Zardoz

 

This 1974 movie is gloriously weird, a post-apocalyptic film that is filled to overflowing with speculative technology, oddball characters, and a society of immortals who long for death.  It opens in the year 2293 with a stone head - Zardoz - flying over the countryside.  When it lands, it vomits guns and ammo to a bunch of men in Zardoz masks and instructs them to kill the Brutals.  Among these 'Exterminators' is Zed (Sean Connery).  Through the movie, it is revealed that the Exterminators are the chosen of Zardoz and only they are allowed to breed.  All other humans - the Brutals - are to be killed.  It is a very dark world.

 

Zed stows away on the stone head and confronts and kills Arthur Frayn, an immortal.  The stone head pilots itself to the Vortex, an idyllic seeming oasis in this dark world.  When the world collapsed, a group of scientists created the Vortex and achieved immortality.  Captured, Zed is studied by the immortals - no brutal had ever penetrated the Vortex - and Zed likewise studies them.  In a particularly odd scene, it is explained that all immortal men are impotent and sex is long forgotten; immortals don't need to procreate.  But there are dark sides to immortality.  There are Apathetics who are almost catatonic from eternal boredom.  Then there are the Renegades, those who have committed crimes (which are shown to literally be thought crimes) and - as punishment - were aged.  They don't die but they become senile and/or insane.  Wow, talk about a utopian society that suffered unintended consequences!

 

Among some of the crazy technology present is the Tabernacle, a computer housed within a crystal but containing all the collected knowledge of the immortals.  It has the ability to grow a new body in the case of an immortal who has somehow died and then implants all the memories; thus, Arthur Frayn returns.  The immortals are able to view Zed's memories as if they were just watching a movie.  There is touch learning, a means of imparting knowledge as if by osmosis.  There are crystal rings that allow access to the Tabernacle wherever the immortal is.  Even 40 years later, the technology feels futuristic and more akin to magic.

 

It is a compelling story but there are dissonant elements that are hard to overcome.  Zed spends most of the movie in an orange diaper-like loincloth.  Later, the Renegades put him in a wedding dress to smuggle him through the immortals hunting him.  There is also an extensive discussion of a male erection.  "The penis is evil!"

 

Interestingly, John Boorman had been planning to film Lord of the Rings.   When that fell through, this was his backup plan!  His first choice for Zed had been Burt Reynolds, whom he had had great success with in Deliverance.  Unable to get Burt, he hired Connery at a bargain price (Connery was having trouble getting acting jobs in the wake of leaving his role as James Bond).  Yes, we see just how desperate Connery was!

 

Here is a movie that deserves a remake.  Let Zed wear something other than an orange diaper, nix the wedding dress, and ditch the fascination with erections and it could be a great - though still strange - film.