Straw Dogs (DVD)

In this thriller, perhaps Sam Peckinpahs 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 Peckinpahs 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 hell go to protect his homeculminating in a harrowing climax that lays out this cinematic masterminds eloquent and bloody vision of humanity.