The Movie: Until I saw this movie, I never knew the true meaning of the derogatory term "cracker". All previous depictions of backwoods hillbillies could not prepare me for the utterly shocking images of the people I saw in this movie... and supposedly they cast locals in this movie to save money... very scary.

Anyway. Deliverance is a tale of survival as four suburban city boys (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox) decide to canoe down a river in the deepest heart of cracker country. What was supposed to be a relaxing weekend in the country quickly turns into a treacherous fight for survival.

The scenery in this film is quite breathtaking, and so far away from anything I've ever known having lived in Southern California all my life. One of the most famous aspects of this film is the rousing rendition of "Dueling Banjos" that starts it all off... almost makes me wanna get up and learn how to play the banjo.

This movie was filmed entirely on location, with all the stunts performed by the actors themselves! This film was nominated for Oscars for Best Director, Best Film Editing, and Best Picture. It didn't win any of them though. But Deliverance did keep me on the edge of my seat.

The DVD: This is a dual-sided disc with a pan and scan version of the film on one side, and an anamorphic widescreen version on the other side. The transfer definitely shows the age of the film, with all its grain and somewhat desaturated colors, but it does provide an overall acceptable image. The audio was also showing its age, and though technically 5.1, the surround mix was pretty flat.

I like the fact that when you put this disc in your DVD player, it goes straight to playing the movie. I can't stand it when you have to watch 5 minutes of splash screens and FBI warnings before you get to see the movie. At the end of the movie you are taken directly to the special features menu, on which you can find a theatrical trailer, Cast and Crew bios, and the original featurette from the movie.

One other thing that I like about this DVD is that on the anamorphic widescreen side, everything is encoded in an anamorphic widescreen format, including all of the special features. On the pan and scan side, everything is in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio. I'm sure this was a bit of extra work for the folks who put this disc together, but I think it's great!