5. Straw Dogs (1971)
Director: Sam Peckinpah Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughn
An American couple, played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, moves to the rural English countryside and runs afoul of the peculiar and suspicious locals. The end result amounts to a home invasion violently portrayed by Peckinpah, in Peckinpahs signature style. What happens next is as disturbing as anything offered up by Hollywood in the 1970s. Straw Dogs is a chilling commentary on how violence can turn even the most committed pacifist into something unrecognizably violent. The film is raw and uncompromising. Yes, the film is brutal and violent, and it manages to haunt us still more than 40 years later. Its a sobering character piece with Hoffman just entering the top of his game as one of the great actors of American cinema. Straw Dogs was remade in 2011 with James Marsden, Kate Bosworth and James Woods, and is one of those films that should not have been remade. Instead of improving on the original it only manages to come off as a grainy monochrome copy of a colorful masterwork by a masterful director.