FILM REVIEW OF ''THE STRANGERS" (2008)

Freshman writer & director Bryan Bertino's new horror movie "The Strangers" (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as an eerie, ominous, white-knuckled account of an after-dark home invasion. If you live deep in the woods where the plot unfolds, this nerve-racking, scream-inducing exercise in terror will make you think before you answer the front door at 4 AM. Horror fanatics that thrive on suspense, surprises, and blood-curdling chills in a plausible context will crave this gripping, low-budget, nail-biter. "The Strangers" is not a supernatural horror movie. Although "The Strangers" neither matches nor surpasses either Sam Peckinpah's violent classic "Straw Dogs" (1971) or Ruggero Deodato's horrific "The House on the Edge of the Park" (1980), both legendary home invasion epics that set the bar high for imitators, this Rogue Pictures Release has more than its share of virtues. Bertino uses silence to create suspense and alternates silence with the sudden appearances of the intruders in masks to build tension. Deep-fried gorehounds will complain about the shortage of blood and humor.

"The Strangers" opens with an anonymous "Dragnet" style narrator talking in a funereal tone. According to him, FBI statistics show one-point-four million violent crimes occur annually in America. He adds that intruders attacked both Kristen McKay and James Hoyt in their summer house at 1801 Clark Road, in South Carolina, on February 11, 2005. No such actual incident occurred, but the semi-documentary approach enhances the film's authenticity. Incredibly, Bertino lets the cat out of the bag at the beginning. Two Mormon boys on bikes in white shirts pedal up to 1801 Clark Road. They find a smashed up car in the driveway with its glass shattered and the house's front doors have been battered down. Abruptly, Bertino turns back the hands of time. Typically, this kind of anti-climactic strategy would blunt a movie's impact. Already, you know the outcome. Nevertheless, Bertino relies on our morbid curiosity—we gawk at accidents—to draw us into the events of this unspeakable crime.

Kristen (Liv Tyler of the "Lord of the Rings" movies) and her boyfriend James Hoyt (Scott Speedman of the "Underworld" movies) are guzzling champagne at a wedding reception. Sweeping her off her feet, he carries her outside where he proposes marriage. Kristen rejects James. They leave the wedding in his car. An oppressive silence isolates them from each other until they reach the summer house in the sticks that belongs to James' parents. Kristen finds rose petals scattered across the carpet leading to the bathtub. James confesses that his brother Mike (Glenn Howerton of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia") and he spent the morning preparing this reception. Kristen explains that she isn't ready for marriage. Later, the ice thaws between them. Kristen and James start to make out. This amorous interlude comes to an abrupt halt when somebody bangs on the front door. They glance at the clock; it's four in the morning. At the door, they meet a wayward young woman. She inquires about somebody that neither Kristen nor James know. After a moment elapses, the girl vanishes into the night.

Kristen asks about cigarettes and James drives off to buy them. While James is gone, the mysterious girl returns and hammers at the door. Kristen tries to ignore her. She finds a beer from the fridge. While she is musing about the evening's events, a man wearing a white flour sack turned inside out on his head appears in the background. Suddenly, Kristen spots him. She starts screaming. Our heroine locks herself inside a bedroom. She cowers there in fear with a steak knife in one bloody hand until James returns. He refuses to believe that anybody has broken into the house. James takes Kristen on a tour of the premises and shows her that they are alone. When James asks her about her cell phone, Kristen tells him that the intruders stole it. James checks his car and finds it in a shambles. He stares at a girl not far away wearing a Pin-Up Girl mask. Afterward, all Hell breaks loose.

