Zardoz

Rating:
Summary: immortality is a dream - a nightmare
Review: Stunning in its scope and execution if you can't understand this films message then you just weren't paying attention !!!

Rating:
Summary: One of my favourite films
Review: I love this film, as well as John Boorman's later work "Excalibur" - though they are two completely different films.

Zardoz features some post-hippy post-apocalyptic visions of the future. I love the themes in this - a select few harbouring all that's good in society; art, poetry, science, and yet they are monsters.

"He who fights a dragon long enough soon becomes one himself" - not the most typical Sean Connery line, but this is such a way-out film anyway.

But then again, my brother-in-law watched this & he couldn't help snigger at the whole thing.

Rating:
Summary: Satisfying on many dimensions
Review: This movie is satisfying on many dimensions from social commentary to sci-fi to visual impact to mystery and so forth. It is impossible to extract much logic from it when watched on commercial TV as every word and gesture has a meaning and an answer as to what will come next. Being permeated with flashbacks and revelations that come later in the movie it is not practical to tell the story as it needs to be revealed in the proper order for the cohesion to take place.

The story takes place in the future sometime after the un-named calamity has divided humans into those in enclaves, called vortexes and others that live outside. Arthur Frayne (Niall Buggy) a resident of Vortex Four and has reason to travel outside to the brutels. There he poses as a god (Zardoz). The meaning of Zardoz may be reveals in time. On one of the trips Arthur does not return; instead ZED (Sean Connery) a genetically designed assassin returns in his place. This leads to many questions as where is Arthur and is there a purpose or just coincidence that Zed is here? How did he get here? More important is he what he appears to be?

Rating:
Summary: Beyond 1984...Beyond 2001...Zardoz Awaits!
Review: John Boorman's outré film ZARDOZ (1974) is a somewhat campy but visually stunning science-fiction dystopian fantasy set in the distant future. Sporting a ponytail, a red diaper-like loincloth, bandoliers, and thigh-high gold-digger boots, actor Sean Connery plays an clever barbarian who, on the order of his "god" Zardoz, invades The Vortex, an enclave of cultured academics and aesthetes who have grown intellectually stagnant and morally depraved after their many years of isolation from the rest of the world.

Writer/director Boorman is probably best known as the director of DELIVERANCE, James Dickey's screen adaptation of his literate and highly acclaimed novel. While DELIVERANCE is a fairly straightforward story of a clash between a group of northern city dwellers and a clan of depraved backwoodsy southerners, Boorman's ZARDOZ is a deep and complex film that requires viewers to peel back its many layers and ruminate over what they find. The lush cinematography, dazzling visuals, and quirky humor just make up the façade. Underneath is an intricate and sometimes abstruse ontological parable that addresses the nature of reality, class struggle, and the individual's responsibility to society (and vice versa). Thrown into the mix are subtle satirical comments about religion, politics, science, and academics. ZARDOZ is not an audience-friendly movie; it requires the viewer to pay attention and think. In fact, it may take repeated viewings to catch all the symbolism and subtext and thereby understand the film's full meaning. So those who prefer to have their movie themes spoon-fed to them probably won't enjoy ZARDOZ, but those who like for films to stimulate the gray matter--most notably SF fans--should find the film quite entertaining and satisfying.

The acting in the film is a mixed bag, but the principals, especially Connery and Charlotte Rampling, generally do an outstanding job. In a role that is a far cry from his sophisticated and charming James Bond, Connery is very convincing as an intelligent brute who has a difficult time wrapping his head around the philosophy of the denizens of The Vortex. (Some film historians have surmised that Connery's character is a personification of socio-political conservatism, whereas The Vortex folks are philosophically diametric and therefore represent liberalist ideals.) And Ms. Rampling provides sexual tension as a Vortex woman who is physically attracted to Connery but repulsed by what he represents.

