Bad Movie Review - Zardoz
Jun. 18th, 2006 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patgundSometimes one keeps putting off and putting off a movie review. In the case of things like "Barn of the Blood Llama", it's because the brain's self-preservation instincts are trying in vain to block out all memories of the movie.
And in some cases, it's because you just don't know where to begin. You want to try to place yourself in the director and writer's mindset, to try and figure out just what the smegging hell were they thinking.
In the case of Zardoz, you can't do that. Not without some major amounts of narcotics. But, stone cold sober, I'll give it a go....
And this is going to be a VERY long review, simply because there's a blortload of plots, subplots, halfplots, quarterplots, semi-hemi-demiquaver plots, and just plain "huh?" going on. Every review of "Zardoz" I've read has been bloody long, why should mine be any different?
The movie starts out with the bouncing disembodied head of a man with a drawn-on goatee and a dishrag on his head, While doing an imitation of "Breakout", this head, one Arthur Frayn by name, gives you a rather pretentious opening monologue to describe the movie you are about to see. News-flash, it doesn't help. A far better use would have been to let you know what drugs to take and in what quantities in order to make sense of the movie.
We're then treated to a shot of the Irish countryside, with "A Film by John Boorman", (so you know who to blame), and "Set in the year 2293". The scene then cuts to a giant floating stone head, soaring high over Ireland's green hills. Meanwhile, you hear shouts and the sound of horses. The head finally settles down on the hillside, and a batch of men ride up to greet it, herding some slaves and brandishing rifles. These men are all wearing masks identical to the floating stone head and what look like read thigh-high boots and red diapers. They're all shouting out "Zardoz, Zardoz", which makes you think, possibly for a second, that this may be the name of the floating stone head.
The diaper riders all ride up and start worshipping the stone head, complete with the occasional human sacrifice. Zardoz calls the diaper riders his "Chosen Ones", (I guess that far in the future, the labour pool is a mite thin). You then find out that the diaper riders have been "raised up from brutality to kill the Brutals". Which seems to mean, oh, I dunno, everyone else I suppose. Turns out Zardoz is also the diaper riders gunrunner, telling them he gave them the "gift of the gun" to help them in their merry homicide. This results in the most remembered line in the movie:
"Zardoz: The gun is good.
Diaper Riders: The gun is good.
Zardoz: The penis is evil.
Diaper Riders: The penis is evil.
Zardoz: The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth and kill!"
Whoa there, Zardoz, dude. Got some issues there, don't you?
The diaper riders greet this with more worship motions, which Zardoz rewards by vomiting forth a rain of rifles, pistols, shells, and bullets. When this NRA wet dream hits the ground, the diaper riders go wild and start stocking themselves up like an Idaho militiaman.
Wandering though all this is a strangely familiar looking diaper rider. Yes, it's 1970's Sean Connery, sporting a ponytail, pistol, red thigh-high boots, red diaper, and not much else. The hormone count of most of the female part of the audience, (and some of the men), just skyrocketed. Sean cocks his pistol, points the gun at the audience, and fires, causing the screen to go black.
Alas, the audience doesn't get off that easy.
Cut back to the giant stone head floating among the clouds. In a pile of grain on the floor, something moves. Yes, it's diaper rider Sean, who seems to have decided to take a ride in his God's mouth. Sean starts to explore the inside of the giant stone head, finding nothing of interest except rock, grain, and nude people in large ziplock baggies. Quafaa??? Diaper Sean then hears a noise, sees a figure by the mouth, and fires. Hey, wow, it's Arthur "breakout boy" Frayn! Diaper Sean decides to shoot first and not bother with questions, and wings Frayn in the shoulder. Arthur decides to chew Diaper Sean out over the pointlessness of this actions. For pity's sake Sean, shoot him again!! In an overdramatic fashion, Arthur then falls out of the floating stone head. The audience is denied the chance to follow suit.
Eventually the head lands, with Diaper Sean hiding behind the ziplock brigade. He then sneaks out of the head, finding himself in what looks like a quiet Irish village, complete with a giant plastic terrarium that bears a striking resemblance to a set of buttocks. Diaper Sean then wanders around, seeing nothing but the contents of the head being off-loaded, including what looks like large amounts of flour. Of course, considering this movie, it may be pure columbian cocaine as well, just before the production staff got their hands on it.
Diaper Sean finally finds his way up to an attic room, with an evolutionary chart on the wall leading up to something called an "Eternal", which happens to have a rag on their head. I didn't know bad fashion was a evolutionary advantage, but so it goes. While getting freaked out by things like jack in the boxes, Diaper Sean hears a chime and a voice calling for production results. He traces it to a talking crystal ring, showing that the New Age crystal fad has lasted for 300 years now. For being a barbarian, Diaper Sean seems to figure out how to have the ring answer questions before getting freaked out. He then hears voices outside and decides to scram, wandering around the woods, asking questions of the ring, and hiding from a topless woman wearing a rag on her head and riding a horse. He finally finds himself by the shore of a lake, is surprised by another rag-headed woman, who trains her googly eyes on Zed, causing him to join the audience in unconsciousness.
Diaper Sean wakes up to the rag-headed woman playing 20 questions with him. You find out that they're in a "Vortex", the diaper riders believe they'll go to a vortex when they die, the diaper riders are called "Exterminators", and Diaper Sean's name is Zed, (showing, I suspect, that they really have hit the end of the line here....)
We then get a flashback to Zed and the otherdiaper riders Exterminators riding along a beach, shooting anything that moves, and netting and raping the occasional woman in the bargain. This cuts away to Zed being restrained on a table while more rag-headed people (Eternals, presumably), are sorting though Zed's memories. They put more and more pressure to show his memories, even the ones that make no sense to Zed, (like this movie). At one point, you see the Exterminators putting a batch of slaves to work tiling the fields, with the Eternals saying "Cultivation has started". Cool, maybe they can issue more settlers and go up a level to achieve pottery!
