Deliverance - who would have thought it possible - a brilliant movie with Burt Reynolds in it - surely a contradiction in terms?
Deliverance is something quite unusual in the horror / thriller format - its believable, which is the main strength of the movie. James Dickey's adaptation of his own novel (that itself took ten years to write) moves along with a masterful atmosphere and pacing. The choice of casting is absolute perfection from the stars Reynolds, John Voight and Ned Beatty through to the supporting cast of entirely believable Rednecks.
Once the action begins the unremitting terrorising of the group is absolutely gripping. Some of the scenes are now universally known (like the duelling Banjo's) as are many of the films most memorable lines ( "He's got a real pretty mouth on him, don't he" is a particularly disturbingly one).
Despite Deliverance putting us off adventure holidays in the backwaters of America for ever it is still a great movie.

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Product Description

What Did Happen On The Cahulawassee River?Four ordinary men in two canoes navigated a river they only know as a line on a map taking on a wilderness they only think they understand.Deliverence based by James Dickey on his novel surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man's change of character under stress harrowingly enacted by award winners Jon Voight Burt Reynolds Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox. Director John Boorman sets us on the knife-edge of survival - and draws us in with the irresistable force of a raging current.System Requirements:Running Time: 109 MinsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 085391165125 Manufacturer No: 116512

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3807 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 110 minutes

Features

• What Did Happen On The Cahulawassee River? Four ordinary men in two canoes navigated a river they only know as a line on a map, taking on a wilderness they only think they understand. Deliverence, based by James Dickey on his novel, surges with the urgency of masterful storytelling, like Georgia's Chattooga River along which it was shot. Equally masterful is the portrayal of each man'

Amazon.com essential video
One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman's Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey's book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character--the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one's soul. --Tom Keogh

Amazon.com
One of the key films of the 1970s, John Boorman's Deliverance is a nightmarish adaptation of poet-novelist James Dickey's book about various kinds of survival in modern America. The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen of various male stripe: Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type. Together they decide to answer the ancient call of men testing themselves against the elements and set out on a treacherous ride on the rapids of an Appalachian river. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions. Boorman, a master teller of stories about individuals on peculiarly mythical journeys, does a terrifying and beautiful job of revealing the complexity of private and collective character--the way one can never be the same after glimpsing the sharp-clawed survivor in one's soul. --Tom Keogh

On the DVD
The single-disc deluxe edition of Deliverance has plenty to recommend it over the previously released DVD. In addition to an improved transfer, director John Boorman recorded a full-length commentary track in which he explains how he shot the famous "Duelling Banjos" scene when the boy didn't know how to play the banjo, how he was instructed to use unknown actors and came up with Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, and how he persuaded Jon Voight to do the picture when the actor was going through a difficult time ("he told me I saved his life, , then spent three months trying to kill him"). A 2007 55-minute documentary is split into four parts: The Beginning, The Journey, Betraying the River (focusing on the "squeal like a pig" scene), and Delivered. Voight, Cox, Beatty, Burt Reynolds, and Boorman all participate, as do director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond and "mountain man" Bill McKinney. Christopher Dickey, son of the author of the original novel, James Dickey, also recounts his father's experiences with the film and how he eventually had to be asked to leave the set. Included from the original DVD are the theatrical trailer and the vintage documentary "The Dangerous World of Deliverance," which is an interesting contrast to the other bonus material because of its use of behind-the-scenes footage (rather than stills) and showing Dickey working at his university. --David Horiuchi

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Customer Reviews

A classic thriller has been remastered and loaded with extras
This DVD is the 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of the film. One of the great things about Deliverance is that, even though it is an adventure filmed in the 1970's, it has managed to not age like a 70's film. It is both depressing and edge-of-your-seat suspenseful at the same time. The four leads do a tremendous job of playing the parts of urban dwellers who want a weekend of adventure in the wilds of Georgia and wind up getting far more than they bargained for. It has much to say about what it takes to make a man uncivilized and whether or not there is a bit of savagery in all of us, despite how domesticated we may be in predictable situations. Past these observation I won't rehash the plot elements since just about everybody on earth knows the details, and if you don't I won't spoil it for you. The film is newly remastered and will have many special features which include:

Commentary by John Boorman - Director Boorman discusses the adventures, the team, the controversy and everything it took to make Deliverance a classic film.

Deliverance: The Beginning - Take a historical look at the novel and its adaptation to the screen.

Deliverance: The Journey - Along from the early stages of filming to the creation of classic moments, such as the Dueling Banjos scene.