The DVD version of this cult classic, from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, is nothing short of outstanding. The film is offered in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and the anamorphic widescreen digital transfer is simply beautiful, with few (if any) noticeable filmic or digital artifacts. Extras include the original theatrical trailer--which blatantly reflects the sensibilities of the post-60s hippie youth of the early 70s--and some radio spots narrated by Rod Serling of THE TWILIGHT ZONE fame. Also available is a feature commentary from writer/director Boorman. (The commentary is interesting, though Boorman's delivery is sometimes halting.)

In short, ZARDOZ is a fascinating SF film that will appeal to the aesthete and the intellectual (i.e., the simple-minded should steer clear). And it's delightful that the DVD age can rescue this oft misunderstood cult film from obscurity and make it available to its fans in its original format. The ZARDOZ disc is well worth the retail price, and all serious SF fans will want it in their DVD collections.

Rating:
Summary: Something to Think About ¿ Burt Reynold Was Originally Sched
Review: One afternoon, 10 years after it was released, I saw Zardoz in a moviehouse in Georgetown and didn't get it - except that Sean Connery was still very sexy. Recently, the serendipity of watching The Swimmng Pool with Charlotte Rampling suggested giving this Boorman allegory another chance. I finally get it and had fun seeing it again. Three reasons to watch Zardoz are John Boorman's emerging vision and personal iconography, the power of Sean Connery's presence and acting (especially at the point in his career when he was trying to break from the Bond type-cast), and Geoffrey Unsworth's masterful photography.

Boorman and his actors put their hearts and talent on the line. Connery pulls off wearing the red loincloth and wedding dress, pulling a rickshaw and effectively performing scenes like the lecture on libido with subtle irony. Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, and other actresses can survive wearing go-go boots or performing nude while portraying strong women in conflict reacting to Zed's mojo. The whole cast of immortals are such good actors that you can giggle about the horror of wearing macramé tops and overly foofed hair, but they suspend your belief in the nightmare society these characters have created. Unsworth not only films this movie; he validates the vision with clear images that indulges Boorman's penchant for setting archetypes and going all Jungian on us. It is beautiful to watch and mostly poetic.

Boorman stuffs the movie with cinematic references like Welles and Peckinpah, much like the immortals have stuffed their museum. In his commentary, he admits putting too much in the film and that he would do things differently with more money and experience. At the beginning, there are moments that almost feel like Monty Python's Holy Grail or Woody Allen's Sleeper, but the movie progresses past that. The set design was interesting, but I felt that the costuming was just a little too groovy. He also admits that some of this cult classic is laughable, but the actors and the camera take it seriously enough to trap us in the Vortex and follow Zed as he searches for the truth. I am a sucker for personal films, and everybody involved made this personal to their truth.

Given what has been going on in Silicon Valley, Zardoz is still very pertinent. The irony is that celluloid projections on glass, superimposed images on film and light refracting from faceted crystals simulated computers, which were used to depict John Boorman's vision of 2293. In any remake, instead of green bread, Boorman's successor would have to direct the brutals in assembling green pizzas, and a notion of a religious mystery commanding the terminators would be named by the corruption of the phrase - Stock Option. Their god would be called Ckoption. Nyahhh! Just watch Zardoz.

Rating:
Summary: GAR - BAHJ
Review: Movie: *1/2 DVD Quality: ***1/2 DVD Extras: **

The first five minutes of "Zardoz" promise a lot of campy fun as a giant stone head flies through the sky, then lands as a voice intones, "The penis is evil." Shortly thereafter, Sean Connery shows up sporting a huge Fu Manchu moustache and a waist-length ponytail, clothed in a bikini bottom and hip boots, and the audience knows it is in for a good time in the vein of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" or "Flesh Gordon". But as the movie drones on, it all too soon becomes apparent that this nonsense is supposed to be taken seriously as science fiction and even purports to have A Deeper Cosmic Meaning ... that no one is meant to laugh when Mr. Connery appears in drag as a bride, or fights his way out of a giant plastic Baggie. A very, v-e-r-y l-o-n-g 106 minutes passes before the end title flashes across the screen, leaving the audience to ponder the eternal question, "Huh?"

