Anyway, all I'd say Mark is watch it. I think, however, you're crediting mainstream directors with more responsibility than you should. As I said, I consider The Last House on the Left to be a more powerful and shocking film than Straw Dogs. It's not a better made one, but it makes its point better. If you're trying to make out that Peckinpah made a film which can only be suitably analysed and appreciated by middle class intellectuals (and I'm not sure you are to be fair, but this is the way this thread is going) then it's time to acknowledge than anyone and everyone was watching Straw Dogs when it came out and for one reason: Peckinpah caused a huge stink by showing a rape scene where the woman enjoys it. In doing this he paved the way for all sorts of misogyny on screen in the 70s. If you've read about Peckinpah's private life then surely you are aware he had little respect for women anyway?

I find many of the more challenging American films made in the 70s to be low budget underground flicks anyway (Romero's Martin, Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Craven's Last House on the Left) and in comparison to something like Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Straw Dogs really is a dull, floundering mess of a movie.

I thought that, too, but watching the scenes between Amy (Susan George) and the yokels leading up to the rape scene, it's interesting how much more neutral her behavior actually is.

a) There's a scene early on where the thug who was her ex-lover is talking to her in the car while she waits for David (Hoffman) in the pub. He begs her to come back to him, and when she says it's in the past, he grips her forcefully around the neck. She tells him to take her hands off her, very clearly no flirtation in sight.

b) There's a scene where she playfully talks to Scutt and Cawsey (two of the thugs) as they are resting from work on the stone wall, and Hoffman is watching them all from the house. But this could be very easily interpreted more as a platonic, non-sexual interaction between people who grew up in the same village.

c) There's a scene where she adjusts her skirt as she's getting out of the car, while the 4 thugs watch her. It is indisputable that she is fully aware they are watching her, but the smirk on her face is not one that is inviting them; it seems to be one of disgust for them.

d) Finally, there's the key scene where, after fighting with Hoffman, she walks in full view of the thugs from the upstairs window topless. This is much like c), because she is fully aware they are there, but again the look on her face again is not really one of beckoning them or being slutty; it is one of contempt.

So, given those scenes, I'd argue her behavior represents a complete passive-aggression against Hoffman, not partial, particularly with d), which comes right on the heels of a significant argument with Hoffman's character. She's using her sexuality predominantly (perhaps exclusively) as a tool to strike back at her husband, not really because she wants the yokels because they are "more manly". In other words, the amount of rage she deep down feels towards her husband trumps all else. And what is grim about the movie is that the amount of rage that mousy Dustin harbors is even more brutal than hers (or anyone else's)...

as fr. calum's point about a woman "enjoying" rape i like *really* don't want to get into this especially since this is pretty much guys on this thread thusfar, but since he keeps pressing it i'll just note that one of the first things rape counseling always sez is "don't be ashamed if the biological response of yr. body betrays you -- it doesn't mean you've been any less violated" and leave it at that. there's apparently a french film as disturbing if not moreso on this count making the rounds, but whose name i forget. (haha that sentence could be said about any count in any year ever though i think, oh those kooky french).

The reason the film isn't deliverance I think is that Peckinpah doesn't show hoffman's violence any more "noble" than the townsfolks' I think. & finally I'm curious what mysogeny Calum attributes "straw dogs" as paving the way to (I'm sort of eclectic with my knowledge of cinema and official historic trends and etc).

I would agree with this. but still in a way I was rooting for him at the end.

anyway here's a chunk:
"As the film's central image of 'normal' femininity Amy is always already corrupted. She refuses David's authority, but aligns herself nowhere else. She opens doors and invites danger in. She fails to stand by her man, yet even here she cannot be cast as a feminist heroine, for this failure is only one aspect of the way in which she hovers between active disobedience and feckless unreliability — she is even unreliable as to whether she will disobey. This is perhaps cleearest in her double response to the double rape, as she embraces one, then tries to refuse the other. If Straw Dogs seems at first to rely on a simple model of heterosexual desire, the figure of Amy foregrounds the possibility that heterosexuality and feminity are seldom pure and never simple."

