Zardoz

By Richard Romano

After director John Boorman’s 1972 film Deliverance became a smash hit, he was given carte blanche (if not carte budget—$1 million, pretty paltry even by 1974 standards) to make whatever project he wanted. A recipe for over-the-top self-indulgence? You betcha. The result was 1974’s Zardoz. Written, directed, and produced by Boorman, it’s an imagining of what human society has become by the year 2293. And it ain’t pretty. Or even coherent. It’s basically the cinematic equivalent of what the Emperor in Amadeus said about Mozart’s music: “It’s got too many notes.” Indeed, Zardoz just has too many half-baked ideas crammed into it. There are easily five different movies in here, all jostling for attention.

One of these movies is a meditation on what it means to be immortal. Apparently, when you are immortal you become androgynous and impotent, and eat green bread.

The film was made in 1974, and is a triumph of visual style often at the expense of narrative coherence. Heck, Zardoz makes the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey seem as clear-cut and understandable as a Scooby-Doo episode. My guess is the narcotics budget for Zardoz far exceeded the visual effects budget. And while I myself have never taken anything stronger than Sudafed, I suspect the best way to appreciate this film is to be higher than a paper kite.

Zardoz stars Sean Connery, who had just quit the James Bond series and was apparently so hard-up for work that he agreed to don an upsettingly skimpy red sarong and cavort around the Irish countryside groping women who bear more than a passing resemblance to Eric Idle.
Boorman, by the way, had a pretty hit-or-miss career since, directing Heretic: Exorcist II, Excalibur, and Hope and Glory, the latter being the only movie of his I rather liked (it is a semiautobiographical story of a boy growing up in London during World War II).

Anyway, get ready for Zardoz.

The first thing we see is a guy’s floating head bobbing around the screen against a black background. As he floats closer to the camera we see that his facial hair has been drawn on with a Sharpie. Okay, movie, are you sure you want to start this way? Remember, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. He says, “I am Arthur Frayne, and I am Zardoz.” Must be his code name. I would be happier if he had introduced himself as No-Doz. You certainly could use some while watching this movie.

“I have lived for 300 years, and I long to die.” Well, don’t let me stop you. Please. It turns out that death is no longer possible, and that he is immortal. “I present now my story—full of mystery and intrigue.” No real plot, but lots of mystery and intrigue, as in “What the heck is going on?!” “It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events has actually occurred. But they may.” Oh, I see— Huh? Arthur says that he is a fake god by occupation “and a magician by inclination.” Watch him pull a rabbi out of his hat? “I am the puppetmaster. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see.” So we can blame this guy. “But I am invented, too, for your entertainment.” Oh, so it’s going to be one of those movies. Hunker down...

According to the director’s commentary track on the DVD, this introduction was filmed and added after the fact because no one understood the movie. It doesn’t help. However, I think the subtext of this little introduction is, “If you brought acid into the theater, now is the time to drop it.” (Someone should have dropped acid—sulfuric acid—on the final print of this film.)

By the way, even though this was only 1974, they still could have tried a video game tie-in—maybe Zardoz Pong. Although “Bong” would probably be more appropriate.

And as Arthur drops off the bottom of the screen, we cut to the fog-shrouded Irish hills. The titles start, and we are told that this is “A John Boorman Film set in the year 2293.” We see silhouettes of horsemen shouting “Zardoz!” as the soundtrack kicks in with what sounds like an anaconda slithering slowly over the keyboard of a pipe organ. What are they shouting about? Is it behind the giant stone head that is emerging from the clouds? Oh, I see— Huh? The giant head kind of looks like Ian Anderson—was it a prop from the 1974 Jethro Tull tour?

The head lands in a field, and we can see that the horsemen are wearing skimpy red shorts and matching Zardoz masks. I see, the god and his worshipers. Fair enough. A deep, resonant voice booms out of the head: “Zardoz speaks to you, his chosen ones.” “This is CNN.” It continues: “You have been raised up from brutality to kill the brutals who multiply.” Oh, I see— Huh? Raised up from brutality, to kill the brutals? Mr. Zardoz, I have a question...

Oh, never mind. Just go on.

Zardoz reminds his followers that he gave them the gift of the gun. I always get shirts. “The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds and makes new life to poison the earth with a plague of men....The gun shoots death and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals.” Oh, I see— Huh? “Go forth and kill.”

And at that point, the giant stone head vomits up a vast arsenal of rifles and ammunition. Oh, so they’re in Texas. And of course the followers grab the guns and go off on a shooting spree, rather like an NRA fantasy. Sean Connery appears, and immediately points the gun at the camera and shoots. Hey, what did we do?

Some time later, the giant stone head is cruising through the clouds, and the titles continue. It would have been apt if the costumer designer had been Edith Head, but alas not. The head turns and heads straight for us, and we disappear into its mouth. Great. First Sean Connery shoots us, then the giant stone head eats us. What does this movie have against us, anyway? Inside the head, we cut to a close up of a large mound of what looks like grain. Out of the grain, a hand emerges, clutching a gun. Oh, god, it’s Deliverance all over again. Boorman does like that shot, doesn’t he?

Sean Connery emerges from the grain and looks around inside the stone head. For some reason that is never explained, the walls are lined with half-naked men and women shrink-wrapped in plastic. Is this the grand parade of lifeless packaging, all ready to use? (This movie makes Genesis’ concept albumThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadway seem straightforward and coherent by comparison.)

Sean Connery examines the plastic-wrapped bodies. There is no Q around to explain what they’re for or how they work, but maybe they keep fresher that way. He sees a figure moving about on the floor of the head. It is Arthur Frayne from the pre-title sequence, and he stands right in the teeth and glances out the mouth. Sean Connery leaps out and shoots him. “You...” groans Arthur, hamming it up big time. “Foolish...I could have shown you...Without me, you are nothing.” Uh huh. And then he flies out the mouth. They should put in some kind of safety railing or seat belts or something. That open mouth is just asking for trouble, but then again it’s not far removed from some Southwest flights I have taken. And, hey, is the interior of the head pressurized? It is pretty high. But then, I imagine, so is the director.