The first Eternal woman, who we find out is named "May", argues towards keeping Zed around, but her green-clothed friend argues against it And look, they have the same crystal rings Zed found! Asking their rings about Frayn, they get to see his falling from the stone head from his point of view. When they ask where Frayn is in case he's injured, the ring says that "reconstruction has begun", and they see a plastic fetus in a ziploc baggie. The green Eternal, who we find out is named "Consuella", tells May that there's no point in keeping Zed around and they should get rid of him, May argues against the idea and threatens to have it placed to a vote. They then go back to snooping though Zed's memories.
A show that gets more attention, as we now have a room full of rag-headed Eternals playing voyeur. This is when we find out that ol' Zed is the result of a breeding programme that Frayn started, and didn't bother to clue his fellow Eternals in on. Hmmm, this means something. Connie and May have their tiff about keeping Zed around, and the rest of the bored Eternals vote to keep him for three weeks, much to the delight of the male Eternal fawning over Zed.
Cut to a courtyard, with animals in cages. Including, it turns out, Zed. The male Eternal wakes Zed up, and puts him to work, getting in a couple sneaky whip shots while at it. Okay, but you really should have worked out safewords with Zed first dude. And so they trot off to the male Eternal's house, full of enough statues and the like to look like a garden supplies store. The male Eternal is less than helpful, letting Zed move things around until lunchtime.
Lunch, it seems, is a communal affair, but May takes Zed off for his feeding, ending up at a disco-style mirrored pyramid. This seems to inspire Zed's latent talent for mime, and does a really bad "man falling down a slide" imitation.
Inside the mirrored pyramid, Zed ends up on another table while May does a medical examination on him. Which gets interrupted by a trial of an Eternal in another vortex, said Eternal being accused of "transmitting a negative aura". Oh, well, I'm in deep doo-doo then.
Speaking of doo-doo, we get back to Zed being led around like the pony part of a dog and pony show, this time in a kitchen, watching Eternals making loaves of green bread. The male Eternal, who we find is named "Friend", comes in to get more Zed time. Not content with whipping Zed, Friend decides to indulge in some pony-boy fantasies with Zed, and trot off with Zed pulling a cart full of bread.
At this point, we find out three things about the Eternals.
1) If you do something wrong in Eternal society, you're aged a little bit more and more as punishment.
2) Aged Eternals, or Renegades, are senile and kept in a nightclub.
3) Eternals that have gone "Eh, screw it" and stopped caring stand around all day and do nothing except try to photosynthesize. They're called Apathetic, after the ones still watching by this point.
Eventually they end up in the Apathetic warehouse, Friend having amused himself by throwing bread at the ones they passed. The rings chime again, calling for a verdict in the trial of the guy who transmitted the bad aura. Who is now copping major attitude against the Eternals. Friend, just to be a pain, votes for acquittal. Meanwhile, Zed is wandering around feeling up the stationary female Apathetics. Friend tells Zed to "help himself", so he picks one up and starts to try and get something started. However, unlike many women in the position of having Sean Connery on top of them trying to seduce them, she does absolutely nothing. Not even a "lie on your back and think of the vortex dear". Zed gets pissed off and starts throwing things around at random. At which point Friend's ring chimes again. Seems the verdict is in, and the People's Court has decided to age the offender five years.
Cut to another scene, this time with a nude Zed standing surrounded by Eternals, while Connie gives a historical lecture on male erection. It seems that Viagra doesn't work with Eternals, because it's been 300 years since anyone sprouted morning wood. However, Connie goes on to say that "society is no longer subjected to this violent, convulsive act, which so debased women and betrayed men". Whee, I think we found some of the bats in John Boorman's belfry here.
But wait, unlike the Eternals, it seems that Diaper Sean is still capable of getting it up. Connie wants to put this to the test by showing a variety of images to Zed.
1) A woman soaping up her chest. This does nothing for 'lil Zed.
2) Two women mud wrestling. Zed's windsock is still showing 0 mph.
Frustrated, Connie shuts off the images, causing Zed to look at Connie. Suddenly, it's skyrockets in flight, as Zed shows some interest in afternoon delight with Connie. Which seems to fluster Connie no end, and amuse the other Eternals.
Back to the barnyard, and a couple of llamas in the movie. You know, I think a good rule of thumb may be that if a movie has llamas in it, it's gonna be bad. Zed is back in his cage, and Connie is looking at him, finally deciding to try and wake him up. Would that they did the same to the audience. Seems the Eternals have evolved past sleep, and she's curious about this "primitive behaviour", which was replaced by "Second Level Meditation", (I'm sure you can find a class in this somewhere. Check the bulletin board at Whole Foods Market)
Back in the mirrored pyramid, and May is looking at Zed's genetic structure. And hey, guess what, Frayn's breeding programme produced a bouncing baby mutant! May starts to rattle off all the advantages of Zed's mutanthood, and finally gets pissed at Frayn. Good, I've been pissed at him since the start of the movie! May says that Zed is superior, mentally and physically, to the Eternals. Gee, that wouldn't take much doing, would it? May at first thinks that Connie might be right in putting old Zed down, but decides to keep him anyway.
Cut away to dinner time, and Zed serving up Purina Eternal Chow. Connie gets pissed off and tells may to put Zed outside. Yeah May, you don't know where he's been! Or if he's housebroken!. This sets off a row with the Eternals, with Connie bitching about Zed being "disruptive. Finally they take another vote, and May's three weeks has been cut to seven days. Things aren't looking good for Diaper Sean here.
Topless girl tells everyone to "meditate on this at second level", (i.e. sleep on it), and they all put out their arms and wiggle their fingers. Well, all but Friend, who decides to have a hissyfit and goes "don't wanna". Seems "Don't Wanna" isn't a good enough excuse for an Eternal, and they start to finger him as well (no, not like that!), finally declaring him to be a renegade. Friend falls over with his eyes glazed and drooling. Fair enough, that's what the audience is doing by now anyway.
