is perhaps Sam Peckinpah's most divisive film; some viewers continue to worship at its altar, while others have written it off as worthless and repulsive. Dustin Hoffman plays an American mathematician who moves to a tiny, self-contained Cornish village with his voluptuous young wife Susan George. To say that Hoffman is a fish out of water would be giving him a break; the shy, bookish number-cruncher is treated with outright contempt by the local thugs, who while away the time singing songs about cohabiting with sheep. The bored George begins an affair with one of the locals, leading to an all-out assault against Hoffman and the gang-rape of his wife. Pushed to the brink, Hoffman takes a chilling, bloody revenge against his persecutors. The message seems to be "a man's home is his castle;" but, gee, Mr. Peckinpah, Bugs Bunny adhered to that same philosophy without attacking people with axes and burning gasoline. David Warner has a major role as a village-idiot type who becomes one of Hoffman's only friends; because a recent accident had rendered Warner a bad insurance risk, he was obliged to appear in the film without billing, lest the insurers cancel their policies. was based on , a novel by Gordon M. Williams.