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 #9. Posted on February 26, 2000, 04:28:49 PM by Stefan Robak
I saw this one Space Bar (a show on the Space channel host by 3 guys) and after veiwing one of them says "I'm not stupid. I'm a smart guy. Reasonably smart. BUT WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN THE LAST 80 MINUTES OF THIS FILM! After the pointless Wizard of Oz reference it became indecipherable"! Sounds about right.
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Reply #10. Posted on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM by Sammy Day
Hi, it's me again!
Now I have seen it... and I got to admit, all you people who said that this film is 100 per cent crap - you were right!!! I couldn't watch it without surfing to other channels for time to time, it was too painfull. I mean, WHAT THE HELL WAS CONNERY THINKING?!? Was he at that time of his life using drugs and he won't even remember doing that movie or what...? Jeesus. I'm afraid that now I won't be able to watch my old Bond-films without laughing my ass off. Oh, Sean, Sean... why?
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Reply #11. Posted on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM by Harve
I remember seeing this film forever ago. a few times in fact. so much I disremember about it cuz I was young and I Know I was stoned, cuz I was All the time back then. But i remember I loved it. I remember thinking it was profound. And I big time remember how kewl it was that the main chick (meg?) was awful flat-chested (as I was, and still am). That was so kewl to me, cuz movie stars and anybody kewl always hadda have huge boobs, which of course makes flat girls feel like crap. So this woman was not only a 'movie star', but her character was like, totally sexy, And was the 'Queen' of everybody! so anyways, reading all the stuff here, I wana go out and get the video. better yet, the DVD so i can hear the commentary!
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Reply #12. Posted on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM by Keydo
Breasts!
Who would thought they could shoot so many breasts shots in the 70s!
I kept watching and waiting for something to turn this movie around. In the end, all I could do was laugh at the Eternal's advance technology derived from the 70s.
I did not realize the superior genetic structure looked a lot like an oblivious swimming jelly fish.
Glad to see mud-wretling is alive and well in the future.
For all their technology, they had no clue how a flaccid penis turned into an erect penis?!?
However, the one thing I did take away from this movie is that if you're ever with an unresponsive woman
SHOT-PUT HER ASS! (Go Zed! Go!)
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Reply #13. Posted on July 06, 2000, 04:09:37 AM by Partyman
I watched ZARDOZ with 2 friends of mine. After watching this movie for over 50 minutes, I asked my friend Patrick: "Pat, what the hell is this movie about?" and he thought for a minute and then asked his friend Fulco: "Fulco, do you have any idea what this movie is about?" And Fulco said; "Let's watch the video-box and see if there is an explaination on the back. And so we read it, and we still didn't have a clue what is was all about. So we entitled this movie: The most vague movie of all time. And still I want to buy it, because the movie sucks so bad, I just gotta have it. I love to torture myself. :)
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Reply #14. Posted on July 06, 2000, 02:35:01 PM by Crow
I saw it once on cable, entirely by accident. It is the Picasso of sci-fi. Twisted, incomprehensible, yet strangely intriguing. It made my neural receptors bleed.
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Reply #15. Posted on July 10, 2000, 01:50:15 PM by mejicano_loco
Zardoz is one of those movies that when you watch it you say, "What the hell?" But I'm a fan of pure crap movies, movies that would get a skull on this page, and I found this movie great. Great in a terrible way of course. First you must open your mind to the fact that this movie will make NO sense. Then just sit back and become confused and laugh at all the stupid stuff that happens. My favorite scenes (because of their sheer insanity) are the "I will not go to second level" scene, the "we will give you our knowledge through osmosis" scene, and the part where Friend talks gibberish for NO REASON! I've seen this movie 4 times and each time I laugh and think, "how mush acid does it take to make a movie like this?" And always remember that the gun is good and the penis is evil!
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Reply #16. Posted on July 20, 2000, 12:40:13 AM by moorblues
You have to realize the genre of movies at the time Zardoz was released. There were other "futuristic" movies released in the early part of the seventies that were highly stylized in their format. Some examples would be Logans Run, Soilent Green, Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, Clockwork Orange, just to name a few. The big idea of this movie is that man will never be capable of controlling his own destiny. He will always be his own worst enemy.
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