Zed decides to go run up a hill while they're fingering Friend, running smack dab into the shield around the vortex, (which, just in case you couldn't figure it out, has a voice warning of this every 10 seconds). And hey, there's some of the red diaper riders on the hill. Zed hand signals to them, they shoot something in the air and leaves. After signaling the diaper riders, Zed then goes off in search of Friend, finding him at the Renegade's night club, where we discover that only half of Friend's face was aged. Friend seems to have a grudge against Zed though, and riles up the rest of the old farts to try and kill Zed, because Zed has "the gift of death". Zed stands up against the geriatric lynch mob and tells them all to stand up for their right to die, if that's what they want. The oldest of them all, who created the vortex, tells Zed to talk to May.
Zed runs back, finding all the Eternals under the sheets, so to speak. Finally finding May under her sheet, she says "you want to destroy us". Well, yeah...... Zed tells her he wants the truth, she tells him it would "burn him". He seems to find this a good trade and gets under the sheet with May, just like they were making a tent with pillows and blankets. May trains her googly eyes on Zed, who starts to whimper and fall apart.
At which point the movie hits another Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. Seems that Zed and the Diaper Riders were in a town, shooting up the local residents, and he saw a figure in a building. He ran into the building to make sure he scored another notch on his pistol. Turns out it was a library, and the figure leads Zed into the maze, finally holding up a basic reader book.
This seems like it was all the spark Zed needed to learn to read, and he scarfs down all the books he can. Okay, fair enough, I've done the same. But there is one book he gets all cranky and upset when he tries to remember, which at first suggests to me he found the Robert Jordan section. Zed goes on a rampage in the library, screaming out "Zardoz!" over and over
Cut away to the cultivation scene, with Zed telling how Zardoz told them not to kill anymore, but to take slaves and grow wheat. Good carnivore Zed is, this makes him cranky, because they were hunters, not farmers. He goes on to say that every season, Zardoz came down and took the harvest. Zed looks at the rest of the red diaper patrol, and May makes the connection that his friends were mutants as well. Great, fine, dandy, sign Zed up for X-Men 4.
Very unhappy mutant diaper riders, since Zed tells them of the book he got all upset about. Turns out it wasn't "Wheel of Time, book #378", but "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Hummm......"Wizard of Oz".....wiZARD of OZ.......ZARDOZ! This causes them to hatch a plot. May pressures Zed again, wanting to know if he wanted vengeance, or the truth. Finally he says revenge. May seems happy with this answer, and cradles Zed's head against her (now) bare breasts as a reward.
Connie seems to be put out of this scene though, accusing May of "bestiality" Oh, come now, isn't what a bit harsh?? Especially Connie's demands that May be aged 50 years so "no man, woman, or beast shall ever desire" her again. Whoa, jealous issues there. Connie tries to get Zed under control, but he grabs the other end of May's sheet and gets into a staring contest, which ends when Zed rips off Connie's shirt and tries to use his manly charms on her. Connie's breasts are like forbidden fruit I guess because Zed is struck blind as a result.
Connie and May walk away. Topless girl comes in and leads Zed away into one of the glad-bag terrarium, rubbing some leaves on his eyes to restore Zed's sight, "more and deeper" than before. Right, that must be killer weed. Topless girl gives him a leaf of the killer bud as well, "for when the time is right". Seems she's decided that old Zeddie-poo is "the liberator", and offers to help Zed in exchange for Zed offing her when he's done. Oh gee, how does the audience get in on this offer??
We then get a flashback to how the vortexes were created. Seems the Eternal's parents were part of the cliquey in-crowd and when the world started to go straight to hell, made themselves this little pocket where the "beautiful people" would live and the "ugly people" could pound sand. You get a shot of the "Brutals" pounding on the shield of the vortex....
......to a batch of pissed-off Eternals, led by Connie, pounding on the terrarium, trying to crush Zed. Even though it "can't be done" and the plastic is "indestructible", super-Zed punches though it anyway and escapes the new age lynch mob. Zed runs up the hill *again*, and signals more of the diaper patrol, who ride off. Hmmm, this means something...... After telling his fellow diaper-fetishists to scram, Zed then has to escape Connie and her mounted police, who he manages to evade and head back to the village, just in time to see Connie and her lynch mob (complete with torches) ride in and set fire to the place.
Yes, they set fire to *their own* village. These aren't the brightest crayons in the box here.
Zed ducks into a building.....and finds himself among the Apathetics, who are now humming. The Apathetic Girl that Zed tried to play with reaches out, takes a drop of Zed's sweat onto her finger, and places it in her mouth, her eyes lighting up in excitement. As the Apathetics pass the sweat between themselves, the girl then kisses Zed, saying "We take life from you". They then play "pass the tic-tac" with each other, passing whateverthehellshegotfromZed'skiss between themselves, starting to group grope Zed in the bargain. Connie picks that moment to ride in, the Apathetics see a new bright shiny object and lose interest in Zed, and Zed decides that maybe now is a good time to eat that killer bud Topless Girl gave him.
Zed makes his escape into the woods, and about this time the movie just falls apart at the seams. Zed manages to get himself caught by the Renegades, and gets them to bring him to Friend.
Later that night, the Renegades come back, escorting a veiled person in a wedding dress. They pass by the former Apathetics, who are making up for lost time by boinking each other's brains out on the lawn, chairs, patios, pump, etc. Seems that chasing after Zed got them excited, got the hormones flowing. and suddenly SOUP'S ON!!!! The Renegades say they want to get some of this too, (oh, I bet they do!), while one old lech leans over to the bride and says "see you did you naughty girl". Umm, yeah dude, whatever floats your twinkie. Don't you have 300 years worth of tentacle porn to catch up on?
Connie, meanwhile, is stirring her troops tokill the dragon, kill the dragon, KILL THE DRAGON..... kill Zed. They ride off, and the Renegades find Friend, telling him to "Kiss the Bride". They pull back the veil, and there is Sean Connery in a Victorian wedding gown.
Let me repeat that:
Sean Connery In A Victorian Wedding Gown.
Bleaching the brain doesn't help. I know, I tried.