Eventually, the head comes in for a landing. Please wait until Zardoz has come to a complete stop before unfastening your seat belt. Be careful opening the overhead bins as the contents may have shifted during flight. Heaven knows mine have.

This movie is literally a head trip.

Sean Connery climbs out of the head and comes across what appears to be a farmhouse, and then a nursery where all the plants are encased in plastic. I’ve heard of people keeping their furniture covered in plastic, but their plants, too? It’s like if Monk ran a farm.

Sean finds a hidden staircase that leads up to an attic room filled with odd knickknacks, including a little alcove separated from the rest of the room by silver streamers. It all looks like a Spencer Gifts circa 1979. Where are the naughty novelties and glow-in-the-dark black velvet skull paintings? Inside is a shrine to the giant stone head. Sean finds a jack-in-the-box and it freaks him out.

He is interrupted by the sound of a bell, and what sounds like a BBC newsreader announcing “Attention, harvest progress report.” The voice is coming from a jewelry box. Sean opens it and removes a silver ring with a large stone on it. Sean holds up the ring, and it is not only the source of the voice, but also projects images in the air—or, I should say, on a glass sheet placed across the set. It identifies what “Vortex 4 needz: soap, applz, solt, lethur.” Great; in the future the English language has (d)evolved from instant messaging. The ring—a computer of some kind—gives a fairly thorough inventory of needs and surpluses in various vortices. Meanwhile, as the inventory management system is giving its report, Sean is bemused by projecting the images from the ring on his hand. The bell rings again, and the system shuts off. Sean shakes the ring, thinking that ought get it going again, but nothing doing.

He then says “Food,” and the ring projects an image of a loaf of bread. He sees it, then says “Meat” and the ring projects a leg of lamb. He tries to grab the holographic leg of lamb and is frustrated when he cannot. “Who lives here?” he asks, and we see Arthur’s face projected from the ring. “I am Arthur Frayne, Vortex 4” he repeats endlessly, and the ring projects an image of his eye, which Sean projects around the room while trying to get the ring to shut up.

Outside, some people return from...somewhere, cheerfully talking about “mangled limbs” and “bodies.” Sean grabs the ring and goes outside. He asks it what a flower is, and then sees what appears to be Lady Godiva after getting a rather severe haircut. That gets Sean’s attention; kind of like Ursula Undress.

He walks down to a lake, and along the shore he comes across another woman, clothed this time (after a fashion) (well, after a freakish fashion), and his first response is to try to shoot her. She glares at him, and he winces in pain. Ah, some kind of telekinesis or something. Either that or she’s got a really mean look. “Do you know where you are?” she asks him. “The Vortex,” he responds. She pegs him immediately as not being from around there. I think the body hair gave it away. Sean says, “Zardoz says if you believe in him you will go to a vortex when you die and there you will live forever.” Live and Let Die? (Oh, wait, Connery wasn’t in that one.) “So you think you’re dead?” she asks him, and he looks around unable to answer for a while. I bet he’s thinking “My career probably is after this movie.” “Am I?” he finally responds. “You’re an exterminator,” she tells him. Is that what Terminix guys wear in the 23rd century? What a terrifying thought. It turns out the stone head is the only way into and out of the Vortex, whatever that is. She then forces him to tell her how he got there—or he will suffer the wrath of her freckles. I assume those are freckles, or she ran a live cow through a wood chipper without adequate spatter protection.

She can read this thoughts and memories, and we learn that his name is Zed. (Zed...Zardoz...this movie will help you catch some Zs all right). We flash back to Zed’s work life as an exterminator—he and his coworkers, riding on horseback along the beach in Zardoz masks, shooting what look like college professors. He throws a net round a barechested woman, and she falls to the beach. He rushes back and decides to rape her. Charming. This is our hero? At least James Bond had class. Does he have a tuxedo on under that sarong?

Suddenly, Zed is lying spreadeagle on a table in...some kind of room. His thoughts are being projected on a large trapezoidal screen, and Freckles is there, accompanied by another woman played by Charlotte Rampling. The decor of the room is Early Freakish Period, and seems to comprise photos of nude people who had been tossed into an aquarium. Huh? Zed is narrating his adventures. “25 brutals exterminated.” Who’s the real brutal here? “Took a woman in his name.” Presumably Zardoz’s name. Of course. That’s one of the oldest excuses in the book. Are we sure he’s not some sort of fundamentalist preacher? Or do they only troll highway rest stops? “The place,” he continues, “where the sea meets the land.” So...the beach. At that point, the screen goes blank.

“It seems to be able to control its memory,” says Freckles. Would that we all could. “Show us more of your work.” Does he have a portfolio? He complies. “Zardoz made us grow wheat.” Not wheat! Oh, the humanity! Freckles can tell that this is a more recent memory; are they time-stamped? On the display, a line of “brutals” (who wear black sports jackets—were they rounded up at a conference of funeral directors?) are digging in the ground with long poles. One of them drops, and Zed shoots him. His approach to farming needs some work.

Freckles and Non-Freckles discuss their attitudes toward the “Outlanders.” (Actually, Sean Connery starred in Outland in 1981. That was a good movie.) Non-Freckles has always disapproved of “forced farming.” Freckles reminds her, “You eat the bread.” Ouch. If I knew what the heck they were talking about, I’d be...something. I don’t know what. Bored, probably.

It turns out that Arthur Frayne had been delegated to control the Outlands but no one had ever really kept track of what he was doing, and these memories of Zed’s are the first data they have on what Arthur had been up to. “It is proper to investigate,” says Freckles. “It’s best not to know,” responds Non-Freckles, “these images will pollute us.” Uh huh. Plausible deniability. So this is basically like any government. Freckles is curious about how Zed managed to penetrate a Vortex, “and maybe it’ll tell us why Arthur vanished so mysteriously.” They then ask the computer to track Arthur’s memory transmission. Why didn’t they do this earlier, if they were so concerned? Anyway, the computer says that Arthur’s memory stopped transmitting three days earlier, and they ask to play his last “memory moment.” Naturally, his last memory is of falling from the stone head—though why he sees himself in his own memory is a good question. In this advanced society, are all their memories in the third person? Or was he carrying a full-length mirror when he fell out of the head?

