Grab your banjo and hide your butts, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of Burt Reynolds’ most critically acclaimed drama (as opposed to his many car chase movies), Deliverance.
It’s every straight man’s worst nightmare – getting forcibly butt blasted against his well by a pair of drunken redneck perverts.
Yes indeed, Hollywood has created a number of monsters over the years. However, if you’re a straight, red blooded American male who dreams of titties and vag 24/7, the scariest, most unimaginable nightmare you can possibly think of is to be forced to “squeal like a pig” as what happened to Ned Beatty in a scene that is, frankly, hard to watch. Honestly, you might want to fast forward through it. I watched this movie years ago and would watch it again but for that scene that I never want to see again.
Four friends and city slickers (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voigt, Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty) go on a canoe trip to explore the great outdoors. When they reach town, they have a banjo duel with a creepy local boy, setting the eerie tone of what is about to transpire.
At first, it’s fun. Beer, canoeing and fishing. Burt’s character, Lewis, is actually an experienced outdoorsman who carries the rest of the crew on his back and his scenes where he shoots bad dudes with his bow and arrow are iconic.
Long story short, one canoe gets lost. Ned and Jon are accosted by dirty mountain man perverts who attack Ned’s tucas while Jon is forced to watch. Lewis saves the day by shooting one of the rapists in the heart with an arrow.
Alas, the other perv escapes and stocksthe rest of the canoers as they try to make it down the river to civilization. Ergo, the city slickers must band together to protect their lives and more importantly, their butts. Yes. These are manly men who will fight to the death to protect their butts from illicit invasions.
I doubt Hollywood would make this movie today. First, it implies the South is an awful place….eh, that’s probably a debate for another post, though Hollywood has never been shy about dumping on the South. But the main reason they wouldn’t make it again is because they’d be afraid people would assume that all homosexuals are looking to rape straight men’s butts which really is far from the truth. Just because these particular homosexuals were butt attackers doesn’t mean all are and surely audiences can be trusted to direct their disdain at these two outliers who deviated from the field containing the vast majority of homosexuals who only engage in consensual butt related activities.
Anyway, it’s a loaded subject matter. No, straight dudes shouldn’t fear gay dudes. But yes, straight dudes are going to fight like hell to protect their butts when in the presence of the very occasional, not representative of the norm, gay rapist because to a straight man, getting your butt invaded by another dude is a fate worse than death.
Hollywood, if they were to remake it today, would probably have Ned Beatty’s character be scared of butt activity only for him to decide he quite enjoys it and then he celebrates the butt invasion and then he moves to the country and opens up a bed and breakfast with his attackers.
Not gonna lie. Even by 1970s standards, the film’s a little freaky. They probably could have just made the rednecks a couple of crazed, homicidal murderers who like to kill people and the audience would have been given the requisite sense of dread without adding the butt attack scene which really, you’ll feel like you have to bleach your brain just to forget that terrible, terrible scene.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but I’ll never watch it again. Cool as Burt is with his bow and arrow, I just can’t watch Ned get butt attacked again. Frankly, Ned should have gotten an Academy Award just for having the courage to play, as far as I know, the first male on male rape victim caught on film. That’s some shit that even Daniel Day Lewis won’t do.
Bookshelf Battle 