Friend is pleased with his bride (twitch), and tells them to find May. Back to Friend's old house, they find May, and Zed has (thankfully) changed back into the red diaper. May is all for using Zed to create a better breed of Eternal, Friend and Zed want to destroy the vortex. So May makes Diaper Sean a deal. She'll teach him all she knows, in exchange for knocking May and all her followers up. Umm, May, aren't there some Jr. High School teachers who gave birth in *jail* for that kinda thing? Zed's not stupid and agrees to the deal.
But wait, Connie is trying to break in? How is Zeddie-poo going to learn all that is learnable *AND* perform multiple wham-bam-thank-you-ma'ams?? Seems May thought of that too, taking Zed and her followers "out of time", and "touch-teaching" Zed while they make love.
You know, that kinda thing would have made college a LOT more enjoyable.
They finish the educational orgy, and Zed calls the vortex "a prison", of which Friend goes "no, it's an ark, a spaceship" (WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT????). Seems all the technogeekery of the Eternals was meant to travel into space and find other worlds. Considering what we've seen of the Eternals, it comes as no surprise they failed that one as well. Seems the Renegades are the ones that started the vortex, the shield, all of that, to seal themselves into a "place of learning". But they were too conditioned to mortality, which is why they eventually went Renegade. To top it all off, just to prevent second thoughts. they told the mirrored pyramid to hide the off button so they can't turn the place off. After having new-agey crystals implanted in their heads (Ommmmm.....)
Topless girl tells Zed they've given him "everything they have", but there's one more kewpie doll Zed has to earn. Now in an Eternal outfit rather than the diaper, Zed fights his way though various images, and ends up with a huge chunk of crystal, which Topless girl tells him to study until he understands. At first, Zed sees nothing but his own confusion, (hey, why should he be different from the audience??). However, his crystal-gazing is interrupted by noises, which he investigates. Only to find himself "stabbed" by a trick knife welded by Arthur Frayn, back from the dead, complete with penciled in goatee. Arthur throws Zed a glass ball and asks what Zed sees in it. So far, he sees zip
Time starts up again at this point and we're back to Connie trying to break in to Friend's house. Breaking in, they start to tear the place part looking for the Zedster. Meanwhile, Zed is still crystal-gazing, but not enough to ignore Connie coming up and trying to stab Zed. Which is only a half-hearted attempt, because it seems Connie has gone all gooey for Zed and his manly charms. She slips her crystal ring on his finger, (aww, she gave him her class ring!), and then runs off to lead her followers on a wild goose chase. Zed goes back to crystal gazing. At this point, figuring out what the audience did 15 minutes earlier, Zed gradually starts to put two and two together, and realizes that the controlling intelligence for the vortex and the mirrored pyramid is that crystal (dum dum DAHHH!!)
Said crystal decides to protect itself by sucking Zed into it's centre. Which seems to be a mirrored fun-house. Zed bounces from place to place, seeing images more disjointed and disconnected than this movie is, until confronted by a member of the red diaper brigade. They draw, and Zed fires first, shooting the red diaper rider in the chest. Again, the audience is not as lucky.
Wow! It seems Zed shot his old self! What inventive symbolism!! (Code Blue, Code Blue. Paging Dr. Campbell. Paging Dr. Joseph Campbell. Will Dr. Campbell please report to the overdone symbolism ward, stat.)
And ol' Zed's back asleep in Friend's house, when Friend, May and a batch of the female Eternals Zed knocked up run in to see Connie standing over Zed. Connie reassures them of her change of heart and wakes Zeddie-poo up with a kiss. Zed jumps to his feet and tells all of them to "Stay close, inside my aura". Wow, he's got the New Agey thing down cold now! Next thing you know he'll be offering "Cleansing Chakras the Red Diaper Rider Way" seminars at $500 a pop. Making time run backward, Zed and his faithful sidekicks make their way out of the house.
Friend leads Zed and followers to the Renegade's nightclub, where he uses the power of the crystal (dum dum DAHHH!!!) to off the oldest of them, the one who's bright idea the vortex was in the first place. Alas, he doesn't use it on John Boorman in the process. His death is marked by the Flying Stone Head falling out of the sky and going boom.
Meanwhile, Topless girl has gathered her group together at a pond. Zed gives a farewell to May and the other women he knocked up, handing them the crystal as a farewell gift. With that out of the way, Zed makes his way to the pond, meeting up with Connie and Friend, (who tells him the Renegades are dropping like flies). Frayn shows up as well, his usual annoying git of a self, patting himself on the back for breeding Zed as a slave that could free his masters. Zed tells him to stuff it, the idea wasn't Frayn's in the first place. No, I think the original death wish came when they first read the script.
They make their way to the pond. Topless girl tells them all they're mortal again, and, oh by the way, Zeddie-poo, you can kill her now. Zed lines up to make the shot, then drops his arm down, saying he can't do it.
Which is the cue for the Red Diaper Brigade to come in and do the act for him. The Eternals are overjoyed to see this, rushing the Diaper Riders begging to be killed next. Obviously with a target-rich environment like that, you really don't have to worry about grouping or range, just point and click, and down goes another Eternal.
While the Red Diaper Brigade plays clay pigeon with the Eternals, (offing Friend and Frayn in the process, much to the audience's delight), Zed and Connie make their escape. Finally the Eternals are kibbles and bits across the grass, and one of the Red Diaper Brigade is calling out Zed's name.....
........which segues into a topless, sweaty Connie in a cave doing likewise. It seems that Zed pulled the "out of time" trick he got from May, and Connie now looks like she's in her 37th month of pregnancy......
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, with Connie feeding their child.......
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now about 8 or so........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now a moody teen.........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now an adult, who looks at his parents, thinks "hell with this, I'm out of here", and splits.....
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, and Connie, holding hands and much older........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of the bones of Zed, and Connie, holding hands still, but otherwise looking like extras in "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra".......
.......and finally nothing, save two handprints on the cave wall and Zed's rusted gun.
And so the movie ends, not with a bang, but rather the whimper of the viewer's brain as they try and figure out just what the hell was all that about???
Boys and girls, I watched this movie two times trying to make sense of it. Next time I'll try it while taking cold medicine and drinking a Guinness. This movie is either:
A) A confusing mess
B) A Director's ego gone wild
C) The result of WAY too many narcotics
D) One of the more pretentious pieces of tripe to ever appear on the screen
E) All the above.
