Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Produced, written, and directed by John Boorman
• Starring
  • Sean Connery
  • Charlotte Rampling
  • Sara Kestelman
  • John Alderton
  • Niall Buggy

Thanks to Gerry Carpenter, webmaster at scifilm.org, I’m sitting here trying to figure out what the hell to say about Zardoz. Gerry suggested that we, as the Utah contingent of the b-movie review community, tag-team on a deserving feature, and suggested this one; I, having not seen it, gamely said okay. I’ve purposely avoided listening to the commentary track before writing the review, as is my habit; and the biggest question pressing on my mind is, What was Boorman smoking?

Say what you will about Boorman, but you have to admit he’s a director with a strong personal vision; he makes the movie he wants to make. Understandably, that has meant that his movies of late have fallen out of the multiplex circuit, as the current studio mentality doesn’t go in much for auteurs. And honestly, just because you’re a director with a vision doesn’t mean that people are going to appreciate that vision. Or share it. Or pay money to watch it. The auteur theory is proved as often by its black sheep as by its luminaries, by its Albert Pyuns as by its Alfred Hitchcocks.

This movie even makes the big stone head yawn!

I will give Zardoz this: it’s a visually striking movie. The boys at Stomp Tokyo recently sponsored a local showing of it in Florida, and I’m sure that it must have been practically awe-inspiring larger than life up on the big screen. But once characters start talking and the story tries to make itself known — in fact, I’m guessing once Sean Connery strides on-screen in a red Speedo — well, that’s when the audience starts laughing (a reaction it had in common with Boorman’s other anti-opus of the decade, Exorcist 2 in 1977).

So what’s Connery doing in a loincloth? Well, first there’s a spoken preamble in which Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy) reveals himself to also be “Zardoz,” an admitted “false god,” and makes some self-conscious comments about being a fictional creation of the director. (Kind of counterintuitive for the suspension of disbelief, I’d say.) It doesn’t help that Frayn is a roundfaced little man with painted-on facial hair and a pseudo-Egyptian headdress that looks like he’s wearing a pair of boxers on his head.

Connery goes looking for his agent.

Anyway, on to Connery: See, there’s this huge flying stone head that comes floating out of the clouds to the rollings hills (filmed in Ireland, by the way), to be met by a bunch of savages on horseback wearing two-faced masks in the similitude of the head (two-faced — ooh, symbolism), greating the head as the good Zardoz. Connery is Zed, one of these “Brutals,” dashing in his red Speedo and matching bandoliers. The head gives a pep talk in that ostentatious style that deities are wont to use, though rifle-dispensing gods who proclaim, “The gun is good, the penis is evil” are kind of rare.

Zed slips aboard the head through the gaping maw (a security flaw just waiting to be exploited), hides in the grain that the Brutals have loaded aboard, and waits until the head is airborne before shooting Frayn and knocking him out the mouth to his death, more or less. Zed stays aboard as the head returns home, to what appears to be an idyllic British village and manor house with plastic bubbles and pyramids as set decoration. He spends far too much time wandering around, finding things like a computer-link ring and such, mostly with an expression of mute incomprehension on his face that he would continue to wear for the majority of the running time (had anyone been watching me, they would have found my expression to have mirrored Zed’s).

Sort of like Logan’s Run — but at least Logan’s Run had sex.

Eventually, he runs into other people, and finds the citizens of “the Vortex” to be standoffish, reserved, and snooty. Granted, they’re mostly played by Brits, so that’s no surprise, but they also prove to be tremendously intelligent and gifted with psychic powers that they use to beat Zed into submission. Since Frayn didn’t return in the head, and none of them really know what he was doing out there to keep the Brutals in line, they decide to keep Zed around and test him and such. Or rather, May (Sara Kestelman) is in favor of testing “it”, while Consuela (Charlotte Rampling) wants to simply destroy Zed before he brings disruption to their community. A particularly sardonic citizen, Friend (John Alderton), weighs in on May’s side and helps sway the community, mostly because he’s bored. So, so bored. In fact, that’s really the whole problem with the Vortex: Everyone is bored, whether they admit it or not. They’ve got a life of perfect immortality, without any breeding, sexual desire, innovation, dissent, or anything that makes life even remotely interesting.

Now, this is an idea with merit, though not scarcely original (how many old Star Trek episodes dealt with societies so advanced that they bored their own citizens to tears?), but it could be a halfway interesting movie, right? And I guess halfway interesting is what it is, but not remotely in the way that Boorman intended.

“Noo! Not the jazz hands! Arrgh!!”

Not that it’s a stupid movie. No, far from it. It’s an Intelligent movie, a Very Intelligent movie, and Boorman spares no effort to let you know that it is Oh So Very Intelligent, practically overflowing with Meaning and Depth and any other sort of pretentiousness that I can put capital letters on. Boorman is not just making a movie, he’s MAKING STATEMENTS about religion, conformity, class structure, immortality, education, and tall Scotsmen in tiny red shorts. There are so many statements being made that they outshout the storyline, and any sort of narrative drive and tension is leached away by the high-falutin’ self-importance of it all. The revelation that Zed is actually a super-intelligent mutant? Huh. Or that “Renegades” are advanced in age into eternal senility and left to dance around a decrepit ballroom? Hm. How about the part where Zed gives a demonstration of the fine art of the erection, which everyone in the Vortex has forgotten? Okey-dokey.

I mean, I don’t care how intelligent you are, it’s still hard not to laugh when the community psychically declares Friend a renegade by making high-pitched whining noises and twiddling their fingers at him until his eyes roll back into his head. And I’ll let someone with more patience than I have try to explain the second half, which seems more an exhibition of interpretive dance and performance art than an attempt to convey a narrative. (Connery shouting “Kill the tabernacle!” frantically at the camera may just be the low point of Zed’s career. Unless it’s when he shows up in a wedding dress disguise.)

“NOT. ONE. WORD.”

Frankly, I’m surprised that Boorman was ever given the reins of another theatrical release after this. But all that this demonstrates is that apparently, in 1974, the audience had access to whatever recreational pharmaceutical it was that inspired this in the first place. Pity that I, a good Mormon boy, tried to comprehend it sober.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 84 (approximately)
• breasts: 25
• explosions: 1
• dream sequences: 0 (but plenty of hallucinatory episodes)
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Bairbre Dowling (”Star”) played “Edith” on the Voyager episode “Spirit Folk”