Day 36: He Got A Real Purty Mouth, Ain't He?

DELIVERANCE (1972)
Directed by John Boorman
Starring: John Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox

All men like to think they're tough.  There's something in our DNA that sometimes makes us want to run out in to the wilderness and live off the land.  We want to be providers, hunters and gatherers, like our forefathers.  This side of us lies in every male, whether they admit it or not.  So it stands to reason that the best way to scare the crap out of a man is to put him in a situation where he is at the mercy of his surroundings.

And thus we have Deliverance, a film about four city boys from Atlanta who want to ride the Cahulawassee river before it's dammed up and made into a lake.  The Alpha Male of the group is Lewis (Reynolds), who has the most experience in the woods.  His friend Ed (Voight) tags along out of boredom more than anything.  Their mutual friends Bobby (Beatty) and Drew (Cox) also come along, though they are clearly out of their element.  Their first stop is at a gas station where Drew picks his guitar along with an odd-looking banjo-playing boy.  It's a scene that's funny, cute and sort of off-putting all at the same time.  In fact, the whole first half of the movie, with it's gorgeous cinematography by veteran D.P. Vilmos Zsigmond, sort of lulls us into a false sense of security.  The scenery is beautiful and the boys are having a grand old time canoeing down the river and "getting back to nature."

Things take a sinister turn, however, when Bobby and Ed go off into the wood alone.  They come across a couple sodomite hillbillies who proceed to violate Bobby and start to work on Ed (the one with the "purty mouth").  But Lewis is there just in time, and shoots one of the offenders down with his bow and arrow.  The other bolts into the woods.  Now the boys are faced with a decision: go to the authorities or keep quiet and just bury the body.  Despite Drew's insistence on the former, they decide on the latter, and get on with their trip.  But there's still one deranged mountain man on the loose, and he's got revenge (and probably other things) on his mind.

This film starts off pretty peaceful and serene, but there are several instances where we get the feeling that this isn't going to be a peaceful journey.  Over shots of construction near the lake, we hear Lewis and his friends debate whether it's a good idea to dam the lake.  Lewis says no at first.  But through the gruelling course of this film, covering up what happened there seems like a pretty good idea.  As we progress, the terrain gets rougher and rougher, and by they time our boys find their way back to civilization (so to speak), they all have a hard time re-adjusting.  Especially when the cops start asking questions like "If you started with four guys, why are there only three of you?"

This is the film that is credited with making Burt Reynolds a household name, and rightfully so.  His combination of machismo and charisma make for a commanding performance.  Voight is pretty good too as a novice who soon - out of necessity - learns the meaning of survival.  This is actually the first film for Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, who both came from theater backgrounds.  And having two novice film actors with two experienced ones adds to the realism of the film. 

Of course, there are parts that are pretty hard to sit through, especially for men.  I've actually seen this movie classified as a "horror film," and for those of us who like to think we're macho, I'd say that's right on the money.  It's especially interesting because most horror films are made to make women scream.  Men are supposed to sit there like the Rock of Gibraltar and say "There, there, honey.  It's only a movie."  Deliverance works in a different way, and will scare the living daylights out of any man who's never been camping.  And, as a result, will probably never go.