Rick Stump (otherRic)
Well-acted film that skips flashy for effective. With its character focus, surprisingly good characterization, character development, moral ambiguity, and pacing it feels a lot more like a stage play than a TV movie - in the best ways. Bradford Dillman and George Kennedy put in great work with Dillman's quiet desperation being particularly poignant. The mountain setting works well to focus on the isolation of the characters both from the world and from moral decisions then, finally, from each other. The cold weather seems at first to represent the hostility of the world but ends up representing the coldness of the men toward each other.The writer, Jack Sowards, had previously worked on TV series like Bonanza and this was his first full-length screenplay to be shot. Its good dialog, solid pace, and rich characterization foreshadow the work he did a decade later when he wrote Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.Definitely worth a watch if you can find it!
merklekranz
George Kennedy, Jan-Michael Vincent, Jack Weston, Bradford Dillman, are among the wilderness warriors tempted to divide and keep $600,000 taken from a parachuting plane hijacker. After George Kennedy kills the hijacker, the group rather quickly decides to hike out of the mountains with their windfall gain. This leads to various members dying, with their share again divided equally among the survivors. With the money seeming to bring on nothing but bad luck, the last men find themselves burning $100 bills for warmth in a driving blizzard. The scenery is impressive, character development acceptable, and the story rather predictable. - MERK
mfnmbessert-224-279128
It's hard to believe that this film is nearly forty years old, and I would dare to say that it is still thrilling by today's standards, without relying on extremely expensive special effects or gore or of any of the like. I was in the mood to watch something on the order of 'A Simple Plan' with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton, and 'Deliver Us From Evil' was a definite inspiration for that one. Other reviewers have likened this movie to 'Deliverance' but I can't say as I haven't seen it yet. The acting is decent, although I had only ever heard of George Kennedy before.It's hard to believe that this movie was made for TV, and it really is a shame that more people don't know about it, because I would definitely recommend it.DELIVER US FROM EVIL ----- 8/10
Ajtlawyer
This was one of the first made-for-TV movies and it is a good one. A group of hikers hear on a radio about a skyjacker taking over an airplane and collecting a ransom. Soon thereafter they see a parachutist coming down in the mountains near them. When they run across a lone hiker, they chase him and one of the hikers shoots him to death. Sure enough, the lone hiker is the skyjacker and his backpack has $600,000.00 in it.The group debates about what to do and decides to split the money and go home and say nothing. (Sort of a mountain version of "Deliverance"--of which it is certainly derivative--meets "A Simple Plan"). Of course along the way nature starts punishing them for their sins and the hikers face increasingly difficult obstacles which kill them off one by one until, crossing a glacier in a snow storm two of them abandon their packs heavy with money while the greediest stays behind, refusing to give up the money but being forced to try and burn it to keep from freezing to death.George Kennedy, Bradford Dillman, Jack Weston and Jan-Michael Vincent all give good performances in this movie. "A Simple Plan" told a similar story but about 25 years after "Deliver Us From Evil" did but didn't necessarily tell the story any better. It is probably impossible to rent this movie and almost impossible to see it re-run on TV. That's a shame because it is worth watching.
AD
