In 1971, Mary Whitehouse appeared at the Nationwide Festival of Light, speaking out against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence in Britain.Over in the US, a storm was brewing, that would hit these shores in the coming months, and provide plenty of extra work for Mary and her mission. Four films were released that would blow the debate wide open, split opinion, appall and enthrall in equal measure, and change the face of cinema forever.
The gentlest of the explosions was Dirty Harry, which you can see reviewed in an earlier post. Then came The French Connection, the first 'R' rated film to win the Oscar for Best Film. Then, two films so controversial they spent most of the next three decades banned in Britain. The first was Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. The second was Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs.
Dustin Hoffman plays David Sumner, a mousy American mathematician setting up home in Cornwall, where his new English wife grew up. They're supposedly there to escape the noise and violence of 'America', but their rural idyll feels distinctly queasy from the off. Filled with staring yokels, the village is like Royston Vasey with shades of that island in The Wicker Man (another Whitehouse-baiter that would appear on the scene two years later). There's the local paedo-mentalist, who hasn't been locked up because 'they deal with him their own way here', so spends his days playing football with minors. There's the belligerent, drunken village patriarch who literally seems to be the father or grandfather of most of the younger characters. There are the children - a bunch of manipulative creepy little shit-stirrers, and then there are the young men - ogling, threatening and decidedly more sinister as the film progresses. So far so creepy.
I should point out here that Hoffman's wife, played by Susan George, is well fit, and my gosh don't she know it. Flouncing around smuggling peanuts around the village, she instantly attracts the attention of the yokel lads tired of shagging their sisters, one of whom it seems she had a rather ambiguous childhood relationship with. To make matters worse, they're all working on the house where Hoffman and George are living, so spend most of their time staring at her tits through the window, and laughing at the rather pathetic, toothless Hoffman for not standing up to them.
The events that follow are to be watched on screen rather than read on a blog. I will say though that a key scene, the key scene for the censors, centres around an horrific act of violence towards Susan George, and the most shocking aspect is George's reaction to her treatment. Critics accused Peckinpah of sadism, misogyny and chauvinism in his direction, but the scene and the events that follow spark, in my view, a debate worth having. As for the film being a 'celebration of violence', that's just plain wrong. All the violence in the film is sickening, the clear and overriding message is that violence begets more violence, and the ending is bleak. There is little enjoyment and satisfaction from Hoffman's ultimate violent revenge spree, unlike so many Hollywood blockbusters that would have the audience whooping and cheering at similar scenes.
As a footnote, I've always thought Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was an incredibly violent film - if Kevin actually did all those things to Harry and Marv, he would have killed them both many times over. Well there's a large chunk of Straw Dogs that's a lot like the Home Alone films, except Hoffman uses a mantrap where Culkin used Micro Machines, and, when the invaders get beaten or stabbed or burnt or shot, in Straw Dogs, they actually die.
