9 Terrifying Movie Rednecks You Never Want To Meet In The Woods

6. David Sumner - Straw Dogs (1971)

œber violent flick from Sam Peckinpah which shows that rednecks do not solely dwell in the American South - they can exist in rural Cornwall. David Sumner (played by Dustin Hoffman) and his beautiful young wife Amy (Susan George) move to a small Cornish town so David, a mathematician, can get peace and quiet to do some research. Unfortunately this is a local town for local people, and David's presence raises the yokels' hackles. David is affluent, educated and has a beautiful young wife - everything these rednecks lack - so they make it their business to rape Amy in some very distressing sequences. At the end, the yokels' animosity towards David reaches such heights that he has to become a one man vigilante to repel a gang of rednecks. The rednecks think that David has helped a child abuser, but are ignorant as to their own hypocritical behaviour vis a vis the rape of Amy. They are true monsters and David's feat at the end of the movie - to successfully repel a home invasion by a bunch of the yokels - is a victory for his manhood over theirs. They may violate women but they cannot stand up to David's intelligence even on a violent level which is a language they understand but David is a novice to. David has the smarts to beat them at their own game. I found the ending quite cathartic as Peckinpah never evokes any sympathy for the rednecks during the movie but he paints Sumner as a pretty decent guy who does his best to fit in with these alien circumstances he finds himself in. Through the local yokels, Peckinpah shows us that hostile rednecks are a universal phenomenon and exist all around the globe - even in rural idylls.