ZARDOZ
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| Rated R
| | Copyright 1973 John Boorman Productions
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 'a long time ago' |
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 | Zed - Sean Connery! The ultimate in human evolution, but still an "exterminator" who wishes to destroy the Eternal society. Dies of old age.
|  | Arthur Frayn - Eternal, a trickster who has orchestrated Zed's existence through selective breeding. Shot by exterminators.
|  | May - Eternal, their foremost scientist. This girl has a huge number of freckles, it's almost grotesque.
|  | Consuella - Eternal, she hates the male sexual organ, but falls in love with Zed for some reason. Dies of old age.
|  | Friend - Eternal, he is a prick. Shot by exterminators, that is all.
|  | Star - Eternal, she's the wiggy "meditate" sort. Shot by exterminators.
|  | The Eternals - Humans who never age, drawing their power from a mystic "tabernacle."
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| Where can you find Sean Connery running around in a loincloth, worshipping a HUGE FLYING STONE HEAD (hehehehe!), being hounded by naked women, and battling immortals? The seventies baby, the seventies...
...oh boy, where do I start with this one? Zed begins as a total ape man, but in the end we discover he is the pinnacle of human evolution! Even turns back time at one point; it took me a few viewings to decide that was indeed what happened. So he starts off a Neanderthal man, but finds out Zardoz (the GIANT FLYING STONE HEAD) is really a construct used by other men to control his people. That pisses him off. Do not piss off Sean Connery in a loincloth.
Bent on revenge, he hides inside the head and travels to "Vortex Four" where the "Homo Eternals" live. After running into random naked woman number one (Star, and she's riding a horse?) he is captured by May. The Eternals can do this neat paralyze-brutals-with-my-eyes thing. The immortals decide to study him and his presence causes all sorts of problems in their already dysfunctional society. It seems people were not meant to be immortal. They go insane in some fashion after a time - becoming renegades or apathetics.
I liked the apathetics. Friend had a tendancy to just walk around screwing with them and Zed tries to have sex with one girl. She does not respond, it annoyes ape boy, and he shotputs her! Eventually Zed finds a way to destroy the Tabernacle and free his masters from the imprisonment of living. At the same time all of his exterminator friends show up and start shooting people. They love it (the people being shot). It is like a party; there's even a band playing (until somebody shoots them).
May, and a few choice women who Zed impregnated, escape to continue evolution while he and Consuella take refuge in a cave. After that we get a time lapse section: they have a kid, he grows up, he leaves, they turn into skeletons, the end. Still can not figure out how him and Consuella fell in love. She spends most of the movie being a feminist penis hater. Definately a well, creative film.
NOTE: I am sick and tired of people saying that I "did not get" this film. Apparently, you people have not watched the DVD with its commentary track. Want to know something? Boorman does not "get it" either. Most of the commentary consists of stuff like, "The head itself is a model." (duhhhhh) or, "She was really looking forward to being raped by Sean Connery." He also devotes an enormous amount of effort to talking about how little money they had for the production. The only major thought in this film is that people were not meant to live forever. If you like the movie, that is well and good. Trying to see more in it than the director is fooling yourself. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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 | Having a disembodied head for your announcer is not a good start.
|  | Ammo can be a fashion statement.
|  | Your memories are from a third person perspective!
|  | Nets look pretty sexy on a girl.
|  | Erections sound like guitars.
|  | If you kiss a girl and she doesn't kiss back - SHOTPUT HER ASS!
|  | Immortality causes impotency.
|  | Human genetic structure looks like a jellyfish or euglena. (Oh stop looking at me and find a dictionary.)
|  | Flowers are an impassable barrier.
|  | Sean Connery looks pretty darn good in a wedding dress, sets a guy to thinking...
|  | People can remain in one place for sixty years.
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 | 2 mins - OH YEAH? Who used a cheap marker to draw that ugly ass goatee on your face?
|  | 4 mins - It's a GIANT FLYING STONE HEAD!
|  | 11 mins - Why are those people vacuum wrapped?
|  | 18 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOT!
|  | 30 mins - Sean Connery just licked that guy's hand!
|  | 41 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST THE APATHETIC WOMAN!
|  | 44 mins - Naked female mud wrestling? They do have a superior culture...
|  | 53 mins - Man, thank goodness that scene is done with.
|  | 65 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST THE APATHETIC WOMAN!
|  | 79 mins - RANDOM GRATUITOUS BREAST SHOTS!