What sets Bertino apart from Peckinpah and Deodato is that he pares everything down to its bare essentials. We know very little about the killers. They wear ordinary masks, and Bertino never reveals their faces. All he wants us to know is they are random, cold-blooded killers. Basically, they want is to corner somebody at home somewhere that they can torture and kill. Neither Kristen nor James has done anything to deserve their tragic fate. They are in the wrong place at the right time for our homicidal maniacs. Bertino keeps the story short, simple, but far from sweet. Liv Tyler is a scream queen natural, and Bertino paces the film for maximum impact. The assailants have a way of being everywhere at once, and their encounters with Kristen are guaranteed to shock. Bertino loves to let the intruders emerge unbeknownst behind our heroes or to tackle them out of the blue like a football linebacker. Indeed, Bertino leaves out so much that your typical hack horror director would wallow in that "The Strangers" seems comparatively poetic in his down-to-earth authenticity. Altogether, "The Strangers" will hoist your hackles and keep them hoisted during its brisk but hallowing 85 minutes.

FILM REVIEW OF THE REMAKE OF "STRAW DOGS" (2011)

Imitation, Mohandas Gandhi said, is the sincerest form of flattery. The ghost of Sam Peckinpah would be flattered by the new tricks that “Deterrence” writer & director Rod Lurie has taught the old “Straw Dogs” for contemporary audiences. Although it isn’t a carbon copy of the volatile 1971 melodrama, the new “Straw Dogs” (*** out of ****) replicates the original in many respects. Mind you, nobody could set aside Peckinpah’s gritty epic which still sparks controversy for its misogynistic sexual politics for feminists. Nevertheless, Lurie’s politically-correct remake polishes off the rough edges and makes everything objectionable in this frightening story palatable. In the process, he sacrifices some of the ambiguity that made Peckinpah’s messy masterpiece a more memorable movie. Naturally, the new “Straw Dogs” lacks the rabid ferocity of the Peckinpah picture. Nevertheless, the original and the remake both wound up with an R-rating for violence, sexuality, nudity, and profane language. Like the original, the remake features a vicious rape sequence, but Lurie depicts the assault with virtually no nudity. Specifically, the heroine’s private parts are not displayed. What may sicken some otherwise stout-hearted spectators more than the man versus man violence is the mysterious strangulation death of a white cat. Yes, the original had a similar scene where our protagonists found their pet cat dangling from their closet light cord. Otherwise, the new “Straw Dogs” boasts a gripping story, interesting characters, and some surprises that ought to keep audiences guessing throughout this unsavory saga. Along the way, Lurie has implemented some alterations. First, he shifted the setting to rural Mississippi and takes advantage of the tradition of southern violence. One of the few problems with the original was the lack of familiarity with the English setting. Hollywood has not made as many movies about sadistic English vigilantes as it has about xenophobic Mississippi racists. Second, the hero is a film scenarist rather than an astrophysicist. Third, the mentally handicapped supporting character is not as unsavory. Fourth, David and Amy have a stronger marriage. At the end of Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs,” the husband abandoned the wife because she had betrayed him during the home invasion.

Hollywood scenarist David Sumner (James Marsden of “X-Men”) and his gorgeous young wife Amy (Kate Bosworth of “Blue Crush”) return to her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi. Sumner has to pen a screenplay about the landmark twentieth century battle of Stalingrad, one of the turning points of World War II, and he wants to write it in the bucolic backwoods of the south. David and Amy met during a television series that he wrote for her, but the show has been canceled. Unfortunately, the Harvard educated David isn’t prepared for the reception that he encounters. Essentially, David is a fish-out-of-water. Not only does he discover that his debit card is worthless, but he doesn’t share the same relish for fried pickles as a delicacy that Amy’s friends do. One of Amy’s friends, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård of HBO’s “True Blood”), wants to resume their former relationship as lovers. She was a cheerleader, and Charlie was the star football quarterback under the guidance of old school coach Tom Heddon (James Woods of “Ghosts of Mississippi”) who made his players grovel. When he meets Charlie at the local watering hole, David makes the mistake of hiring Charlie and his redneck hillbilly pals to rebuild a garage on Amy’s property that Hurricane Katrina ravaged.

