Straw Dogs

This harrowing investigation of trauma, violence, and victimization is one of the most controversial films of the 1970s, as well as one of the most frighteningly effective thrillers ever made. Dustin Hoffman gives one of his finest performances as a mild-mannered American mathematician who moves with his British wife (Susan George) to a drab town in the Cornish countryside where they endure escalating humiliations from the hostile locals—culminating in a horrifying home invasion and a night of shocking violence. The darkest and most disturbing of Peckinpah’s films, Straw Dogs also contains some of the director’s most accomplished filmmaking. His control over the steadily mounting dread and ability to suggest violence lurking at every turn are Hitchcockian in their mastery.