The plot summary at wikipedia sounds kind of… dumb.
But there’s more to a movie than a plot.
What’s good about this movie? If I should see it, why should I see it?
-FrL-
Nothing. The main claim to fame I can think of for Dickey is that he hit on the English majors I couldn’t fuck when he visited my campus, successfully or not. It was a crappy movie and a crappy book.
I thought the tension, built up through the shots of the natural environment, was phenomenal, and the imminent brutality of the “villains” (really, representing nature itself, paying back the city-folk for raping it of its resources, as shown at the movie’s beginning) was thoroughly disturbing. Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds had rather lousy Southern accents - sometimes they sounded real, sometimes they sounded totally unconvincing. Other than that I thought the movie was good.
We get to see how Ronny Cox became so embittered (i.e. Robocop and Total Recall).
And we get to see Ned Beatty buttfucked.
I thought Ned Beatty gave an excellent performance. I could smell his sweat.
Of course, I was 12 at the time it came out, so…
:dubious: Weird simulpost, dropzone. 
Usually, the very mention of Ned Beatty getting buttfucked is enough to turn folks off to it.
Heh. I can’t think of it these days without also thinking of Jeff Foxworthy’s bit on the Atlanta Olympics and the sculling competitions on the Trinity River. Something to the effect of “Hell … If Ned Beatty can’t get down that river without getting screwed, how in the devil do you think a bunch of Frenchmen in bicycle pants is gonna make it ???”
My apologies for probalby getting the quote wrong, and offending various people.
ETA: I probably got the name of the river wrong too. Sigh.
Jon Voight may have been from Yonkers, but Burt Reynolds was born in Georgia and raised in Florida.
As to why it’s a great movie, Tim Dirks and Jeremiah Kipp explain.
This reminds me of a Jeep ad in a magazine. It showed a Jeep Wrangler overlooking an Appalachian mountain range. The caption said “Gives a new meaning to the term Deliverance.”
I got the joke. However, I wondered how other people would take this joke. I imagined having to explain the punchline to a foreign person. “They’re saying that if you don’t buy their vehicle, you are more likely to be forcibly sodomized in the woods.” So, uh, buy a Jeep.
I don’t think that was the message of the ad.
Maybe not, but I find it better than anything else they might’ve intended.
The direction is fantastic. No one photographs green like John Boorman
The banjo playing is good (though it’s not done by the actors on the screen). Aside from that, I think it’s a case of “The emperor is butt nekkid- and better run cause here come the hillbillies”, and Jed’s saying something to Jethro about a purty mouf.
I later read part of a bio of Dickey by his son (who’s now a journalist). He was an intensely miserable person with major substance problems (5 pack a day smoker, gallon a week whiskey drinker) who later married a woman half his age who added cocaine to the mix. The misery and the addiction shows in his writing and in the movie adaptation of same.
I don’t really see why you think the plot of the movie sounds “dumb”.
It’s men trapped in the wilderness with numerous threats of death hanging over them and no easy out. What are you looking for, Burt Reynolds to bust up a diamonds-for-arms smuggling ring?
The rape scene has almost become a punchline, but it’s a horrible violation, and completely changes the tone of the movie, and the relationship of the men.
The banjo scene provides a really discomfiting foreshadowing.
There’s beautifully shot water, and woods, and rocks. It’s a pretty tightly put together movie. I don’t think it’s great. But, I don’t think anyone mentions it in the same breath as Godfather, Cuckoo’s Nest, or Taxi Driver as one of the best films of the 1970’s either.
What makes the movie memorable (though not great) is that it is realistic.The audience can imagine that the plot could actually happen to them, personally.
As trunk says, it’s not a shoot-em-up action movie. There is no international smuggling ring using James Bond style technology. There are no car chase scenes with rapid cuts back and forth between the spinning wheels and the driver’s face.
And it doesn’t take place in unrealistic places.
There is no ,say, main character who has a private jet and sexy women waiting for him in 6 European cities, spending millions and doing things that we in the audience don’t do in our private lives. Instead, the movie shows realistic views of life in the Appalchians–which for the audience is foreign enough to be interesting, but close enough to home to be ,well, worrying.
You can imagine it happening to you–so you remember the movie.
Living in North Georgia also makes it a lot more interesting. I’ve been to the river where the movie takes place, and it’s just a weird feeling. The whole thing is done in such a way that it really feels like it could very well happen.
My ass.
“Black Deliverance” Starring Andre 3000, Big Boi, Ludacris and Samuel L. Jackson
Big Boi:Yo-- check out the retard on the banjo.
Chris: You-all want to go canoing through in North Georgia this weekend? Just us. NOOooooOOOo other black people around. Nothing but us, the wilderness and some lonely hillbillies.
Everyone: HELL, NAW.
Lil’ Jon throws
Chris: What? I was just asking…
Sam J" Say “What” again. Say “What” again. I dare ya. I double dare ya! Say “What” one more goddamn time!
Run time: 1:00
(emphasis added)
I’d need something like a cite for that. This is part of what seemed “dumb” to me from the plot summary. The “hillbillies,” it seemed to me, were getting a treatment similar to that of the “Indians” in many old westerns.
On the other hand, I was just now starting to think it would be interesting to watch the movie in order to “psychoanalyize” just exactly that kind of aspect of it.
-FrL-