The women ask to see the memory preceding the fall from the head, but they have laws preventing the viewing of another person’s memories-earlier than the absolute last one, that is—without their consent. And if they’re dead, well, I guess they haven’t found any loopholes in that law yet. The women protest that they need to know the location of his body in case it needs to be recovered. However, the computer says, “Arthur Frayne has died. Reconstruction has begun.” And they glance over to the wall. “Ah, yes,” says Freckles. And there, hanging from the ceiling, is a baggie containing a plastic fetus. What, they didn’t notice a fetus hanging there before now? So that’s how their immortality works; if they “die” in an accident or something, they are born again. Zed is watching all of this; is he thinking, You Only Live Twice?

We learn now that Freckles is named May and Non-Freckles is named Consuela. Consuela wants to kill Zed; May wants to study him. May says, fine, then they’ll put it to a community vote. There is then a rather tedious argument over whose intuition the community will listen to.

May then continues to grill Zed. Poor Sean Connery; he’s been lying splayed out on that table for about 20 minutes now. He has more flashbacks to killing brutals.

Dah! Now suddenly he is standing in another room, with another viewscreen behind him. This is apparently the community room and he is the entertainment for the evening. If he starts juggling or doing some kind of ventriloquist act, I’m turning this off. For some reason, some of the audience are watching from within translucent cloth teepees. Are they squeamish?

Even worse; he flashes back to the rape memory. Don’t tell me he’s out of original episodes and in reruns already?

Says Zed, “My father was chosen. My mother was chosen. Only we could breed.” Oh, I see— Huh? “Selective breeding?” asks May. “Whatever has Arthur been doing out there all these years?” I guess immortality doesn’t imply efficient oversight. “No one wanted to run the Outlands,” says one of the few males in the room. “He’s an artist.” Who, Arthur? Judging from his hand-drawn facial hair, not much of one.

Back to the screen “I love to see them running,” narrates Zed. “I love the moment of their death.” It is rather like a John Wayne movie, isn’t it? The shooting and whooping goes on for rather a while.

One of the males comes up to Zed and remarks on his decaying flesh and the smell of putrefaction in the air. He then checks Zed’s teeth. “He’s a fine, strong beast.” His pick-up technique needs some work. I bet Sean Connery is thinking, “I was James Bond only three years ago. What the hell was I thinking?”

May starts babbling about all the reasons why she wants to study him, but Consuela thinks she has some kind of hidden agenda. Apparently, they have stopped being able to have children, but May wanted to look into changing that “even though we have no deaths.” Consuela seems quite happy about the fact that their society has “stabilized” and she is concerned that this “beast” from the outside will disrupt their tranquility. In other words, she doesn’t like kids, which is what I’m sensing here.

While she’s babbling, two other women are having a grand old time rubbing Sean Connery’s chest. I suspect he quickly had this added to his contract in exchange for all the humiliation he has suffered so far.

The community decides they want to keep him around—“anything to relieve the boredom.” One of the males sidles up to him. “I wonder what’s going on inside your pea brain,” he says, adding “I like you, you sly old monster.” He playfully slaps Zed’s face—and Zed licks his hand. Oh, yuck. I guess this guy knows when he’s licked. They all vote, and apparently the majority wants to keep Zed around—for three weeks anyway. Then they’ll replace him with Roger Moore.

They keep Zed in a metal cage near the farm animals. The guy he licked strolls over. “Hello, Monster,” and takes him aside. He then flogs Zed. “Where’s Arthur Frayne?” he demands, and stares at him, which causes Zed to wince in pain. “Ever hear the expression, ‘If looks could kill’? Well, here they can.” And with one eye closed they can maim you pretty badly, too.

He then quickly changes his tone and gets all friendly with Zed. “You’re saying nothing. All right. We’ll wait and see....I’m going to look after you.” Man, this guy blows hot and cold. I bet his mood swings can kill, too. He leads Zed into a large stone structure. He tells Zed that Zed will now be working for him—“Menial stuff; nothing too taxing.” So I guess Zed won’t be doing his taxes.
Inside is some kind of museum—it is packed solid with stone statues. Like the British Museum, really. “Is this your god’s house?” asks Zed. It’s more like god’s storage locker or god’s warehouse. The strange man goes on about how all their gods died of boredom, then cackles maniacally. I think he has some issues.

In the room is one of those electronic picture frames which is displaying photos of vintage automobiles. The weird guy is arguing with the computer about...something. Zed takes a Van Gogh self-portrait and pokes his finger (Goldfinger?) through it. Good one. You can’t take him anywhere. Meanwhile, the weird guy is yelling at the computer. Yep, I think that’s a pretty accurate vision of the future. I guess that means Windows is still around.

Cut to the communal dining room where the table is set for lunch. Fresh fruit, green bread, and a chambered nautilus are apparently on the menu. Everyone starts filing in. Can’t they give Zed a shirt and pants? Please?

May leads Zed outside where he disappears into a mirrored pyramid. As he walks behind it, he is supposed to convey that he fell into a pit, but is only slightly more convincing than that old “crouch down while pretending to walk down stairs” gag.

He floats gently down and May meets up with him in what appears to be one of those fun house mirror mazes. He lies down on a table and May scans his retinas, for some reason. She must have CNN on because the computer breaks in with a news update on the trial of George Satan (?), who has been accused of “transmitting a negative aura.” I think that law is actually on the books in San Francisco.

Transmitting a negative aura over state lines is a felony. Some states also have laws against possession of a negative aura, and transmitting negative auras to a minor.

Anyway, Satan pleads “innocent of psychic violence,” claiming that his negative thoughts were intended as “constructive criticism.” Hmm...I’ll have to try that one. An examination of his face and eyes can prove or disprove his innocence.

Some time later, Zed is in the bakery making green bread that looks like Play-Doh. I think we’ve all eaten Play-Doh but I’m not sure it should be the basis of en entire society’s diet. Do they have the Fuzzy Pumper Barber Shop in the back room? It’s interesting that the society of the future has a primitive, 18th- or 19th-century technology—except for the oven, which is apparently the only high-tech apparatus they have. So I guess Williams-Sonoma conquered the world.