My bet is on E. Though it's interesting to note that, while listening to the director's commentary on DVD, even John Boorman confesses he didn't know what some of the scenes were about.
And in some cases, it's because you just don't know where to begin. You want to try to place yourself in the director and writer's mindset, to try and figure out just what the smegging hell were they thinking.
In the case of Zardoz, you can't do that. Not without some major amounts of narcotics. But, stone cold sober, I'll give it a go....
And this is going to be a VERY long review, simply because there's a blortload of plots, subplots, halfplots, quarterplots, semi-hemi-demiquaver plots, and just plain "huh?" going on. Every review of "Zardoz" I've read has been bloody long, why should mine be any different?
The movie starts out with the bouncing disembodied head of a man with a drawn-on goatee and a dishrag on his head, While doing an imitation of "Breakout", this head, one Arthur Frayn by name, gives you a rather pretentious opening monologue to describe the movie you are about to see. News-flash, it doesn't help. A far better use would have been to let you know what drugs to take and in what quantities in order to make sense of the movie.
We're then treated to a shot of the Irish countryside, with "A Film by John Boorman", (so you know who to blame), and "Set in the year 2293". The scene then cuts to a giant floating stone head, soaring high over Ireland's green hills. Meanwhile, you hear shouts and the sound of horses. The head finally settles down on the hillside, and a batch of men ride up to greet it, herding some slaves and brandishing rifles. These men are all wearing masks identical to the floating stone head and what look like read thigh-high boots and red diapers. They're all shouting out "Zardoz, Zardoz", which makes you think, possibly for a second, that this may be the name of the floating stone head.
The diaper riders all ride up and start worshipping the stone head, complete with the occasional human sacrifice. Zardoz calls the diaper riders his "Chosen Ones", (I guess that far in the future, the labour pool is a mite thin). You then find out that the diaper riders have been "raised up from brutality to kill the Brutals". Which seems to mean, oh, I dunno, everyone else I suppose. Turns out Zardoz is also the diaper riders gunrunner, telling them he gave them the "gift of the gun" to help them in their merry homicide. This results in the most remembered line in the movie:
"Zardoz: The gun is good.
Diaper Riders: The gun is good.
Zardoz: The penis is evil.
Diaper Riders: The penis is evil.
Zardoz: The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth and kill!"
Whoa there, Zardoz, dude. Got some issues there, don't you?
The diaper riders greet this with more worship motions, which Zardoz rewards by vomiting forth a rain of rifles, pistols, shells, and bullets. When this NRA wet dream hits the ground, the diaper riders go wild and start stocking themselves up like an Idaho militiaman.
Wandering though all this is a strangely familiar looking diaper rider. Yes, it's 1970's Sean Connery, sporting a ponytail, pistol, red thigh-high boots, red diaper, and not much else. The hormone count of most of the female part of the audience, (and some of the men), just skyrocketed. Sean cocks his pistol, points the gun at the audience, and fires, causing the screen to go black.
Alas, the audience doesn't get off that easy.
Cut back to the giant stone head floating among the clouds. In a pile of grain on the floor, something moves. Yes, it's diaper rider Sean, who seems to have decided to take a ride in his God's mouth. Sean starts to explore the inside of the giant stone head, finding nothing of interest except rock, grain, and nude people in large ziplock baggies. Quafaa??? Diaper Sean then hears a noise, sees a figure by the mouth, and fires. Hey, wow, it's Arthur "breakout boy" Frayn! Diaper Sean decides to shoot first and not bother with questions, and wings Frayn in the shoulder. Arthur decides to chew Diaper Sean out over the pointlessness of this actions. For pity's sake Sean, shoot him again!! In an overdramatic fashion, Arthur then falls out of the floating stone head. The audience is denied the chance to follow suit.
Eventually the head lands, with Diaper Sean hiding behind the ziplock brigade. He then sneaks out of the head, finding himself in what looks like a quiet Irish village, complete with a giant plastic terrarium that bears a striking resemblance to a set of buttocks. Diaper Sean then wanders around, seeing nothing but the contents of the head being off-loaded, including what looks like large amounts of flour. Of course, considering this movie, it may be pure columbian cocaine as well, just before the production staff got their hands on it.
Diaper Sean finally finds his way up to an attic room, with an evolutionary chart on the wall leading up to something called an "Eternal", which happens to have a rag on their head. I didn't know bad fashion was a evolutionary advantage, but so it goes. While getting freaked out by things like jack in the boxes, Diaper Sean hears a chime and a voice calling for production results. He traces it to a talking crystal ring, showing that the New Age crystal fad has lasted for 300 years now. For being a barbarian, Diaper Sean seems to figure out how to have the ring answer questions before getting freaked out. He then hears voices outside and decides to scram, wandering around the woods, asking questions of the ring, and hiding from a topless woman wearing a rag on her head and riding a horse. He finally finds himself by the shore of a lake, is surprised by another rag-headed woman, who trains her googly eyes on Zed, causing him to join the audience in unconsciousness.
Diaper Sean wakes up to the rag-headed woman playing 20 questions with him. You find out that they're in a "Vortex", the diaper riders believe they'll go to a vortex when they die, the diaper riders are called "Exterminators", and Diaper Sean's name is Zed, (showing, I suspect, that they really have hit the end of the line here....)
We then get a flashback to Zed and the other
The first Eternal woman, who we find out is named "May", argues towards keeping Zed around, but her green-clothed friend argues against it And look, they have the same crystal rings Zed found! Asking their rings about Frayn, they get to see his falling from the stone head from his point of view. When they ask where Frayn is in case he's injured, the ring says that "reconstruction has begun", and they see a plastic fetus in a ziploc baggie. The green Eternal, who we find out is named "Consuella", tells May that there's no point in keeping Zed around and they should get rid of him, May argues against the idea and threatens to have it placed to a vote. They then go back to snooping though Zed's memories.
