Southern Comfort (1981)

My Review

“Southern Comfort” is a survivalist drama about nine men from the Louisiana Army National Guard on weekend maneuvers in swampy bayou country who suddenly become the hunted as they inadvertently antagonize the locals. Director Walter Hill (“The Driver” 1978) put together a riveting drama with great atmospherics, excellent pacing, good performances, and lucid writing from a screenplay he penned with Michael Kane and David Giler.

The film is well-cast and includes believable performances by Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe, Fred Ward, Franklyn Seales, T. K. Carter, Lewis Smith, Les Lannom, Peter Coyote, Carlos Brown, Sonny Landham, and Brion James as a Cajun trapper. The watchable “Southern Comfort” was a big flop at the box office for Cinema Group Ventures and 20th Century Fox. It was filmed at Caddo Lake near Shreveport, Louisiana, in Caddo Parish.