The weird guy wanders in and starts speaking in what sounds like the dialogue recorded in reverse. Whatever he is saying, everyone else in the bakery finds it highly amusing. Okay then. Zed is loading up a cart with bread and the weird guy hops on the wagon. Meanwhile, some other guy is having some kind of epileptic seizure which is freaking out the women. The weird guy says that he will be punished for it. Okay then.

As if to further Sean Connery’s humiliation in this movie, he has to be the weird guy’s coolie, and haul him around on the bread cart. While Zed is pulling the weird guy around, they discuss the legal system. Their punishment for various offenses is aging. That is, making the offender older by some length of time. “Three months here, a year there. These sentences add up.” As do whole paragraphs. The rub? “They make you old, but they don’t let you die.” Kind of like this movie. The weird guy says that when someone tries to kill himself, the “Eternal Tabernacle” rebuilds them. We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

The weird guy takes Zed to deliver bread to the “Renegades,” who are condemned to an eternity of senility. “They’re malicious and vicious.” It’s basically an old age home where everyone is very well-dressed and whooping it up. Welcome...to Geriatric Park. They yell at Zed to stay off their lawn. By the way, this is also what happened to John McCain after the election.

They then deliver bread to another class of people: the Apathetics. They stand about expressionless and staring off into space, oblivious to everything and everyone around them. They must have evolved from chronic cellphone users.

We interrupt this bread delivery for a news update on the trial of George Satan. He now changes his plea to guilty, and babbles on about how he hates everyone. I bet that’ll help. Everyone is then requested to vote or his acquittal or conviction. The weird guy votes for “complete acquittal.”

Meanwhile, Zed wanders over and starts groping one of the Apathetic women. I think this was one of Mrs. Moneypenny’s fantasies. He then tosses her down into a haystack and starts.... Hey! Sean! Have a little class, pal! The weird guy explains that the Apathetics are the result of a disease creeping through all the vortices, and that is why Zardoz had the Outlanders grow crops, to feed the Apathetics. Oh, I see— Huh? That makes Zed so mad he throws a barrel against the wall and overturns the bread cart, for some reason.

Oh, and the verdict in the George Satan case: guilty, and he will be aged five years. That doesn’t seem so bad; let’s face it, one’s 20s are vastly overrated.

We then cut to the community room and Consuela is giving a lecture on the male reproductive system and how they don’t understand how it works. Well, with the males they’ve got I’m not surprised. She shows a very cheesy animation of the system in question; someone needs a Flash animation tutorial. In other words, they don’t understand the link between stimulus and response, despite “our intensive researches into the subject.” Well, I’ll bet it makes grad school a tad more interesting. She explains that, thanks to their immortality, they didn’t actually need to procreate so everything just sort of atrophied. Because all sex is solely for the purpose of procreation, of course. Does this make any sense? Anyway, the Eternals can’t get, ahem, things to work anymore. “We are no longer victims of this violent, convulsive act,” says Consuela. Methinks she doth protest too much.

She then points out that “this brutal” meaning of course Zed, “is capable of spontaneous and reflexive erection.” Sean Connery is now reaching the lowest depths of his abasement in this movie (well, not really; it gets worse). They have apparently been conducting experiments on him. I bet. Consuela demonstrates. I could easily make some reference to Thunderball, but I don’t think I will. On the screen, she shows Zed film of...some naughty things involving soap lathering and nude mud wrestling. Samuel L. Bronkowitz presents Catholic High School Girls in Trouble. Not surprisingly, this fails to have the, um, desired effect. Still, they are all rather stunned by this. The picture goes off and Zed stares at a flickering white line on the screen. Everyone chuckles and looks away embarrassedly, and Consuela is perturbed. I have no idea what that was all about, but I think we should be happy that we immediately cut to various shots of livestock.

Zed is asleep in his cage, and Consuela is talking into her ring, musing about the brutals’ need for sleep. (I guess the Eternals don’t sleep either.) The computer explains, “Sleep was necessary when man’s conscious and unconscious lives were separated. As Eternals achieved total consciousness, sleep became obsolete.” And mattress sales plummeted. “Second-level meditation took its place.” Is that meditating upstairs? For some reason, this explanation is accompanied by a film of microscopic marine organisms. Oh, I see, it turns out that this is a film of Zed’s genetic structure. His genetic structure is made up of jellyfish, polyps, and plankton? Seems kind of fishy to me.

May is still grilling him about how he got into the Vortex. “I’m just an exterminator,” he says. Maybe he was called in to take care of their mouse problem. May points out that he is physically and mentally superior to all of the Eternals (oh, like that’s hard) and she is afraid he will destroy them. “Like you destroyed the rest of life?” he counters. Ouch. “Could you unknow what you know about me?” he asks. I wish I could! May says she will keep it from the others, as long as he obeys her every word and does whatever work is given to him. Wait—how did he get on the losing side of this deal?

Some time later, in the communal dining room, everyone is gathered around for a meal. Zed is dishing out potatoes, and Consuela insists that “that thing” (i.e., Zed) be put outside. I guess she’s still bitter about that whole free willy episode—whatever it was that happened. The weird guy—and we now learn that his name is Friend (oh, the irony)—asks if anyone else is disturbed by Zed’s being there—and no one else is. “So let’s take another boringly democratic vote, shall we Consuela?” he says. I guess this is what happens when you base your entire society on Robert’s Rules of Order.

Consuela is upset that it was Friend’s turn to make the food, and that it is essential that everyone in the society do things for themselves in accordance with true equality. Don’t tell me this is now some kind of “look how bad society is when everyone is made equal to everyone else” message. Oy. “Yes or no? Potatoes?” asks Zed, and everyone laughs. Ha ha ha.

Friend is now going off the rails, and starts railing against his having to do chores. He throws a fork into the middle of the table and everyone is aghast. Not a fork! Where ever will it end? Spoon throwing? A cascade of gravy ladles? The horror, the horror!

May and Consuela come to loggerheads. Consuela wants Zed destroyed, as he is disrupting their society. Besides, she likes Pierce Brosnan much better.

