“That’s not the Avon lady!”

Welcome to Re-make Mondays, a new weekly feature that will take a look at a remake/reboot currently being waved at audiences. I’ll feature the remake, and also what footage or content I can from the original, and then leave the helpless victim for you all to tear apart or cuddle up to in the comments. So, let’s get started:

Sam Peckinpah’s 1971 opus, Straw Dogs, stands as a monument to the psychological thriller genre to this day. As caustically violent as it is misogynistic, it was originally banned in the UK in its uncut version until 2002. Mathematician, David Sumner and his wife move to small town England where they soon stoke the ire of the village locals, to the extent that murder, rape and mayhem ensue. Even by today’s standards, it’s chilling viewing- slotting perfectly into that primal mistrust we carry for the strangers living but a wall and a door away from us.

I’d love to feature some of the footage from the original, but that’s going to harsh your Monday afternoon buzz a little, so here’s the trailer for the 1971 version:

Unusually, this is prime fodder for a re-make, since the theme of the casual, inexplicable hate of strangers versus a man defending his castle remains a universal one. This time the action is transplanted to small town Louisiana, and erstwhile X-Man, James Marsden, takes the role of David, the all too pragmatic protagonist who’s sensibilities, not to mention his spouse (played by Kate Bosworth), are brutally besieged by the local red necks (a stunningly disturbing turn from True Blood‘s Alexander Skarsgård is especially chilling here).

Here’s the 2011 take:

My Verdict:
These days, brutal rape and murder are the fodder for banal TV police procedurals, so you’d imagine modern audiences would be pretty de-sensitized to the horrors of small town hatred unleashed on the Sumners. Not so. From what I’ve seen of the re-make of Straw Dogs, the horror is as brilliantly caustic and visceral as it is in the original, with some jarring cinematography and performances making this a rare occasion where the re-make gets the Re-Make Monday stamp of approval.