Charlie and his pals start work too early for David and things deteriorate from that point. One of Charlie’s crew, Bic (Drew Powell of “The Marine”), ambles into Amy’s house without an invitation and helps himself to a beer from the fridge. Amy thinks coming home is a vacation, but David is serious about his work. Amy aggravates matters when she jogs around the property without a bra. She reminds David that she dresses for him and he reminds her that he knows what she looks like without a bra. Meantime, Charlie interprets Amy’s behavior as solicitation, and he invites David—who knows little about firearms—to join them for a hunt. Charlie slips away and rapes Amy while David is occupied in the woods. Later, one of the town citizens, a mentally challenged man, Henry Niles (Dominic Purcell of “Prison Break”), accidentally kills Tom Heddon’s daughter. All chaos breaks loose. David shields Niles from a vengeful Heddon who demands that David relinquish him. Heddon persuades Charlie and his friends to help him storm the farmhouse and take Niles. Suffice to say; what ensues isn’t a picnic for anybody.

Lurie has done a splendid job of fleshing out the heroes and villains in a different locale. He lets the antagonism smolder, and then he orchestrates a savage finale where our hero takes no prisoners. One weapon that our hero wields was not available to the English yahoos who assaulted Dustin Hoffman. James Marsden wields an automatic nail gun with devastating results. Similarly, the English yahoos didn’t smash through the farmhouse with a pick-up truck. Comparatively, the Englishmen were armed with only one shotgun rather than an arsenal of high-powered hunting rifles. Marsden plays a different kind of nerd from the Hoffman hero. Lurie rewrote the Kate Bosworth damsel-in-distress role so that she possesses more maturity than Susan George’s petulant Lolita-like wife. Unlike the Hoffman-George marriage that strained credibility, everything about the Marsden-Bosworth union seems believable. As a couple, their characters seem far more compatible. We are told more about their back story than Peckinpah revealed about the Hoffman-George marriage. Meantime, Alexander Skarsgård and James Woods emerge as stronger villains than Peter Vaughn and Del Henney in the original. While the film relied on Gordon Williams’ novel “The Siege of Trencher’s Farm” for its source material, Lurie derived most of his inspiration from the David Zelag Goodman & Sam Peckinpah script. Lurie lifted several lines straight from the original, though he left out Hoffman’s memorable line: “I will not allow violence against this house!” For the record, although the action occurs in Mississippi, the filmmakers lensed the story in Shreveport, Louisiana. Nevertheless, as remakes rate, “Straw Dogs” qualifies as a breed apart.

A FILM REVIEW OF "STRAW DOGS" (1971)

Controversial filmmaker Sam Peckinpah forsook his traditional Old West setting for his sixth film "Straw Dogs" (***1/2 out of ****) to show how the most harmless milquetoast in the twentieth century could metamorphose into a man of extreme violence. Basically, Peckinpah explores the theme of survival of the fittest. British author Gordon Williams' novel "The Siege at the Trencher's Farm" served as the literary source. According to Peckinpah biographer David Weddle," Peckinpah did not like the Williams title so he changed it to "Straw Dogs." The Peckinpah title came from a quote in Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu's "The Book of 5,0000 Characters." The passage that Peckinpah cited was: "Heaven and Earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs: the sage is ruthless and treated the people as straw dogs. ... Is not the space between Heaven and Earth like a bellows?" According to Marshal Fine and Garner Simmons in their respective Peckinpah biographies "Blood Sam" and "Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage," actor Walter Kelly gave the director Tzu's quote. More than just the title changed as the filmmakers adapted the Williams novel. Initially, wrote Simmons, "Logan's Run" scenarist David Zelag Goodman penned two early drafts of the script. Goodman told Simmons about some of the differences between the novel and the film. Two of the minor changes concerned the protagonist; George Magruder was an English professor in the novel rather than an astrophysicist like David Sumner. The biggest change, however, was that no rape occurred in the novel. Furthermore, according to Simmons, Williams distanced himself from “Straw Dogs” because he hated Peckinpah's use of sex, not violence. Sex emerges as the stimulus for the conflict since two females in “Straw Dogs” are such nymphs that they are prepared to die for it.