A bell rings, the soundtrack goes quiet except for a high-pitched whine, and a woman who I think is the staff psychic looks around suspiciously. She casts her gaze around the table and everyone makes some kind of hand signal or mouths something—are they voting on something? The verdict: “May has been given seven days to complete her study. Then Zed will be terminated.” I thought they had decided that some time earlier.

The society’s poet laureate or something then starts making a shrill whine of her own, and everyone stands up. They all extend their arms and start wiggling their hands at Friend, who starts groaning “No! I will not go to second level!” I guess that’s their version of the woodshed. Friend is not doing himself any favors by yelling “The Vortex is an obscenity!” and “I know what May wants with Zed!” They all continue waggling their hands at Friend. May says that Friend is beyond redemption and has been declared a Renegade. The hand-waggling, high-pitched whining, and shouts of “Renegade” continue for a while, until finally Friend slumps over on the table. Everything goes quiet. So...dessert?

Zed wisely takes that opportunity to beat cheeks out of there—and unfortunately in that little red sarong we get to see those cheeks. Ugh. He runs through the woods and finally to a clearing where a recorded voice warns him that he is nearing the periphery shield of Vortex 4. He signals to some of his cohorts beyond the periphery. How did they get there? And how did he know where they were? But to no avail as there is a transparent wall preventing him from getting out or them getting in.

He goes to the old age home where the Renegades are. Through the window he sees someone who looks like Q after a weekend bender. Inside, they are all having a quiet party. Zed finds Friend, who for some reason has only been aged on one side of his body. Oh, I see— Huh? “Old friend,” says Friend. Yep, old friends, sat on the park bench like book ends. A newspaper blown though the grass falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.

Anyway.

Friend tells Zed, “This is your fault.” How do you figure that? Friend then addresses the crowd and introduces Zed as the force of death. That gets everyone’s attention. Friend eggs the old people on and for some reason they all start attacking Zed, who has to forcibly fend off the onslaught of old people. It’s kind of like being in South Florida.

Finally, Zed has had enough, and as he is about to beat a guy with his own crutch, the mob comes to a stop. Zed asks Friend what he wants—and Friend wants the death of the entire human race. Oh, I see— Huh? “You stink of despair,” says Zed. Um, that’s not despair... Zed encourages Friend to fight for death, and then asks where the Tabernacle is, and that there must be a way to break it.

Friend then introduces Zed to the guy who invented immortality who, ironically enough, was aged horribly by his grateful people. “We want to die!” yells Friend. “What’s the trick?” “Death,” is the response. Thanks, that’s a help. The guy kind of looks like Father Jack Hackett from Father Ted. Feck off! He starts rasping something unintelligible. “Frog ptomaine,” he says. I have no idea.

It must have had something to do with May, since Zed charges back to the Eternals’ dining room shouting for her. He finds her in what appears to be a sewing room with a table cloth over her head. It’s Casper the Psychedelic Ghost.

“I want the truth,” he demands. You can’t handle the truth! “You must give the truth if you expect to receive it.” Fair enough. “I’m ready,” he says, and she then invites him under the table cloth into her little fort. “It’ll burn you,” she says. “Tell me everything,” she purrs. “Show me pictures.” I want JPEGs, animated GIFs, Flash animations, QuickTime movies, a whole variety of rich media applications.

Now we get Zed’s flashback. Zed, does this clip need any setup? “Zardoz gave us the gun.” Right, yes, I vaguely remember that. Go on. He says that his people were the chosen ones to kill the brutals who multiplied. Right, the guys in the sports coats. I remember that. “Man was born to hunt and kill,” says Zed. But surely not each other. “And then one day, something happened that changed everything.” He discovered that he liked martinis shaken, not stirred. In the flashback, he looks up at a window and sees a face. Naturally, he shoots at it. Zed runs into the building and charges up to the second floor.

A strange bemasked figure leads him on with a book attached to some fishing line which hangs in the air. A little light reading? Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America? Zed approaches it, and it is a learn-to-read primer. Zed tells May that he proceeded to teach himself how to read, and then read every book there, “I learned all that had been hidden from me. I learned what the world had been before the darkness fell.” The previous day?

“Then one day I found...The Book.” Dr. No? “What was the book?” May insists. “What was the name of the book?” In the flashback, Zed starts tearing the book apart and pitching pages down the corridor. I have the same reaction to Ayn Rand. The way he’s freaking out about the name of this book, I’m guessing it’s the whole key to the movie. Anyway, she gets him to admit that he knew that Arthur was Zardoz and that he killed Arthur. “You murdered your own god by accident,” she says. I’ve had days like that.

Then one day, Zed says, Zardoz said “Stop. No more killing.” Zardoz instead told the chosen ones to take prisoners to use as slaves to grow wheat. “Did you need wheat?” May asks him. “No! We ate meat!” Well, maybe Zardoz wanted to get their cholesterol down. “Zardoz betrayed us! We were hunters, not farmers!”

He then explains how he got into the stone head. Zed and his cohorts had hatched a plot. He had told them about the book—aha, and now we find out what the book was: L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz which, if you put your fingers over the “Wi” and “of,” you get “Zardoz.” So the big stone head was the “wizard” and Arthur was the little man behind the curtain. Oh. Okay. Is that all? A bit anticlimactic.

The Book

So basically this was how Arthur controlled the Outlands, by creating a big stone god that scared people into obedience. That’s your basic religion, sure.

Anyway, Zed’s idea was to stow away in the stone head, find a way into the Vortex, and seek “the truth.” Or revenge; kind of a fine line, really.
Zed is exhausted, and he lies down. May lies next to him, and they are still under the table cloth. Consuela appears and thinks she’s caught them at something naughty. “There’s another word for this: bestiality.” May will be aged 50 years for this. “No man, woman, or beast will ever desire you again.” I thought their problem was that no one desired anyone at all.

Zed and Consuela play tug of war with the table cloth, and he resists her lethal look. As it happens, he ends up blind, and he blunders around the room, falls into a loom, and gets entangled in colored yarn. “We must now become hunters and killers ourselves!” says May. Um, why? What the heck is going on?

