FREE: Deliverance Deluxe Addition (1972)

The listing, Deliverance Deluxe Addition (1972) has ended.

The story concerns four Atlanta businessmen : Jon Voight's character is a reflective, civilized fellow, Burt Reynolds plays a strapping hunter-gatherer in urban clothes, Ned Beatty is a sweaty, weak-willed boy-man, and Ronny Cox essays a spirited, neighborly type.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. What they don't understand until it is too late is that they have ventured into Dickey's variation on the American underbelly, a wild, lawless, dangerous (and dangerously inbred) place isolated from the gloss of the late 20th century. In short order, the four men dig deep into their own suppressed primitiveness, defending themselves against armed cretins, facing the shock of real death on their carefully planned, death-defying adventure, and then squarely facing the suspicions of authority over their concealed actions.
Director John Boorman recorded a full-length commentary track in which he explains how he shot the famous "Duelling Banjos" scene when the boy didn't know how to play the banjo, how he was instructed to use unknown actors and came up with Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, and how he persuaded Jon Voight to do the picture when the actor was going through a difficult time ("he told me I saved his life, , then spent three months trying to kill him"). A 2007 55-minute documentary is split into four parts: The Beginning, The Journey, Betraying the River (focusing on the "squeal like a pig" scene), and Delivered. Voight, Cox, Beatty, Burt Reynolds, and Boorman all participate, as do director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond and "mountain man" Bill McKinney. Christopher Dickey, son of the author of the original novel, James Dickey, also recounts his father's experiences with the film and how he eventually had to be asked to leave the set.
The Dvd has little or no scratches.