What a waste of my time!!!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's Sean Connery like you've never seen him before! It's cheesey, but in a fun way. It never fails to entertain. I read somewhere that many have called it one of the best sci-fi flicks! Naw, that ain't true -- it's one of the best flicks ever. Period. It's non-stop fun!

What movie would Sean Connery choose to follow up his run as James Bond with? Well, it's The Offence, but this was his second movie after. And it's definitely the first film John Boorman did after Deliverance. What they created was a film that absolutely cannot be easily explained. I've watched it in the double digits and there are whole sequences that I can't unpack.In the year 2293, Earth has lived beyond the end of the world. There are two populations, the immortal Eternals and the mortal Brutals. The Eternals live in the Vortex, a country estate that affords them comfort at the expense of excitement. The Brutals live in a wasteland growing food for the immortals, yet face constant danger.The group that ties them together are the Brutals, exterminators who are ordered by a giant flying stone head named Zardoz to kill other Brutals and exchange food for more weapons.One of the Brutals, Zed (Connery) goes for a ride on Zardoz, even temporarily killing its pilot, Arthur Frayn. Zed goes to the Vortex, where he meets Consuella (Charlotte Rampling, The Damned, Asylum) and May (Sara Kestelman, Liztomania). They defeat him with psychic powers and use him for menial labor. Consuella wants hm destroyed, while May and Friend want to keep him alive.Zed learns that the Eternals are watched over by an artificial intelligence called the Tabernacle. Because they live forever, they have become bored and no longer have sex. Some of them have fallen into comas and are known as Apathetics. And despite their vast resources of knowledge, all they care about is making special bread, meditating and enforcing their social rules by artificial aging anyone who violates their byzantine rules.The Eternals misjudge Zed - he is far more intelligent than he lets on. He learns that he is part of Arthur Frayn's eugenics experiment and that Frayn is also Zardoz. He's also learned to read, and once he discovers that Zardoz isn't a god but a play on the Wizard of Oz, he becomes enraged.Zed lives up to Arthur's goal for him - to deliver death and freedom (one and the same) to the Eternals. He absorbs all of their knowledge as he leads the Brutals on a killing spree against the Eternals.The film ends with still images of Consuella and Zed falling in love to the tune of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony - an ode to soldiers - and giving birth to a son before they age into skeletons. It's complex and simple and moving and silly all at the same time. Kind of like the rest of Zardoz.I didn't even mention the animated scene of how erections work or Connery in a wedding dress or the weird outfit Zed and the Brutals wear - knee-high boots and a giant red thong.The film was inspired by Boorman almost making The Lord of the Rings. Although the project ended, he wanted to see if he could create his own fantasy world. A fantasy world that makes little or no sense, as evidenced by the spoken word intro that 20th Century Fox executives asked Boorman to create. The goal was to help the audience understand the film. But just look at this dialogue:"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue - rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation - and a magician, by inclination. Merlin is my hero! I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment - and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business too?"There's no way to really prepare you for this movie. Trust me when I say that there has never been a movie like it before or since.

Zardoz (1973)Plot In A Paragraph: In the distant future, Zed (Connery) a savage trained only to kill finds a way into the community of bored immortals that alone preserves humanity's achievements.Director John Boorman started to write Zardoz while preparing to adapt The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but when the studio became hesitant about the cost of producing film versions of Tolkien's books, Boorman continued to be interested in the idea of inventing a strange new world, and pressed ahead with this one. After the success of his last movie Deliverance, he was allegedly given Carte Blanc to do as he wanted on the movie by 20th Century Fox. And it shows. Originally, Burt Reynolds was cast in the lead role (having just worked with Boorman) but had to pull out due to an injury and was replaced by Connery for $200,000. Allegedly Boorman never got over it, and thought Reynolds had let him down. As a Reynolds fan, I'm glad he didn't do it. It is awful. Truly awful. All actors have a real stinker or two in their resume, and This is one Connery's. There was not much for Connery to do but lend his physical presence to the role. He made his first entrance, firing his gun straight into the camera (deliberately recalling Bond) He was in excellent shape and ware very little (and orange line cloth and thigh high boots) for the third non Bond movie he was sporting a mustache, and this time he If you want to see Connery in a wedding dress, this may be the movie for you. I can safely say, I'll probably die, having never rewatched this movie again!!On a budget of $1.5 million Zardoz grossed $1.8 million at the domestic box office.

The perspective one has on Zardoz will depend on whether or not one saw it in the original theater run. Growing up in the 1970's brings a perspective that modern viewers just won't have.This review was prompted by a re-viewing of Zardoz prompted by a text message from a friend who claimed he wasted 2 hours of his life watching this awful tripe. My friend knew I would know Zardoz.I originally saw Zardoz first run at the Eastown Theater. The Eastown theater was the last big screen theater in the USA in the 1970's. Back then the neighborhood laughed their buns off for weeks over how silly it was. Zardoz is like an extended Monty Python script that goes on and on.The attempt at a sociological statement is laudable. The result is laughable.The giant floating head spews guns and ammunition. Well, how does the weaponry get manufactured? There are no manufacturing facilities anywhere. Also...would not ejecting Winchesters up into the air and down on the ground damage at least some of the weapons? Wouldn't it be wiser...since the Brutals enter the head to put in the grain...to just have the Brutals pick up the weapons on the way out? The Immortals in the Vortex have lost all sexual desire. OK...don't they still have to use the bathroom (like, where is the trash and sewage system in the vortex)? Don't their clothes get stinky (no one ever changes clothes...unless you became a banished aged one...which means)? Who makes the clothes for the banished aged immortals? What do the women do when they have their menstrual cycle (no stores to buy tampons at; do they bleed down their legs)? These are just a few of the unanswered but obvious questions about life in the Vortex. Life in the Vortex makes no sense.The film is also weighted down by the film construct of better than half the movie being made of motionless people standing or laying around pontificating. Note to all authors and filmmakers: if you want to bore your audience to tears then orate like heck with no motion and you will have them snoozing in no time.As teenagers we thought Zardoz was silly. As an adult I found it to be a nice idea for a movie but an idea for a movie doth not a movie make. I still found Zardoz to be silly