The weird psychic woman suddenly appears, and leads him away to restore his sight, which involves rubbing leaves into his eyes. Naturally she is topless for this. Well, he is blind.

She then steps back. “I see now why you are here. You are the one, the liberator.” There is an odd shot of Zed standing with Father Jack in the Renegades’ house. Weird psychic woman says that he will help him. “When the time comes, you will set me free.” There is then a vision of Zed shooting her. Oh, I see— Huh? “You have great strength, but there are times when that strength fails you,” she continues. Like when he lost that Iron Man competition? “Eat this when the need arises,” she says, and hands him a Ficus leaf. “This place is built on lies and suffering,” he dramatically announces. Anyone else feel like singing that 1985 Starship hit, “We Built This City on Lies and Suffering”? He then asks, “How could you do what you did to us?” I thought Arthur had done it and that the rest of the Eternals had no idea what Arthur had been doing?

“The world was dying,” she begins. Oh, this is gonna go on for a while...

In a nutshell, as some kind of “darkness” descended on the human race, the rich and powerful took all the knowledge and treasures of human civilization and locked it all and themselves away in “an oasis” away from...human civilization. Oh, I see— Huh? “To do this, we had to harden our hearts against the suffering outside.” Of course they did. Just like the rich and powerful today. So, let me guess: the rest of civilization had given these yo-yos massive bailouts and as a result they built giant stone heads and made the rest of humanity their slaves. (I think this was one of the provisions of the TARP legislation.) “We were the custodians of the past....You are the price we now pay for that isolation. You have brought hate and anger into the Vortex to infect us all.” Good. And why did they need the Vortex again? What was this “darkness” anyway? Disease? War? Reality TV?

For some reason, Zed is now encased in a clear plastic baggie, and all the Eternals start beating on the plastic trying to get at him. Huh? Yeah, I’d be scared of these clowns. Zed punches a hole in the plastic and everyone is freaked out by this. Don’t get mad, get Glad. I’m guessing this lot hasn’t the physical strength to punch a hole through a wet paper towel. He runs to a cart and throws flour on them and they scream in pain (?). Talk about flour power. You’re so vicious; you hit me with a flour...

Zed runs to the edge of the Vortex and signals to his cohorts. However the Eternals are right behind him, although I wouldn’t be that scared if I were him.

They come after him on horseback, and he runs into the realm of the Apathetics. They saunter on up behind him and start humming. One Apathetic woman tastes a drop of his sweat. Eww... It is obviously the best thing she has ever tasted, and she passes the sweat around. Say what? That seems to wake the Apathetics from their apathy. Does he secrete Red Bull or Jolt Cola? “We take life from you,” says the happy Apathetic (Happathetic?). She then proceeds to kiss all the other women. Now the director is getting into some serious self-indulgence. If they all start licking Zed, I’m turning this off. Oh, god, they do....eww... He eats the leaf that the weird psychic woman gave him; I guess that was as good a time as any. Where had he been keeping it, or do I not want to know?

He wisely runs off and ends up in the woods. One minute he is hiding behind a tree from the Eternals, the next he is being chased down by the Renegades. What? Did I miss something? And how does Sean Connery not outrun a bunch of really really old people? He promises to bring death to them if they will go find Friend.

Now the wheels are starting to come off the wagon. Or in other words, on the set, the acid must have started kicking in. The Renegades wander into a clearing, where the Happathetics have become, um, rather amorous. “It’s a miracle!” yells one, “we’re Apathetics.” The Renegades want in on the action now, too. One Apathetic, in media res, explains, “We started chasing the brutal. And we killed him. Only it wasn’t him. And the we felt...desire.” Our fine young director has a very strange vision. I’d see an optometrist if I were him. The Renegades are sneaking someone through the field of randy Apathetics in a wedding dress.

Oh, please tell me it’s not...

“Look at the excitement you caused,” one of the Renegades says.

Oh, please, no...

They come across Friend. “Kiss the bride, Friend,” says the Renegade and pulls the veil up. Probably the last thing any human should ever have to see is Sean Connery in a wedding dress. From Russia with Love, indeed. I think his utter debasement is complete. Friend says, “I will take the bride. Death comes closer for us all.” I’m certainly praying for it right about now. Friend and Zed go off in search of May.

They end up in the museum. May pleads with Friend not to destroy the Vortex, that they can renew it, build a better breed of person, given time. “Wasn’t eternity enough?” asks Friend. Shouldn’t he instead say, “Won’t eternity be enough?” Can you really speak about eternity in the past tense, as if it’s all done? I mean, let’s get our tenses right. Everyone in the movie is tense enough. “This place is against life,” says Zed. But he’s the one claiming to be death and promising to kill everyone. May then offers to teach Zed everything she knows and hopes he can break the Tabernacle. Well, that was easy.

“The end of eternity,” says Friend. “A higher form,” says May. “Revenge,” says Zed. You say potato, I say potahto...

Suddenly it is day, and Consuela is leading the other Eternals in an attempt to break into the museum.

Meanwhile, Zed asks, “How much time will we have?” “We will not work in time,” says May. “You will take our knowledge by osmosis.” But doesn’t any process of osmosis take time? “Out of time. We will touch teach you, and you will give us your seed.” Ewww!!!!

Apparently, this touch teaching involves some incoherent babbling and a very striking if seemingly acid-induced series of visuals of famous artworks, sheets of music, mathematical formulas, etc., projected onto nude women and Zed. It is visually striking, I’ll give it that. My guess is, if you were stoned out of your gourd, you’d probably be having a religious experience right about now. But for a process that is supposed to take place out of time, it is taking rather a while.

Just Plain Weird

Finally, Zed awakes on a table, and May tells him that he now knows everything they know. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. But wait— when he read all those books way back when in the other flashback, didn’t he learn all about human history then? Or was it all just Wizard of Oz sequels?
Friend mumbles something about how all this technology was intended to be put on a spaceship and sent to the distant stars. “Did you go?” asks Zed. “Yes. Another dead end.” And then we cut— Hey, wait! Why was it a dead end? I want to hear more about the spaceship. I want to see Santa some more. I want to see more toys!

