Deliverance was a critical and commercial success. It earned three Academy Award nominations and five Golden Globe Award nominations, and grossed $46.1 million on a budget of $2 million. It became a popular culture landmark for a scene featuring Cox's character playing "Dueling Banjos" on guitar with a banjo-picking country boy, and garnered notoriety for a scene in which Beatty's character is brutally raped by a mountain man. In 2008, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[1][2]
Plot
Lewis Medlock, Ed Gentry, Bobby Trippe, and Drew Ballinger are Atlanta businessmen who decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote northern Georgia wilderness before it is dammed. Lewis is an avid outdoorsman and survivalist who leads the group, and Ed has been on several trips but lacks Lewis's ego, while Bobby and Drew are novices. En route to their launch site, the men, in particular Bobby, are rude toward the locals, who are hostile to the "city boys". At a local gas station, Drew, with his guitar, engages a young banjo-playing boy in a musical duel. The duel is mutually enjoyable, and some of the locals break into dance at the sound of it. However, the boy does not acknowledge Drew when prompted for a friendly handshake.
The four friends travel in pairs and their two canoes become separated. Ed and Bobby encounter a pair of mountain men emerging from the woods, one carrying a shotgun and missing his two front teeth. Following an argument, Bobby is forced by the men to undress and the unarmed man rapes him, demanding he "squeal like a pig", while Ed is tied to a tree and held at gunpoint. Lewis sneaks up and kills the rapist with his bow and arrow while Ed snatches the shotgun from the other mountain man, who flees into the woods. After a heated debate between Lewis and Drew, Ed and Bobby vote to side with Lewis' plan to bury the body and continue on as if nothing had happened. The four continue downriver but the canoes reach a dangerous stretch of rapids. As Drew and Ed reach the rapids in the lead canoe, Drew falls into the water.
The canoes collide on the rocks, throwing the three remaining men into the river and smashing one of the canoes. Lewis breaks his thigh bone and the other two are washed ashore alongside him in a gorge. Lewis, who believes Drew fell out of the boat because he was shot, encourages Ed to climb to the top of the gorge and ambush the other mountain man, whom they believe to be stalking them from above. Ed reaches an overhang and hides out until morning, when a man appears above him and aims a rifle at him; a panicked Ed clumsily shoots and manages to kill the man, but falls backwards and lands on one of his own arrows. Ed worries that he has killed the wrong man when he inspects the body to find that the man has all of his teeth, but he then realizes the man is wearing dentures. Ed and Bobby weigh down the man's body in the river to ensure it will never be found, then do the same to Drew's body when they encounter it downriver shortly after.
Upon finally reaching the small town of Aintry, Ed and Bobby take Lewis to the hospital. The three carefully concoct a cover story for local authorities about Drew's death, lying about their adventure to Sheriff Bullard in order to escape a possible double murder charge. Their cover is almost blown when Ed thinks he has overheard Bobby secretly telling the sheriff the truth, but Bobby convinces him otherwise. Ed and Bobby visit Lewis in the hospital, where Lewis is being watched over by a police officer. A worried Ed whispers to Lewis that they need to change their cover story, but Lewis relaxes him by pretending that he has no memory of what happened after they fell off the canoes due to head trauma. Sheriff Bullard does not believe the men and reveals that Deputy Queen is suspicious of them because his brother-in-law went hunting a few days ago and has not returned. However, he has no evidence to arrest them, and instead tells them never to do "this kind of thing again" and to never come back to the area. The three men vow to keep their story of death and survival a secret for the rest of their lives.
Ed reunites with his wife and son. Some time after, a bloated hand rises from the lake, only to be revealed as a nightmare from the experience that torments Ed.
Deliverance was shot primarily in Rabun County in northeastern Georgia. The canoe scenes were filmed in the Tallulah Gorge southeast of Clayton and on the Chattooga River. This river divides the northeastern corner of Georgia from the northwestern corner of South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot in Salem, South Carolina. Filming took place from May to August 1971.[4]
A scene was also shot at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church cemetery. This site has since been flooded and lies 130 feet (40 m) under the surface of Lake Jocassee, on the border between Oconee and Pickens counties in South Carolina.[5][6] The dam shown under construction is Jocassee Dam near Salem, South Carolina.
During the filming of the canoe scene, author James Dickey showed up inebriated and entered into a bitter argument with producer-director John Boorman, who had rewritten Dickey's script. They allegedly had a brief fistfight in which Boorman, a much smaller man than Dickey, suffered a broken nose and four shattered teeth.[3] Dickey was thrown off the set, but no charges were filed against him. The two reconciled and became good friends, and Boorman gave Dickey a cameo role as the sheriff at the end of the film.
The inspiration for the Cahulawassee River was the Coosawattee River, which was dammed in the 1970s and contained several dangerous whitewater rapids before being flooded by Carters Lake.[7]
Stunts
The film is infamous for the cost cutting by the studio in an effort to kill it[8] and having the actors perform their own stunts, such as Jon Voight notably climbing the cliff himself.[9] Reynolds requested to have one scene re-shot with himself in a canoe rather than a dummy as it tumbled over a real waterfall.[10] Reynolds recalled his shoulder and head hitting rocks and floating downstream with all of his clothes torn off, then waking up with director Boorman at his bedside.[10] Reynolds asked "How'd it look?" and Boorman said, "It looked like a dummy falling over a waterfall."[10] Beatty almost drowned and Reynolds cracked his tailbone.[11]
Regarding the courage of the four main actors in the movie performing their own stunts without insurance protection, Dickey was quoted as saying all of them "had more guts than a burglar".[12] In a nod to their stunt-performing audacity, early in the movie Lewis says, "Insurance? I've never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk".