Wimpy American mathematician David Sumner (a bespectacled Dustin Hoffman of "The Graduate") settles on a sabbatical in serene Cornwall, England, far away from the violence and unrest raging in America so he can work on a grant. When the villagers ask him if he has witnessed any of the turmoil in America, David replies that he only glimpsed the violence between the commercials on television. David's cryptic response and his subtle indictment of the media speaks volumes. The rustic British hamlet, where "Straw Dogs" takes place, was the hometown of David’s promiscuous wife Amy (Susan George of "Lola"), and their marriage appears to be deteriorating because his Lolita-type spouse wants him to pay more attention to her than the work with his equations on a blackboard in his study. Simmons quotes Hoffman who wasn't entirely sold on either the casting of Susan George as well as the notion that David would have wed such a selfish, shallow-minded dame. Indeed, the first time that we see Amy, she is traipsing through the village with no bra with an adolescent boy and girl following in her footsteps toting what appears to be huge steel-jawed animal trap. Apparently, Amy bought the trap as a birthday gift for her husband. Amy excites the locals with her no-bra-look. As it turns out, one of these locals is none other than her old boyfriend Charlie Venner (Del Henney of "Brannigan") who Amy hasn't seen in six years. Charlie helps David load the man-trap into their convertible Triumph coupe. Ironically, Charlie will later on have a close encounter with the unwieldy contraption before fade-out. Moreover, Charlie foreshadows the use that the bear-trap is put to when he observes that it was designed to catch poachers.

David hires Charlie to help Norman Scutt (Ken Hutchison of "Ladyhawke") complete the work on the roof of his garage on the basis that he knows Amy. What David has no way of knowing is that Amy and Charlie have a history as a couple. When Charlie makes a pass at Amy in the village, Amy deflects his advances, little knowing that David is watching them from the pub where he went to buy cigarettes. Meantime, these ruffians are more intent on watching Amy parade around bare-chested than perform their chores. At one point, Amy appears bare-chested so that they can see her and then she complains to David about how they practically licked her body. David's response is to acknowledge their good taste in women. Simultaneously, the locals are not sure about how to deal with David. They aren't too excited by David's preppy look, his white tennis shoes, and his glasses. Peckinpah makes a point of showing David's wardrobe from the perspective of one of the villagers. Of course, the local constable, Major John Scott (T.P. McKenna of "Red Scorpion"), and the Reverend Barney Hood (Colin Welland of "Villain"), treat David with kindness, but rough-hewn Tom Hedden (Peter Vaughan of "The Mackintosh Man") and his relatives reserve nothing but contempt for him. Eventually, Tom's evil relatives and their friends take David on a duck hunting trip. Basically, the hunt amounts to a snipe hunt, such as in the classic Robert Mitchum movie "Home from the Hill," and they abandon him in the wilderness. During this subterfuge, Charlie and his mate, ex-convict Norman rape Amy. Earlier, Chris Cawsey (Jim Norton of "Hidden Agenda") stole a pair of Amy's panties and flaunted them like a trophy in front of Norman. Norman observed that he had no use for her panties. Instead, he preferred to have what was in them. First, Charlie rapes Amy in a lovingly tender fashion. Second, Amy looks like she is enjoying the experience. This is the part of "Straw Dogs" that outraged feminists. Later, when Norman gets his hands on Amy, Norman shares none of Charlie's tender sentiments. A conflicted Charlie finds himself holding down Amy so Norman can sodomize Amy while she shrieks in agony. Amy doesn’t forget the humiliation of being raped and suffers through it flashbacks during the church party. Meantime, a simpleton, Henry Niles (David Warner of "The Omen") arouses trouble because he was not jailed for a sex crime. Charlie mentioned to Amy that they take care of their own, and Henry is allowed to roam the streets as long as he stays out of trouble. Nevertheless, Henry is seen playing with the children at different times during the action. Everything comes to a head during the church party when Tom's slutty daughter Janice Hedden (Sally Thomsett of "Baxter!") tries to take advantage of Henry after David wants nothing to do with her. Repeatedly, Tom has warned Henry's brother John Niles (Peter Arne of “The Pink Panther”) to keep an eye on his slow-witted brother. Says Tom, "Your brother; been hangin' around the girls again. You'd better keep a closer watch or we'll be puttin' him away!" This subplot is part of the narrative that Peckinpah and Goodman never provide much clarification about so that we know what Henry did that made him emerge as a threat to Tom.

