Review by Oliver Longden
Southern Comfort is a re-release of a 1981 survival thriller by Walter Hill, best known for the cult classic The Warriors in which a street gang must fight their way home across a surreal gang-haunted vision of New York. Southern Comfort tells a similar story of violence and struggle. A group of National Guardsmen training in the Louisiana bayou end up in a violent confrontation with the Cajun inhabitants of the swamps. With limited supplies, scarce ammunition and a collection of amateur soldiers with very little skill, the Guardsmen are trapped in a guerilla war with an enemy that knows the terrain, and the business of hunting and killing, better than they ever will.
Southern Comfort works on a number of levels. Firstly it works as a pretty typical ensemble survival thriller. We are presented with a middling sized cast who are violently whittled down over the course of the narrative. The characters are broadly drawn but well acted, with a cast that includes Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe, both of whom would later pop up in HBO’s Deadwood (on which Walter Hill also worked). Southern Comfort has a typical range of characters for the survival genre: the nutter, the coward, the bad guy and the guy who is clearly out of his depth. There are the guys who drive the plot forward through their mistakes and the guys who drive it through their ability to survive, to rise to the occasion. The Cajun bad guys are a mysterious other culture who, despite living in America, are not fully part of it, a species of indigenous alien. There are obvious points of comparison here with the hillbillies of Deliverance, the gang bangers of Assault on Precinct 13 and even the monstrous cannibal family of The Hills Have Eyes. The bayou location provides a plausibly alien environment; the claustrophobia of the sodden trees, the men constantly up to their knees in water, the endless panorama of greys and browns. It’s well shot and Hill expertly ratchets up the tension throughout the film, often exploiting familiarity with the shooting techniques of anticipation to raise the stakes in long, knuckle-biting sequences filled with the growing expectation of sudden violence. The music is excellent too: legendary slide guitarist Ry Cooder provides a fantastic score, and the final scenes make heavy use of Louisiana folk music to embody the unique Cajun culture of the bayou. Taken on a superficial level though, Southern Comfort is still a standard, if expertly put-together genre piece mostly notable for having an unusual and soggy setting that must have been an absolute nightmare for both cast and crew.
The film is about more than simple horror though. It can also be seen as a powerful commentary on war; the Vietnam war at the time, but equally applicable to the Iraq war and other conflicts. The actions of the National Guard patrol in microcosm reflect the actions and attitudes of the whole US military in macrocosm. The Guardsmen are arrogant, careless of the feelings of the Cajun residents, stealing their supplies and generally strolling round like they own the place. As the conflict escalates the soldiers find themselves increasingly out of their depth in the strange, surreal world of the swamps. The point is that they simply don’t understand what is going on, they don’t understand the swamps and they don’t understand the people who live there. Crucially they don’t understand how underskilled they are in this strange environment, and they never fully grasp that their arrogance is completely unjustified. There are links here with films like Black Hawk Down that chronicle some of the more abject failures of the American military abroad, but the parallels might be equally applicable to great British military failures like the Boer War and the disastrous Cadiz Expedition of 1625. Unwarranted military self-confidence has always been a widespread failing. This rich seam of historical commentary elevates Southern Comfort above its genre trappings and turns it into something rather more intriguing.
This re-release adds a 45 minute interview with Hill in which he talks about the making of Southern Comfort, the cast, crew and the social context in which it was made. He fills in some information on the National Guard that helps establish the organisation for non-US viewers. Interestingly Hill rejects the notion that Southern Comfort was designed to be seen exclusively as a metaphor for the Vietnam war and suggests that this is merely one interpretation. He goes on to suggest that the film can also be seen as a Western transposed to a new setting. The interview illuminates the filmmaking process and provides a fascinating insight into the way Hill sees the world. It’s well worth watching and is definitely one of the better DVD extras I’ve seen as Hill goes out of his way to be meticulous in his reminiscences and provide wider contexts for all aspects of the film.
Southern Comfort comes highly recommended, particularly to fans of survival horror and action thrillers who are sick of zombies and mutants and like their murder to come seasoned with a healthy dash of social comment.
Southern Comfort is out on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray on 26th November, from Second Sight Films.