Zardoz (1974)

In 2006, the world was changed with the release of two websites.  The first was YouTube, which became public access in December 2005.  Yes, that’s technically the year before, but it was acquired by Google in November 2006, which made it into the biggest video streaming site.  Facebook was the other one, being opened to the general public in September 2006, after two years of being a college site.  Those two websites were well on their way to becoming the juggernauts they are today.

In the thirteen years since 2006, things have changed in unimaginable ways.  People have connected more than ever before with social media.  Myspace, which was the biggest social media site in 2006, gave way to Facebook, which then led to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and all the other fun ways of connecting through the everyday life moments you choose to share.  YouTube paved the way for other online streaming sites like Vimeo, Twitch, and Netflix.  And what would the world be without those?  Not as entertaining, that’s for sure.

The thing most changed in 2006 was accessibility.  There had been chatrooms and places to watch videos before, but those two websites made access easier.  With Facebook (followed by every other social media), it was easier to connect and converse with people around the world.  Did you fall out of touch with your high school friends?  Forget about Classmates.  Try Facebook.  And then YouTube had all kinds of videos from cat videos to conspiracy videos to full movies.  You could watch whatever your heart desired, as long as it was legal and wasn’t porn.

The reason I mention all of this is that in those thirteen years, the types of movies that I cover have gained attention that they hadn’t before that point.  The accessibility of the movies and people made it so that you could watch almost anything you wanted and then talk to other people about it.  You could share your thoughts into the ether, and people would see.  They would take notice.  People who had seen what you saw would share their thoughts with you.  Conversations would happen that might not happen in your immediate personal connections.  That was the power of the internet with bad movies.

One of the movies that rose in popularity was Zardoz.  The 1974 film was Sean Connery’s second film after leaving James Bond behind.  Zed (Sean Connery) was an Exterminator who killed Brutals under the order of giant stone head Zardoz.  One day, he snuck into the stone head and was transported to The Vortex, a place filled with Eternals who could not die.  One of the Eternals, May (Sara Kestelman) wanted to study Zed, while another, Consuella (Charlotte Rampling), wanted to kill him.  The whole time that debate was going on, Zed was being mentored by Friend (John Alderton) in the ways of The Vortex.

Zardoz was a strange movie.  I knew that from the first moments, when a giant stone head came down to Earth and spewed guns from its mouth while shouting “Guns are good!  The penis is evil!”  If a movie starts with something like that, there’s little chance that it will let up on how ridiculous things get.  The obsession that the movie had about penises was another thing that never let up.  The movie was about a penis.  Specifically, it was about Sean Connery’s penis.

There were moments where people would just talk about the male genitalia.  There was “The penis is evil.”  There was also a slideshow about erections, and the use of sexually themed videos as Consuella tried to arouse Zed in front of the Eternals.  But there were moments much more important to the story.  As May was studying Zed, she tried to extract his memories.  He kept going back to a moment when he raped a female Brutal on the beach.  That was the most important moment in Zed’s life.  When May got through to his thoughts, she realized that Zed was the best specimen for reproduction.  The whole movie came down to the Eternals using Zed to reproduce.

Death was another major aspect of the movie.  Zed was being used to reproduce because the current generation of Eternals needed to die out.  In The Vortex, death was non-existent.  The Eternals lived forever.  When they did something wrong, they were aged.  Many of them wanted to die, but they couldn’t.  Zed was the person who would bring death to The Vortex.  He disrupted the harmony of The Vortex, letting people share their true thoughts.  He destroyed the class system in the future world.  And, just to tie it all back in to penises, when all Hell broke loose, everyone started having sex.

Zed’s costume throughout Zardoz also seemed to point back to the whole penis issue.  His clothing consisted of a red diaper-like cloth covering his waist, butt, and junk.  It had two longer pieces coming up to hook around the shoulders.  They were basically there to hold up the diaper part.  The lack of any other piece of clothing only helped to highlight the direction that the movie took when it came to the penis.

The final weird thing that needs to be mentioned actually didn’t have to do with penises.  One of the reasons that May thought Zed would be the perfect breeding specimen was that he was smarter than most of the people from outside of The Vortex.  He was able to think and read, where the others were simple killing machines.  The reading reveal was also the reveal of Zed’s intentions.  His ability to read got him to sneak onto the Zardoz head.  His ability to read led him to know that Zardoz was a lie.  In the biggest reveal of the movie, he was reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and realized that the last four letters of Wizard and the word Oz could be combined to form Zardoz.  He wanted revenge for the lies he had been told about Zardoz being a higher being.  That’s why Zed went to The Vortex.

Zardoz benefitted from how far the internet has come since 2006.  Community was a television show that got a lot of attention on social media.  They had an episode about an app called Meow Meow Beans that gave nods to Zardoz.  Online, the movie got attention through that episode.  Then there was the podcast How Did This Get Made which covered the movie on two different episodes.  That also got a lot of social media attention.  Add to the online buzz that it became easier to find the movie streaming somewhere online, or to purchase it through Amazon, and you have the internet pushing the 1974 science-fiction film back into the limelight.

The internet has made anything related to movies easier.  The accessibility to movies you wouldn’t have otherwise known about, and the common discourse through social media have propelled older, not-so-well received movies back into the spotlight.  Why?  Because someone out there liked them.  Every movie had someone who liked it.  And they could vocally share that with like-minded people from around the world.  That talk built traction, and eventually, the movies were noticed again by the masses.  All because thirteen years ago, Facebook and YouTube became things.

Now for a few notes to close this off:

• David de Keyser made his second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Zardoz.  He was also in Flash Gordon (week 81).
• This week saw Charlotte Rampling’s second appearance, after she popped up in Orca (week 144).
• Last but not least, we saw the return of Sean Connery, who had already been in The Avengers (week 304).
• Have you seen Zardoz?  Did you see the Community episode or listen to the How Did This Get Made episodes?  What did you think of any of this stuff?  Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• You can also use Twitter and the comments to tell me about movies that I should be checking out for future installments of the Sunday “Bad” Movies.
• There’s an Instagram for the Sunday “Bad” Movies which should be picking up steam soon, as I finish school and have more time to figure things out for it.  Check it out.
• You can also add me on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin) if you want to see clips of the bad movies that I watch for this blog.  I tend to share clips of them, as well as other ridiculous things, and my hate of Tanner Z.
• The last thing before I let you go is to prep you for next week.  Over the Christmas break, I bought each of my friends a DVD of a bad movie.  These weren’t your typical bad movies, though.  It wasn’t like I was finding Adam Sandler movies or anything.  Well, maybe Going Overboard (week 67) could have fit in here.  It wasn’t one of them though.  For one of my friends, I found a buried Jimmy Fallon movie called The $cheme.  They watched it a month or so ago and said it was terrible for reasons that will surely be explained when I cover The $cheme next week.  I’ll see you then with a post.