It’s taken absolutely ages for Rod Lurie’s remake of ‘Bloody’ Sam Peckinpah’s classic, Straw Dogs, to see the light of day. If you thought it was gonna be all clotted cream and shotguns again, you’d be wrong. The Screen Gems release has relocated the action to the US and the deep South.

The 1971 original pitted an American academic played by Dustin Hoffman against some Cornish weirdos when he moves to the area with his wife. The geek finds his inner psycho – and a shotgun – and kicks off. The third act is a little like Night of the Living Dead but with mad locales and an even madder central character shooting stuff and yelling “I will not allow violence against this house!”

Straw Dogs caused controversy in the UK due to a rape scene in which it implies the female character, the academic’s wife and local lass, is getting off on it a little bit. The remake has got a fine cast in James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgard, James Woods, Dominic Purcell and Willa Holland.

One can’t help but feel the relocation is going to make this a little less unique. There will be Cornish pasties has been replaced with there will be yokels. A new image has appeared online via Yahoo! depicting what looks like a tense scene involving Marsden’s lead character, David Sumner.

“David and Amy Sumner (James Marsden and Kate Bosworth), a Hollywood screenwriter and his actress wife, return to her small hometown in the deep South to prepare the family home for sale after her father’s death. Once there, tensions build in their marriage and old conflicts re-emerge with the locals, including Amy’s ex-boyfriend Charlie (Skarsgård), leading to a violent confrontation.”

US Release: 16th September, 2011
UK Release: TBC
Australia Release: TBC

Source: Bloody Disgusting.