This film is part of Free

Straw Dogs at St Buryan

Actors talk of Straw Dogs while on location in Cornwall.

News 1971 7 mins

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Overview

Members of the cast are interviewed in St. Buryan Cornwall during a night shoot on the set of the film Straw Dogs. Sam Peckinpah's film is set in a small village in Cornwall and based upon the novel The Siege Of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams. American mathematician David Sumner played by Dustin Hoffman comes to live with his wife Amy played by Susan George in rural Cornwall. Amy’s ex-boyfriend and his friends take exception to an outsider marrying one of their own.

Straw Dogs contains a controversial sex scene and explores the theme of rape and retribution, which led to the film being banned from release on video or shown on television in the UK until 2001. At the time the film was notorious because films in general were getting perceptibly more violent in their content. Director Sam Peckinpah gained notoriety for his work which often dealt with conflict and corruption behind violence in human society and gave him the nickname of Bloody Sam.