Dueling Banjos - Deliverance 1972 [Good Quality] - YouTube Dueling Banjos - Deliverance 1972 [Good Quality] Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Apr 9, 2012 Deliverance is a 1972 American thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and released by Warner Bros. Principal cast members include Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, with both Cox and Beatty making their feature-film debuts. The film is based on a 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.

Widely acclaimed as a landmark picture, the film is noted both for the memorable music scene near the beginning that sets the tone for what lies ahead: a trip into unknown and potentially dangerous territory, and for its famous "squeal like a pig" 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." Read More at Wikipedia: Category Deliverance - Dueling Banjos (HQ) - YouTube Deliverance - Dueling Banjos (HQ) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Uploaded on Jun 25, 2009 The classic banjo pickin' scene from the movie Deliverance. Deliverance is a 1972 drama film produced and directed by John Boorman. Principal cast members include Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, and Ned Beatty in his film debut.

The film is based on a 1970 novel of the same name by American author James Dickey. The screenplay was written by Dickey and an uncredited Boorman. 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". Billy Redden plays "Dueling Banjos" opposite Ronny Cox, who joins him on guitar. Redden plays "Lonnie", a mentally retarded, inbred, but extremely gifted banjo player. The song went to #2 for four weeks on the U.S. pop chart in 1973 and topped the adult contemporary chart for two weeks the same year. It also led to a successful lawsuit by the song's composer, since it was used in the film without his permission. "Duelling Banjos" was arranged and performed for the movie by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell and was included on the soundtrack album. The song had been composed in 1955 by Arthur Smith as a banjo instrumental he called "Feudin' Banjos".

Smith recorded it, playing a four-string plectrum banjo and accompanied by five-string bluegrass banjo player Don Reno. When he was not acknowledged as the composer by the filmmakers, Smith sued. He eventually won, receiving songwriting credit as well as royalties. Two young musicians, Ron Brentano and Mike Russo, had originally been signed to play their adaptation for the movie, but instead it was performed by the others. Category Ed Helms on “Dueling Banjos” and the magic of Deliverance · Fan Up · The A.V. Club Share Tweet The Internet features more than its share of negativity and snark—sometimes you’ve just gotta vent . But there’s plenty of room for love, too. With Fan Up , we ask pop-culture people we admire to tell us about something they really, really like. The fan: Though he’s best known for his acting roles in everything from The Office to the upcoming Vacation, Ed Helms also dabbles in music, having played the banjo for years. His bluegrass band, The Lonesome Trio, formed while all three members were at Oberlin College, and the group released its self-titled debut earlier this week on Sugar Hill Records.

Given Helms’ background in bluegrass, it’s no surprise that he was drawn to the genre by one of its most successful LPs: Eric Weissberg’s Dueling Banjos . The A.V. Club talked to Helms about that record, and about how he learned to separate the sound of the banjo from having to squeal like a pig. The A.V. Club: You told your publicist that Deliverance shaped your musical tastes in a way. Can you explain why that’s the case? Ed Helms: How familiar are you with the movie? AVC: I have some familiarity with it. EH: You’re aware of its horrific lore, what it depicts in the movie... AVC: Yeah. EH: Why it’s the butt of many a joke. Okay. Where do I start? Deliverance is a novel written by James Dickey, and it’s a really powerful novel about when you do something wrong, it never stops following you. In the story of the movie, there’s these guys and a horrible rape, and they wind up killing one of the hillbillies, and they have to kill his brother and stuff. And it’s a very dramatic, intense movie.

That author, James Dickey, took guitar lessons from the person I took guitar lessons from. And I just knew that as a little kid and thought that was kind of cool. Even though I hadn’t seen the movie, I knew that it was an important movie. So there was that. Then, I went to summer camp in the mountains in North Carolina for many years, and I was really into the white-water canoeing program there. Deliverance was filmed on the Chattooga River, which runs between Georgia and South Carolina as part of the border—beautiful river. And the canoe program at my camp was going to run a section of that river. And so the counselors showed us a section of Deliverance in order to show us the river that we were going to run, and they literally just hit the fast forward button over this horrific scene. We were all, “What in the hell was that?” We were like, 11 or 12. But that was also where I heard, in the score of the movie, this beautiful bluegrass music.

