ZARDOZ

by Kevin Koehler

The gun is good.  The penis is evil.  The penis shoots seeds and makes new life to poison earth with the plague of men, as once it was.  But the gun shoots death and purifies the earth of the filth of [man].  Go forth and kill.  Zardoz has spoken.

- Zardoz

How, exactly, does a film like Zardoz happen?  John Boorman completed the filmmaker trifecta on the picture - writing, directing, and producing - which makes it considerably easier to assign blame.  Boorman himself bemoaned the low budget available to him (despite coming off critical and commercial hit Deliverance).  One sympathizes...to a point.  While the production values are, generally speaking, atrocious, this can't all be ascribed to lack of funds; rather, Zardoz is a perfect storm of parsimony and bad ideas.  It's difficult to imagine that any amount of money would bring clarity to this campy, impenetrable boondoggle.

The year is 2293, a dystopian future characterized not by flying cars but an oversized, flying papier-mache head.  The "Brutals" call him Zardoz and he is their god, giving them weapons in exchange for grain.  Zed (Sean Connery, his second role after relinquishing the golden Bond tuxedo.  Oops) is a member of the Exterminators, a red loincloth and bandolier-clad coterie of mutants in thigh-high leather boots who hunt the Brutals, delivering death on behalf of the deity.  They also rape "in his name," wearing masks that mirror his face.

One day, Zed wakes inside the flying head Zardoz (though it is not immediately clear why) and shoots its pilot (Niall Buggy).  The head lands in the "Vortex" of the "Eternals" (played by, among others, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kesterman, and John Alderton) an Arcadian neighborhood protected by a forcefield from the barbaric wastelands surrounding it.  There, he is captured by its immortal inhabitants; rather than kill him, they choose to study Zed, intrigued by this loutish individual with the chest hair and the Scottish brogue who can not only kill but be killed.

He also gets erections, which is of great interest to the Eternals: everlasting life has made many of them insane or clinically apathetic, the secrets of sexual propagation lost by virtue of its obsolescence.  They're not sure why the evolutionary mystery known as the hard-on occurs, but they gather it has something to do with violence and fear.  "Many a hanged man died with an erection."  Seriously?  As an experiment, Zed is shown images of nude women showering and mud-wrestling.

What follows is a Chimera of sci-fi mysticism, crystals, soporific religious allegory, and awkward parallels to the Wizard of Oz (revelations of which form the underwhelming centerpiece of the film).  It's all pretty silly stuff, honestly, and the execution is even worse - costuming is one part Ziggy Stardust, two parts Renaissance fair while the climax of the picture takes place in a hall of mirrors.  The Eternals have evolved into undreaming, undying eunuchs, killing God so they can take his place.  Only they've found he had a fairly boring job and the only eternal life is death.  They covet the only thing they cannot have - anything to break the monotony of their pedantic existence, consumed with formality and drudgery.

Somewhere in all this, between the phallic worship and phallic abhorrence, you get the impression Boorman is trying to say something about masculinity and our bestial carnal natures. What that is I don't know, lost like so many of the film's themes in a torrent of pretentious verbigeration ("I hate you all...especially myself"), 70s sc-fi kitsch, unintelligible plot elements, and Connery's handlebar mustache.

Interesting footnote: Apparently Connery had a hard time finding work after finishing his run as Bond.  He signed on to Zardoz for relatively little money, even driving himself to and from production in his own vehicle until Boorman gave him money for a car and driver.

© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.