At my school we were encour­aged to join one or more of the many extracur­ric­u­lar clubs and soci­eties, and I recall a bewil­der­ing array of choic­es from archery to play­ing the zither (not real­ly, but it begins with Z and illus­trates the point). I chose Film Club because it didn’t involve any more effort than sit­ting in the lec­ture the­atre and watch­ing a movie, and this seemed like a fair extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty to me. Some stu­dents must have been in con­trol of the actu­al film selec­tion because I can’t imag­ine any of our teach­ers sug­gest­ing 1975’s vio­lent­ly dystopi­an sci-fi flick Roller­ball (set in the then-dis­tant future of 2018) or 1972’s grit­ty and nudi­ty-con­tain­ing mob movie, Prime Cut, yet both these movies fig­ure promi­nent­ly in my Film Club mem­o­ries. Anoth­er movie that some­how made the cut was Deliv­er­ance.

Deliv­er­ance was a land­mark 1972 movie pro­duced and direct­ed by British film­mak­er John Boor­man, and chron­i­cles the sto­ry of a group of city slick­ers embark­ing on a canoe­ing adven­ture in the remote wilder­ness of north­ern Geor­gia. Burt Reynolds plays Lewis, the most sea­soned out­doors­man and leader of the group, with Jon Voight play­ing his friend Ed, and new­com­ers Ned Beat­ty and Ron­nie Cox appro­pri­ate­ly play­ing novices Bob­by and Drew. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for all con­cerned, things don’t turn out quite the way they were planned.

The film is not­ed for the music scene near the begin­ning, in which one of the vis­i­tors, Drew, plays Duel­ing Ban­jos on gui­tar with a gift­ed ban­jo-pick­ing coun­try boy, played by fif­teen-year old local Bil­ly Red­den (whose large head and almond-shaped eyes ticked the box­es for Boor­man look­ing for a char­ac­ter sug­gest­ing an “in-bred from the back woods”, with all due respect to Red­den). Red­den didn’t actu­al­ly play the ban­jo and wore a spe­cial shirt that allowed a real ban­jo play­er to hide behind him!

Deliv­er­ance is also noto­ri­ous for the scene lat­er on in the movie when the adven­tur­ers are now deep in woods coun­try, and in which Bob­by and Ed encounter two shot­gun-wield­ing moun­tain men. These men turn out to be the last peo­ple you would want to meet in such a remote set­ting, and they tie Ed to a tree by his neck whilst one of them puts Bob­by through a gru­elling and humil­i­at­ing ordeal: he is com­pelled to strip down and then to “squeal like a pig” as his attack­er tor­ments him, before final­ly being raped. It’s grim view­ing, and only relieved when Reynolds’ capa­ble char­ac­ter Lewis hap­pens upon the scene and comes to the res­cue (if a lit­tle late for Bob­by) by killing the rapist with his bow and arrow and induc­ing the sec­ond hill­bil­ly to scarp­er into the woods. The rest of the film involves the pan­icked reac­tions of all con­cerned and the dra­ma of their attempts to escape back to civil­i­sa­tion (where you can safe­ly imag­ine Bob­by would be remain­ing ever after).

There is a scene in which the guys fall from their canoes whilst rid­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous stretch of rapids. Dum­mies were used in the film­ing but hav­ing viewed the scene, Burt Reynolds request­ed to have the scene re-shot with him­self in the canoe rather than a dum­my, in the inter­ests of authen­tic­i­ty. Boor­man agreed and Reynolds pro­ceed­ed to ride the rapids, but fell out, smashed his shoul­der and head on rocks and float­ed uncon­scious down­stream, before wak­ing up with Boor­man at his bed­side. Reynolds asked “How’d it look?” and Boor­man said, “It looked like a dum­my falling over a water­fall”!

Get a flavour of the movie by watch­ing this mon­tage below.