History Film / StrawDogs1971

* GainaxEnding: The finale of the film after the violence leaves the outcome ambiguous about the Sumners' marriage, and David's state of mind:
-->'''Henry''': I don't know how to get home.\\
'''David''': That's okay. Neither do I.

* DeathByAdaptation: No one actually dies in the book.

* DaylightHorror: The cat scene uses its light source very effectively.

* BourgeoisBohemian: Part of the reason why the Sumners are resented by the villagers is their affectations. Amy for instance is keen on collecting rustic artifacts and other woodsy stuff for the Sumner's home (such as a mantrap), and likewise asks them to commission a bunch of stuff to affect a kind of Americanized idea of rustic English life, which these men take as being highly condescending. This is further emphasized in the scene where one of them brings up the violent unrest happening in America in the late '60s and '70s, and all David says that he only saw it "between commercials", i.e. as a white middle-class man, that stuff never affected him.

''Straw Dogs'' is a controversial 1971 British-American thriller film directed by Creator/SamPeckinpah and starring Creator/DustinHoffman.

The film centers around American math professor David Sumner (Hoffman), who moves to the small English village where his wife Amy (Susan George) grew up. Working on a book, David withdraws into his study for hours at a time while his bored and idle wife begs for his attention. Meanwhile, a group of blue-collar locals, one of them his wife's old flame, provide a constant threat to his manliness as they leer at his wife and mock him behind his back. As the workers become more invasive and threatening, Amy criticizes David for not confronting them and flaunts herself hoping to provoke her husband to action. When finally pushed too far, David stands up for himself in a shocking and violent finale.

* NerdsAreSexy: David is irresistible to his wife Amy (at least at first) and even attracts the eye of Janie Hedden who tries to steal him from his wife at the church gathering, only for David to look away (since for all his flaws, the guy is faithful to Amy).

* HobbesWasRight: Peckinpah has said the story is an exploration of the philosophy that at their core, everyone is violent. The siegers are simple and violent. David as an intelligent and civilized man has developed an aversion to violence, but once he is finally pushed past that, he is much ''worse'' than the siegers because he is intelligent about his application of violence. The reverend earlier in the story drawing a connection between David's scientific work and the development of nuclear weapons also reinforces the idea of civilization actually making violence worse.

* GainaxEnding: The finale of the film after the violence leaves the outcome ambiguous about the Sumners marriage, and David's state of mind:

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Straw_dogs_movie_poster_7935.jpg]]

''Straw Dogs'' is a controversial 1971 film directed by Creator/SamPeckinpah and starring Creator/DustinHoffman.

* BourgeoisBohemian: Part of the reason why the Sumners are resented by the villagers is their affectations. David for instance is keen on collecting rustic artifacts and other woodsy stuff for his home (such as a bear trap), and likewise asks them to commission a bunch of stuff to affect a kind of Americanized idea of rustic English life, which these men take as being highly condescending. This is further emphasized in the scene where one of them brings up the violent unrest happening in America in the late '60s and '70s, and all David says that he only saw it "between commercials", i.e. as a white middle-class man, that stuff never affected him.

** David himself [[spoiler: seems to be a distant husband, but his wife also seems to be quite needy. He takes a passive-aggressive approach to confrontations with his wife and the local toughs. In the end, he takes a stand to defend someone who, from his perspective is ''possibly'' guilty of manslaughter, but also because, in his own words, the thugs had gone ''way'' to far, and at this point would almost certainly kill them too.]]

In 2011, [[Film/StrawDogs2011 a remake]] starring Creator/JamesMarsden and Kate Bosworth was released. Please put tropes regarding that film [[Film/StrawDogs2011 here]].

* FourEyesZeroSoul: The famous poster of the film evokes this.

* BadassBookworm: David is a maths scientist at the outset, who everyone sees as a harmless pushover, and who his own wife seems to see as too much of a nerd but in the end of the film, he absolutely terrorizes everyone.
* BerserkButton: David finally snaps when the local toughs try to [[spoiler:invade his home and drag out a man for some vigilante justice]].

* SickeninglySweethearts: David and Amy start out this way, with Amy being unable to keep her hands off him, but eventually his patriarchal hangover, commitment to work, leads to trouble in paradise, ruined even further by him utterly neglecting his wife's discomfort about coming back home, and becoming worse and worse from there.

* TheSoCalledCoward: David spends most of the film allowing the local workers to walk all over him, and quarrels constantly with his wife. When the locals try to murder a guest in his house however, [[spoiler: he finally stands up to them and to his wife, who had openly called him a coward for not standing up to them earlier.]]

* TheMeanBrit: The Brits who terrorized the Sumners, especially Charlie and his roughneck buddies.

* VideoNasties: The film was never included in the official "video nasty" list, but was refused certification for home video release in the 1980s, and not allowed to be released until 2002. It was reported that part of the problem was that the cut versions originally submitted for video release had cut the pivotal rape scene in such a way that it implied that Amy entirely enjoyed the rapes, whereas the full-length version made it clear that she didn't.