And there’s a famous scene in the movie where “Dueling Banjos” gets played quasi-spontaneously by one of the main guys, and this weird, sort of inbred banjo player. It wasn’t long after that that I just chased down whatever recordings I could find of bluegrass music, and started begging my guitar teacher to teach me all these things. He was really well steeped in folk and bluegrass traditions, so it was a great fit. It was also just sort of cool that he had this personal connection to James Dickey. And then, I guess in high school at some point, I actually bought the soundtrack to Deliverance. The soundtrack is incredible, because it’s actually a lot of music that has nothing to do with the movie. It’s this great bluegrass outfit, Eric Weissberg on banjo, and Marshall Brickman on guitar, who, ironically, is also a comedy writer who worked with Woody Allen, among others. If you look up Marshall Brickman on IMDB , you’ll be amazed.

But they just shredded all these great old fiddle tunes on guitar and banjo, and it’s a really exceptional and I think very important album in the bluegrass canon, because Deliverance had such a big impact on pop culture when it came out. It was part of what brought bluegrass into the mainstream, briefly, in the ’80s. Actually, was it ’79? I don’t remember. AVC: The movie came out in 1972. EH: That early? Wow, that’s before I was born. So, John Boorman directed. It’s an incredible movie. It’s the butt of lot of jokes because of that terrible scene, but it’s actually a really powerful and beautiful movie in a lot of ways, and quite stunning. AVC: Well, some of that gets assigned to “Dueling Banjos.” That movie contributed to the assumption that bluegrass music meant backwoods guys with no sense. EH: Oh, yeah. I don’t know why. I mean, they would sell T-shirts up by the Chattooga River that said “Paddle faster, I hear banjo music.” So, yeah, it definitely had a negative connotation.

And I think that that sort of inbred, hillbilly stereotype was not helped at all by the movie. But the music, I mean, at that point I had already spent so much time up in those mountains that I already had such a positive association with it, that—I don’t know why—that music really captured my imagination at a really young age. I was very lucky to have a guitar teacher who actually gave a shit about that music and really knew what he was talking about and knew what to expose me to. Because there was no one around me—I mean, my parents, none of my friends—no one was interested in that music. I grew up in midtown Atlanta, where everyone was obsessed with R.E.M. and Drivin’ And Cryin’ and Widespread Panic and all these weird jam bands and whatnot. AVC: And you liked bluegrass. EH: Yeah. AVC: In a way, you’re helping keep traditions alive in a sense. EH: There seems to be a folk revival or renaissance every two years or so, and I feel like we’re kind of in the middle of one.

But there will always be—I mean, people look at the ’60s and say, “Oh, that’s where folk music comes from,” but that was just its own revival. AVC: There was Woody Guthrie before that. EH: Bob Dylan and all those guys, they were just playing earlier songs. And Peter, Paul, & Mary—they were playing Woody Guthrie songs, and Woody Guthrie was playing older songs, and it just goes back to colonial campfires. And then before that, it goes back to Scotland and Ireland and Africa. So much bluegrass music goes back to the Scotch-Irish Appalachian settlers. There’s something timeless about it, and I think that’s part of what I liked about it. It felt like firm ground to stand on. And I don’t know why that was important to me, but, as a kid, I think I had a weird sort of Catcher In The Rye preoccupation with authenticity or something. If you’ve read The Catcher In The Rye, Holden just calls everyone a phony, and he’s really morose, and I think it’s what a lot of introspective teenagers go through, that kind of looking for something to latch onto.

And that certainly was me as a kid. I needed something that felt old. AVC: Just to clarify, you said you spent time in the mountains. Were you exposed to bluegrass before you heard it in Deliverance? Or was it something you started getting into afterward? EH: I would say that I had definitely heard it before. My parents liked it or at least they wouldn’t turn it off the radio. My dad was a big classical music guy, but he appreciated folk music. So occasionally we’d, like, stop at a truck stop in Tennessee—my mom grew up in Nashville, so we were always back and forth to Nashville as kids—and we’d pick up a cassette tape of Appalachian classics, or something. So I was hearing it early on, but something about “Dueling Banjos,” which is one of the corniest—I mean, bluegrass traditionalists hate that song because it’s so overplayed and over-popularized, but, for me as a kid, it was something that I latched onto. And Deliverance was the source of that. AVC: Did you ever try to branch out into any other instruments?

