Walter Hill is probably best known for more popular box office hits like The Warriors and 48 Hrs., but this movie is by far his most intense and underrated one. Advertised as the "1980s version of Deliverance," this movie is really an allegory for U. S. involvement in the Vietnam War, mixed with an updating of the Agatha Chrisitie "Ten Little Indians" theme.

Nine (not ten) Louisiana National Guardsmen enter the bayou, miles away from civilization, for a routine weekend warrior training exercise. Despite their training, they get lost in the swamps and borrow Cajun pirogue boats to make up for lost time. A practical joke by one of the dimmer weekend warriors backfires. The Cajuns are not pleased an retaliate with real ammo, which is no match for the blanks the Guardsmen brought with them.

One by one, the Guardsmen are picked off. They are unwanted soldiers in a strange, hostile land, that happens to exist within the borders of the United States. Each Guardsmen brings a distinct personality to the screen, all variations of male machismo: The cocky but ineffective second-in-charge Casper, who becomes the leader after the more serious Poole gets shot near the beginning of the film; the brute Reece, who as one character says "acts as if he's in a dime novel;" the aforementioned prankster Stuckey, "who can't even read a dime novel"; the likely unbalanced high school football coach Bowden; the wise-cracking Black Guardsman; and so on.

Keith Carradine's Spencer and Powers Boothe's Hardin are the only two grounded members of the team, besides Peter Coyote's Poole, who we really don't learn much about before his murder. Of course they turn out to be the sole survivors in the swamp. They initially believe all is well when they end up at a Cajun village, miles away from any non-Cajun town. Spencer believes "these are the good Cajuns." But the appearance of the hulking character actor Sonny Landham as a Cajun hunter suggests otherwise (the late Landham had a career of playing psycho villains, including his character in Hill's next film, 48 Hrs.)

Another character who appears several times to make things complicated for the Guardsmen is a trapper played by another late character actor best known for villain roles: Brion James.

The atmosphere depicted in the film is moody and dangerous. Ry Cooder's score is equally ominous. And although a few women appear near the end in the Cajun village, this is definitely a male-dominated action/thriller. The sequence at the Cajun village near the end is memorable and disturbing, as Hill intercuts the ritualistic slaying of a boar with the scenes pitting Spencer and Hardin against the hunters (the sequence also works as a tribute, or rip-off to more cynical viewers, to the climax of Apocalypse Now).

The actors are first-rate. Carradine is our sympathetic center of attention, and gets top billing. Boothe is also supposed to be a hero in the movie but his character seems "off" as well - he has a giant chip on his shoulder, and as a chemical engineer, feels "above" his fellow weekend warriors. Fred Ward is especially memorable as the bullying Reece, who does nothing to hide his animosity towards James' trapper character (the trapper may or may not have been involved with the killings of the men). Ward and James would reunite more civilly twelve years later in Robert Altman's The Player.

Hill's later films were an uneven bunch, ranging from a Sam Peckinpah-inspired western, to a "rock and roll fable," to a silly Richard Pryor/John Candy buddy comedy, to a strange road movie musical hybrid. Southern Comfort, and possibly The Long Riders, rank as the director's most artistically gratifying works.

A bizarre yet excellent paranoia thriller that takes place in a swamp in the Louisana where eight National Guard members who are on a routine reconnaissance excerise, unwillingly and intentionally start an exhausting battle of wills and survival with some Cajuns who know the swamps like if their own backyard.

Director Walter Hill ("48 Hours", "Undisputed") and his screen-writers (David Giler and Michael Kane) have unveiled an expected surprise that surpasses even my expectations of a top-notch thriller. The trio have borrowed the backdrop from one of those not-so-smart slasher movies like "Friday the 13th", then change the location of the story to the Louisana Bayou, and give the viewer characters that we may like.

As for the cast, Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe emerge here to give the best performances. Boothe is good as Hardin, who came to the unit as a transfer from Texas while Carradine is the relatively easy-going Spencer. Fred Ward and Alan Autry also deliver here as two members who are both troublesome in two different ways. Ward is the bully who doesn't need much to provoke a fight with anyone and Autry is the emotionally shell-shocked soldier whose fragile feelings are rocked when the unit's leader, Sargeant Poole (Peter Coyote) is unexpectedly shot and killed.

Some of the locals that the team run into are either harmless or polite instead of being stereotyped. However, the Cajuns that are seeking revenge are about as hard to find as the shark in the first half of "Jaws".

Even a few of the Hill regulars: musician Ry Cooder, photographer Andrew Laszlo, and production designer John Vallone add another key element to the movie. The look, the feel, and especially - the music fit the atmosphere like it should be and I was satisfied with that.

Plus, the movie ads for "Southern Comfort" don't lie here and what happens in the film shows very clearly why.

Thank the heavens for John Boorman! If it hadn't been for his classic "Deliverance", we never would have had the stream of gritty and relentless "Backwoods" action & horror movies. Most of them are just a cheap excuse to make fun of stereotypical rednecks and depict gratuitous violence, but some are truly great films that come damn near to the quality level of "Deliverance" itself, like Walter Hill's "Southern Comfort". This exhilarating backwoods survival chiller uses some of the best exterior filming locations ever, the suspense and atmosphere of madness gradually builds itself up, the (almost) all-star cast is terrific and the violence is extremely rough at times. A nine-headed squadron of the Louisiana National Guard enrolls into a training practice in the Cajun Swamps and soon get lost. They borrow three canoes of the local population without asking and when one of the soldiers playfully (but stupidly) fires off blanks in their direction, the unseen Cajuns hillbilly-poachers respond with real bullets. This inflicts a disturbing cat and mouse game between the soldiers (with minimal ammunition and no knowledge of the area) and the seemingly invisible Cajuns (with their primitive hunting instincts and inventive booby traps). Usually in this type of flicks, it's obvious to choose which side you're on, but in "Southern Comfort" you have to think at least twice. The soldiers aren't exactly warm and friendly men, neither, and you're more than often tempted to think they're somewhat responsible for the mess they're in. After all, they did steal the canoes, they did set fire to one of the Cajun's homes and they did yell obscure things at them! The finale, set in an actual Cajun community, is truly nail-biting, absorbing and strangely educational, what with all the portrayal of typical rituals like dance parties and barbecuing! Another masterful period accomplishment from Walter Hill, who also made the brilliant cult classic "The Warriors" and the family-western "The Long Riders".