A show that gets more attention, as we now have a room full of rag-headed Eternals playing voyeur. This is when we find out that ol' Zed is the result of a breeding programme that Frayn started, and didn't bother to clue his fellow Eternals in on. Hmmm, this means something. Connie and May have their tiff about keeping Zed around, and the rest of the bored Eternals vote to keep him for three weeks, much to the delight of the male Eternal fawning over Zed.
Cut to a courtyard, with animals in cages. Including, it turns out, Zed. The male Eternal wakes Zed up, and puts him to work, getting in a couple sneaky whip shots while at it. Okay, but you really should have worked out safewords with Zed first dude. And so they trot off to the male Eternal's house, full of enough statues and the like to look like a garden supplies store. The male Eternal is less than helpful, letting Zed move things around until lunchtime.
Lunch, it seems, is a communal affair, but May takes Zed off for his feeding, ending up at a disco-style mirrored pyramid. This seems to inspire Zed's latent talent for mime, and does a really bad "man falling down a slide" imitation.
Inside the mirrored pyramid, Zed ends up on another table while May does a medical examination on him. Which gets interrupted by a trial of an Eternal in another vortex, said Eternal being accused of "transmitting a negative aura". Oh, well, I'm in deep doo-doo then.
Speaking of doo-doo, we get back to Zed being led around like the pony part of a dog and pony show, this time in a kitchen, watching Eternals making loaves of green bread. The male Eternal, who we find is named "Friend", comes in to get more Zed time. Not content with whipping Zed, Friend decides to indulge in some pony-boy fantasies with Zed, and trot off with Zed pulling a cart full of bread.
At this point, we find out three things about the Eternals.
1) If you do something wrong in Eternal society, you're aged a little bit more and more as punishment.
2) Aged Eternals, or Renegades, are senile and kept in a nightclub.
3) Eternals that have gone "Eh, screw it" and stopped caring stand around all day and do nothing except try to photosynthesize. They're called Apathetic, after the ones still watching by this point.
Eventually they end up in the Apathetic warehouse, Friend having amused himself by throwing bread at the ones they passed. The rings chime again, calling for a verdict in the trial of the guy who transmitted the bad aura. Who is now copping major attitude against the Eternals. Friend, just to be a pain, votes for acquittal. Meanwhile, Zed is wandering around feeling up the stationary female Apathetics. Friend tells Zed to "help himself", so he picks one up and starts to try and get something started. However, unlike many women in the position of having Sean Connery on top of them trying to seduce them, she does absolutely nothing. Not even a "lie on your back and think of the vortex dear". Zed gets pissed off and starts throwing things around at random. At which point Friend's ring chimes again. Seems the verdict is in, and the People's Court has decided to age the offender five years.
Cut to another scene, this time with a nude Zed standing surrounded by Eternals, while Connie gives a historical lecture on male erection. It seems that Viagra doesn't work with Eternals, because it's been 300 years since anyone sprouted morning wood. However, Connie goes on to say that "society is no longer subjected to this violent, convulsive act, which so debased women and betrayed men". Whee, I think we found some of the bats in John Boorman's belfry here.
But wait, unlike the Eternals, it seems that Diaper Sean is still capable of getting it up. Connie wants to put this to the test by showing a variety of images to Zed.
1) A woman soaping up her chest. This does nothing for 'lil Zed.
2) Two women mud wrestling. Zed's windsock is still showing 0 mph.
Frustrated, Connie shuts off the images, causing Zed to look at Connie. Suddenly, it's skyrockets in flight, as Zed shows some interest in afternoon delight with Connie. Which seems to fluster Connie no end, and amuse the other Eternals.
Back to the barnyard, and a couple of llamas in the movie. You know, I think a good rule of thumb may be that if a movie has llamas in it, it's gonna be bad. Zed is back in his cage, and Connie is looking at him, finally deciding to try and wake him up. Would that they did the same to the audience. Seems the Eternals have evolved past sleep, and she's curious about this "primitive behaviour", which was replaced by "Second Level Meditation", (I'm sure you can find a class in this somewhere. Check the bulletin board at Whole Foods Market)
Back in the mirrored pyramid, and May is looking at Zed's genetic structure. And hey, guess what, Frayn's breeding programme produced a bouncing baby mutant! May starts to rattle off all the advantages of Zed's mutanthood, and finally gets pissed at Frayn. Good, I've been pissed at him since the start of the movie! May says that Zed is superior, mentally and physically, to the Eternals. Gee, that wouldn't take much doing, would it? May at first thinks that Connie might be right in putting old Zed down, but decides to keep him anyway.
Cut away to dinner time, and Zed serving up Purina Eternal Chow. Connie gets pissed off and tells may to put Zed outside. Yeah May, you don't know where he's been! Or if he's housebroken!. This sets off a row with the Eternals, with Connie bitching about Zed being "disruptive. Finally they take another vote, and May's three weeks has been cut to seven days. Things aren't looking good for Diaper Sean here.
Topless girl tells everyone to "meditate on this at second level", (i.e. sleep on it), and they all put out their arms and wiggle their fingers. Well, all but Friend, who decides to have a hissyfit and goes "don't wanna". Seems "Don't Wanna" isn't a good enough excuse for an Eternal, and they start to finger him as well (no, not like that!), finally declaring him to be a renegade. Friend falls over with his eyes glazed and drooling. Fair enough, that's what the audience is doing by now anyway.
Zed decides to go run up a hill while they're fingering Friend, running smack dab into the shield around the vortex, (which, just in case you couldn't figure it out, has a voice warning of this every 10 seconds). And hey, there's some of the red diaper riders on the hill. Zed hand signals to them, they shoot something in the air and leaves. After signaling the diaper riders, Zed then goes off in search of Friend, finding him at the Renegade's night club, where we discover that only half of Friend's face was aged. Friend seems to have a grudge against Zed though, and riles up the rest of the old farts to try and kill Zed, because Zed has "the gift of death". Zed stands up against the geriatric lynch mob and tells them all to stand up for their right to die, if that's what they want. The oldest of them all, who created the vortex, tells Zed to talk to May.