"Squeal like a pig"
Several people have been credited with the phrase "squeal like a pig", the now-famous line spoken during the graphic rape scene. Ned Beatty said he thought of it while he and actor Bill McKinney (who played Beatty's rapist) were improvising the scene.[13] James Dickey's son, Christopher Dickey, wrote in his memoir about the film production, Summer of Deliverance, that because Boorman had rewritten so much dialogue for the scene one of the crewmen suggested that Beatty's character should just "squeal like a pig".[14] Boorman, in a DVD commentary he made for the film said the line was used because the studio wanted the male rape scene to be filmed in two ways: one for cinematic release and one that would be acceptable for television. As Boorman did not want to do that, he decided that the phrase "squeal like a pig", suggested by Rabun County liaison Frank Rickman, was a good replacement for the original dialogue in the script.[15] Reynolds later recalled the scene as so uncomfortable cameramen avoided watching, and Reynolds opted to interrupt the filming. Reynolds said, "I asked John Boorman, the director, 'Why did you let it go that long?' He said, 'I wanted to take it as far as I could with the audience, and I figured you'd run in when it got too far.'"[16]
Soundtrack and copyright dispute
The film's soundtrack brought new attention to the musical work "Dueling Banjos", which had been recorded numerous times since 1955. Only Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel were originally credited for the piece. The onscreen credits state that the song is an arrangement of the song "Feudin' Banjos", showing Combine Music Corp as the copyright owner. Songwriter and producer Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, who had written "Feudin' Banjos" in 1955, and recorded it with five-string banjo player Don Reno, filed a lawsuit for songwriting credit and a percentage of royalties. He was awarded both in a landmark copyright infringement case.[17] Smith asked Warner Bros. to include his name on the official soundtrack listing, but reportedly asked to be omitted from the film credits because he found the film offensive.[18]
Joe Boyd, who was producing the music for the movie Deliverance, offered "Duelling Banjos" to Bill Keith, but as Bill was travelling in Europe and wanted to visit a girl in Ireland, he turned it down suggesting Eric Weissberg instead.[19]
No credit was given for the film score. The film has a number of sparse, brooding passages of music scattered throughout, including several played on a synthesizer. Some prints of the movie omit much of this extra music.
Boorman was given a gold record for the "Dueling Banjos" hit single; this was later stolen from his house by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Boorman recreated this scene in The General (1998), his biographical film about Cahill.[20]
Deliverance was a box office success in the United States, becoming the fifth-highest grossing film of 1972, with a domestic take of over $46 million.[22] The film's financial success continued the following year, when it went on to earn $18 million in North American "distributor rentals" (receipts).[23]
Critical
Deliverance was well received by critics and is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1972.[24][25][26] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 89% rating based on reviews from 65 critics, with an average rating of 8.40/10. The site's consensus states: "Given primal verve by John Boorman's unflinching direction and Burt Reynolds' star-making performance, Deliverance is a terrifying adventure."[27]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[28]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It is a gripping horror story that at times may force you to look away from the screen, but it is so beautifully filmed that your eyes will eagerly return."[29]Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "an engrossing adventure, a demonstrable labor of love" carried by Voight and Reynolds.[30] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film was "certainly a distinctive and gripping piece of work, with a deliberately brooding, ominous tone and visual style that put you in a grave, fearful frame of mind, almost in spite of yourself."[31]
Not all reviews were positive. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed 2.5 stars out of a possible 4. He declared the film was "admittedly effective on the level of simple adventure" and had good performances, particularly from Voight and Reynolds. However, Ebert also wrote Deliverance "totally fails [in] its attempt to make some kind of significant statement about its action [...] It's possible to consider civilized men in a confrontation with the wilderness without throwing in rapes, cowboy-and-Indian stunts and pure exploitative sensationalism."[32]
Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote that the setting was "majestic" but it was "in the fleshing out that the script fumbles, and with it the direction and acting."[33]Vincent Canby of The New York Times was also generally negative, calling the film "a disappointment" because "so many of Dickey's lumpy narrative ideas remain in his screenplay that John Boorman's screen version becomes a lot less interesting than it has any right to be."[34]
Following the film's release, Governor Jimmy Carter established a state film commission to encourage television and movie production in Georgia. The state has "become one of the top five production destinations in the U.S".[43] Tourism increased to Rabun County by the tens of thousands after the film's release. By 2012, tourism was the largest source of revenue in the county, and rafting had developed as a $20 million industry in the region.[43] Jon Voight's stunt double for this film, Claude Terry, later purchased equipment used in the movie from Warner Brothers. He founded a whitewater rafting adventure company on the Chattooga River, Southeastern Expeditions.[44] Payson Kennedy, the stunt double for Ned Beatty, established the Nantahala Outdoor Center with his wife and Horace Holden along the Nantahala River in Swain County, North Carolina, in 1972, the same year that Deliverance was released.[45]
^Culture, Center for the Study of Southern. "Revisiting Deliverance". southernstudies.olemiss.edu. Retrieved May 29, 2023.
^Burger, Mark. (March 19, 2006). "Beatty Given Master of Cinema Award; Character Actor Is a Veteran of More than 200 Film and Television ProductionsArchived March 23, 2009, at the Wayback Machine", Winston-Salem Journal, Page B1 "Regarding his debut film, Deliverance (1972), in which his character undergoes an unforgettably vivid sexual assault, Beatty said: 'The whole "squeal like a pig" thing ... came from guess who.' As the audience laughed, he theatrically put his head in his hands and silently pointed to himself, before elaborating how director Boorman encouraged him to improvise the scene with his onscreen tormentor, Bill McKinney."
Tibbetts, John C., and James M. Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Novels Into Film (2nd ed. 2005) pp 94–95.[ISBN missing]
Deliverance essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN0826429777, pages 686-688 [1]
