text: A truly horrible film that left me feeling sullied by having watched the forty minutes or so I could stand. Not the actors' fault, but the writer/director, producers, financiers, etc., need a very stiff talking to. Maybe it thinks it is profound. It isn't. This rape and ultra-violence, unlike that central to Clockwork Orange, has nothing to say about or add to the sum of human understanding. It's no Straw Dogs, either, to which I have seen it compared. Rather it feels like something Pete Walker might have turned his hand to, yet even in saying that I'm probably being a bit unfair on Pete Walker.<br /><br />Revenge is a powerful human desire, but The Bedroom Window has more to say about that and male emasculation than this pitiful effort.<br /><br />I don't think it's particularly misogynistic, merely too gleeful in its depiction of certain details -- the blood running down GA's leg post rape, par example. It's neither challenging nor confrontational, though I'm sure the film-makers consider themselves very 'daring', just deeply unpleasant.<br /><br />Is this as high as we can aim? Is this why those involved wanted to make films? ( I did write in here the Latin phrase which translates as Oh the Times! Oh the customs! But the new spell-check on IMDb wouldn't let me post until I had removed it. Likewise I had to remove square parentheses. Get it sorted IMDb.)<br /><br />Where is the lofty aspiration? The noble impulse? When you look at British film - the joyful comedies of Ealing or the Boulting Brothers; Carol Reed's work with Graham Greene on Fallen Idol, Our Man in Havana or the sublime The Third Man (a film which has far more to say about evil than a thousand Straightheads); the work of Powell & Pressburger; or if you want to talk about sex, violence and male emasculation look at "The Offence' Dir. Sidney Lumet, from an original play by John Hopkins; check out "Tunes of Glory" for something worth making, that has something to say.<br /><br />Unlike the foregoing, Straightheads is, alas, an altogether hateful waste of celluloid.