Straw Dogs (1971 film) days over schedule and $3 million over budget. Left with a limited number of directing jobs, Peckinpah was forced to travel to England to direct "Straw Dogs". Produced by Daniel Melnick, who had previously worked with Peckinpah on his 1966 television film "Noon Wine", the screenplay began from Gordon Williams' novel "The Siege of Trencher's Farm", with Peckinpah saying "David Goodman and I sat down and tried to make something of validity out of this rotten book. We did. The only thing we kept was the siege itself". "Straw Dogs" drew inspiration from Robert Ardrey's books "African Genesis" and "The
The Siege of Trencher's Farm for the book came from the panic and sense of siege where Williams lived in Devon when "The Mad Axeman" Frank Mitchell escaped from nearby Dartmoor Prison. Williams wrote the book in nine days – "he dashed off the final page to catch the post office van" – and received £300 from the publisher. "The List" included the book among its "100 Best Scottish Books of all Time", dubbing it "a deliberation on how traditional masculine values find a place in modern society". Author Ian Rankin wrote that "This novel is quite different to the eventual movie version, being a