18. Straw Dogs (1971)
David Sumner is an American academic who has come to stay in rural Cornwall with his beautiful young wife Amy. There is tension between David and the locals. They never really accept him. They take to Amy though and violently sodomise and rape her. In the end there is a home invasion sequence where David defeats the local yokels with some stupidly hardcore acts of violence. Straw Dogs is an exciting film to watch. It is not without merit, with Peckinpah masterfully building up the tension between David and the locals. But at the same time, it is pretty reprehensible. The notorious rape scene is hard to watch and it poses a major problem in that Amy appears to submit to the rape and enjoy it. This is a dangerous precedent to set and many would call it highly offensive. Another problem exists in the final sequence where David is trying to fend off the locals from making a home invasion. There is some ridiculously OTT violence which could be seen as Peckinpah endorsing vigilantism. It was certainly an extremely problematic film for the British censors and was not released in its full form for over thirty years.