The only aspect of the movie that comes off as intended are the art direction and cinematography. John Boorman films are typically a feast for the eyes, and "Zardoz" is no exception. The rest of the film is negligible. The script, the performances, the music, the editing, the direction ... everything is subpar. The Fox DVD offers an acceptable transfer of the film, with generally clear sound and crisp video. The DVD extras are so-so; director John Boorman's commentary is interesting and helpful in terms of trying to interpret what's happening in the narrative, but the Stills Gallery is small and uninteresting, and the Theatrical Trailer and Radio Spots are as silly as the film itself. Not particularly recommended, not even for those who tend to enjoy really bad movies for the comic value.

Rating:
Summary: John Boorman meets Ed Wood
Review: Take John Boorman, fresh from an incredible artistic and cinematic masterpiece ("Deliverance"). Stir in a sci-fi concept quite worthy of Stanislaw Lem: that humanity has developed the technology to explore the secrets of the universe, but has not developed the corresponding capability to understand the results, and retreats perforce like a clam into its shell. And what do you get: something that is arguably warped genius or juvenile trash.

As much as I acknowledge this movie to be a masterpiece of bipolarity, every decade or so I have to revisit it in order to remind myself why I believe it to be so truly awful. And every time I see it, the more banalities I see that make me cry aloud in anguish.

"Cheese" doesn't do it justice. "Fatuous" doesn't do it justice. How about "incredibly overblown, overly back-projected, over-planktonic (if you see it, you'll understand), over-breasted, cheaply-costumed, conceited, microsatirical, mercaptanesque, cinematic flatulence, a rhizoidal, festuring mass of curdling queso on a cross"? Even that description falls pathetically short of ... this ineffable work, worthy only of sheer amazement at its audacity. This is a self-referential (read: self-congratulatory) movie aimed at the very people who are capable of getting a bit of a chuckle out of it (and I must confess that I did at times). Yet I feel compelled to point out that "Zabriskie Point" and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" were made on significantly smaller budgets.

The details are too painful to recall. Just heed my warning: DO NOT BUY IT. Rent it if you must, to satisfy the curiosity that kills you. Rent it again, an iterative ten years later, as I do, out of sheer masochistic ritual. But whatever you do, do not be caught dead with it.


Rating:
Summary: Cheese Wiz.
Review: Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974)

Poor John Boorman. In 1974, he was on top of the world. He'd delivered (no pun intended) Deliverance two years previous, and it was not only a critical success, but a box-office success as well. And it got him nominated for Best Director and Best Picture. Yep, John Boorman was someone in Hollywood.

Then came Zardoz.

Zardoz is not a film so much as it is a bad erotic dream that happens after taking a good deal of LSD. The psyche of the dreamer seems to involve a good deal of leather fetishism, a fondness for orgies, some well-repressed rape fantasy, and, well, a thing for stone heads.

Zed (Sean Connery) is an Exterminator for the god Zardoz, tasked with the job of hunting down and killing "brutals" (i.e., other humans). Zardoz' opening monologue explaining this to the viewer (for, obviously, the exterminators are already aware of this philosophy, else they wouldn't be exterminators) is absolutely hysterical, and must be heard to be believed. (Those without a strong stomach can hear it sampled, in its entirety, on Terror Organ's Buzzbomb CD.) We cut, and very badly mind you, to a shot of Zed emerging from a pile of something inside the stone head, which transports him (after certain minor adventures) to the Vortex, where Zardoz lives. Zed must explore the world of the Vortex, and adapt to life there, and the life in the Vortex must adapt to him.

Comparisons are made to most of the usual suspects (all contemporary science fiction films, of course, most notably Rollerball), but what I was reminded of more often than not was John Frankenheimer's brilliant picture of a decade previous, Seconds. Except that Seconds made a good deal more sense, but didn't have anywhere near as much nudity.