Were you like, “I should learn to play the jug?” EH: I picked up banjo in high school because my guitar teacher was also a banjo teacher. And my high school was doing a production of Cotton Patch Gospel, which was this obscure bluegrass musical. And they needed a banjo player, so I learned songs for that on banjo, and that was sort of the first time I got into banjo-playing. But I’d been playing guitar for a good five or six years at that point. AVC: Did you care that Steve Martin played banjo? Did that affect you in any way? EH: Did I care, one way or the other? You know, I loved Steve Martin’s comedy way more. I thought it was cool as shit that he played “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” though, which is just one of the greatest things ever. But it’s weird. I didn’t connect him with bluegrass music that much, even though he played banjo. Of course, I do now a lot more, because he’s put out a couple of fantastic albums and I’ve had the great privilege of hanging out with him a bunch, even playing music with him on a few occasions, and he’s a tremendous songwriter.

It’s funny, the only reason that we met is because of music friends that we had in common, and not through comedy. AVC: When you were growing up, you probably didn’t think of him as a guy that played banjo, but rather as the guy from The Jerk who just happened to know how to play banjo. EH: Yeah, and the banjo was like this great, funny prop that was part of his comedy. It’s funny, I never really mixed my music with comedy. I didn’t ever really want to play guitar and sing funny songs or be that guy. I love those guys—I mean, Flight Of The Conchords—there are so many great musical comedy acts. But for some reason, in me, they were always very separate. I took music kind of seriously, and I didn’t want to mix it in with the comedy that much. With that said, it’s no secret that Andy Bernard sang a lot on The Office. Probably too much. And in that way, music was mixed in. AVC: It still seems like you don’t have an interest in overlapping the two. EH: When The Lonesome Trio performs, a lot of our songs—it’s all original music.

And some of it does have kind of a sly wink to it. And we try to keep our shows lively and fun, and we joke around and stuff, but it’s not a comedic performance. AVC: You just have stage presence. EH: Yeah. And then, by the same token, on the acting front, and the comedy writing and performing, I’m weirdly serious about that. I feel like music is a distraction. But I’m so thrilled to add this layer to the public perception of me, because anyone who’s close to me in my life—my family, my friends—they all know that music—and this kind of music in particular—is just a huge part of my life. And The Lonesome Trio—we’ve been best friends for 22 years. To get to finally share that is a huge privilege, and I’m just beyond thrilled about it. It’s going to be a blast.

Dueling Banjos (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) by Eric Weissberg on Apple Music by blyfox As a general rule, I don't care for banjo music and bluegrass is definitely a required taste, as are so many good things (Laphroaig, English-Blend Pipe Tobacco, bagpipes, etc.). If you are among those who've acquired the taste (even if you aren't) this is one to have – it's what I'd call sophisticated bluegrass, mostly on and always with, the banjo; the instrument is certainly as well played as it could possibly be. I'd never heard of Weissberg (even though I've seen the movie Deliverance - who remembers credits?), but this album demonstrates that he's a master. Don't let the slow beginning fool you - the rest goes, surely, as fast as a banjo can be picked. The tone of the instrument, also, is better than any I've ever heard, recorded or otherwise (my brother owns a Gibson). As an aside: if you haven't seen Deliverance, it's a very interesting piece of work - abstruse as well as a mite scary.

dueling banjoes by nick of the light man it does my southern TN ears good to here some good ol dueling banjoes AAAAAA++++++ Piece of Heritage and out country by rmstudio There are some things in music you have to have to make your pallete complete to have a balance of all natural things and this is one of those American Staples. I dont think there is any better plucking and Picking on a banjo than on this album. The first reviewer above is right its true "Bluegrass" is an aquired taste but its a good one. I can say this coming from a me a 1/2 "Mexican" I prefer being a "Mexican than a "Mexicant". I like to be open to listen to good music wherever its from. This is what America is about open and a melting pot. Somehow sometimes this kind of music is looked at as old ways or times of the dark begings in this country but I see it as a piece of american history. Enjoy it!

Biography Genre: Soundtrack Years Active: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, '10s Multi-instrumentalist Eric Weissberg will always be remembered as a one-hit wonder for his 1973 smash "Dueling Banjos," but that was only a small part of his lengthy career as a studio musician. Master of ten instruments -- bass (acoustic and electric), guitar, fiddle, banjo, kazoo, mandolin, pedal steel, Dobro, and jew's harp -- Weissberg has accompanied a who's who of folk-pop artists, including Judy Collins, Jim Croce, John Denver, Bob Dylan, Art Garfunkel, Richie Havens, Ian & Sylvia, Melanie,... Top Albums and Songs by Eric Weissberg 1. 'Deliverance' actor Ronny Cox to play music concert at Listen Live! Music - The Morning Call 'Deliverance' actor Ronny Cox to play music concert at Listen Live! Music Actor Ronny Cox to play guitar concert at Listen Live! Music in Macungie Actor Ronny Cox to play guitar concert at Listen Live!

