Only a few months after the book's publication in March 1970, a film adaptation confirmed its Georgia setting by filming on location in Rabun County and on the Chattooga.
It centres on four city boys on an outdoor weekend around the fictional Cahulawassee River (really Georgia's Chattooga River) in the Appalachian mountains.
The rundown town seen in Deliverance was filmed in Sylva, North Carolina, while the movie also filmed at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church. This site was flooded by Lake Jocassee shortly after filming, with the dam seen under construction being the Jocassee Dam, which forms the lake.
If you want to visit this Deliverance film scene location, we've got some bad news for you: it's now underwater. These shots were filmed at what is now Lake Jocassee in South Carolina, roughly 25 miles northeast of where most of the river scenes were shot. The lake was formed by flooding the Jocassee Valley in 1971.
Deliverance was shot primarily on the Chattooga River following the state line between Northern Georgia and Western South Carolina. Additional scenes were shot on the steeper sections of the Tallulah River and its deep gorge.
Did the actors in Deliverance really canoe down the river?
To minimize costs, the production wasn't insured, and the actors did their own stunts. Jon Voight climbed the cliff. Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx (tailbone) while going down the rapids when the canoe capsized. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too fake, like a dummy going over a waterfall.
Bobby is raped in the film's most intense scene. While not that graphic, the scene is still very disturbing as it displays the victim being chased, held down and taunted during the assault. And after all that, the anal rape begins, with disturbing squealing from the rapist and the victim, but not explicitly visible.
“Deliverance,” which the writer hinted was based on real events (although few believe him; Boorman says “nothing in that book actually happened to him”) was his first and only experience in the film industry (although after his death, the Coen Brothers tried to make a silent version of his final book, “To The White Sea ...
What was wrong with the banjo playing kid in Deliverance?
The fact is that Redden was not in any way mentally challenged, he was simply hired by the director because he had the backwoods look they were after. They coached him, and used makeup techniques, to make him appear to be a witless boy in the film. Billy was 15 at the time the scene was shot.
After a while, Bobby and Ed pull off to the side to wait, and encounter a pair of unkempt hillbillies emerging from the woods; one toothless (Herbert 'Cowboy Coward), and one wielding a shotgun (Bill McKinney). The hillbillies are mildly hostile at first.
Some facts about the scene are that Redden did not know how to play the banjo, so another teenager was his hand double in the song "Dueling Banjos" while in the soundtrack, Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell were the musicians performing the song.
What is the meaning of the banjo scene in Deliverance?
The banjo boy scene in Deliverance establishes the narrative's resonating themes of ability, adaptability, and manhood. The hyperwhite banjo player functions as a kind of future primitive, whose savant skill on an ancient instrument signals danger.
James Dickey's first novel, Deliverance, is an adventure story of a three-day canoe trip in the rugged wilderness of southern Appalachia, in which four suburbanites are brutalized both by the sheer force of the river and by violent and degenerate mountain men.
Great acting, great locations, great music… especially the Dueling Banjos segment…the viewers were actually put into the scary situation the actors were in… I remember being very uncomfortable when they were interacting with the hillbilly men…
The film was made on location up in the northeastern corner of Georgia, around Rabun Gap and Clayton in Rabun County, towards the border with the Carolinas.
The river had as much a starring role in the film as actors Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds. But many people don't realize that the actual river they filmed on was the Chattooga River, which runs along the top of the northwestern part of Oconee County and creates the border between South Carolina and Georgia.
The Chattooga River is the crown jewel of southern white water. Famous as the location for the movie Deliverance, this beautiful gorge contains twenty-six miles of rafting adventure, split into two different river trip sections, for all experience levels.
The brutal scenes in the 1972 classic thriller Deliverance were enough to scare viewers away from canoeing entirely — but they were actually far more realistic than you might expect as actors revealed they nearly lost their lives while filming during several terrifying incidents.
to scream very loudly, as though you are in a lot of pain. Alan tried to calm him while Miller continued to scream like a stuck pig. Easy Learning Idioms Dictionary.
Ed manages to kill the hillbilly, whose dead body is tied down with weights and tossed into the river by Ed, Lewis, and Bobby to ensure it will never be found.
The film never tells the audience the origin or significance of the title Deliverance, but James Dickey's novel explains that its four city-dwelling protagonists, Ed, Lewis, Bobby, and Drew, take their backwoods canoeing trip seeking “deliverance” from the stresses of their modern, day-to-day lives.
Billy Redden (born 1956) is an American actor, best known for his role as a backwoods mountain boy in the 1972 film Deliverance. He played Lonnie, a banjo-playing teenager in north Georgia, who played the noted "Dueling Banjos" with Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox).
Filled with meaningful dialogue ('Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything') and iconic moments (the spirited Dueling Banjos scene), Deliverance is an adventure movie like no other, a film that cemented Burt Reynolds star status and confirmed the considerable talent of Jon Voight.
