ZARDOZ!

[andrew in philadelphia]

earlier this year (jan or feb,) tom was talking with a caller about chuck norris and his endorsement of mike huckabee. i believe it was the caller who said they would get sean connery to endorse their bid for office and tom stated it would be great if it was the same sean connery from john boorman's 1974 dystopian disaster "zardoz." the caller's reaction to the picture that came up when tom had him google zardoz live on the air was one of the funniest thing i've ever heard (being already WELL familiar with said picture myself.)

my question is: has anyone else seen this movie? or own it? what did you think? love it? hate it? read the page long synopsis on wikipedia and STILL had no clue what it's supposed to be about?

i'm dying to know..

[Steve in North Hollywood]

I have a friend who has probably made me sit through Zardoz about 4 times ... Not to mention the first time I saw it on Sci-Fi channel and was just like "Sean Connery's in it?  This might be good!" ... Other than a giant stone head vomitting up about a thousand handguns and assault rifles (which happens in the first ten minutes), there is nothing worth watching.

But I think the plot is basically:  Connery's Red Undies Army worships Zardoz as a god.  Connery finds out it's just a man inside the giant stone head manipulating his savage folk, so he kills the guy and the Zardoz head takes him back to that man's society, where he is taught to ... I've really never paid attention much longer than that.  I remember Zardoz saying something about the penis being bad and the gun being good.  So, maybe the guy who controlled the Zardoz head was trying to get the savages to come and kill the people in his own, sexually free society ... Maybe?





I want my life back.

[HaroldBlvd]

I saw Zardoz when it came out while I was in HS. Our SciFi Lit teacher actually took the whole class to see it.
It was pretty boring although there was a fair amount of female nudity. As a Bond fan I was completely disappointed. 

One of the eggheads in my class said the thing was based on the Wizard Of Oz, thus the name Zardoz.

Hard to believe that director's previous picture to this was Deliverance. He also did Point Blank and a Dave Clark Five movie.

Would anyone pay to see a theatrical edition of Wizard of Oz but with the Pink Floyd soundrack?
It could be fun for a Saturday night instead of the same old Lazerium.

[Sarah]

I saw Zardoz when it first came out, a rare movie attended with both my mother and my father.  I remember finding it immensely silly, annoying, and dull.  Couldn't for the life of me tell you much about it, although I recall the sentimental closing sequence showing Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling sitting hand in hand aging and eventually rotting down to skeletons. 

The best part about the whole experience was that my father absolutely loathed the movie and commented about it quite audibly throughout, much to everyone's entertainment.  Everyone in the audience hated the movie, and Daddy became their voice.  It was quite fun.

[God Stewart]

One of the eggheads in my class said the thing was based on the Wizard Of Oz Little Women, thus the name Zardoz.

I can not believe you gave away one of the weirdest/dumbest plot twists in history.

It's almost worth sitting through for the incredibly miscalculated ending montage.

[andrew in philadelphia]

holy cow - you don't know how delighted i am to hear people actually saw this thing in the theater during the initial run. 

doesn't seem like anyone really liked it though. can't say i blame youse - it's a hard one to sit through .

one the weirdest/bestest parts for me is the sequence they showed (at least twice) where connery and two of his cronies are galloping down the beach on horseback (in full red diaper attire, of course) just shooting random people with revolvers. too strange..

[Pat K]

I hold a great personal fondness for Zardoz. It is annoying, boring, impenetrable, poorly acted, edited, scripted, conceived, and just monumentally miscalculated on every level, but I still don't like it on a purely ironic, "Plan 9 From Outer Space" level - it's so much more than that. I'm more just in awe of it, that something as weird and insane as it really exists. There are few modern precedents for it.
And also, of course, it's easy to appreciate just for it's frequent moments of pure, unadulterated surrealstic weirdness. I used to play the audio clip of "The gun is good! The penis is evil!" on my radio show all the damn time.

Also, and I can't stress this enough - naked horseback riding.

The last indie/artsy/foriegn film-centered video store in my town is going out of business and coming to the end of the long, painful process of selling off their old stock. I stopped in there a couple weeks ago to pick over the well-picked-over remainder of their stuff and say a fond goodbye, and picked up a $1 VHS copy of Zardoz. On my way out the owner told me to call him if I had any problems with the tape. I told him I'm sure the tape plays fine, but that doesn't mean it's problem-free by a looooong shot.