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Friday March 29th 2024

Straw Dogs | 1971

Straw Dogs location: St Buryan, Cornwall
Straw Dogs location: the village square of ‘Wakely’: St Buryan in West Cornwall

Audiences and critics remain seriously divided over Sam Peckinpah’s ambiguous – to say the least – filming of The Siege of Trencher’s Farm. The 2011 Hollywood remake didn’t set the world on fire.

Straw Dogs location: St Buryan, Cornwall
Straw Dogs location: the village square of ‘Wakely’: St Buryan in West Cornwall

The violence isn’t as shocking as it seemed in 1971, but the rape scene is as disturbing as it ever was. And somehow Peckinpah’s Western sensibility doesn’t quite settle into the English West Country setting.

Straw Dogs location: St Buryan, Cornwall
Straw Dogs location: the kids play in the churchyard of ‘Wakely’: St Buryan in West Cornwall

Down in deepest Cornwall, pacifist mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) is pushed to defending himself with ultraviolence when local heavies lay siege to his isolated farmhouse.

Straw Dogs location: St Buryan, Cornwall
Straw Dogs location: locals congregate at the village pub in ‘Wakely’: St Buryan in West Cornwall

The village of ‘Wakely’ is St Buryan, on the B3283 a few miles west of Penzance, way down toward England’s southwestern tip at Lands End.

Unfortunately, the ‘Wakely Arms’, the village pub on the corner of Rectory Road, seen in the film has closed and is now a private house but, don't worry, you can get a pint in the St Buryan Arms, a couple of doors along the road.

‘Trencher’s Farm’ itself is Tor Noon, a private farmhouse (so the usual rules about not disturbing inhabitants obviously applies), about a mile south of the village of Morvah.