Deliverance

Jessica Morris6 said:I put together this GIF so you guys can actually see what I mean. The whole thing feels incredibly cheap and poorly executed... especially that part where he basically impales himself on his own arrow—it’s such an obvious, lazy stunt 🙂. Most of the other scenes hold up fine, but they really dropped the ball on this one.

Like Patrick Martin said—he fires the arrow and then trips.

Then we get a CUT.

Next shot: he’s sliding down the cliffside, skewered by the arrow. So, basically, he impaled himself mid-fall and just slid all the way to the edge.
Look, it doesn't matter if we see the EXACT mechanics of how he gets stuck—the point is, he's stuck. Accidents happen.🤷

He could've gone over the cliff, but he didn't.

There's no way he could have loaded that arrow while falling like that. And since it’s one of the most crucial scenes in the movie, it actually matters.

The issue here is the continuity—in the previous shot, he’s standing in a perfectly safe spot where there's no way he could have been impaled, yet in the very next frame, the arrow has suddenly pierced right through him. But honestly, if you can just look past that, one single scene isn't going to ruin the whole experience. It’s an excellent film, easily one of the best in its genre... whatever you want to call it... adventure, man vs. nature, or something along those lines.

This whole debate is pretty much as pointless as arguing about whether a punch in a movie actually works—you know, those people who suddenly become armchair experts claiming it’s physically impossible to knock someone out unless you hit them at a very specific angle.

I’m honestly struggling to find the right way to put this—the scene is edited perfectly, capturing that exact split second where the guy falls directly onto his own arrow. 🤷

That’s really the core of it in this part of the film—the fact that he falls onto the arrow, and the editing handles it so well that a regular viewer* sees exactly what happened: a man trips and impales himself on his own gear.
There isn't some massive continuity error or script flaw here; it's just a brief, clear moment that shows precisely what the director intended to convey.

*And by "regular viewer," I mean an actual person watching the movie, not someone sitting there frame-stepping through clips on a computer, slowing everything down to calculate the precise trajectory of the arrow's entry point just so they can judge the directing, the editing, or the quality of the entire film based on such pedantic analysis.

Everyone watches movies differently—there aren't any rules. If there were, what would be the point?

@Jessica Morris6,
Boorman is obsessed with life in the wild, hunting, and all that crap. He’s worth checking out, including The Emerald Forest, 1985, even if it doesn't hit the legendary status of Deliverance.

Man, you guys are seriously nitpicking over nothing again and obsessing about details that don't even matter. Look, this movie was shot back in 1972—there wasn't any damn CGI or whatever high-tech nonsense exists today.

Here’s what actually matters.
The guy is clumsy.
He's clinging to the edge of a cliff.
He’s in a totally precarious spot.
Calculating his fall.
He’s barely hanging onto that ledge (that intense live shot where he hits the arrow is cool, but the real kicker is that massive canyon in the background 😉 )
Then he gets impaled by the arrow (after the cut, there's that second angle showing the detail of the arrow passing through him)

So, in just a few seconds, a whole lot of stuff goes down, and for that era, the execution was top-notch.
Honestly, I kind of dig that this is how they filmed it; it gives the whole scene a unique vibe.

It's all about the editing—how they creatively pieced those shots together—and let me tell you, that kind of stuff is hard to pull off even nowadays.

I can tell you right now, the guy messed up and ended up on that arrow because it ain't easy to be dangling off a cliff while simultaneously panicking because some guy is coming at you with a shotgun.

"Timing" isn't an excuse. What counts as important is entirely subjective depending on who's watching.

For me, the issue is HOW he went for that arrow; they could have easily skipped the graphic close-up of it piercing through him.
Everything else holds up—the tension, the danger, his clumsy nature—but that specific shot was overkill. Why show us the impalement?

James Garcia50 said:Everyone watches movies differently—there aren't any rules. If there were, what would be the point?

@Jessica Morris6,
Boorman is obsessed with life in the wild, hunting, and all that crap. He’s worth checking out, including The Emerald Forest, 1985, even if it doesn't hit the legendary status of Deliverance.

Posted👍

Point Blank is easily my favorite Boorman flick.

Just one more thing—since I initially dismissed the "goof," thinking that unidentified flying object was just some pyrotechnic prop that missed the football entirely:

It’s nothing more than a simple rifle reload ( 🤷 damn, the most mysterious phenomena usually have the simplest explanations)

Casey Cox2 said:Point Blank is easily my favorite Boorman flick.

Zardoz joke☕

Just kidding. I’d say The general is the winner, especially with Brendan Gleeson being so excellent.

coppersailor28 said:Just one more thing—since I initially dismissed the "goof," thinking that unidentified flying object was just some pyrotechnic prop that missed the football entirely:

It’s nothing more than a simple rifle reload ( 🤷 damn, the most mysterious phenomena usually have the simplest explanations)

once you weigh everything against each other, that scene was actually shot with only a handful of mistakes...🙂

Some cool trivia about the movie:
To save some cash and make things feel more authentic, they actually used locals to play the hillfolk.

John Boorman originally had his sights set on Lee Marvin and Marlon Brando for the roles of Lewis and Ed—but after reading through the script, he figured they were just too old for it and pivoted to younger actors instead.

Most of the filming went down along the Chattog River, right on the border of South Carolina and Georgia.

Sam Peckinpah was actually supposed to direct this one, but once John Boorman locked down the rights, Peckinpah ended up directing Straw Dogs instead.

This was the first film for Neda Beatty.

Donald Sutherland actually turned down a role in this because the script was way too violent for him at the time. He admitted later on that he totally regretted passing it up.

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