Last Updated on July 31, 2021
Sam Peckinpah is one of my favorite directors and his film STRAW DOGS is my favorite film of his. I saw it when I was WAAAYY too young and it made me think "Is this what all adult movies are like?" Thankfully, content-wise, the answer turned out to be no.
It's really cool to report Straw Dogs will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 27 via The Criterion Collection. The 1971 thriller has been newly restored in 4K and includes the uncompressed monaural soundtrack.
The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Susan George as a couple visiting her home town, and after a violent sexual-assault, must fight off a group of townies that want their heads and the head of the alleged child-killer they harbor in their home. It is dark, dark sh*t.
On a special note, the disc includes the amazing Peckinpah documentary MAN OF IRON, which I have seen more times than any number of flicks I call my favorites. The documentary is worth the price of the Blu-ray in itself.
Full special features on the disc include:
Audio commentary by Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies author Stephen Prince (2003)
Mantrap: Straw Dogs – The Final Cut – Making-of documentary with cast and crew (2003)
Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron – Documentary featuring actors Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards, Ali MacGraw, and more (1993)
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 (new)
Archival interviews with actor Susan George, producer Daniel Melnick, and Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons
Behind-the-scenes footage
TV spots and trailers
Essay by scholar and critic Joshua Clover
STRAW DOGS synopsis:
In this thriller, arguably Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial film, David (Dustin Hoffman), a young American mathematician, moves with his English wife, Amy (Susan George), to the village where she grew up. Their sense of safety unravels as the local men David has hired to repair their house prove more interested in leering at Amy and intimidating David, beginning an agonizing initiation into the iron laws of violent masculinity that govern Peckinpah’s world. Working outside the U.S. for the first time, the filmmaker airlifts the ruthlessness of the western frontier into Cornwall in Straw Dogs, pushing his characters to their breaking points as the men brutalize Amy and David discovers how far he’ll go to protect his home—culminating in a harrowing climax that lays out this cinematic mastermind’s eloquent and bloody vision of humanity.
STRAW DOGS was directed by Sam Peckinpah, who also co-wrote the script, based on Gordon M. Williams’s 1969 novel, The Siege of Trencher’s Farm, with David Zelag Goodman. Dustin Hoffman and Susan George star.
STRAW DOGS hits Criterion Edition Blu-ray and DVD June 27.
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