Did You Know?

Director John Boorman's son Charley Boorman appears near the end of the movie as Ed's little boy.

To save costs and add to the realism, local residents were cast in the roles of the hill people.

Burt Reynolds broke his coccyx while going down the rapids when the canoe capsizes. Originally, a cloth dummy was used, but it looked too much "like a dummy going over a waterfall". After Reynolds was injured and recuperating, he asked, "How did it look?" The director replied, "Like a dummy going over a waterfall."

Originally, Sam Peckinpah wanted to direct the movie. When John Boorman secured the rights, Peckinpah directed Straw Dogs instead.

"Dueling Banjos" was the first scene shot. The rest of the movie was almost entirely shot in sequence.

The movie was shot primarily on the Chattooga River, dividing South Carolina and Georgia. Additional scenes were shot on the Tallulah Gorge in Georgia as well in Salem, South Carolina and Sylva, North Carolina. Monaca, Pennsylvania is represented in shots of the town which did not call for the actors to be present.

Despite the title of the piece, "Dueling Banjos" actually features a banjo and a guitar.

John Boorman discovered both Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty working in theater. Neither had substantial film experience previously.

John Boorman was looking for an actor to play the toothless one of the pair of murderous hillbillies. Burt Reynolds suggested Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward, who had no front teeth, stuttered and was illiterate. Reynolds had worked with Coward in a Wild West show in Maggie Valley, NC.

When Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand were married during this shoot, Charley Boorman (then 5) served as a pageboy at the wedding.

Not only was this movie Ned Beatty's first feature, his voice (laughter) is the first human sound to appear on the soundtrack.

According to director John Boorman, the jig done by the filling station attendant during the "Dueling Banjos" sequence was unscripted and spontaneous on the part of the actor.

Both Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda turned down the role of "Lewis" before it was offered to Burt Reynolds, who took it.

This movie is in film history considered to be the "breakthrough" film of Burt Reynolds. By breakthrough, it marked his transition from acting and starring into super-stardom. This film reflects the start of the period of Reynolds enormous star power and box-office pulling power, his machismo persona being mixed with a critical recognized serious dramatic performance.

Bill McKinney became so identified with his chilling role as the Mountain Man that he adopted www.squeallikeapig.com as the name of his official website.

The aluminum canoe has the blue and white logo of Grumman, the famed aircraft company and builder of such craft as the F-14 Tomcat and the Apollo Lunar Module.

An alternate ending was shot, but cut from the final version. This other ending apparently takes place a few weeks (or perhaps months) after the main events of the movie. It appears in author/screenwriter James Dickey's original script as part of the final "dream" sequence, but not as the story's literal conclusion. The scene shows Lewis, Burt Reynolds, walking with a crutch (in Dickey's screenplay, his leg is supposed to be amputated below the knee). The sequence depicts Ed, Jon Voight, Lewis and Bobby, Ned Beatty, meeting with Sheriff Bullard, James Dickey, near the dam in Aintry. The sheriff displays to them a body placed on a stretcher and uncovers it, so that they can look at its face. No identifiable details of the body are shown, which was a deliberate choice, to make the audience uncertain whether the dead man is Drew, Ronny Cox, Don Job, Bill McKinney, or the Toothless Man, Herbert 'Cowboy' Coward. The body was played by Christopher Dickey (James Dickey's son), who writes about the scene in his memoir, "Summer of Deliverance", and even HE doesn't know whose body it was supposed to be. In the screenplay, Ed awakens terrified from this dream, just before the face of the corpse is to be revealed.

Ronny Cox's shoulder is double-jointed and it was he that suggested to director John Boorman that his arm appear twisted around his neck when his body is discovered. No prosthetic was used.