The simple-minded Henry and Janice retire to a barn for their assignation. Clearly, poor Janice doesn’t realize that she is playing with fire. Henry kills her in a scene straight out of "Of Mice and Men" with a conspicuous lack of remorse. Later, on their way home from the church party, David collides with Henry because the road is shrouded in fog. Amy isn’t happy with David because he brings the injured Henry into their house. A drunken Tom and his mates show up at David's house and demand that he hand over Henry. David refuses and chaos ensues. When Major Scott tries to intervene, Tom kills him by accident and things degenerate into chaos. Amy wants David to hand over Henry to Tom and company, but our hero refuses. At the same time, he tries to maintain his nonviolence, but Tom and company sorely try him until he retaliates. David warns them in no uncertain terms. He says, "I will not allow violence against this house." By the time that the dust settles, Tom Hedden has blasted his own foot off with his shotgun. Charlie winds up killing Norman with Tom's shotgun, and Charlie stumbles into the man-trap as he is giving David a thorough thrashing. Indeed, everybody but David, Amy, and Henry survive this nightmarish fracas. Dustin Hoffman delivers a dynamic performance as a meek, mild-mannered man who achieves manhood during a baptism by fire. Peter Vaughn makes a nefarious villain. Vaughn's scene in the pub when David runs into him for the first time foreshadows Tom Hedden's sadism.

Several scenes stand out individually. First, Peter Vaughan's scene in the pub when he calls for another pint before the pub closes and then raises hell until he gets it sets him up as the chief thug. He doesn’t like David Sumner for the first moment that he sees him. The next interesting scene occurs when David careens in his Triumph between a truck and a bull dozer as the two approach each other. The villagers driving the truck flag David to pass them but then they accelerate so that he has to step on the gas to avoid hitting the bulldozer. Momentary though it is, this scene is exciting. Repeatedly, throughout the action, the villagers test David’s mettle. Peckinpah orchestrates the final quarter-hour for maximum suspense and tension. At this point, Peckinpah has established who the thugs are and their agenda. David has emerged as an individual who goes out of the way to avoid violence. When Tom and his mates launch their home invasion, David finds himself in a corner with his irritating wife goading him on to retaliate. The bloodiest that "Straw Dogs" gets is when a lout blows his foot to smithereens with his own double-barreled shotgun. Peckinpah foreshadows the use of a giant steel mantrap and his use of violence is still grisly but it seems toned-down but realistic compared with his classic western "The Wild Bunch." The ambiguous ending will prompt many interpretations. As David is driving the retarded Niles home, Niles says, "I don't know my way home." David replies, "That's okay, neither do I."

In some ways, "Straw Dogs" is reminiscent of those western movies where vigilantes storm a jail, abduct a prisoner from a lawman powerless to thwart them, and then lynch him. Watching Dustin Hoffman miraculously outsmart these five dastards makes this movie a sight to behold. Unfortunately, despite its lyricism, “Straw Dogs” was not a major Hollywood hit. Nevertheless, it showed that Peckinpah could make more than just westerns.