Zed runs back, finding all the Eternals under the sheets, so to speak. Finally finding May under her sheet, she says "you want to destroy us". Well, yeah...... Zed tells her he wants the truth, she tells him it would "burn him". He seems to find this a good trade and gets under the sheet with May, just like they were making a tent with pillows and blankets. May trains her googly eyes on Zed, who starts to whimper and fall apart.
At which point the movie hits another Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment. Seems that Zed and the Diaper Riders were in a town, shooting up the local residents, and he saw a figure in a building. He ran into the building to make sure he scored another notch on his pistol. Turns out it was a library, and the figure leads Zed into the maze, finally holding up a basic reader book.
This seems like it was all the spark Zed needed to learn to read, and he scarfs down all the books he can. Okay, fair enough, I've done the same. But there is one book he gets all cranky and upset when he tries to remember, which at first suggests to me he found the Robert Jordan section. Zed goes on a rampage in the library, screaming out "Zardoz!" over and over
Cut away to the cultivation scene, with Zed telling how Zardoz told them not to kill anymore, but to take slaves and grow wheat. Good carnivore Zed is, this makes him cranky, because they were hunters, not farmers. He goes on to say that every season, Zardoz came down and took the harvest. Zed looks at the rest of the red diaper patrol, and May makes the connection that his friends were mutants as well. Great, fine, dandy, sign Zed up for X-Men 4.
Very unhappy mutant diaper riders, since Zed tells them of the book he got all upset about. Turns out it wasn't "Wheel of Time, book #378", but "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". Hummm......"Wizard of Oz".....wiZARD of OZ.......ZARDOZ! This causes them to hatch a plot. May pressures Zed again, wanting to know if he wanted vengeance, or the truth. Finally he says revenge. May seems happy with this answer, and cradles Zed's head against her (now) bare breasts as a reward.
Connie seems to be put out of this scene though, accusing May of "bestiality" Oh, come now, isn't what a bit harsh?? Especially Connie's demands that May be aged 50 years so "no man, woman, or beast shall ever desire" her again. Whoa, jealous issues there. Connie tries to get Zed under control, but he grabs the other end of May's sheet and gets into a staring contest, which ends when Zed rips off Connie's shirt and tries to use his manly charms on her. Connie's breasts are like forbidden fruit I guess because Zed is struck blind as a result.
Connie and May walk away. Topless girl comes in and leads Zed away into one of the glad-bag terrarium, rubbing some leaves on his eyes to restore Zed's sight, "more and deeper" than before. Right, that must be killer weed. Topless girl gives him a leaf of the killer bud as well, "for when the time is right". Seems she's decided that old Zeddie-poo is "the liberator", and offers to help Zed in exchange for Zed offing her when he's done. Oh gee, how does the audience get in on this offer??
We then get a flashback to how the vortexes were created. Seems the Eternal's parents were part of the cliquey in-crowd and when the world started to go straight to hell, made themselves this little pocket where the "beautiful people" would live and the "ugly people" could pound sand. You get a shot of the "Brutals" pounding on the shield of the vortex....
......to a batch of pissed-off Eternals, led by Connie, pounding on the terrarium, trying to crush Zed. Even though it "can't be done" and the plastic is "indestructible", super-Zed punches though it anyway and escapes the new age lynch mob. Zed runs up the hill *again*, and signals more of the diaper patrol, who ride off. Hmmm, this means something...... After telling his fellow diaper-fetishists to scram, Zed then has to escape Connie and her mounted police, who he manages to evade and head back to the village, just in time to see Connie and her lynch mob (complete with torches) ride in and set fire to the place.
Yes, they set fire to *their own* village. These aren't the brightest crayons in the box here.
Zed ducks into a building.....and finds himself among the Apathetics, who are now humming. The Apathetic Girl that Zed tried to play with reaches out, takes a drop of Zed's sweat onto her finger, and places it in her mouth, her eyes lighting up in excitement. As the Apathetics pass the sweat between themselves, the girl then kisses Zed, saying "We take life from you". They then play "pass the tic-tac" with each other, passing whateverthehellshegotfromZed'skiss between themselves, starting to group grope Zed in the bargain. Connie picks that moment to ride in, the Apathetics see a new bright shiny object and lose interest in Zed, and Zed decides that maybe now is a good time to eat that killer bud Topless Girl gave him.
Zed makes his escape into the woods, and about this time the movie just falls apart at the seams. Zed manages to get himself caught by the Renegades, and gets them to bring him to Friend.
Later that night, the Renegades come back, escorting a veiled person in a wedding dress. They pass by the former Apathetics, who are making up for lost time by boinking each other's brains out on the lawn, chairs, patios, pump, etc. Seems that chasing after Zed got them excited, got the hormones flowing. and suddenly SOUP'S ON!!!! The Renegades say they want to get some of this too, (oh, I bet they do!), while one old lech leans over to the bride and says "see you did you naughty girl". Umm, yeah dude, whatever floats your twinkie. Don't you have 300 years worth of tentacle porn to catch up on?
Connie, meanwhile, is stirring her troops to
Let me repeat that:
Sean Connery In A Victorian Wedding Gown.
Bleaching the brain doesn't help. I know, I tried.
Friend is pleased with his bride (twitch), and tells them to find May. Back to Friend's old house, they find May, and Zed has (thankfully) changed back into the red diaper. May is all for using Zed to create a better breed of Eternal, Friend and Zed want to destroy the vortex. So May makes Diaper Sean a deal. She'll teach him all she knows, in exchange for knocking May and all her followers up. Umm, May, aren't there some Jr. High School teachers who gave birth in *jail* for that kinda thing? Zed's not stupid and agrees to the deal.
But wait, Connie is trying to break in? How is Zeddie-poo going to learn all that is learnable *AND* perform multiple wham-bam-thank-you-ma'ams?? Seems May thought of that too, taking Zed and her followers "out of time", and "touch-teaching" Zed while they make love.
You know, that kinda thing would have made college a LOT more enjoyable.