Deliverance: Betraying the River - The making of one of the most controversial and ground-breaking sequences in film history.

Deliverance: Delivered - A reflective look back on the completion of the film, its impact and how the idea for the shocking ending came to be.

The Dangerous World of Deliverance - The original behind-the-scenes documentary on the difficult conditions and challenges of making this film. This is on the 2004 release also.

Theatrical Trailer

This information comes from a press release by Warner Home Video. I have the 2004 release of this DVD, and quite frankly it looks fine now. I guess the primary reason to upgrade would be for all the extra features and the commentary, which are all new with the exception of "The Dangerous World of Deliverance", which was on the 2004 version of the DVD.

They don't make 'em like they used to...
Director John Boorman's exciting, brutal, brooding, explosive and violent masterpiece remains one of Hollywood's most intelligent takes on the complex, contradictory cultures of American manhood, otherwise the more familiar preserve of directors like Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill. Based on James Dickey's novel, Deliverance roots itself assuredly in fascinating and provocative dualities: liberal modernity and backwoods barbarism; beauty and violence; kindness and cuelty; morality and pragmatism and, atmospherically, the existential and the visceral - situating it a distinct cut above the average Hollywood action adventure output. Four suburban friends - career-best performances from Reynolds, Voight, Beatty and Cox - take one last alpha-male shot at canoeing the mighty Cahulawassee river - just as it is set to be flooded - literally and figuratively - by the needs, culture and infastructure of the New South as it rolls unforgivingly through what's left of the countryside.Just as their own middle class tensions, arrogances and irritations begin to surface, they run - courtesy of the hostile local population - into a world much smaller(...). What starts out as an egoistic attempt to reclaim some element of American frontier manhood amidst the privileged, cosseted reality of an otherwise safely suburban life becomes a gripping struggle to survive the ravages of nature and (distinctly warped) nurture. Features what is probably the silver screen's most notorious male rape scene, an episode that slides so quickly and unsuspectingly from cautious negotiation to gruelling and humiliating cruelty that it still retains the power to shock and unsettle. Possibly did more than any other movie to forever demonise the poor-white population of the Appalachians, spawning a slew of inferior copycats as well as the opportunistic "hillbilly horror" sub-genre that persisted into the early 80s with such exploitation nonsense as Hillbilly Holocaust and Trapped. Walter Hill's differently brlliant Southern Comfort, Jonathan Mostow's efficient suspenser Breakdown and Curtis Hanson's The River Wild can be argued to be among Deliverance's more palatable latter-day spawn. (In the latter, Meryl Streep shows that otherwise meek women - pushed to the limit - can be just as primal given a reason and a river!) Deliverance is a superior film that harks back to the days when a thoughtful Hollywood film and a crowd-pleasing box office smash were - more often than not - one and the same thing.

What REALLY happened on the Cahulawassee River?
When it comes to fictional survival stories, few can approach the sheer grueling brutality of DELIVERANCE. Brilliantly adapted by James Dickey from his best-selling book and superbly directed by John Boorman (POINT BLANK, HOPE AND GLORY), this is a tremendous endeavor. So much so that horror writer Stephen King and Boorman's fellow director Stanley Kubrick both expressed a tremendous admiration of it.

As pretty much everyone knows, DELIVERANCE focuses on four Atlanta businessmen (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox) who decide to take a canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River in the Appalachian Mountains of northern Georgia before it is dammed up into a lake. It is apparent, however, that the local folk don't take kindly to these "city boys" messing around in their woods. And when Voight and Beatty are sexually assaulted at gunpoint by a pair of sadistic rednecks (Bill McKinney, Herbert "Cowboy" Coward), in the infamous "SQUEAL!!" segment, what began as a canoe trip explodes into a nightmare.

Much is made, and justifiably so, not only of the "SQUEAL" scene but also of the "Dueling Banjos" part, between Cox and a retarted mountain kid. But DELIVERANCE has much more to offer besides these moments. Like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and STRAW DOGS, it offers a hard-hitting and unflinching look at Man's penchant for violent and (arguably) abhorrent behavior. The four leads are extremely good in their roles, and McKinney and Coward make for two of the more frightening and vicious villains in screen history. Dickey appears in the film's final reel as a local sheriff who, as he puts it would "kinda like to see this town die peaceful."

Shot totally on location, and featuring ominous cinematography from the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond, DELIVERANCE is a great and frightening piece--arguably a modern gothic horror film, certainly a great action film with an undercurrent as sinister as the Cahulawassee River itself. It is not to be missed,