Taglines: What _did_ happen on the Cahulawassee River?
Deliverance movie storyline. The Cahulawassee River valley in Northern Georgia is one of the last natural pristine areas of the state, which will soon change with the imminent building of a dam on the river, which in turn will flood much of the surrounding land. As such, four Atlanta city slickers – alpha male Lewis Medlock, generally even-keeled Ed Gentry, slightly condescending Bobby Trippe, and wide-eyed Drew Ballinger – decide to take a multi-day canoe trip on the river, with only Lewis and Ed having experience in outdoor life.
They know going in that the area is ethno-culturally homogeneous and isolated, but don’t understand the full extent of such until they arrive and see what they believe is the result of generations of inbreeding. Their relatively peaceful trip takes a turn for the worse when half way through they encounter a couple of hillbilly moonshiners. That encounter not only makes the four battle their way out of the valley intact and alive, but threatens the relationships of the four as they do…
Deliverance is a 1972 American dramatic thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The film is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey, who has a small role in the film as the Sheriff. The screenplay was written by Dickey and an uncredited Boorman. It was a critical success, earning three Academy Awards and five Golden Globe nominations.
Widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted both for the music scene near the beginning, with one of the city men playing “Dueling Banjos” on guitar with a banjo-playing country boy, that sets the tone for what lies ahead—a trip into unknown and potentially dangerous wilderness—and for its visceral and notorious male rape scene. In 2008, Deliverance was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. It is one of the earliest made films on the National Film Registry in which all the main actors, around whom the plot develops, are still living.
Deliverance (1972)
Directed by: John Boorman
Starring: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox, Billy Redden, Seamon Glass, Bill McKinney, Herbert ‘Cowboy’ Coward, Kathy Rickman
Screenplay by: James Dickey
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by: Tom Priestley
Set Decoration by: Morris Hoffman
Art Direction by: Fred Harpman
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: July 30, 1972
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