History Film / Deliverance

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Very, ''very'' loosely based. Writer James Dickey took a canoe trip in the Georgia woods and got lost, but was actually helped by local mountain men, who were friendly. (Of course, that wouldn't have made for as an interesting a story...)

* DepravedHomosexual: The two hicks who raped Bobby.

* OnlySaneMan: Drew. The novel lampshades this, when [[spoiler:Ed sinks his corpse in the river and says, "You were the best of us, Drew. The only decent one; the only sane one."]]

** However, this may be justified as all the characters do say that they don't know anything about the law.

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Both the rapists end up getting shot to death]].

* DaylightHorror: All of the film's violent terrors occur in broad daylight.

* DuetBonding: Subverted — after the famous "Dueling Banjos" scene, Drew goes to shake the boy's hand; he is snubbed.

* AllThereInTheManual: The movie doesn't explain why it's titled ''Deliverance'', but the book states that what the city boys are trying to find in the backwoods is [[{{Irony}} deliverance from the stress of modern life]]. All four men seem to be somewhat trapped in careers, marriage, and/or other commitments, Lewis and Ed in particular. By the end of the story, they're looking for deliverance from the very wilderness to which they hoped to escape. Survivalist Lewis seems to have gotten his wish for the collapse of civilization (at least in his life) and has most likely changed his stance on such things.

* AntiHero: Ed evolves into this by the end of the novel. Even though he makes sure as many people from the trip make it out alive, [[spoiler: he ends up murdering a man that he's not fully certain was the man he wanted to kill, a situation that annoys him more than anything else; treats Bobby in a cruel fashion, to the point of pointing a rifle at him with the urge to kill him; and ultimately delivers himself from any guilt relating to his actions.]]

After being separated from the other two, Bobby and Ed encounter a pair of local mountain men, who force them into the woods with a shotgun. In the film's most infamous scene, Bobby is commanded to undress and "squeal like a pig" before being violently sodomized by one of the men. As the duo prepares to do the same thing to Ed, Lewis shows up and kills the rapist with a recurve bow. Following a brief but heated discussion about what to do with his body, the four elect to bury him and carry on like nothing happened. Unfortunately, the dead man's accomplice got away, and is now hunting them down like animals, throwing them all into a struggle to survive.

The film involves four middle-class suburbanites from UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} who decide to spend a weekend canoeing in the wild countryside of [[UsefulNotes/GeorgiaUSA Georgia]], hoping to have fun and witness the area's unspoiled beauty before the Cahulawassee River valley is flooded by construction of a dam. Two of the guys in question, Lewis Medlock (Reynolds) and Ed Gentry (Voight), are experienced in the ways of the outdoors, while the other two, Bobby Trippe (Beatty) and Drew Ballinger (Cox), are entirely new to this.

After being separated from the other two, Bobby and Ed encounter a pair of local mountain men who force them into the woods with a shotgun. In the film's most infamous scene, Bobby is forced to undress and "squeal like a pig" and then violently sodomized by one of the men. As the duo prepares to do the same thing to Ed, Lewis shows up and kills the rapist with a recurve bow. Following a brief but heated discussion about what to do with his body, the four elect to bury him and carry on like nothing happened. Unfortunately, the dead man's accomplice got away, and is now hunting them down like animals, throwing them all into a struggle to survive.

* TheLoad: Lewis also sort of becomes this, ironically enough, after getting hurt.

* TookALevelInBadass: Bobby goes from TheLoad to being tougher than he looks after that scene and the boat breaking.

* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: The two hillbillies truly become irredeemable when one rapes Bobby and the other attempts to molest Ed.

* RevisedEnding: The originally ended with an epilogue that takes place a few weeks, perhaps months, after the main events. It appears in James Dickey's original script as part of the final dream sequence, but not as the story's literal conclusion. Lewis walks with a crutch (in Dickey's screenplay, his leg is amputated below the knee). Ed, Lewis, and Bobby meet with Sheriff Bullard near the dam in Aintry. The sheriff directs them to a body on a stretcher, then uncovers it so they can look at its face. No identifiable details of the body are shown, a deliberate choice to make the audience uncertain whether the dead man is Drew, Don Job, or the Toothless Man. The body was played by Christopher Dickey, James Dickey's son, who writes about the scene in his memoir, "Summer of Deliverance", and even he doesn't know whose body it was supposed to be. In the screenplay, Ed awakens from the dream, terrified, just before the corpse's face is revealed.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Very, ''very'' loosely based. Writer James Dickey took a canoe trip in the Georgia woods and got lost but was actually helped by local mountain men, who were friendly. Of course that wouldn't make an interesting book...!

* RatedMForManly: Toyed with. It certainly ''seems'' to be going this way, with four manly men going a camping trip into the wilderness and a sideburn-sporting Burt Reynolds killing people with a bow and arrow. It then becomes rather deconstructed when, well, ''[[RapeAsDrama it]]'' happens, and then the supposedly-manly Lewis becomes totally useless the moment he breaks his leg.

* NonIndicativeName: "Dueling Banjos", the other most famous scene in the film, is between a banjo player and a guitarist.

