The Ballad Of Cable Hogue - A cute friendly movie where Peckinpah tried to get away from the violence of TWB a bit, not many people talk about this movie but it's worth seeing. If you get through the whole thing you get to watch Peckinpah put Strother Martin through one of the most embarrassing scenes I've ever watched in a movie at the end.
Straw Dogs - It's worth watching, I s'pose, because it held my interest and gave me a few things to think about, but as the years have gone by I've come to the conclusion that this film is best thought of as a watchable artistic failure. If it's meant as a statement against violence, it's a failure because the violence is too entertaining; if it's trying to implicate the audience for finding that violence entertaining, then the screenplay should not have contrived the siege at the end in such a way that neither side actually knows that David Warner's character killed the miniskirt chick (let alone that Hoffman would accidentally hit Warner with his car, thus necessating that he be brought home to begin with.) If Peckinpah wanted us to see the Dustin Hoffman character as the villain (he did say that, right?), the film is an even bigger artistic failure because few people these days are going to argue that he shouldn't have defended himself against the Cornish guys. Sorry, but it simply doesn't ring true that the Hoffman character's "ugly Americanisms" are of such great offense that he's worse than a bunch of yobs who'd kill his pet and buttf*ck his wife and get drunk and murder the local law enforcement officer. Finally, Dustin Hoffman's and Susan George's characters have what is easily one of the four or five least believable marriages in movie history, possibly only rivalled by John C. Reilly and Tilda Swinton in We Need To Talk About Kevin. Both this film and Last House On The Left got modern remakes that removed the moral ambiguity from the originals so audiences wouldn't have to feel anything when the bad guys suffer horrible deaths, which seems pathetic until you realize that neither of the original films did a terribly good job of showing post-violence remorse on the part of the winners at the end.
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid: I remember this as being good enough but I don't even remember if I watched the right version--I *think* I watched my mom's old VHS tape, actually, which explains why my main memory of the film is my dad making fun of Bob Dylan's "beens....lima beans" scene. Joe explained in labrynthine detail the differences between all the cuts of this, which left my head spinning. Whatever the case it sure does need a f***ing rewatch!!!
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