Now we get more back story on the Vortex and how it began. Hoo boy. Friend points to the Renegades. “They did it. They were the scientists, the best in the world. But they were middle-aged.” Gasp! Anything but that! “Too conditioned to mortality.” What? We then flash back to them forming the Vortex. “Death is banished forever.” Is it as easy as that? I can’t even keep mice out of the garage, but these guys can banish death from their little fort? They then order that all recollection of the Tabernacle’s creation be erased from their memories “So we can never destroy it.” Do you really need to know how something was built in order to destroy it? I have no problem destroying things (often inadvertently) whose creation I know nothing about. “Here man and the sum of his knowledge will never die, but go forward to perfection.” Uh huh. These are the best scientists in the world? Don’t they know a little something about the law of unintended consequences?

Says Friend, “We applied ourselves to the unsolved mysteries of the universe.” What about the unsolved mysteries of Unsolved Mysteries? Had they brought Robert Stack into the Vortex? “But even with infinite time and the help of the Tabernacle, our minds were not up to it” I think the problem was that they had inadvertently sought the help of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. There are now more flashbacks to touch-learning, blah blah blah. I’m beginning to understand the concept of infinite time right about now.

Zed then abruptly freaks out and starts shooting in all directions. “Kill it! Destroy the Tabernacle!” Is that the same gun he brought with him in the stone head? It’s only a six-shooter. Does the Vortex imbue it with infinite bullets?

There is then another flashback. Man, this movie has more flashbacks than Lost. A diamond is being surgically implanted in someone’s head, which is apparently the source of all their telepathy. Or it’s the latest fashion in self-mutilation, a step up (down?) from body piercing or tattooing. “A crystal joins them,” says Zed. Yep, Diamonds Are Forever. Says May, “Now that we have given you everything that we are, one gift remains. A gift that contains everything...and nothing.” You know, only in the 1970s could you get away with a line like that. A gift that contains everything and nothing. So...a gift card? It is, if you think about it. But not for too long.

Oh, I see, that’s not May; it’s weird psychic woman having an even worse hair day than she usually has. This whole sequence is performed while films of microscopic sea life are projected over them. Of course, that makes perfect sense. She gives Zed the crystal, babbling about lines to the future... “I see nothing in it but my own perplexity.” Like watching this movie.

Now Zed finally has some kind of shirt and pants on (thank you!) and sits in the museum studying the crystal. “Knowledge is not enough,” he thinks. What else does he need? Wisdom? Understanding? Cheddar fries? He hears a voice, and grabs the gun to go look for its source. He walks through what is apparently Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. Three guesses what’s going to— Yep: one of the wax figures is actually a real person. Zed pulls off its mask and it is Arthur Frayne, fully restored, complete with hand-drawn facial hair. Great; that one. Zed knows him. “My brutal friends call me Zardoz.” He chuckles and “stabs” Zed with a fake stage knife. Arthur tests Zed on his knowledge of T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (although his own knowledge of it leaves much to be desired since he skipped a line):

“Would it have been worth while
...
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,’”

“Do you know the next line?” Arthur asks. “Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all,” Zed says. That is not what I meant at all.

Arthur also does a bit of business with a glass ball that he makes float about the room. It ends up in Zed’s hands, and Arthur asks him what he sees in the ball. Zed glances into it for quite a bit of time. “Nothing.” Doh! “Nothing? Then I have nothing to tell you,” says Arthur and he vanishes with a series of cackles. Can we chuck him out of the stone head again?

Consuela and the rest of the Eternals finally crash into the museum and, in slow motion, demolish all the statues. True, the British Museum can get a bit wearying after a while, but there’s no call for that. Zed is still staring into the ball, and Consuela comes up behind him. She is about to stab him, but he tells her she won’t kill him and, by jove, she doesn’t. Well, that was pretty easy. “The hunt is always better than the kill,” he tells her. “Hunting you, I have become you,” she replies. Huh? Is she going to grow his moustache? They trade vaguely philosophical lines, Zed quotes Nietzsche, they pledge to each other their love (huh?), and they speak in a strange, halting manner as if they were reciting poetry they hadn’t quite memorized. This is symbolic of something...bad memory maybe? She puts the Tabernacle ring on his finger. She then goes out and tells the others that the brutal is not there.

He stares into the crystal again and there is a medley of various voices telling him to break the crystal. He then talks to the Tabernacle, and tries to get information about it. The Tabernacle insists that it can’t say anything that would jeopardize its own security. Maybe it’s just password protected? Try the Tabernacle’s birthday. Zed babbles about light refraction, laser light, blah blah blah. “I think you’re a crystal, in fact this one,” he says. I thought we knew that already. He holds the crystal in his hand. “You have me in the palm of your hand,” says the Tabernacle. “But you could be elsewhere,” says Zed. “But I choose to be here.” Ahhh!!!! Enough with the vague existential blathering. Just break the damn thing! The Tabernacle insists that it is the sum of all the peoples’ knowledge, “I am everywhere and nowhere.” Would you cut that out!

The Tabernacle starts pleading for its life in a weird, vague kind of way, and is joined by a chorus of voices, and visually we see flashes of light within the crystal. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. It tries to cajole Zed into joining...them. Who? Zed shots “No!” and the crystal vanishes. Zed is now trapped in the room. “There is no escape. You are now within me. Come into my center.” My creamy nougat center. And Zed slides down a ramp into another fun-house mirror room. There are films of microscopic sea creatures projected on the wall again. It’s kind of like the end of The Lady from Shanghai meets The Discovery Channel. Is Jacques Cousteau really Zardoz? Images of May, Consuela, Friend, and others appear in the mirrors and everyone starts wailing “Nooo!!!” Now we are in serious fever dream territory. This goes on for rather a while, as Zed runs around freaking out like Spongebob Squarepants and the mirrors display staccato images of the rest of the cast twirling about and keening in high-pitched voices. Beneath the wailing of the characters is what sounds like an extract from Pink Floyd’s “Saucerful of Secrets,” or someone jamming on electric wind chimes. Finally, there is a long, Rockettes-like line of multiple Zed reflections, and he shoots his gun. Suddenly, the Tabernacle says, “You have killed us. You found the flaw in the crystal.” I think we found the flaw in the plot. “We are gone. You are alone.” What the heck is going on? Oh, good, now Zed has his old Zardoz mask on. He shoots himself—or his old self. I guess that’s symbolism. Or something. My guess would be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato. There is more gravy—Wavy Gravy—than the grave about this movie.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Eternals are still trashing the museum, in slow motion of course (why should there be straightforward cinematography at this point; the toothpaste is out of that tube). Friend, Consuela, and some of the other Eternals finally break into Zed’s room and find him slumped over the desk, unconscious. Friend says, “Take him to the east door.” They start to carry him out, but then Friend abruptly says, “It’s too late! He’s finished.” Consuela appears, kisses his forehead, and he wakes up immediately. Okay then. He gets to his feet, and instructs everyone, “Stay close to me, inside my aura.” I’m sorry, but not even Sean Connery can make a line like that work. He holds out his hand as if performing “Stop in the Name of Love” and the avenging Eternals in front of him fly backward. Oh, now we have the scene of the Eternals trashing the museum run in reverse, so the statues are being put back together. What the heck is going on? Are they the statues of limitations?

