Straw Dogs - A Cornish Western

Released the same year as Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and Siegel’s Dirty Harry, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs was a controversial exercise in macho generalised and sexual violence. It doesn’t make for easy viewing, but it’s a very well-crafted conscience-baiting thriller that whether you like it or not will have you forming an opinion or several opinions by the end. Essential debate-generating genre classic or reprehensible and dangerous slice of thoughtless exploitation. Your right of choice to watch, your place to decide. As it stands for the moment, anyway.