"didn't make a fucking nickel anywhere. Foreign, domestic, anything... I was proud of the film... But I was disappointed in the lack of response. It was a universal audience failure... Usually you can say they loved it in Japan or something. I don't think anybody loved it anywhere." On the Rotten Tomatoes website the film has received a positive reception from critics with an overall rating of 76% from 21 reviews. Roger Ebert rated it 3 stars, stating that it is "a film of drum-tight professionalism" but criticizing it for making its characters "into larger-than-life stick figures, into symbolic units who stand for everything except themselves." While he said that the stock nature of the characters reminded him greatly of the way Hill approached the gang members in The Warriors (to which he gave a 2 stars, thumbs down review) he also said that he would recommend Southern Comfort partly because he had overlooked good qualities of Hill's previous film over that issue, and that the atmosphere and pacing of Southern Comfort were so strong that he gave it a thumbs up. At the time critics regularly made reference to the film's plot similarities to John Boorman's 1972 thriller Deliverance. Change of story under Iranian censorship In the late 1980s Iranian state TV IRIB broadcast the film, under the name "Operation Lagoon" (Amaliyate Mordab). The film was shortened to 95 minutes, and the story was changed. In the Iranian version, a group of US Army soldiers who opposed the Vietnam War are sent to a mission among man-hunters, equipped only with blanks. The soldiers are killed by man-hunters one after another as planned by US authorities. At the end, when the remaining two soldiers believe the US Army truck is coming to save them, the picture fades and a voice of constant shooting is heard, indicating the US authorities killed all the soldiers. The film was a huge hit among the Iranian audience. The Iranian film critics believed that the IRIB censored version made more sense considering the American government's alleged atrocities overseas. See also List of American films of 1981 Survival film, about the film genre, with a list of related films "Amos Moses", 1970 song by Jerry Reed about a one-armed Cajun poacher References Bibliography External links "Walter Hill: The Hollywood Interview" (September 8, 2009) 1981 films 1981 action thriller films 1981 independent films 20th Century Fox films