Picture the scene… A giant stone head floats above a barren landscape as it bellows the phrase “The gun is good! The penis is evil!” as countless guns and shells tumble out of its downturned mouth into the arms of its barbaric acolytes. One of these acolyte rises in the foreground clad in knee-high boots, a crisscrossed bandolier and what can only be a described as a scarlet nappy and turns to reveal a shaggy ponytail, formidable sideburns and a handlebar moustache. This bizarre figure raises to point a pistol directly at the camera and pulls the trigger.
The absurdly dressed man is Sean Connery, the movie is Zardoz, and your mind – is about to get well and truly fucked courtesy of John sodding Boorman.
A lot has been said of Boorman’s frantically whacked-out sci-fi fantasy over the years – a good portion of it wasn’t particularly kind either – but give Zardoz a chance, open your mind, and chances are this aggressively strange movie will never leave…
It is the year 2293 and humankind has been split into two fractions. One of these fractions are known as the Brutals who live in a dystopian wasteland who, when they weren’t getting systematically slaughtered by the barbarian-like Exterminators, grow food for their God, a giant, floating stone head called Zardoz. However, while out doing typically Zardoz-type things one day (disgorging firearms from its mouth and urging the Exterminators to keep up the good work and not procreate), an Exterminator named Zed, sneaks onboard and manages to kill the human being piloting it.
The man was Arthur Frayn a member of the second faction of mankind, an immortal race who call themselves the Eternals, live in a sealed off contry estate called The Void and who are perpetually regrown from death by the Tabernacle, their ruling A.I. and thanks to him stowing away in the head of the grimacing stone deity, Zed manages to infiltrate this strange new existence.
However, while the Eternals have been living a idealistic existence, they have absolutely no aims to speak of whatsoever and so treat this moustachioed barbarian with the excitement of a grown man gifted a PS5 in a Tiktok video. From there it sort of becomes Planet Of The Apes, but without the Apes as Eternal scientists Consuella and May bicker about what to do with him while subversive Eternal, Friend, thinks he could be the key to finally ending their endless existence once and for all.
You see, living forever with all the goals of a forty year-old living in their parent’s basement, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and those Eternals who haven’t gone catatonic with apathy or senile secretly yearn to be allowed to die, and it seems that the arrival of Zed might finally give them that chance.
Jesus, where do you even begin with a film like Zardoz? Do you start with the information that the film’s tactic of having hard sci-fi meets fanciful fantasy was born from Boorman’s aborted attempt to film Lord Of The Rings? Do you broach how absolutely bonkers it truly is? Or do you go straight for the Frank Zappa facial hair in the room and address the stunningly unconventional look for a former Bond actor desperate not to be typecast by his nost famous role?
Well, how about we start by pointing out the obvious: Zardoz, much like John Boorman’s later epic – the similarly bonkers Excalibur – cannot be described as a conventionally good move. There isn’t a single normal character or premise to cling to and the tone the movie is dedicated to cramming into your convulsing brain is that of Tolkien by the way of the funkily paranoid TV show, The Prisoner as we are thrust into a vision of the future that’s utterly alien and yet endlessly trippy. Boorman, gleefully drunk on his eccentric world building has created something quite unlike anything seen since, although plenty of movies have borrowed from it liberally in the years following.
Still, the most striking image in a film jam packed with them, is the sight of a former James Bond dressed in what looks like a S&M incontinence wear as he wanders about the place looking totally lost. It’s a famous Hollywood fable that Connery turned down roles in Lord Of The Rings and The Matrix because he didn’t understand them, so fuck knows what he made of this and he spends almost the entirety of the film looking horribly miscast – although, when you realise that Boorman’s first choice for Zed was Burt friggin’ Reynolds, I wonder who the hell would have been right for the role. However, as out of place as poor Sean looks, his continued bewilderment actually adds to the sense of violent confusion, much in the way that Keanu Reeves’ endearingly blank expression worked for Neo in The Matrix – he’s literally living the role.
Adding to this is that he’s surrounded by a cadre of actors who absolutely seem to understand the assignment which works extra well considering that the Eternals they play are supposed to behave like arrogant, superior beings. Chief among these is Charlotte Rampling as the icy Consuella who wants to examine Zed to study his erection (no, really – the Eternals have moved on from needing any rumpity pumpity), John Alderton’s Friend, who seems to be pushing Zed to disrupt the very system that’s keeping him alive and Sara Kestelman, whose May is most convinced that the mutton-chopped Executioner can be of great value – just not in the way she thinks.
As Zardoz continues on its hugely unpredictable and strangely horny story that takes in mind reading, a fateful reading of The Wizard Of Oz and a mass suicide attempt dressed up as violent genocide, it’s probably best to give up and just go where the movie takes you, even if it involves the Tabernacle sensually talking about being penetrated. Of course, anyone with a low tolerance for weird will no doubt knock a couple of stars off my rating before they manage to get twenty minutes into it and while I blatantly understand that Zardoz is not for everyone, I found it an intriguing, confounding and thoroughly engrossing experience that as ridiculous and funny as it is deadly serious.
There’s not many movies that can blend the blatantly ludicrous with legitimate, mind melting themes while somehow managing to be both overwhelmingly camp and oddly topical – and I’m not even sure Zardoz manages it. But for a truly unique cinematic freak out, Boorman’s dumbfounding epic has what it takes to take you out of your head; especially if it’s a giant, stone, floating one that pontificates about dicks….
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We Have Issues 
After a specific success like Deliverance, John Boorman must have been ambitious enough to take on a most challenging sci-fi tale like Zardoz. In the early 70s when dystopian future films were making big headway for the cinema, it might have felt at home. But it would have been interesting to see how any filmmakers would have pulled it off in the later decades. Thank you for your review.
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