Music in Macungie Actor Ronny Cox to play guitar concert at Listen Live! Music in Macungie John J. Moser Contact Reporter Of The Morning Call 'Deliverance' actor to play music concert at Lehigh Valley venue The character actor/musician who played perhaps most memorable banjo song ever in a movie is set to return to a Lehigh Valley venue to play a concert this fall. Ronny Cox, the actor who played the song “Dueling Banjos” in the 1972 film “Deliverance” with Burt Reynolds, John Voight and Ned Beatty, will give a concert at 8 p.m. Oct. 16 at Listen Live! Music, the listening room that brings national and regional music acts to Macungie Institute, 510 E. Main St., Macungie. Tickets, at $20, are available at . “Dueling Banjos,” which was played in a scene of “Deliverance” that has Cox’s character facing off on banjo against a young mountain boy, won the Grammy Award in 1974 for Best Country Instrumental Performance, and “Deliverance” was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The film made stars of its cast. Cox, 76, who made his film debut in that picture, went on to star in more than 35 feature films, including “Taps,” “Beverly Hills Cops,” “RoboCop” and “Total Recall,” as well as significant television roles on “St. Elsewhere” and other shows. In 2011, he had a guest role on the popular Showtime series “Dexter.” He had a role in the 2014 Michael Douglas film “Beyond the Reach.” But he’s also been a lifelong musician, releasing his first, self-titled album in 1991. He has released nine since. His latest is 2014’s “Ronny Cox Live In Concert – The Official Bootleg.” His 2009 disc “Ronny Cox: Songs with Repercussions,” went to No. 1 on the Folk DJ list. Cox first played Listen Live! Music in 2013.

Deliverance (1972) - IMDb IMDb Doctor Strange Confirmed to Appear in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ 23 hours ago There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON TV a list of 21 titles created 12 Jun 2011 a list of 30 titles created 10 Aug 2011 a list of 26 titles created 24 Jun 2013 a list of 25 titles created 10 Apr 2015 a list of 30 titles created 6 months ago Search for " Deliverance " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 3 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 10 nominations. See more awards » Videos Two counterculture bikers travel from Los Angeles to New Orleans in search of America. Director: Dennis Hopper A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered. Director: Francis Ford Coppola A young American and his English wife come to rural England and face increasingly vicious local harassment. Director: Sam Peckinpah When a mad man calling himself 'the Scorpio Killer' menaces the city, tough as nails San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and ferret out the crazed psychopath. Director: Don Siegel Edit 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 ... Written by Huggo Four men ride a wild river. A weekend turns into a nightmare. See more » Genres: 20 September 1972 (France) See more » Also Known As: Beim Sterben ist jeder der Erste See more » Filming Locations: 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)| Mono (35 mm prints) Color: Did You Know?

Trivia According to director John Boorman , the gas station attendant's jig during "Dueling Banjos" was unscripted and spontaneous. See more » Goofs When the main characters first meet the hillbillies they're on the right side of the river. After the accident in the rapids, and for Ed's climb up the cliff, they're on the left side of the river. They never passed under a bridge, but the surviving hillbilly is on that side of the river with them. See more » Quotes Lewis : You w- you wanna... you wanna talk about the vanishing wilderness? Bobby : Lewis, listen - what are you so anxious about this? Lewis : Because they're buildin' a dam across the Cahulawassee River; they're gonna flood a whole valley, Bobby, that's why. Dammit, they're drownin' a river; they're drownin' a river, man. See more » Crazy Credits The end credits only show the cast and a notice of where the location of the film was shot and the special thanks, which rolls over a shot of Ed and his wife laying down trying to sleep.

It also shows the shot of the lake where the hand ascended up out of the water and the final credit reads 'Distributed by WARNER BROS' See more » Connections The New Man confronts the Old in a place of raw beauty and stark terror 23 December 2004 | by Nergal-Is-Risen (Where I am now) – See all my reviews 'Deliverance' is a brilliant condensed epic of a group of thoroughly modern men who embark on a canoe trip to briefly commune with nature, and instead have to fight for their sanity, their lives, and perhaps even their souls. The film has aged well. Despite being made in the early Seventies, it certainly doesn't look particularly dated. It still possesses a visceral punch and iconic status as a dramatic post-'Death of the Sixties' philosophical-and-cultural shock vehicle. There are very few films with similar conceits that can compare favourably to it, although the legendary Sam Peckinpah's stuff would have to be up there.

