Zardoz Explained

When Bad Movies Happen to Good People

Dignity. Always, dignity.

For much of its life, science fiction has been dismissed as a genre for children, or at least the eternally juvenile (raises hand, calls out “Present!” in a clear, nerdy, adenoidal voice). In the 1920s it was largely the purview of pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, while in the 1930s science fiction branched out into weekly movie serials and daily comic strips, cementing its reputation as cheap, shoddy, mass-produced entertainment. World War II put the brakes on the genre, but by the Fifties sci-fi was back and bigger than ever, thanks to such palate-whetting developments as V-2 missiles, the atomic bomb, and Sputnik. It remained cheap, however, settling in as a kind of alt Western, with the traditional ropin’, ridin’, and occasional Agnes DeMille ballet replaced with rockets, robots, and ray guns.

By the late Sixties, Hollywood had finally become serious about producing science fiction films aimed at adults (Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey where both released in 1968. Of course, so was Barbarella, but given enough booze I could make a case for the serious artistic merit of that movie as well).

1970 saw the release of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, with its shockingly downbeat ending, and Colossus: The Forbin Project, one of the first Hollywood films to take a serious look at the implications of A.I.

1971 saw prescient motion pictures like A Clockwork Orange, The Andromeda Strain, THX 1138, and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, while 1972 ushered in such immortal SF fare as Solaris, Silent Running, Slaughterhouse-Five and both The Thing with Two Heads and The Man with Two Heads, each getting in on the Dual Cranium Craze at the very last second.

1973 was another good year for science fiction in film, with major motion pictures like Soylent Green, Fantastic Planet, and Westworld, and it seemed like the youthful energy and iconoclasm of New Hollywood might finally allow science fiction to escape the genre ghetto. But then we get to 1974…

On paper, 1974 looks like a great year for almost every major film genre. Gangster: The Godfather Part II. Mystery: Chinatown. Paranoid thrillers: The Parallax View, Death Wish, and The Conversation. Slasher horror: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas It was even a banner year for satires of film itself, seeing the release of both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.

But when it came to SF, our choices were limited to John Carpenter’s low budget comedy Dark Star (which I gave 3.5 Dark Stars in my review), the porno chic satire of old movie serials, Flesh Gordon, or the latest film by distinguished British director, John Boorman. Again, on paper, the choice seems clear, but with the benefit of hindsight I think I’d skip over the one made by the director of Deliverance and many good and great films since, and go with either the movie featuring an alien made from a beach ball, or the one with the stop-motion monster voiced by Craig T. Nelson.

In short, this was the year that showed us the limits of the adult science fiction film. This far, the genre seemed to say, and no farther. No paseran! In 1974 we learned that sci-fi can handle just about any metaphor, allegory, or veiled social commentary, but it hits a brick wall face first at high velocity when asked to explain its writer-director’s midlife crisis.

Zardoz (1974)
Directed by John Boorman
Written by John Boorman

Now that we know who to blame, let’s start the movie. Our story opens with the disembodied head of a fey Englishman, who’s sporting facial hair scribbled on with an eyebrow pencil and an Egyptian-style head-dress made from a periwinkle dishcloth. This is “Zardoz”, and he’s here to make sure things don’t get weird.

Like Criswell, he informs us that what we are about to see are future events, that will affect us all in the future, while his towel-draped head slowly bounces from one side of the screen to the other, like the ball in Pong. Zardoz confesses he’s a “fake god” with a “fake mustache,” but assures us we’re about to experience genuine boredom.

The credits roll, and the title, “ZARDOZ” appears in a strange, dramatic font (I think it’s Xanadu Bold Condensed) followed by the most chilling words in the film: “Written, Directed, and Produced by John Boorman.” Yes, John’s reward for the success of his previous film, Deliverance, was a bag of peyote buttons and carte blanche to film the subsequent hallucinations. It didn’t go very well, and afterwards Boorman apologized to the movie-going public by offering them Exorcist II: The Heretic until his loved ones tackled him and staged an intervention.

The future gets off to a goofy start when a giant paper-mâché bust of Santa Claus screaming like a howler monkey hovers over the English Midlands, while cavalry soldiers wearing nothing but Angry Santa masks and scarlet hot pants ride around below.

The Giant Screaming Santa Head lands and we learn that this is Zardoz, god and motivational speaker. Zardoz reads the minutes of the last meeting, recounting how he raised the Hot Pants Men from brutality so that they might go forth and slaughter everybody who had the decency to wear slacks, or at least pedal pushers.

Zardoz reminds them, “I gave you the gift of the gun. The gun is good. The penis is bad. The penis shoots seeds [and occasional kidney stones] and makes new life.” So auteur Boorman envisions a future where right wing militias gad about in crimson short-shorts and Andrea Dworkin runs the NRA.

