You know you're in for one hell of a ride when a movie begins with a disembodied head with a mustache and goatee literally drawn on his face (seemingly with a black Magic Marker) and a blue towel on his head, who directly addresses you/the audience as it bounces around the screen like a low-fi version of Pong with only one player. "Is God in show business, too?" he says as he floats off. Not if this movie is any indication.
Reportedly, writer/director John Boorman added this prologue after the fact when he saw that audiences were confused by the film that followed, in hopes of helping better communicating his vision. Um, it doesn't. But it does set the tone for the wacky experience that is the movie Zardoz.
After that oddball opening, we begin the film in earnest, as a large stone head floats onto the screen, worshipers gathering below to listen to its wise words. Pray tell, what worldly knowledge will this God-like presence intone?
"The penis is evil," it booms. "Guns are good." It then spews forth from its gaping maw a host of firearms and tells them to go and seek out the "fornicators" and kill them before the "Brutals" breed and fill the earth with more like them. Okay, then.
Just when you think things can't possibly get weirder, onto the screen steps no less than the OG James Bond himself, Sean Connery, with long hair braided into a pony-tail, a sizable handlebar mustache, bandoleers criss-crossed over his bare-but-decidedly-hairy chest.
Clad only in a way too tight red diaper and knee-high boots, Connery manages to be the personification of 70's masculinity and look utterly ridiculous at the same time. And all of this occurs before the title credits even finish rolling! Such are the pleasures that Zardoz has to offer.
Believe it or not, things only get weirder and crazier from there. Sneaking into the massive stone head, Connery's character, Zed, stows away and flies back to its destination: an Utopian society called The Vortex populated by The Eternals, a group of immortals for whom the Brutals grow food, in hopes of being left to their own devices in the wastelands in which they live.
With the arrival of Zardoz, however, the Brutals are thrown into a tizzy and begin to revolt against their oppressors- and each other. As groups of them make their way across the world, slaughtering and raping as they go, The Eternals capture Zed upon his arrival to study one of these Brutals and see what makes them tick, in hopes of staving off the impending revolution. Or something.
Actually, there's also a contingent that seems to have tired of being immortal and actually wants to die, and see the Brutal revolution as a means to an end for achieving that. They also want to use Zed to help in this quest, so a sort of back-and-forth occurs, as the side that wants to die argues with those who want to fight for their right to live and combat the Brutals with everything they have, even if it means sinking to their level of violence, and becoming what they most fear.
Perhaps needless to say, it's a lot to take in, but it's also surprisingly timely, given the parallels one could make to the way things are in America at the moment, what with the small 1% contingent holding all the major wealth in the States, while the 99% suffer as the middle class dwindles to next-to-nothing and poverty reigns supreme. In other words, it's the haves-vs.-the-have-nots, which is more or less what is going on in this movie.
That said, Zardoz manages to be both thought-provoking and near-unbearably pretentious at the same time in a way that only late 60's-early 70's "high concept" pieces can be. There's a striking innocence to the proceedings that's admittedly charming as hell- for instance the casual way one man kisses another towards the end of the film at a key point, which was no doubt far more shocking at the time than it is now.
At the same time, you've got Connery in full-on 70's testosterone mode, hot off of his latest go-round as Bond, no less, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all the insanity going on around him. Has ever a part been more dreadfully miscast? And yet, it works precisely because he stands out in the crowd.
After all, he's supposed to be an outsider that's strikingly different from all of those around him, so, in another way, it's dead-on casting. If this were an American film or a US remake of it, for instance, Burt Reynolds would have been perfect in the role, given the distinctly 70's masculinity he represented at the time. I think that's the point. (He was allegedly offered the role, as Boorman had worked with him in the classic Deliverance, but Reynolds had to turn it down because of health concerns at the time.)
That said, though, there's no denying that Connery's very presence, his vibe and his unique style of acting really calls attention to itself in a way that makes the whole thing laughable as all get out. Don't get me wrong- Connery's a fine actor under normal circumstances, even if he's basically just being himself in most every role. But here, what makes him unique and beloved as an actor just turns the whole affair into high camp of the first order.
I mean, try not to laugh by the point the film plops Connery down into a freaking wedding dress. Yep, it's true- the manliest of men, James Fucking Bond himself, dons a wedding dress in the movie- that's how insane this thing is. (Reportedly, Connery was none too happy about it, either, and only begrudgingly agreed to it in the end.)
This film is jam-packed with ludicrous scenarios and dialogue, ensuring a whole lot of silly fun for any group of people who get together to watch it, or those who choose to brave it alone. Wait until you get a (ahem) load of the scene in which the scientists of the bunch get together to try and puzzle out what causes men to get an erection, complete with helpful illustrations and "stimulating" visuals, including mud wrestling women!
By the time you get to the nutty, psychedelic climax, which features Connery uttering such bon mots as "Stay close to me- inside my aura!" and the take-down of the artificial intelligence configuration the Tabernacle (which is basically just a hall of mirrors), if you're the right kind of bad movie fan, you should be completely in love with this one.
One of my favorite moments is the scene in which Zed tries to outfox the Tabernacle, a la 2001's famous "Hal" sequence, but WAY sillier. I think I would have gone into complete hysterics if Hal had intoned the phrase "You've penetrated me! There is no escape- you are within me. Come into my center!" at any point in that movie. Here, it's hilariously overwrought and totally giggle-inducing.
Indeed, between this sort of thing, and all the sort of homoerotic imagery in general in this film, his subsequent movie Excalibur and, of course, the infamous climax of his Deliverance ("Squeal like a pig!"), one can't help but wonder if Boorman was perhaps working through some stuff, lol. (For the record, he's ostensibly straight, with two wives and seven kids, some of whom have cameos in this movie.)