* CorruptHick: The film would seem to be both played straight and subverted. On the one hand, the rapists themselves play this deadly straight. On the other, [[spoiler: we never see the rapists again]] and while the rest of the hillbilly town is set up to be creepy and/or evil, they never really do anything, good or bad. There's one police officer who mentions that his brother-in-law went missing recently and is suspicious of the protagonists, but the sheriff rightly says they don't have sufficient evidence to arrest them and instead advises that they leave the town and never return. Especially subverted in the case of the mentally-challenged banjo player, whose playing provides a creepy soundtrack but is otherwise just minding his own business.

* NothingIsScarier: The scenes where the rapists ''aren't'' on screen are arguably even scarier than when they are.

* NatureIsNotNice: The only thing worse than the savage mountain men is the brutal and unforgiving nature of the wilderness itself.

* AllThereInTheManual: The movie doesn't explain why it's titled ''Deliverance'', but the book states that what the city boys are trying to find in the backwoods is [[{{Irony}} deliverance from the stress of modern life]]. All four men seem to be somewhat trapped in careers, marriage, and/or other commitments, Lewis and Ed in particular. By the end of the story, they're looking for deliverance from the wilderness to which they hoped to escape. Survivalist Lewis seems to have gotten his wish for the collapse of civilization (at least in his life) and has most likely changed his stance on such things.

* AmbiguousSituation: The sheriff makes a point to ask about one of the men who helped drive their cars to the other town, hinting that man may be one of the rapists, the missing brother in-law of the deputy or both (although if he was the former, who he did wear a similar hat to, it seems questionable if he would have had time to double back out to the woods where they run into him) although the sheriff may have simply been checking an extra detail to corroborate their story.

* AntiHero: Ed evolves into this by the end of the novel. Even though he makes sure as many people from the trip make it out alive, [[spoiler: he ends up murdering a man that he's not fully certain was the man he wanted to kill (a revelation that annoys him more than anything else), treats Bobby in a cruel fashion, to the point of pointing a rifle at him with the urge to kill him, and ultimately delivers himself from any guilt relating to his actions.]]

A 1972 American adventure thriller film [[TheFilmOfTheBook adapted]] by James Dickey from his own 1970 novel of the same name, directed by Creator/JohnBoorman and starring Creator/JonVoight, Creator/BurtReynolds, Creator/NedBeatty, and Creator/RonnyCox. It's #15 on AFI's 100 Years 100 Thrills list.

[[quoteright:308:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7e866f18_3a00_463d_a684_5d62deb00b69.jpeg]]

The film involves four middle-class suburbanites from UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} who decide to spend a weekend canoeing in the wild countryside of [[UsefulNotes/GeorgiaUSA Georgia]], hoping to have fun and witness the area's unspoiled nature before the Cahulawassee River valley is flooded by construction of a dam. Two of the guys in question, Lewis Medlock (Reynolds) and Ed Gentry (Voight), are experienced in the ways of the outdoors, while the other two, Bobby Trippe (Beatty) and Drew Ballinger (Cox), are entirely new to this.

When the two canoes they take are separated, Bobby and Ed encounter a pair of local mountain men who force them into the woods with a shotgun. In the film's most infamous scene, Bobby is forced to undress and "squeal like a pig" and then violently sodomized by one of the men. As the duo prepares to do the same thing to Ed, Lewis shows up and murders the rapist with a recurve bow. After a brief but heated discussion about what to do about the rapist's body, the four elect to bury him and continue their trip like nothing happened. Unfortunately, the dead man's accomplice got away, and is now hunting them down like animals, throwing all of them into a struggle to survive.

[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7e866f18_3a00_463d_a684_5d62deb00b69.jpeg]]

A 1970 novel by James Dickey, ''Deliverance'' was adapted into a 1972 film directed by Creator/JohnBoorman and starring Creator/JonVoight, Creator/BurtReynolds, Creator/NedBeatty, and Creator/RonnyCox. It's #15 on AFI's 100 Years 100 Thrills list.

The film involves four middle-class suburbanites from UsefulNotes/{{Atlanta}} who decide to spend a weekend canoeing in the wild countryside of [[UsefulNotes/GeorgiaUSA Georgia]], hoping to have fun and witness the area's unspoiled nature before the Cahulawassee River valley is flooded by construction of a dam. Two of the guys in question, Lewis Medlock (Reynolds) and Ed Gentry (Voight), are experienced in the ways of the outdoors, while the other two, Bobby Trippe (Beatty) and Drew Ballinger (Cox), are completely new to this.

When the two boats they take are separated, Bobby and Ed encounter two local men who force them into the woods with a shotgun. In the film's most infamous scene, Bobby is forced to undress and "squeal like a pig" and then violently sodomized by one of the men. As the duo prepares to do the same thing to Ed, Lewis shows up and kills the rapist with a recurve bow. After a brief but heated discussion about what to do about the rapist's body, the four elect to bury him and carry on like nothing happened. Unfortunately, the dead man's accomplice got away, and is now hunting them down like animals, throwing all of them into a struggle to survive.

* FanDisservice: The rape scene, natch.