"Amy's impulses position her between sides. Husband and wife are on the inside, the villagers without, but it is Amy who tries to open all the doors: 'If you won't give them Niles I will,' she says. 'I told you I won't help you.' David's battle with the enemy without is clear-cut; his battle with the enemy within is anything but. As the camera darts from one side of the wall to the other, taking the part of both sides, the film is refusing, visually, to choose between one or the other, just like Amy. For all its rampant misogyny, this refusal means that, in a curious way, it actually ends up on Amy's side (which is no 'side' at all). This is not simply a film which allows her to be leered at, humiliated, raped, and then drawn into the worst violence, although it does do all of those things. Nor is it a film which, after abusing its heroine, then celebrates with and through her the final act of brandishing the gun and using it (it is Amy who dispatches the last victim with a shot-gun): there is no identification with any victim-turned-victor. Instead, the whole is constructed round an ambiguous set of responses of which Amy is the prime focus, an ambiguity which is also cinematographic, present in the astonishing editing techniques, and in strange dialogue put into the mouths of several otherwise morally-grounded characters. The obdurate perversity of of the project lies not merely in its characterisation of Amy, but in the way which she functions as a crystallisation of the film's wild techniques and unsettling undecideability."

Mark S: "i kind of like deliverance but it is SO easy-option in respect of yr allegiences, like UGLY YOKELS ARE BRAINLESS and INTERBRED and EVIL shout shout, while the hunting party are cookie-cutter nice guys forced to be admirably tuff zzz zzz)"

This isn't entirely fair, I don't think. In the early scenes where the 'nice guys' first meet the yokels, it's the city slickers who come off looking like obnoxious jerks, particularly fatty Ned Beatty, who sort've represents urban self-indulgence and greed - he was asking for it!

The French film you're talking about is Base Moi by the way, which I've yet to see.

And Sergio Leone and Italian cinema in the 60s/70s most certainly did not show women enjoying rape. What films are these exactly?

As I said, it's funny that the BBFC has now released Straw Dogs uncut but will censor Last House on the Left or I Spit on Your Grave - both more realistic and harrowing depictions of rape. 70s cinema had scenes of very aggresive misogyny, including Emmanuelle (which features a similar 'woman is raped but she asked for it and ends up liking it anyway') and such hardcore films as Sex Wish and Forced Entry. All arguably Peckinpah's bastard offspring. You've also got grindhouse films such as The Toolbox Murders and Don't Answer the Phone (the beginnings of the 'woman in jeapordy film which would reproduce like a cancerious genital disease in the 80s) as well as less well known titles such as Snuff and Ilsa She Wolf of the SS.

i tend to agree that she's not exactly vibrant writer, and buries strong ideas in tortuous prose-style: as i haven't seen the film, i don't know if the ideas are right or wrong

>I'm curious--how are the protagonists in "Wild Bunch" (one of the greatest of all films, IMHO) "unlikeable"? How is James Caan's character unlikeable in "Killer Elite" (or for that matter Burt Young's in same film)? SP's movies are all about the correct response to violence--professionalism, camaraderie, all that old-fashioned stuff. Did horses really get injured in "Wild Bunch"? Very odd thread here.

most blatant example of what Andrew's talking about that i can think of = High Plains Drifter, but that's Eastwood's own spaghetti pic, not Leone's. (agree with Andrew that Deliverance is getting a slightly unfair bashing here)

that wi11iams excerpt is interesting. from what i remember of SD and various pieces i've read on it, the central conflicts and the conclusions that might be drawn from them are kept fairly open-ended, so right vs. wrong might not even apply to her reading - at any rate trying to chart out a sympathetic feminist take on Peckinpah can't be easy work.

The Gorch brothers, IIRC, are wanted for rape if you look at their "Wanted" posters. During one the gunbattles, Dutch (Ernest Borgnine) makes no bones about using a woman civilian to shield him from gunfire. Pike (William Holden) knowingly abandons Crazy Lee to what will be certain death during the first gunfight, and almost would have certainly have abandoned Angel to Mapache, if not for the change of heart brought about by Dutch's objection.

i am much older and more easygoing than when i last saw it, so probbly i will love em :(

Interesting argument that the commentary guy makes on "Straw Dogs" is that he believes with "The Wild Bunch" (which he concedes is still a great film) Peckinpah ultimately failed in the message he was trying to deliver, because the violence DOES become heroic at the end (I guess, in part, due to the demands of its genre). He says that by "Straw Dogs", Peckinpah had learned from his mistake in the "Bunch", and was more careful to make the violence more grim and nonheroic (or at least that's what he argues).

