Four friends set out on a canoe trip through backwoods Georgia—a lark, a weekend's diversion, a blissful, beery break from their day jobs. But their itinerary unexpectedly swings into darker territory when they meet a gang of savage, sodomitical mountain men, and by the time they emerge again—most of them—from the wilderness, they have been through some of the blackest terrain, both geographical and spiritual, since Marlowe went up the river in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Though it's been partially eclipsed by the movie version—you know it for that "Dueling Banjos" scene—the original Deliverance is a visceral, dangerous thriller packed with forbidden knowledge.—L.G.