Twickenham: Amerbroco Films, 1970

Final draft screenplay, pp. 147, various colours. Pale blue stiff paper wrappers, front wrapper printed in black, secured with three split pins to left edge. Inked number '80' to front wrapper, 'THIRD DRAFT' corrected by hand to 'final' on title page, many page corners turned down and scenes lined through as per industry practice. A well preserved copy.

FINAL DRAFT SCREENPLAY OF THE SIEGE OF TRENCHER'S FARM, LATER RE-TITLED STRAW DOGS. A WORKING COPY, USED ON SET DURING FILMING.

Heavily adapted by David Z. Goodman and Sam Peckinpah from Gordon Williams' novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm, Straw Dogs was released in the UK in 1971 directed by Peckinpah and starring Dustin Hoffman, Susan George and David Warner. Its graphic depiction of violence, especially sexual violence, made the film immediately controversial. But a scene in which Susan George's character appears to respond to a violent sexual assault in a welcoming way has kept the film controversial for the last fifty years. For many years it was denied a home video release by the British Board of Film Classification, and it ranks alongside The Exorcist, Death Wish and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as one of the most contentious and divisive films of the period.

The inked '80' to the front wrapper of the script will have corresponded to an employee on the crew list, identifying the script as his or her working copy. The script's completeness (few on-set departments use complete scripts, preferring to work from loose pages only), the dog-earing of page corners, the inking through of scenes as and when completed, and the many multi-coloured revised script pages the copy contains, all point to this copy having been the property of one of the films Assistant Directors.

We are aware of the existence of another draft of this screenplay, bound in maroon wrappers and dated 24 August 1970, which hitherto has been described as the final draft. This copy of the script, however, is dated 24 November 1970 on the title page: its printed designation is 'THIRD DRAFT', but 'third' has been amended by hand to 'final', and the script was then clearly used and regularly updated during filming.

A working script, in final draft, of one of the most controversial films of the 1970s.