He goes on to say that Kael & similarly-minded criticisms (and interestingly, he cites reviews that both praised and trashed the movie, at the time, based on their interpretation that it is espousing the ‘Caveman philosophy’) only hold true if one is making the assumption that David (Dustin Hoffman) is the 'hero' of the movie (i.e. someone we are cheering for), and he claims that Kael and the others did so because it was in keeping with the standard orientation of that time (I think, that the audience kind of by default goes with the protagonist). But, the commentator argues that David is actually the villain of the movie, and there are no heroes in it.

I find it amusing that someone would be against professionalism and camaraderie, all that shit...OK, hmm. Naw, we don't need none of that in this mod-ren world.

In "WB" the Bunch are mercenaries, sure...and the whole world they're moving in is kinda rough, wouldn't you say? I find the word "likeable" in this context a little how you say boorz-wah? Compared to the other bad men in the film, they're far more humane. As is "Killer Elite" and the last Peckinpah film "Osterman Weekend," that damn shit professionalism is just about the only thing separating the corporate sleaze from the individualists, all of whom are after the cash--it's how you do it that matters in the world o' Peckinpah. In my experience most folks need to make a living and it's not usually pretty, so I agree with Bloody Sam that style matters, all that.
Also like SP because his films confuse both "liberals" and those over on the right--good.

Kael writes about "Killer Elite" as an allegory of SP's relationship w/ Hollywood. Gig Young being a man of feeling who is trapped in a bad gig...and Burt Young representing loyalty. In that film the nurse who helps Caan get healthy again doesn't seem to me to be represented in a sexist way, unless you think the medical profession is just a haven for little ol' homemakers...and I believe in "Osterman" one of the little gals is purty proficient with bow and arrow...in between making cakes and giving great blowjobs, of course.

I think he's a great filmmaker. As far as westerns go, I generally am indifferent to them...even to John Ford. But Leone's greatest film "Once Upon a Time in the West" and "Wild Bunch" coming in '69 seems somehow appropriate (read Ethan Mordden on them in his excellent book on '60s films "Medium Cool").

jess the camaraderie thing wz a joke obv

His name is Stephen Prince--he has written a book entitled "Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies"

the film is basically an American redneck horror film transplanted to England for no obvious reason. It does not feel true to its English setting, although this might be less apparent to Americans.

I fundamentally like it as a film, albeit with reservations. It does brooding menace very well. I don't like its "women like being raped" schtick - Calum is right, the Susan George character does plainly love it when the first guy rapes her. That is perhaps the kind of thing that film and video censors should excise from films.

But, the commentator argues that David is actually the villain of the movie, and there are no heroes in it.

that's the way I've always read the movie. peckinpah's attempt to reach for something beyond fabulist morality.

I think peckinpah took amy's rape seriously within the context of the movie, and not just as an affront to david's manhood. the scene where amy has to mingle socially among her attackers, and the dissociation it causes her, is one of the most chilling depictions of rape's aftermath I've seen.

has a single woman posted on this thread?

want me to get my wife to post here? she missed some chunks of the movie tho

only if you put on your glasses and drag her by the hair

ironically, after skipping about 20 minutes at the beginning of the movie to go take a shower, she came back during the rape scene and got all wtf is this shit

I think "villain" is too easy (how is that NOT "fabulist morality"?). Anti-hero works better, and does more justice to the confliction and confusion Peckinpah shows in the film. If he wasn't actually working out the issues for himself in the film, and just making a clear-cut damnation of malehood intellectual and otherwise that haters are just too stupid to get, the film wouldn't be half as powerful.

The quotes from Williams that Mark S posted I think get to the root of this better than anything else I've seen about the film.

the more I read the thread above the more I'm astounded at how some people apparently watch movies

don't pay any attention to calum, total bozo

(altho as I noted in my first post the assertion that this film should be censored = NO FUCKING WAY)

yeah but calum is one of about five different posters claiming amy enjoys the rape and david is a hero!