There are some decent performances at times, but no one here stays at a top level throughout. The closest actor to achieving that is John Alderton (recently seen in Calendar Girls), who plays his role with a kind of cynical amusement. The other two main characters are played by Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool, The Statement) and Sara Kestelman (Invasion: Earth) as a pair of women who can't agree on what should be done with Zed. Which is all well and good, until close to the climax, when Boorman (who also wrote the script) seems to get the two mixed up. From there, things break down rather rapidly from what was already a pretty precarious position.

There are certainly worse movies out there. (If you want to see a real science fiction howler, check out the filmed version of Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme; I think everyone on that set, not just the director, had gotten some excellent LSD.) But there are also many thousands that are far better. Zardoz is a curiosity, a film that attempts to invest fevre dreams with great meaning. It's been done far better. **

Rating:
Summary: What was John Boorman thinking?
Review: There has never been any other movie like this one. I still remember the first time I watched it.

At first, I snickered at the disembodied head with the magic-marker mustache and goatee.

Then I saw the giant stone head, zipping along in midair like some dream of Terry Gilliam's, and I started laughing uncontrollably. I mean _tears_ were streaming down my cheeks.

And then the durned thing _spoke_. 'The gun is good. . . . The penis is evil. . . . ' And it started vomiting up rifles. By now I had my hanky out.

And then Zed showed up in his red diaper and hip boots. And I thought: oh, boy, now I see why Sean Connery gave up the role of James Bond; it was so that he could be taken more seriously as an actor.

The whole movie is like that. It's like an unusually preposterous episode of the original _Star Trek_, without any of the original cast. (And the Rod Serling-like 'surprise' -- a bit over an hour into the film -- won't be a surprise at all if you've already figured it out from the film's title.)

But it's not just a 'bad' film. John Boorman (of _Deliverance_ fame) really did have a good idea here, and you might be able to extract it if you can see it through the cheese.

In fact, once you grok that the thing is a big SF morality play (essentially posing the question whether it's better to be immortal or to be Sean Connery), you'll probably think it would have been even _more_ at home on the original _Star Trek_. (And you may like it for that reason alone -- if your favorite episodes were 'Let That Be Your Last Battlefield', 'The Apple', and 'The Gamesters of Triskelion'.)

Connery and Charlotte Rampling save the day as far as the acting is concerned; Connery has an uncanny knack for being believable in whatever role he plays, and Rampling is a slow-burning fire.

_Zardoz_ has a special place in the history of bad cinema. It's good in all the wrong ways. Don't die without having seen it.

Rating:
Summary: A few comments
Review: Zardoz became a cult classic after being a box office failure. Filmed in 1974, one year after the remake of Lost Horizon, and two years before Logan's Run, Zardoz was a low-budget B movie which, despite it's deficiencies, is still a better flick than the much tackier and predictable Logan's Run, although it never quite gets off the ground. I know some people who love the film, and there are even those who think it's a terrible movie, possibly even one of the worst ever, but for me it falls somewhere in-between--not terrible but not great, either--although with some notable problems.

For example, despite some nice futuristic and surrealistic imagery, and Connery running around half-nude with a long ponytail, looking very convincing as the studly barbarian killer as he romps around with a bunch of attractive, small-breasted women, this isn't enough to save the film. But Charlotte Rampling was probably at the height of her fame when the movie was made, and she gives an appropriately exotic cast to the leading lady role, and I think Connery and Rampling played well with each other.

So it does have its moments, and if you're a Connery or Rampling fan, it's probably a must see. But the futuristic society of Zardoz, which is divided between the murderous and barbaric Brutals and the privileged but bored and effete Immortals, just doesn't quite click. As someone else once said, "It's a movie that takes over two hours to inform you that immortal dilettantes would become suicidally bored." :-)

So I give it three stars since it does have its moments, but despite some nice cinematography and imagery, and some stylish performances, that's unfortunately, as I said, not quite enough to get this film off the ground.