Deliverance

Director: John Boorman

1972 / 109min / 35mm

A quartet of city slicker businessman buddies (Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox and, in a star-making role, Burt Reynolds) leave Atlanta to head into the Georgia backwoods for what’s meant to be a little weekend canoe trip… and stumble headlong instead into the hidden horrors lurking in the old Southland. The trial-by-fire endurance test that they’ll pass through makes for pure, pulse-pounding cinema, with at least three scenes—the “Dueling Banjos” gas station stop, Beatty’s “Squeal like a pig!” humiliation, and the white-water rapids set piece—that rank above the most remembered in ’70s American cinema.