This weekend at AFI’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, DC film freaks will have two opportunities to see one of the most bizarre films ever made.
John Boorman’s flawed psychedelic masterpiece ZARDOZ, starring Sean Connery (in a red loin cloth no less!), is playing at 12:30pm on Saturday and again at 7:30 Sunday night. The showings are part of AFI’s month long Sean Connery retrospective.
ZARDOZ swings for the fences with it’s acid inspired, pseudo-philosophy filled screenplay and Boorman’s over the top trippy visuals. The story centers around Zed (Connery), a barbarian, who hitches a ride inside a flying stone head that vomits firearms. Zed rides the stone head back to Shangri-la where he encounters a race of immortal telepaths who decide the fate of post-nuclear holocaust humanity. Zed has the audacity to ask ‘what if humanity wants to decide their own fate?’ and of course things go down-hill from there.
ZARDOZ plays with a straight-face, taking itself very seriously, but how seriously can an audience take Sean Connery dressed up like Barbarella wielding a six-shooter against evil telepaths from the future? ZARDOZ comes across like a cross between 2001 and Yor: The Hunter from the Future and makes for a heck of a good time. Really! Just watching the trailer for ZARDOZ brought the house down at my birthday party a few years ago.
ZARDOZ is a real mess of a movie trying to be a mind-fuck and has the unique distinction of being the only film to ever make me puke. I can not believe I’m going to get the opportunity to see it on the big screen this weekend. Seriously folks, if you want to see a real film oddity – this is the one.
Originally published on June 9, 2006.
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