Zardoz *** (1974, Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, John Alderton, Bosco Hogan, Sara Kestelman) – Classic Movie Review 5000

Writer-producer-director John Boorman’s ambitious and fascinating 1974 Irish-American sci-fi fantasy film is certainly visually impressive looking in Geoffrey Unsworth’s widescreen cinematography and Anthony Pratt’s production designs. It is a peculiar and arty film, the product of a brave era when film-makers went out of their way to try to make weird, uncommercial stuff and people backed them.

Sean Connery stars as the pig-tailed savage Zed in a post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 2293, a future world run by eternally young intellectuals, the immortal Eternals. But then there are mortal Brutals, who live in a wasteland, growing food for the Eternals. Zed is one of the Brutal Exterminators, who kill and terrorise other Brutals on the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz.

Charlotte Rampling and Sara Kestelman also star as Consuella and May, Eternals Zed meets in the Vortex.

The puzzling, serious-minded but still diverting film itself is way too intellectual for general consumption, with its purpose mysterious. So it scores low for clarity and entertainment value, but it is high on imagination, and Connery is as powerful as ever.

Despite its drawbacks, it is still definitely worth a try. The title is a cut-down of The Wizard of Oz, if that is any help.

Also in the cast are John Alderton, Bosco Hogan, Sally Anne Newton, Niall Buggy, Jessica Swift and Barbie Dowling, and Reginald Jarman is the voice of Death.

In a notable effort to widen his range, Connery was still trying to shake off his James Bond image in his second post-007 role, following The Offence. Certainly it was a bold move to wear a red nappy, thigh-high leather boots, pony tail wig and hippy-style Zapata moustache. But, if anyone could make that look work, it was Connery back then.

It was made on a budget of $1.57 million and did well to take back $1.8 million in the US and Canada. However it was largely a  commercial and critical failure, but has developed a cult following and found success on home video.

Boorman had near carte blanche to film this personal project after his hit Deliverance (1972). He had been in the process of adapting The Lord of the Rings for United Artists, but the studio became hesitant about the cost. When Boorman swapped to the idea of inventing a strange new world, he cast his Deliverance star Burt Reynolds in the lead role, but he was replaced by Connery due to Reynolds’s scheduling conflict.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5000

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