Halloween Hits to R.I.P. By – Dueling Banjos

By Bennett Owen

Credit: PlasticAxe.com

If you haven’t seen the movie, it may seem less like Halloween and more like a tribute to the roots of country music. But those of us who have watched ‘Deliverance’ know Dueling Banjos is an ominous and downright creepy portent of terrible trouble right around the next bend in the river.  It’s as if that banjo-picking kid already knows what’s in store for these too smart city slickers. And he ain’t talking. 

As a young lad I snuck into a matinee showing of Deliverance in Gladstone, Oregon and spent the next six months sleeping with the lights on. It’s not so much the misadventure that befalls the four buddies. It’s the nightmare that only truly begins when they return to civilization…a nightmare that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.