The service ends with the traditional admonition to “go forth and kill!”, then Zardoz suffers a painful attack of acid reflux and vomits firearms, just like Hobo Kelly’s toy machine if her mid-60’s syndicated kids show had been sponsored by Glock rather than Milton Bradley and Bosco.

Zardoz lifts off, and suddenly a topless Sean Connery fills the frame, sporting a French braid, Harry Reems’ mustache from Sensuous Vixens, and enough armpit hair to knit a Cowichan jersey. He looks around at his masked compatriots with a perplexed, irritated expression that seems to say, “What the hell? Boorman told me I’d be playing King Arthur. This looks like a bloody nudist camp on Guy Fawkes Day.” Sean turns toward us, points a revolver, and shoots the cameraman. Alas, he’s not getting out of the film that easily…

He makes a break for his car, but it’s parked on the far side of the catering tent and before he can reach it, director Boorman foils Sean’s escape by cutting to a scene of the Giant Screaming Santa Head, floating serenely through the clouds, as it belts out an aria (for a levitating sculpture of a rageaholic Kris Kringle, it has a surprisingly lovely mezzo soprano voice).

Inside the head, we see a huge mound of sawdust. Apparently, when he’s not defending the Second Amendment and preaching against the penis, Zardoz likes to relax with a little decorative woodworking. But wait! It turns out the sawdust was only there so Sean could emerge dramatically from the pile (also so they’d be prepared in case the audience suddenly barfs). As Sean rises, we see that he’s wearing a pair of hip waders, pleather Depends, and crossed bandoliers, creating a look that evokes And a River Runs Through It, if the filmmakers had replaced Brad Pitt with an incontinent Frito Bandito

Sean looks around the interior of the head, sees a bunch of naked English people in man-sized Shake ‘N Bake bags, then spies the guy with the blue tea towel on his head, who tells Sean, “Without me, you’re nothing!” Sean promptly shoots him and he falls out of Zardoz’s mouth and plunges screaming to his death. (Eventually. We assume. At the moment he seems to be thinking his Happy Thoughts, because he just sort of hovers there in his pajamas like one of the Darling children.)

Anyway, the Giant Screaming Santa Head and its precious cargo of boil-in-the-bag nudists lands at “the Vortex,” an impregnable, futuristic 17th century village where everyone dresses like Flemish peasants but talks like they’re on Space: 1999. Sean sneaks around the place and gets terrorized by flour, hydroponic Brussels sprouts, and a jack-in-the-box.

A woman dressed in an orange gown and a hat made from a damp Handi-Wipe appears. Like the other residents of the Vortex, she is immortal, possesses deadly psionic powers, and is very, very boring. Orangina mentally bitch-slaps Sean, then places him in a Mylar pup tent decorated with Playboy centerfolds, and we get to watch home movies of Sean riding around with a bunch of other guys sporting Pampers and porn ‘staches, shooting extras in the back and forcing themselves on women trapped in gill nets.

The raping and killing doesn’t bother Charlotte Rampling, another blank-faced Eternal, but she becomes so traumatized by Sean’s graphic memories of non-consensual wheat farming that she can only speak in words beginning with the letter Q. “Quench it,” she demands. “Quell it.”

Then quaff a quart of Quaaludes and quit your job at Quiznos.

Orangina wants to keep Sean, but there’s a No Pets policy at the Vortex, so the Homeowners Association has to take a vote. Friend, an Eternal with preternaturally poofy hair, takes a liking to Sean and promises to feed him and pick up after he does his business. The condo board agrees to let Sean live on a trial basis, but insists he has to be crated every night.

The next morning, Friend appears dressed in a skirt and a low-cut macramé halter top, his hair ratted like Nancy Sinatra’s, and proceeds to methodically beat the half-naked Sean with a bullwhip in a scene that Robert Mapplethorpe found “a trifle obvious.”

The rest of the Eternals sit down to lunch, where they pass a green baguette around the table and ritually sniff it, while Sean hauls Friend in a rickshaw as he delivers pastel baked goods to the Apathetics—a group dressed like late Renaissance Walloons who stand motionless and stare into space all day, slack-jawed and drooling. Friend explains that these are the sole survivors of a Zardoz test screening in La Jolla.

After lunch, Sean attends Charlotte’s PowerPoint slide show on The Lost Art of the Erection. Apparently, the Eternals can conquer death and construct giant flying heads, but they can’t figure out how the pee-pee works. Charlotte, as part of her Show ‘N Tell segment, makes Sean watch Cinemax After Dark in an effort to put a Lincoln Log in his Huggies, but he can’t rise to the occasion. However, just when her presentation is circling the drain, the Soundtrack from Fantasia arrives and awards Sean a huge pulsating boner, which is symbolized by a cutaway to a llama.

The next day at lunch, an embittered Friend decides he doesn’t want to sniff the baguette. The other Eternals respond to this mutiny by humming like a model train transformer while Carrot Top does a sinister jazz hands routine.

