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
Siege of Eger (1552) of the people of Eger. It was not until the 19th century that the siege was seized upon by Hungarian writers as the basis of fictional accounts. The first was the poem "Eger" by Mihály Vörösmarty in 1827. The most famous account was by author Géza Gárdonyi who wrote his popular 1899 historical novel "Egri csillagok" about the events of this period. It chronicles the events leading up to and including the siege and tells the tale of Gergely Bornemissza, as well as Captain Dobó, and his co-commander István Mekcsey. During the 1960s the novel was adapted into a feature-length