Straw Dogs | 1971
- Locations |
- Cornwall
- DIRECTOR |
- Sam Peckinpah
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.
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.
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.
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.
