Deliverance (1972)

Four businessmen take a canoe trip upriver into the backwoods, and there encounter unreasoning brutality in the shape of the most disgusting hillbillies ever seen on film, wherupon they fight for their own survival and turn the tables on the crazies. Any other director, especially with Burt Reynolds signed up for the lead, would have made this into a standard he man adventure movie, but John Boorman, adapting James Dickey's novel, goes for a more disturbing approach, always questioning what exactly the characters' heroism means, and finally concluding that Jon Voight, by finding in himself the bestiality to survive, has lost rather than won. With the unforgettably eerie 'Feudin' Banjos' scene, the genuinely creepy sight of Ned Beatty being made to squeak like a pig as he is raped, and an often imitated last minute horror twist. Reynolds, given a chance to rethink his good ole boy screen persona, gives as generously self critical performance as John Wayne does in The Searchers.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Fear

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