Zardoz

So, if you were flipping channels, and came across Sean Connery with a giant mustache, wearing what can only be described as underoos with some pirate boots, running through the forest, you'd stop and watch for a bit, right? Well I did. two hours later as Zardoz was ending, I was unsure of what I had just seen. Something that was a mix of Barberella, The Prisoner, Planet Of The Apes, bad '70s soft-core porn, and Farenheight 451. Only really shitty.

Connery stars as Zed, who spends his days galloping around the post-apocolyptic Irish countryside happily raping and murdering "brutals" in the name of Zardoz, a giant floating stone head. All of said brutals are wearing suit jackets for some reason, while Zed has to settle for a loin cloth and a Janus mask, which the writer probably chose for no other reason than that is looks kinda creepy. So one day Zed gets laured into a disused library, and discovers the joys of reading, and by extention, the joys of free thought. He wants to get to the bottom of all this weirdness, so he stowes away in the head, and ends up in "The Vortex", a place where those who were once well-to-do who now call themselves "Eternals" live in a utopian society where they have been for a few hundred years because some crystal robot thing has made them immortal. They live in a perpetual rennaisance festival, blissfully unaware or apathetic to the troubles of their mortal bretheren on the other side of a sort of giant wal-mart bag. While on the giant head, Zed has inadvertantly killes Zardoz, who was really just some guy that got his name from The Wizard of Oz. Zardoz gives Zed and his buddies guns and ammo in return for the crops that the brutals are forced to cultivate. Zed gets trapped in the Vortex with all the hippies, and disrupts the ideallic society therein.

Didn't see that coming. I'm sure that this was supposed to be an allegorical commentary on the.... something. But it sooo does not work that way. Not with Connery in his undies through the whole thing.

Turns out that Zed was genetically engeneered by A few Eternals who are so bored they just want to die already, and need him to do it for some reason. The Eternals decide to impart Zed with all of their wisdom, one at a time, by fucking him. He becomes the new leader, and the societies combine to form a new race, and we see Connery in a full-on wedding dress. and the less said about that the better. Man the '70s were a weird time for science fiction. Until Star Wars in '77, we mainly got things like this and Logan's Run, which was great when I was a kid, but deeply flawed when I watch it now. That happened with The Dark Crystal and The Black Hole as well. Don't do it, kids. Let those movies remain cool in your head. Watch something you haven't seen before.

In other news, page 26 is up. Have a nice day.