They finish the educational orgy, and Zed calls the vortex "a prison", of which Friend goes "no, it's an ark, a spaceship" (WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT????). Seems all the technogeekery of the Eternals was meant to travel into space and find other worlds. Considering what we've seen of the Eternals, it comes as no surprise they failed that one as well. Seems the Renegades are the ones that started the vortex, the shield, all of that, to seal themselves into a "place of learning". But they were too conditioned to mortality, which is why they eventually went Renegade. To top it all off, just to prevent second thoughts. they told the mirrored pyramid to hide the off button so they can't turn the place off. After having new-agey crystals implanted in their heads (Ommmmm.....)
Topless girl tells Zed they've given him "everything they have", but there's one more kewpie doll Zed has to earn. Now in an Eternal outfit rather than the diaper, Zed fights his way though various images, and ends up with a huge chunk of crystal, which Topless girl tells him to study until he understands. At first, Zed sees nothing but his own confusion, (hey, why should he be different from the audience??). However, his crystal-gazing is interrupted by noises, which he investigates. Only to find himself "stabbed" by a trick knife welded by Arthur Frayn, back from the dead, complete with penciled in goatee. Arthur throws Zed a glass ball and asks what Zed sees in it. So far, he sees zip
Time starts up again at this point and we're back to Connie trying to break in to Friend's house. Breaking in, they start to tear the place part looking for the Zedster. Meanwhile, Zed is still crystal-gazing, but not enough to ignore Connie coming up and trying to stab Zed. Which is only a half-hearted attempt, because it seems Connie has gone all gooey for Zed and his manly charms. She slips her crystal ring on his finger, (aww, she gave him her class ring!), and then runs off to lead her followers on a wild goose chase. Zed goes back to crystal gazing. At this point, figuring out what the audience did 15 minutes earlier, Zed gradually starts to put two and two together, and realizes that the controlling intelligence for the vortex and the mirrored pyramid is that crystal (dum dum DAHHH!!)
Said crystal decides to protect itself by sucking Zed into it's centre. Which seems to be a mirrored fun-house. Zed bounces from place to place, seeing images more disjointed and disconnected than this movie is, until confronted by a member of the red diaper brigade. They draw, and Zed fires first, shooting the red diaper rider in the chest. Again, the audience is not as lucky.
Wow! It seems Zed shot his old self! What inventive symbolism!! (Code Blue, Code Blue. Paging Dr. Campbell. Paging Dr. Joseph Campbell. Will Dr. Campbell please report to the overdone symbolism ward, stat.)
And ol' Zed's back asleep in Friend's house, when Friend, May and a batch of the female Eternals Zed knocked up run in to see Connie standing over Zed. Connie reassures them of her change of heart and wakes Zeddie-poo up with a kiss. Zed jumps to his feet and tells all of them to "Stay close, inside my aura". Wow, he's got the New Agey thing down cold now! Next thing you know he'll be offering "Cleansing Chakras the Red Diaper Rider Way" seminars at $500 a pop. Making time run backward, Zed and his faithful sidekicks make their way out of the house.
Friend leads Zed and followers to the Renegade's nightclub, where he uses the power of the crystal (dum dum DAHHH!!!) to off the oldest of them, the one who's bright idea the vortex was in the first place. Alas, he doesn't use it on John Boorman in the process. His death is marked by the Flying Stone Head falling out of the sky and going boom.
Meanwhile, Topless girl has gathered her group together at a pond. Zed gives a farewell to May and the other women he knocked up, handing them the crystal as a farewell gift. With that out of the way, Zed makes his way to the pond, meeting up with Connie and Friend, (who tells him the Renegades are dropping like flies). Frayn shows up as well, his usual annoying git of a self, patting himself on the back for breeding Zed as a slave that could free his masters. Zed tells him to stuff it, the idea wasn't Frayn's in the first place. No, I think the original death wish came when they first read the script.
They make their way to the pond. Topless girl tells them all they're mortal again, and, oh by the way, Zeddie-poo, you can kill her now. Zed lines up to make the shot, then drops his arm down, saying he can't do it.
Which is the cue for the Red Diaper Brigade to come in and do the act for him. The Eternals are overjoyed to see this, rushing the Diaper Riders begging to be killed next. Obviously with a target-rich environment like that, you really don't have to worry about grouping or range, just point and click, and down goes another Eternal.
While the Red Diaper Brigade plays clay pigeon with the Eternals, (offing Friend and Frayn in the process, much to the audience's delight), Zed and Connie make their escape. Finally the Eternals are kibbles and bits across the grass, and one of the Red Diaper Brigade is calling out Zed's name.....
........which segues into a topless, sweaty Connie in a cave doing likewise. It seems that Zed pulled the "out of time" trick he got from May, and Connie now looks like she's in her 37th month of pregnancy......
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, with Connie feeding their child.......
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now about 8 or so........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now a moody teen.........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, Connie, and their child, now an adult, who looks at his parents, thinks "hell with this, I'm out of here", and splits.....
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of Zed, and Connie, holding hands and much older........
.......which then cuts to a hallmark scene of the bones of Zed, and Connie, holding hands still, but otherwise looking like extras in "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra".......
.......and finally nothing, save two handprints on the cave wall and Zed's rusted gun.
And so the movie ends, not with a bang, but rather the whimper of the viewer's brain as they try and figure out just what the hell was all that about???
Boys and girls, I watched this movie two times trying to make sense of it. Next time I'll try it while taking cold medicine and drinking a Guinness. This movie is either:
A) A confusing mess
B) A Director's ego gone wild
C) The result of WAY too many narcotics
D) One of the more pretentious pieces of tripe to ever appear on the screen
E) All the above.
My bet is on E. Though it's interesting to note that, while listening to the director's commentary on DVD, even John Boorman confesses he didn't know what some of the scenes were about.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 06:04 pm (UTC)This will make a wonderful addition to the next bad movie night we have. Whenever we're in the same county again... and the same state.
You bring the cold meds, I'll bring the Guinness or more likely, the tequila.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-24 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-18 07:50 pm (UTC)Jesus christ. People at work have told me about this movie, but they generally trail off after the first shot of the stone head, saying "I can't really describe any more." Now I know why.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 04:43 am (UTC)I know. I tried.