Actors: Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds
Director: John Boorman
Even though Deliverance is both terrifying and insulting, I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's terrifying because it successfully evokes how close we are to our bestial nature, without jamming it down our throats. It's insulting because its evocation of terror is based on our natural fear of bestial hillbillies, who steal and threaten and (spoiler alert) sodomize. So if it does cast the rural South as an uneducated, lawless lot, it manages to grant all the other characters realistic qualities and temperaments.
There's especially great use of cinematography - we know from other films when the camera is 'within' the eyes of a character, the camera moves in the way a person's head and sight does - Deliverance tricks us into thinking someone's watching. Or are they? The feeling of dread is multiplied.
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The south uneducated? How unrealistic!
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