(also A. Nairn = reactionary Jesus nut)

I don't know most of the other posters besides mark s and Sterling - kinda surprised at Sterling's posts honestly.

(sorry not Sterling, Anthony Miccio - I'm gettin people mixed up here)

I think "villain" is too easy (how is that NOT "fabulist morality"?).

that's fair, but I was focusing more on the "no heroes" part of the equation than on the villainy.

> has a single woman posted on this thread?

FWIW, Dana Knowles is a chick, or as radical feminists prefer, a chyck.

Great:

Screen Gems has set Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard to star alongside James Marsden in "Straw Dogs," a reimagining of the 1971 Sam Peckinpah film.

Rod Lurie wrote the script and will direct. Shooting is scheduled to begin in August.

Marsden plays a Hollywood screenwriter who relocates with his wife to her hometown in Mississippi. Bosworth plays the wife, who left the South for LA. to become an actress and returns home so her husband can finish his script in quiet. Skarsgard plays her high school boyfriend, an ex-football hero who sees the return of his former girlfriend as a way to reclaim glory.

Bosworth, most recently seen in "21," next stars in "Warrior's Way." Skarsgard is playing the badass vampire Eric Northman in HBO's "True Blood." Before that, he starred in HBO's "Generation Kill."

Marc Frydman and Lurie are producing through their Battleplan Prods. banner. Gilbert Dumontet, who brought the project to Screen Gems, is executive producer.

"reimagining"

Strawier Dogs

fuck hollywood

Hah! I was watching the tube about a month ago when a doc about the newly-released (a remake I didn't know was in the works) "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" came on. They cut to Tony Scott mouthing a few soundbites, and I'm going "Come on, say it..." and sure enough, right on cue: "It's not a remake as much as a reimagining." Even their denials of their unoriginality have become unoriginal.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with recycling stories ... but its a shame how badly most of them are handled.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with recycling stories ... but its a shame how badly most of them are handled.

i would kinda just prefer that they ripped things off, with arbitrary changes to details, sometimes.

you mean like setting Assault on Precinct 13 on Mars, with aliens

I would kinda just prefer if they recycled a story or remade a movie that they improve on it, as opposed to make a crappier one.

xp Ghosts on Mars was an ok movie.

How many of these Sarsgards and Sarsgaards and Skarsgards are there in Hollywood, anyway?

First trailer for the remake is out:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/strawdogs/

I know, lol trailers not being accurate representations, but yeesh. A woefully miscast James Marsden! Bear-trap foreshadowing! Exploding cars! Foregrounding everything that was subtext! Duck hunting is now deer hunting! Bad Guy is unambiguously bad! This is going to be terrible!

On the positive side, moose hit-and-run.

a remake of straw dogs???? jesus.

wtf, this is horrible

Screen Gems logo!!

find it very odd that anyone thought this was a hot property just begging for a remake

Well, it is Rod Lurie. He isn't real bright.

This movie has been in the can for eons, hasn't it?

OMG, Marsden's character is a "LA screenwriter!?" This is like "Bonfire of the Vanities"-level casting wrong.

This Ole Bornedal movie also pretty much turned into a Straw Dogs remake in the second half (as does this trailer):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K51Uv_tFpbQ

I found out about this the other day...WTF WTF. I reached for my gun only to realize I dont have one. Note to self: buy a gun.

Hollywood is running out of ideas. Remaking a classic film with B actors does not surprise me the least.

Hollywood needs to get its creative license revoked

http://i.imgur.com/VB2J8.jpg

lol

It is my dream to have a movie starring only Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard and Peter Saarsgard.

maybe they can do the wild bunch next with ryan reynolds and jonah hill

lol

It is my dream to have a movie starring only Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard and Peter Saarsgard.

Strawgard

Highlander: The Gard-ening

man that fucking cast.

kind of reminds me of the straight-to-video beyond a reasonable doubt remak starring, uh, jesse metcalfe, amber tamblyn and, for good measure, michael douglas. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183251/

and orlando jones!!

when i say straight-to-video i mean 'played in one los angeles theater for a week to satisfy contractual obligations, then went directly to DVD'

xpost

has anyone actually seen that movie?

"You really don't care, do you?"