Sean decides he’s had enough of this and climbs a hill so he can do mime in peace.

Despite presenting a killer “trapped in the invisible box” routine, he sustains a critical drubbing, so Sean heads to the Sizzler to blow off steam and gets badly mauled by a group of elderly patrons who don’t appreciate him parading around in a diaper while they’re trying to enjoy the Early Bird Special.

Then Charlotte and Sean fight over a poncho and Sean goes blind, but Princess Leia suddenly appears and performs Lasik, then warns him that his strength will inevitably fail, and when it does, he should eat some spinach.

The Eternals trap Sean in one of those inflatable Jolly Jumpers and start beating him to death, but he confounds them at the last possible second by throwing a handful of corn meal in their general direction and escaping! Then he runs back to the top of the hill and commences to vogue. When this doesn’t seem to help, he goes to hang with the Apathetics since at least Boorman didn’t give them any dialogue. Unfortunately, the catatonic women magically awaken when they taste his underarm perspiration. This inspires a brief but tepid lesbian make-out scene, then suddenly all the apathetic Flemish chicks are moaning and licking Sean, so he frantically eats his spinach, then runs a 10K while an angry posse with severe erectile dysfunction gives chase.

Eventually, he’s saved by the elderly Sizzler patrons, who make him wear Miss Haversham’s wedding dress while they dodder around with Roman candles as the Apathetics, still hopped up on Sean sweat, hump the lawn ornaments.

Orangina realizes that even though the Eternals are immortal beings who possess all knowledge, Sean can pop a chubby at will, so he wins. “We will touch-teach you,” she tells him, “And you will give us your seed.” Sean agrees to this bargain, but adds, “Um…I’m gonna need a magazine.”

Princess Leia gets naked and speaks Swedish while math problems are flashed on her boobs. Then suddenly everybody is nude and covered in algorithms and speaking Albanian and nattering on about Ethelred the Unready and the Gadsen Purchase as Sean crams for his midterms. Finally, our hero’s apotheosis reaches a climax as a girl with staticky hair offers to sell him a large cubic zirconium at a substantial discount.

Sean absorbs the sum of all human knowledge, and promptly realizes that he looks ridiculous in this diaper, so he goes and puts on a sensible pair of gauchos. Charlotte sneaks up behind Sean with a huge knife, but she’s so moved by his attempt at pants that she instantly falls in love.

Then Sean sneaks into that glass pyramid at the Louvre, but the inside doesn’t look at all like I thought it would—a lot more labyrinths, bleeding mirrors, and interpretive dance recitals by disembodied heads than you’d expect. Meanwhile, the Flemish peasants break into the workroom on Project Runway and vandalize some dress forms.

Sean tells Orangina and Charlotte, “Stay close to me. Inside my aura,” then sticks out his hand, which causes the film to reverse (but not, thankfully, to the beginning). Then the Santa-Head Hot Pants People ride in waving their guns. Suddenly, the screen is filled with men and women staggering around shouting “Kill me! Kill me!” Since we’ve never seen most of these people before, I can only assume they’re members of the film crew who have finally snapped. Meanwhile, Sean and Charlotte run off and hide in Injun Joe’s cave.

Charlotte is abruptly nude and giving birth. Then she and Sean are sitting on a rock in the cave, and staring expressionlessly at the viewer like the couple from American Gothic, except they’re both topless and she’s breastfeeding. Then the film dissolves and they age a bit — the child is about 5 years old now –- but they’re still sitting on the rock, although they’ve finally had the decency to put on some Napoleonic-era greatcoats.

Another dissolve. They’re still there, still modeling the coats, and the boy is about ten. Another dissolve. Nobody’s moved. Their son is about 18, with long, unkempt hair and a rawhide loincloth like Tarzan. He looks at Sean with an expression that plainly says, “Um, Dad? Can we get off this rock now?” Sean doesn’t respond, so the kid gets up before his leg falls asleep and wanders off camera.

Now that the young man is no longer sitting between them, Sean and Charlotte join hands and continue to rot in their overcoats. Through a series of painfully slow, yet hilarious dissolves, they decay into skeletons, then a big, disorganized pile of bones, and the camera pans up to Sean’s rusted gun hanging on the wall of the cave, beside two handprints that were apparently created using the science of Kirlian photography.

The end.

So what have we learned from Zardoz? Oh, there are lessons a’plenty:

If you’re John Boorman and don’t know how to wrap up your movie, just pretend it’s one of those junior high biology films that tended to end with time-lapse photography of a decomposing badger.

If you’re Sean Connery, take a moment to fire your agent. Then fire the next guy when he suggests you do Highlander. Then fire the guy after that for recommending Highlander II: The Quickening. Then maybe just retire and become cranky.

And finally, if you’re sitting down to write an epic science fiction allegory about the violence and sterility of modern life, Just Say No to Drugs.

If you’re sitting down to watch one, Just Say Yes to Drugs. Yes Please.