Yes, there has been considerable debate and discussion about the film's most confronting scene (which I won't expand upon here) - and undoubtedly one of the most confronting scenes in the entire history of the cinematic medium - but what surprises about this film is how achingly beautiful it is at times. This seems to be generally overlooked (yet in retrospect quite understandably so). The cinematography that captures the essence of the vanishing, fragile river wilderness is often absolutely stunning, and it counterbalances the film as, in a moment of brief madness, we the viewers - along with the characters themselves - are plunged into unrelenting nightmare. 'Deliverance's narrative is fittingly lean and sinewy, and it is surprising how quickly events unfold from point of establishment, through to crisis, and aftermath. It all takes place very quickly, which lends a sense of very real urgency to the film. The setting is established effectively through the opening credits. The characters are all well-drawn despite limited time spent on back story. We know just enough about them to know them for the kind of man they are, like them and ultimately fear for them when all goes to hell. The conflict and violence within the movie seems to erupt out of nowhere, with a frightening lack of logic.

This is author James Dickey's theme - that any prevailing romanticism about the nature of Man's perceived inherent 'goodness' can only wilt and die when his barely suppressed animal instincts come to the fore. There are no demons or bogeymen here. The predatory hillbillies - as the film's central villains - are merely crude, terrifyingly amoral cousins of our protagonists. They shock because their evil is petty and tangible. The film has no peripheral characters. All reflect something about the weaknesses and uncertainties of urbanised Homo Sapiens in the latter 20th century, and all are very real and recognisable. Burt Reynolds is wonderful in this movie as the gung-ho and almost fatally over-confident Survivalist, Lewis, and it is a shame to think that he really couldn't recapture his brief moment of dramatic glory throughout the rest of his still sputtering up-and-down career ('Boogie Nights' excluded, perhaps). Trust me, if your are not a Reynolds fan, you WILL be impressed with his performance here. John Voight is his usual effortlessly accomplished self, and Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox both make significant contributions. This is simply a great quartet of actors.

To conclude, I must speculate as to if and when 'Deliverance' author James Dickey's 'To the White Sea' will be made. For those that enjoyed (?) this film, TTWS is a similarly harrowing tale of an American Air Force pilot's struggle for survival after being shot down over the Japanese mainland during WW2. It's more of the typically bleak existentialism and primordial savagery that is Dickey's trademark, but it has all the makings of a truly spectacular, poetic cinematic experience. There was the suggestion a few years ago that the Coen brothers might be producing it, but that eventually came to nothing. Being an avid Coen-o-phile it disappoints me to think what might have been had they gotten the green light on TTWS, rather than their last couple of relatively undistinguished efforts. Returning to 'Deliverance', it's impossible to imagine a movie of such honest, unnerving brutality being made in these times, and that is pretty shameful. We, the cinema-going public, are all the poorer for this. 130 of 176 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Deliverance (1972) Deliverance (1972) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) Background Deliverance (1972) is British director John Boorman's gripping, absorbing action-adventure film about four suburban Atlanta businessmen friends who encounter disaster in a summer weekend's river-canoeing trip. It was one of the first films with the theme of city-dwellers against the powerful forces of nature. The exciting box-office hit, most remembered for its inspired banjo duel and the brutal, violent action (and sodomy scene), was based on James Dickey's adaptation of his own 1970 best-selling novel (his first) of the same name - he contributed the screenplay and acted in a minor part as the town sheriff. The stark, uncompromising film was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing), but went away Oscar-less. The beautifully-photographed film, shot entirely on location (in northern Georgia's Rabun County that is bisected by the Chattooga River), was the least-nominated film among the other Best Picture nominees.

Ex-stuntman Burt Reynolds took the role of bow-and-arrow expert Lewis after it was turned down by James Stewart, Marlon Brando, and Henry Fonda on account of its on-location hazards. The increasingly claustrophobic, downbeat film, shot in linear sequence along forty miles of a treacherous river, has been looked upon as a philosophical or mythical allegory of man's psychological and grueling physical journey against adversity. It came during the 70s decade when many other conspiracy or corruption-related films were made with misgivings, paranoia or questioning of various societal institutions or subject areas, such as the media (i.e., Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) ), politics (i.e., The Parallax View (1974), All the President's Men (1976)), science (i.e., Capricorn One (1977), Coma (1978), The China Syndrome (1979)), and various parts of the US itself (i.e., Race with the Devil (1975), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and later Southern Comfort (1981)).

