History Film / Deliverance

* [[AllThereInTheManual All There in the Original Book]]: 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 deliverance from the stress of modern life.

* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: Averted very hard... or at least, it tried to. To see how well that worked, look at this film's page image.

* MoralGuardians: In real life some moral guardians protested about ''BrokebackMountain'' being shown on TV. They showed this instead.

* CreatorCameo: James Dickey appears toward the end as TheSheriff, who tells the men one of his deputies has a brother-in-law who's gone missing and advises them to leave and never come back.

* IAmNotSpock: Bill [=McKinney=] was so strongly associated with the role of the mountain man who sodomizes Ned Beatty that it cost him the role of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in ''FullMetalJacket''. StanleyKubrick didn't want to meet with him because he was ''that'' scared of him.

* TheRedStapler: Inversion. [[SarcasmMode For some strange reason]], the camping industry blamed this film for a significant drop in sales.

* RiddleForTheAges: The most common, or second most common question from many in the audience tends to be: [[spoiler: was the man whom Ed shot the same one who had intended to violate him earlier? (Yes, he was.)]] The actual persistent mystery, and one [[ShrugOfGod deliberately]] left ambiguous and unexplained, is, however [[spoiler: Drew's fate: was he shot, did he fall into the river accidentally, or did he choose to jump in? John Boorman tended to be evasive on the subject, James Dickey felt it was murder, Ronny Cox believed it was suicide.]] Nobody really knows and John Boorman says it's up to each viewer to decide.

* RiddleForTheAges: The most common question some in the audience will have is: was the man whom [[spoiler: Ed shot the same one who had intended to violate him earlier? (Yes, he was.)]] The more persistent mystery, and one [[ShrugOfGod deliberately]] left ambiguous and unexplained, is [[spoiler: Drew's fate: was he shot, did he fall into the river accidentally, or did he choose to jump in? John Boorman tended to be evasive on the subject, James Dickey felt it was murder, Ronny Cox believed it was suicide.]] Nobody really knows and John Boorman says it's up to each viewer to decide.

* RiddleForTheAges: The most common question some in the audience will have is: was the man whom [[spoiler: Ed shot the same one who had intended to violate him earlier? (Yes, he was.)]] The more persistent mystery, and one [[ShrugOfGod deliberately]] left ambiguous and unexplained, is [[spoiler: Drew's fate: was he shot, did he fall into the river accidentally, or did he choose to jump in? John Boorman tended to be evasive on the subject, James Dickey felt it was murder, Ronny Cox believed it was suicide. Nobody really knows and John Boorman says it's up to each viewer to decide.]]

* Riddle for the Ages: The most common question some in the audience will have is: was the man whom [[spoiler: Ed shot the same one who had intended to violate him earlier? (Yes, he was.)]] The more persistent mystery, and one [[ShrugOfGod: deliberately]] left ambiguous and unexplained, is [[spoiler: Drew's fate: was he shot, did he fall into the river accidentally, or did he choose to jump in? John Boorman tended to be evasive on the subject, James Dickey felt it was murder, Ronny Cox believed it was suicide. Nobody really knows and John Boorman says it's up to each viewer to decide.]]

* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: Averted very hard.

* ThrowItIn: The infamous rape scene didn't actually call for any dialogue. The actor playing the rapist got so into it that, combined with his general sadism, the other actors tackled him after one shooting because it looked very likely that he was going to rape Ned Beatty for real.[[hottip:*:This is an anecdote from Burt Reynolds and its truth has been questioned.]]

** Of course, since the production went and hired ''actual'' [[TruthInTelevision "mountain men"]] as extras, many of whom didn't have to do all that much acting to play the part, this is most likely [[JustifiedTrope justified.]]

** ''SouthPark'' episode "The China Problem" had a dream sequence in which George Lucas and Steven Speilberg rape IndianaJones while telling him to squeal like a pig.

* CrazySurvivalist: Lewis plays around with this. He adores doing the whole MountainMan thing, scorns people who he thinks rely on or are products of civilization, and believes that at some point society will break down and we'll all have to rely on our wilderness survival skills -- Ed suggests that Lewis actually can't wait for that to happen. At the same time, it's implied that Lewis isn't actually as good a survivalist as he thinks he is, and he takes everyone kayaking down that river without finding out if it was safe first, and even after a local warned him it was extremely dangerous. [[spoiler:This comes back to bite him in the ass big time when the kayaks hit some major rapids, tossing them all out and breaking his leg.]]

* CorruptHick: The antagonists.
** The film takes place somewhere in Georgia. The four "city boys" are unable to form much a connection with the locals. The locals fit the stereotypical hillbilly image of being crude, rude, and inbred for some of them. There is also one point when the four "city boys" encounter two hillbillies on their trip down the river. They assume that the two guys are operating a moonshine still and offer to buy some. The two hillbillies, in response, force one of them to strip himself naked, chase him, and sodomize him, apparently ForTheEvulz. It should also be pointed out that the four "city boys" were rather condescending toward the locals and the one who got sodomized had openly mocked the locals out loud for seeming to display genetic defects.
*** 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. Especially subverted in the case of the mentally challenged banjo player (probably the most famous character in the film), whose banjo playing provides a creepy soundtrack but who is otherwise benevolent.
*** For particularly creepy hillbillies, expect to hear [[{{Deliverance}} "Dueling Banjos"]]. (This is a conflation of the two [[AllThereIsToKnowAboutTheCryingGame things people generally know about the film]]- that song and rapist hillbillies. In the actual film, they had nothing to do with one another.)

A group of stuck-up {{Atlanta}} yuppies decide to go into the wild countryside of Georgia where they do a little canoeing, play a little banjo, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick and suddenly get brutally raped by a pair of local hicks]]. After one of the group kills the rapist, the four city boys must try and escape the town before the locals find out what happened. However, the dead man's accomplice ran off, and starts hunting them down like animals. The film is best known for the page quote about squealing like a pig and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzae_SqbmDE the "Dueling Banjos" scene.]] If you ever see the film [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel you will never be able to enjoy banjos again. Or go canoeing. Or visit rural Georgia. Or, you know, sleep.]]

* CatapultNightmarel: Ed during the final scene.

A 1970 novel by James Dickey, adapted into a 1972 film directed by John Boorman and starring JonVoight, BurtReynolds as Lewis, NedBeatty, and Ronny Cox.

** The kids' show ''CowAndChicken'' had a scene where Chicken is paddling a canoe down a river, and a creepy hillbilly is laughing and commenting on his "Purty beak", Chicken then starts panicking and rowing away faster.

* [=~Don't Go In The Woods~=]

** In the gym episode of ''[=~Rocko's Modern Life~=]'', Rocko gets on a rowing machine and accidentally sets the difficulty level to "[[AC: Deliverance]]". The computer tells him "We gonna make you squeal, piggy!"

* RapeIsFunnyWhenItIsMaleOnMale: Averted very hard.

* TheRedStapler: Inversion. [[WhatAnIdiot For some strange reason]] the camping industry blamed this film for a significant drop in sales.

A 1970 novel by James Dickey, adapted into a 1972 film directed by John Boorman and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds as Lewis, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox.

* {{Jerkass}}: Lewis.