They emerge outside—and the avenging Eternals inside discover that Zed and his Scooby Gang have just vanished.

What the heck is going on?!

Friend asks, “Can you tell us how things stand?” Unsteadily, by the looks of it. Zed is pretty silent; I think just about everyone has lost track of just what is going on in this movie. “What next?” asks Friend—or, indeed, the director. “An old man calls me,” says Zed, “the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.”

The what? The voice of the turtle? Um, movie? Are you now speaking in code?

We cut to Father Jack—he was the guy who invented the Tabernacle—being handed the crystal. “I remember now,” he says. He goes on about how he challenged the natural order and everyone stares down at him. In a nutshell, the Vortex was an offense against Nature, Nature got pissed, and created Zed to destroy it. “We forced the hand of evolution.” I’m not sure how one does that; the question of how they managed immortality is left curiously unanswered, especially as the Father Jack guy sputters a bit, then dies. “A good death,” says Zed. Ah. Everyone is in awe over this, and outside we see the stone head crash to the ground. More symbolism? This movie has more symbols than the Wingdings font.

Everyone then gathers around a fountain, hums loudly, and raises their hands. Touchdown!

Zed gives May the crystal, and instructs her to go on horseback outside the wall of the Vortex, for some reason. She asks what will become of him. He says something cryptic about not being able to go back. Well, he will reprise James Bond in Never Say Never Again in 1983. As the ex-Eternals ride by on horses, he slaps their hands, like basketball players do at the end of a game.

As Zed walks into a clearing, he is charged at by the avenging Eternals, but Consuela tells them to stop, that it’s over. Friend also points out that “The Renegades are dying like flies.” And vice versa. Arthur pops up and says that he is somewhat to blame; “You see, Consuela, our death wish was devious and deep.” To Zed he says, “As Zardoz, I was able to choose your forefathers. It was careful genetic breeding that produced this mutant, this slave who could free his masters.“ Oh, brother. Arthur then points out that it was he who led Zed to the Wizard of Oz book. We weren’t supposed to have guessed that already? And it was Arthur who gave him access to the stone head. “It was I!” And in an odd, disjointed cutaway he does a goofy little head flip and smiles freakishly. And Zed points out that he looked into the face of the force that put the idea into Arthur’s mind. Huh? Nothing more is ever made of that. Movie, you can’t just drop lines like that and leave them! “Arthur,” says Friend, “We’ve all been used.” “And reused.” “And abused.” “And amused.” Would you stop that!

Zed and his Scooby Gang join the others at the fountain, where they are all still humming and signaling touchdowns. “Death approaches,” says one woman. “We are mortal again.” Get it?: Zed = Z = Omega = The End = Death. Cute.

She then says that they can begin to say goodbye to each other, and to the sun, and the earth, and the rock...basically, she bids farewell to every object in existence individually. “Zed the liberator, liberate me now according to your promise.” And Zed draws his gun, but alas he can’t shoot. “All that I am is gone.” He puts down the gun...but a shot rings out anyway. Is there a book depository nearby? It is his exterminator cohorts who show up and take out the ex-Eternals. Arthur suggests to Friend that they kill each other, but the exterminators beat them to it. Arthur dies with a dove in his hand, in the middle of a magic act. The hell? The killing spree goes on for a while.

Well, this is a cheery way to end a movie, isn’t it?

Zed runs off with Consuela and they hide in a cave. Some time later—I would imagine—Consuela is giving birth. There is a stop-motion sequence as Zed, Consuela and their child age. The child reaches manhood, and goes off, while the parents slowly age and decay into bones, then dust. Their family album needs some help. So did they live out their entire lives sitting in that exact same position wearing the same green tunic? And they called immortality boring.

We zoom into a pair of hand prints on the wall of the cave.

The end.

Jeez, I think Prozac should be the drug of choice after this thing. What a downer.

In these types of movies, immortality gets a bad rap. True, I suppose there is boredom, which lads to building giant stone heads, forcing most of civilization to kill people in sports jackets and plant grain, and read The Wizard of Oz, but that ignores all the good things that can come of immortality. Besides, if you believe that the soul is eternal and that there is an afterlife, isn’t that basically the same thing? Six of one, half dozen of another, and if that’s the case, why can’t I just stay here where I know where all the good restaurants are and the bartenders know me?

As Woody Allen once said, “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

So I choose the “glass is half full” attitude to immortality. First if all, if humanity were immortal, Charles Dickens would have been able to finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and that’s enough for me to recommend it.

• Let’s face it, the real drawback to mortality, aside from the dying thing, is that it puts too much of an emphasis on effective time management. If I were immortal, consider:

• I wouldn’t need to worry about having to laboriously reset all my clocks after a power outage.

• I can wait a while before getting a new watch battery.

• I would feel less guilty about procrastination, or choosing to write long recaps of movies like Zardoz instead of doing “real work.”

• Traffic lights probably wouldn’t bother me all that much.

• However, I suspect I would still end up arriving 20 minutes early for any appointment or party.

Posted 02/04/09

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