A group of urban dwellers test their manhood and courage, totally vulnerable in the alien wild, and pit themselves against the hostile violence of nature. At times, however, they are attracted to nature, and exhilarated and joyful about their experiences in the wild. (Director Boorman pursued the same complex eco-message theme of man vs. nature in other films, including Zardoz (1973) and The Emerald Forest (1985).) As they progress further and further along in uncharted territory down the rapids, the men 'rape' the untouched, virginal wilderness as they are themselves violated by the pristine wilderness and its degenerate, inbred backwoods inhabitants. Survivalist skills come to the forefront when civilized standards of decency and logic fail. The river is the potent personification of the complex, natural forces that propel men further and further along their paths. It tests their personal values, exhibiting the conflict between country and city, and accentuates what has been hidden or unrealized in civilized society. The adventurers vainly seek to be 'delivered' from the evil in their own hearts, and as in typical horror films, confront other-worldly forces in the deep woods.

The flooding of the region after the completion of a dam construction project alludes to the purification and cleansing of the sins of the world by the Great Flood. The film was also interpreted as an allegory of the US' involvement in the Vietnam War - as the men (the US military) intruded into a foreign world (Southeast Asia), and found it was raped or confronted by wild forces it couldn't understand or control. The Story The film opens with voice-overs of the main characters discussing the "vanishing wilderness" and the corruption of modern civilization, while the credits play over views of the flooding of one of the last untamed stretches of land, and the imminent wiping out of the entire Cahulawassee River and the small town of Aintry. [The film's trailer provides details about the foursome: "These are the men. Nothing very unusual about them. Suburban guys like you or your neighbor. Nothing very unusual about them until they decided to spend one weekend canoeing down the Cahulawassee River. Ed Gentry - he runs an art service, his wife Martha has a boy Dean. Lewis Medlock has real estate interests, talks about resettling in New Zealand or Uruguay.

Drew Ballinger - he's sales supervisor for a soft drink company. Bobby Trippe - bachelor, insurance and mutual funds. These are the men who decided not to play golf that weekend. Instead, they sought the river."] The four characters include: Lewis Medlock (Burt Reynolds), a bow-hunter and avowed, macho survivalist and outdoorsman Bobby Trippe (Ned Beatty in his film debut), overweight insurance salesman Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox in his film debut), a guitar player and sales supervisor Ed Gentry (Jon Voight, a star actor due to his appearance in Midnight Cowboy (1969) ), married, runs an art service Lewis lectures his friends and anxiously bemoans the dam construction that will soon destroy the ('damned' or 'dammed') Cahulawassee River and town. He urges his friends to take a ride down the river before a man-made lake will forever flood it: ...because they're buildin' a dam across the Cahulawassee River. They're gonna flood a whole valley, Bobby, that's why.

Dammit, they're drownin' the river...Just about the last wild, untamed, unpolluted, unf--ked up river in the South. Don't you understand what I'm sayin'?...They're gonna stop the river up. There ain't gonna be no more river. There's just gonna be a big, dead lake...You just push a little more power into Atlanta, a little more air-conditioners for your smug little suburb, and you know what's gonna happen? We're gonna rape this whole god-damned landscape. We're gonna rape it. His friends Bobby, Ed, and Drew label Lewis' views as "extremist." In voice-over, Lewis coaxes his three, soft city-slicker friends to join him for a weekend canoe trip down the Cahulawassee River - to pit themselves against the US wilderness. (The film's major poster declared: "This is the weekend they didn't play golf.") They leave behind their business jobs and civilized values for their "last chance" to go back to unspoiled nature for a weekend of canoeing, hunting, and fishing, in northern Georgia's scenic Appalachian wilderness.

Their two cars, Lewis' International Scout 4 x 4 and Drew's station wagon with canoes strapped on top, drive into the hillbilly wilderness to their odyssey's starting point: We're gonna leave Friday, from Atlanta. I'm gonna have you back in your little suburban house in time to see the football game on Sunday afternoon. I know you'll be back in time to see the pom-pom girls at halftime 'cause I know that's all you care about...Yeah, there's some people up there that ain't never seen a town before, no bigger than Aintry anyway. And then those woods are real deep. The river's inaccessible except at a couple of points...This is the last chance we got to see this river. You just wait till you feel that white-water under you, Bobby...I'll have you in the water in an hour.