Whatever the case, it's a hoot of a movie that should be a great time for bad movie aficionados. Between Connery's all-too-straight-faced acting style, to the much more game cast's amusing turns (in particular John Alderton and Niall Buggy) to the whacked out sets and randomly-and-strategically-placed naked people scattered about the sets for seemingly no reason, this is just plain bad movie nirvana.
Everyone knows Connery, so no real need to get into his career, and we've talked a bit about Boorman- other notable titles of his include Point Blank, the woefully misguided Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Emerald Forest, Hope & Glory, Beyond Rangoon, The Tailor of Panama and Queen and Country- so let's move on to the supporting cast.
As Connery's leading lady, there's a young Charlotte Rampling, in her late twenties at the time. Rampling made her debut in the classic Georgy Girl at twenty, after a massively-successful and iconic career as a model in the 60's beforehand. She would continue to model and serve as a muse to various artists over the ensuing years.
But she always had a quirkier, darker side, which led her in short order to more left-of-center art-house-type films, typically of the European variety, including The Damned, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and the somewhat infamous The Night Porter, which tackled S&M long before the 50 Shades movies, to say nothing of so-called Nazisploitation.
Other notable movies include the cult classics Vanishing Point, Asylum and Angel Heart; Farewell My Lovely, the killer whale epic Orca, The Verdict, Swimming Pool, Babylon A.D., Melancholia, 45 Years, Assassin's Creed, The Sense of an Ending and Red Sparrow. She was also in the cult horror TV hit Dexter.
Her life is a fascinating, no-holds-barred existence, and she's always been one to speak her mind and do her own thing, which has gotten her into trouble from time to time, be it posing nude in Playboy or in racy movies like Porter, or calling out hypocrites where she saw them, sometimes to the detriment of her own career. Rampling is undeniably an actress that marches to the beat of her own drummer.
Next up is John Alderton, who played Zed's would-be "Friend." Primarily a stage actor in his early years, he later turned to British TV with considerable success, though big-screen stardom sadly eluded him.
Notable credits include The Girl-Getters and Hannibal Brooks (both with Oliver Reed), Duffy, Please Sir! (a rare starring role, which inspired a TV series spin-off), It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet, Clockwork Mice and arguably his biggest hit, the internationally-successful Calendar Girls, with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters.
As the titular Zardoz, aka Arthur Frayn, he whose bouncing head sets off the proceedings, we have the delightfully-named Niall Buggy. Aside from the two leads, he's had far and away the biggest success, with lots of memorable turns in movies you've likely familiar with, whatever you're into.
Interestingly, Zardoz was his motion picture debut, so you can see where his career might have ended before it began, given the film's poor performance at the box office, but thankfully, such was not the case. A likable Irish actor, he quickly rebounded with a series of other movies that were much better received.
His credits include The Purple Taxi (also with Rampling), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (based on the classic James Joyce novel), Philadelphia Here I Come, King David, Hellraiser (yep, the Clive Barker one), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Close My Eyes, The Pope Must Diet, The Playboys, Alien 3, Anna Karina, The Butcher Boy, The Reckoning, The Libertine, Casanova, Mamma Mia!, Brideshead Revisited, The Duel and Mr. Turner.
Other notable actors in the film include Sara Kestleman (Lisztomania, Lady Jane) as May, who suggests that The Eternals study Zed; Sally Anne Newton (Blueblood, Intimate Reflections) as the lovely Avalow; and Bosco Hogan (Count Dracula's Jonathan Harker, TV's The Tudors and The Borgias) as George Saden.
Zardoz is the perfect example of a "personal" film that a director makes after the massive success of another film- in this case, Deliverance- which fails miserably but is often re-assessed in one way or another years after the fact in a more positive way.
While no one is likely to confuse Zardoz with a lost masterpiece, there's no denying that it does have a vibe all its own, and which is not quite like any other film you can name, in spite of how it "borrows" liberally from certain other films, notably 1984 and 2001, which it helpfully name-checks on the poster to get in front of any complaints to that end.
I do legitimately appreciate the bent set design, costuming and color schemes, which are out-there but fun, helping immeasurably to set this film apart from the rest of the pack in a big way- once you've seen this film, you won't soon forget it, and those elements are a big part of it.
Another is the memorable score by David Munrow (who also scored Ken Russell's even crazier The Devils) and Boorman's visual sense, which is often arresting, even when it revolves around silliness or clichés we've all seen before, i.e. the hall of mirrors sequence, the weird stuff montage.
Boorman, while refusing to acknowledge the camp factor- save maybe when he discusses the infamous Sean Connery-in-a-wedding-dress sequence- steadfastly defends the film in the commentary, and makes a good case for his intentions, even if the film itself doesn't quite back it up. As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, though.
Good on him for trying, at least, which is more than you can say for some directors that refuse to work outside of their given comfort zone. I'd rather watch this five times in a row than any given five Michael Bay movies, for instance. Also, I dig that when Boorman does fail, he fails big, you know? (See also Exorcist II, which is equally camptastic.)
The film is readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray (aim for the Twilight Time edition, if you can find it), and it's worth it to get the best visuals on this one as you can, given how colorful the film is. And that commentary by Boorman is definitely worth at least a single listen.
I should also add that, in spite of my good-natured grousing, this film absolutely has its fans who take it seriously and even critics have reassessed the film in a (mostly) positive way, so there's that. What makes some people laugh hysterically may make others wholly fascinated. I'll leave it up to you to determine which one you are. Maybe even a little of both, like me.
Check it out!
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