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | zardoz1.wav
| Arthur Frayn: "I am Arthur Frayn and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years and I long to die, but death is no longer possible, I am immortal."
|  | zardoz2.wav
| Zardoz: "The gun is good." (Exterminators chant back) Zardoz: "The penis is evil, the penis shoots seeds." (Silence from the chanting dudes now.)
|  | zardoz3.wav
| May: "No brutal has ever penetrated a vortex. It therefore requires study."
|  | zardoz4.wav
| Tabernacle: "Arthur Frayn died. Reconstruction has begun."
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | zardoz1.mpg
- 3.1m
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| Zed just kissed this woman and she didn't respond so he is obviously wondering what is wrong. Friend tries explaining everything, but the only result is that our violent hero decides to shotput the poor woman!
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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| Zardoz
Reply #1. Posted on March 25, 1999, 07:28:37 AM by Dr. Oblivion
This movie could not keep a standard level of quality, for a while it would be terrible, one minute a weird guy with a facial hair made with a magic marker would be talking and the next minute the movie would be really interesting and cool, then suddenly some one would say something stupid and it would be funny again for a while. Over all I liked the movie though, it was just too strange to hate.
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Reply #2. Posted on July 24, 1999, 07:48:29 AM by
This movie is exellent. Some people seem to be having trouble understanding it. Sean is a rocker! Admittedly it is a crazy show indeed but that does not detract from this ingenius mindbender of script. People have to learn to read between the lines and not take everthing at face value. There is a lot more to life than meets the eye. Make the choice. EVOLVE!
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Reply #3. Posted on August 08, 1999, 12:23:00 PM by nation@club-internet.fr
Zardoz is a film about nature like the other movies by John Boorman such as Excalibur, Delivrance (with Burt Reynolds and Henry Fonda) or the Esmeralda forest (I am not sure of the title but it takes place in Amazonia).
I did not dislike Zardoz. There are good ideas, but it is sometimes ridiculous for example Sean Connery in a wedding dress. The vortex people looks like a hippie community in the middle of the british countryside.
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Reply #4. Posted on September 28, 1999, 05:24:31 PM by arp@slab.org
Fascinating, baffling film that has moments of brilliance but seems to go out of its way to be ridiculous. One of a select band of intelligent, quite famous 'proper' science fiction movies, in that it's actually about ideas, and not just a horror or action movie with a science fictionial backdrop. It's a terrible shame that it makes itself so hard to take seriously at times.
As a totally silly trivia point Sean Connery wanders around with a rare Webley automatic revolver. Tell that to your friends.
The main classic piece running through the film is the second 'bit' of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
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Reply #5. Posted on November 02, 1999, 11:25:33 AM by Dante
This movie had potential!! I would rank it up there as a failed Clockwork Orange. I think the director must have put his entire budget into Sean's wages. All in all the plot was great and the twisted ending scene in my mind made the entire thing worth while.
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Reply #6. Posted on November 25, 2006, 05:10:12 PM by sana
Look at you all guys!!! all speak about the same movie in a same place... let's have a second level forum! more seriously, this movie is great! i just buy it yesterday, image! I'm french living in Shanghai and find this in a illegal DVD shop... ZARDOZ! with Sean Connery and Charlotte Ramplin (famous in europe indeed). My first think was "Z movie from 70's" and i was right! i get what i was looking for, the pure imagination from our LSD/gangbanger that were our dear parents contemporary... yes they took drugs, yes they shag everywhere. But do not ommit something important, 70's peoples also know what is Comedy, maybe better than some of you guys. You should listen more carefully to what ZARDOZ says as introduction, and you will see that he speak the thruth.
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Reply #7. Posted on January 14, 2000, 01:02:30 AM by sloasucan@yahoo.com
The first time we saw it, we were confused, amused and somewhat titillated. The second time we saw the film, last night, we became instant worshippers of Zardoz ourselves. All those who criticize Zardoz are destined to be punished by a red-leather clad, hot-pant wearing, pistol touting apathetic chickshot-putting Sean! And remember: THE GUN IS GOOD THE PENIS IS EVIL!
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Reply #8. Posted on November 25, 2006, 05:09:49 PM by BarkingSpider
Had seen this a few times back in the seventies. Yes, the belief suspension was difficult to maintain, but the topics were far ahead of their time (genetic engineering, technology used as a form of repression, life extension, etc). Dated? Yes, but that's not a problem with me (hey, I like Soylent Green).
I am curious, though, to see what the future was like after the invasion and how the society changed. The one good thing about them is they didn't live an unsustainable lifestyle.
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