The first view of the city-dwelling buddies in the film occurs when the vehicles pull into a junk-littered, backwoods area that appears "evacuated already." The men reveal more of their believable personalities by their reactions to the community of mountain folk they meet in this first scene: the virile, dark-haired, dare-devil, savvy, somewhat repulsive leader Lewis (a patch on his jacket identifies him as the Co-captain of a skydiving group the chubby-overweight, comical, middle-class salesman Bobby the soft-spoken, decent, liberal and intellectually-minded, gentle, guitar-strumming Drew and the thoughtful, complex, timid, mild-mannered, pipe-smoking, curious Ed From behind a dilapidated, squalid shanty building, the first primitive hillbilly emerges, suspicious that they are from the power company. Lewis asks the old mountain man (Ed Ramey) about hiring him to drive their two cars to a point downstream at their landing point of Aintry: Lewis: We want somebody to drive 'em down to Aintry for us. Man: Hell, you're crazy. Lewis: No s--t. Hey, fill that one up with gas, huh, OK?

As the mountain man pumps gas, Bobby ridicules the strange man's repulsive look: Say, mister, I love the way you wear that hat. He is told: "You don't know nuthin'." Possible drivers are suggested to Lewis for hire: "You might get the Griner Brothers...They live back over that way." One of the film's highlights is a lively, captivating banjo duel of bluegrass music, "Dueling Banjos" (actual title "Feudin' Banjos" - arranged and played by Eric Weissberg with guitarist Steve Mandell). [The song was authored by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith in the 50s, and copyrighted by the Combine Music Corp.] Drew begins by playing chords on his guitar. A deformed, retarded, albino hillbilly youngster (Billy Redden) (on banjo) appears on the porch and answers him. Under his breath, Bobby criticizes the cretinous hillbilly boy: "Talk about genetic deficiencies. Isn't that pitiful?" From behind him, one of the backwoods folks asks: "Who's pickin' a banjo here?" The impromptu song is played as a rousing challenge between the two.

Toward its furious ending, Drew admits to the grinning boy: "I'm lost." When Drew, seen as a suspicious stranger, compliments the moon-faced winner when they are done - "God damn, you play a mean banjo," the mute, inbred, half-witted boy resumes his stony stare, turns his head sharply, and refuses to shake hands with the interloping foreigner. Drew is obviously disappointed that the boy ignores him. As Lewis drives to the nearby Griner Bros. garage, he ridicules Bobby's means of making a living - insurance sales, thereby tempting fate: "I've never been insured in my life. I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk." In an edgy, volatile encounter, Lewis bargains firmly with one of the grimy, poverty-stricken Griner brothers (Seamon Glass and Randall Deal) to have them drive their vehicles to Aintry for $40 - and receives a second ominous warning about the hazardous river: Griner: Canoe trip? Lewis: That's right, a canoe trip. Griner: What the hell you wanna go f--k around with that river for? Lewis: Because it's there. Griner: It's there all right.

You get in there and can't get out, you're gonna wish it wasn't. Ed fears that they have pushed too hard: "Listen, Lewis, let's go back to town and play golf...Lewis, don't play games with these people." With Ed as his passenger, Lewis races his Bronco against the Griner's pickup truck to the river's launch point a few miles away through the dense woods - in his station wagon, Drew follows at a safe distance behind with Bobby. The reflections of leaves from the colorful canopy above shrouds and obscures a clear view of Ed and Lewis through the windshield - the jostling ride frightens Ed: "Lewis, you son-of-a-bitch, why do we have to go so god-damned fast?...Lewis, you're gonna kill us both, you son-of-a-bitch, before we ever see any water." When they reach the peaceful water's edge, Lewis philosophically contemplates the view: Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything...A couple more months, she'll all be gone...from Aintry on up. One big dead lake. They finally venture onto the river in two canoes: Drew with Ed, and Bobby with Lewis.

Through the trees, they are observed at the water's edge by the Griners - inhabitants of the area before 'civilization' took over. The neophyte canoers are unsure of their direction: Bobby: Which way are we goin', this way or that? Lewis: I think, uh, downstream would be a good idea, don't you? Drew - you and Bobby see some rocks, you yell out now, right?... Bobby: Lewis, is this the way you get your rocks off? At first, their encounter with the river and nature is peaceful and tranquil as they paddle along - on a sunny day. Above them on a cross-walk bridge high above the placid river, the banjo-playing lad silently but intently watches them - the camera shooting from Drew's perspective. Before the first of many, increasingly-exciting sequences on the water, Lewis stands upright in the canoe and announces: "This gonna be fun!" They confront the twisting and turning white-water rapids of the swift-moving Chattooga River. They are exuberant and euphoric after victoriously navigating the challenging but not overwhelming wild-flowing water - under Lewis' expert instruction.

Bobby is thrilled about shooting the rapids: That's the best - the second best sensation I ever felt. But Ed isn't as certain: "Damn, I thought we bought the farm there, for a while." Lewis reminisces about how it must have been for the original pioneers, while Bobby foolishes thinks they've masterfully beaten the river: Lewis: The first explorers saw this country, saw it just like us. Drew: I can imagine how they felt. Bobby: Yeah, we beat it, didn't we? Did we beat that? Lewis: You don't beat it. You don't beat this river. With a high-powered bow-and-arrow fishing rod, Lewis takes aim at a fish, misses and then warns: Machines are gonna fail and the system's gonna fail...then, survival. Who has the ability to survive? That's the game - survive. Lewis remarks that the mild-mannered, secure-in-life Ed has all the comforts of civilization, but does he know how to survive in the wild like a man? His implication to his companion is that only the strong survive: Ed: Well, the system's done all right by me. Lewis: Oh yeah.

You gotta nice job, you gotta a nice house, a nice wife, a nice kid. Ed: You make that sound rather s--tty, Lewis. Lewis: Why do you go on these trips with me, Ed? Ed: I like my life, Lewis. Lewis: Yeah, but why do you go on these trips with me? Ed: You know, sometimes I wonder about that. The comrades camp at night by the river's edge, setting up tents, sitting around a campfire, listening to Drew's guitar playing, drinking beer, and roasting a fish that Lewis has speared. Bobby expresses some appreciation for the virgin river and the wilderness surrounding it: Bobby: It's true, Lewis, what you said. There's somethin' in the woods and in the water that we have lost in the city. Lewis: We didn't lose it. We sold it. Bobby: Well, I'll say one thing for the system - the system did produce the air-mattress. Or as it's better known among we camping types the instant broad. And if you fellows will excuse me, I'm gonna go be mean to my air mattress.

Tension is heightened when Lewis senses "something or someone" in the blackness of the night around them. The three tenderfoots criticize Lewis' affinity to nature as he disappears to investigate: "He wants to be one with nature and he can't hack it." Ed drunkenly philosophizes about their isolation from the world: No matter what disasters may occur in other parts of the world, or what petty little problems arise..., no one can find us up here. The next morning after rising early, Ed takes his bow and arrow and stalks a deer - emulating his buddy. But his hands tremble at the moment of the arrow's release toward a live animal, and the shot veers into a tree trunk. Drew sensitively comments: "I don't understand how anyone could shoot an animal." Ed later explains his reason for faltering: "I lost control psychologically." No longer intoxicated by the thrill of the outdoors, Bobby complains about his mosquito bites: "I got eaten alive last night. My bites have got bites...I'm a salesman, Ed." Further down the river, Ed and Bobby become separated from the other two behind them. They pull their canoe out of the river when they decide to rest in the thick wilderness next to it.

More threatening than the untamed river are two evil, violent, primitive, degenerate and hostile mountain men, a gay hillbilly (Bill McKinney) and a grizzly, toothless man (Herbert "Cowboy" Coward) armed with a 12 gauge double-barreled shotgun who suddenly appear from the woods and confront the intruders. [The wilderness isn't populated with romantic survivalists or enobled, heroic characters as in adventure stories, but sadistic brutes.] The two inexperienced, naive adventurers, assuming that the menacing backwoodsmen (who are harrassing them) are hiding a still to manufacture bootleg whiskey, promise not to tell anyone where it is located. Even away from his urban citified element, Ed maintains an inappropriate decorum of decency and ineffectually calls the animalistic rednecks 'gentlemen': Mountain Man: What the hell you think you're doin'? Ed: Headin' down river. A little canoe trip, headin' for Aintry. Mountain Man: Aintry?

Question: The tune Duelling Banjos features in which 1972 film?
Answer: Deliverance