Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my lovely Eternals and Brutals, it’s motherfuckin’ Zardoz!

Man… Where to begin with this movie? I think it’s best to start with the director, John Boorman. Boorman is a rare breed in filmmaking. The British filmmaker got his first directing work on TV in the early 60s. In 1965, he got his first film to direct, Catch Us If You Can (Having a Wild Weekend on IMDb and in its American release). That was part of the in-rush of British Invasion pop bands going from vinyl to celluloid, as it starred The Dave Clark Five. Two years later, he made an American crime drama film, Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin. He followed that up with a war film and a drama before making his biggest splash.

In 1972, Boorman made one of the all-time great 70s thrillers, Deliverance. This was a film that starred an already established leading man, Jon Voight, and established Burt Reynolds as the man who would become THE box office star of the decade. It’s quotable, and one of those movies that even if you haven’t seen it, you know it. If for nothing else, the idea of an intimidating pair of “Dueling Banjos” when you are somewhere you aren’t so sure you want to be in the South came directly from Deliverance.

With Deliverance being a massive success at the box office and Boorman garnering a Best Director and Best Picture nomination for the film, the guy couldn’t do any wrong. Then came the rest of the 70s.

Initially, Boorman was set to adapt The Lord of the Rings for United Artists. However, something that we would learn time and again until Peter Jackson finally figured it out, the adaptation proved to be too difficult and too costly. The plan was scrapped, but Boorman became inspired by three concepts, two of which came directly from Tolkien’s seminal work. Those two concepts, more closely inspired by The Lord of the Rings, were the ideas of a world that seemed to kind of look like ours, but different enough for us to be transported into more of the fantasy element, and the idea of a simpler character going on an adventure that will expand his understanding of how the world works. The third idea he brought to the film was showing the rot of this world being linked to some deeper issues in the present day society, but humanity’s own emotions were not able to keep up with the advanced rot.

To bring together all these extremely abstract concepts, Boorman brought in his long-time collaborator, Bill Stair, to refine his script (though Boorman has sole credit for writing – probably for the best for Stair’s reputation). In the end, the movie would end up becoming a mix of Tolkien, Baum, and Eliot with a heavy dose of Arthurian legend (which he would later use in a direct adaptation of that legend to finally bounce back after a couple of real flops). The concept and the end product would be a movie that would probably be, or at least should be, on the Black List, the famed list of screenplays that are very well-liked, but either aren’t or can’t be produced. It’s a lot of very high, abstract, metaphysical, and fantastical concepts that really wouldn’t have a mass appeal audience, especially when science fiction was kind of a known taboo genre in Hollywood.

Annnnd that was part of the problem. Despite announcing he’d have Burt Reynolds back for Zardoz, he had a real hard time finding a studio willing to take the chance on this movie that might be expensive and could very well be misunderstood or outright hated. Warner Bros., which made Deliverance and definitely cashed all the checks that movie brought in for them, didn’t want it. 20th Century Fox, on the other hand, had been wanting to work with Boorman since he hit big with Deliverance. Boorman’s agent, David Begleman, knew the higher-ups at Fox and basically said, “You have two hours to give us a yes or no, and, if it’s a yes, we need a million bucks.” The executive had no idea what he read, but apparently gambled and agreed to help fund the movie.

Now, famously, this movie does not star Burt Reynolds. That’s because he had to pull out due to illness. Honestly, that probably saved Reynolds. He continued on to make hit after hit. Zardoz might have held him back from a continued streak of successful years. Boorman, in a pinch, found another mustachioed leading man who could slip right into the role as Zed. Sean Connery was a few years removed from the successful Diamonds Are Forever, his final outing in an official James Bond film. Despite his international fame as 007, Connery was in a position where he could not get work and was running out of cash.

We’ll get into the beat-by-beat moments of Zardoz momentarily, but this movie cost about $1.5 million and made just under $2 million. It’s a mild failure after Deliverance brought in 23 times its budget a couple of years earlier, and surprisingly, Zardoz cost $500,000 less than the more successful film. Here’s the thing about this movie’s failure. Many movies did business like that and still found good reviews. However, that’s not so much the case here. Audiences didn’t really know what to think about it. Critics were split because, visually, Boorman did well, but the script was often the part that got the negativity. Ebert gave it maybe the best review among the top critics, but that was only a two-and-a-half-star review that called it “genuinely quirky.” His rival, Siskel, panned it hard. Most criticize two things: the film’s script being lacking, and the obvious self-indulgence of Boorman’s hubris in style.

But here’s where there’s a twist… Later, the film became a cult classic and earned some reappraisal. This really started in the 90s and 00s when new reviewers went back and looked at this as a massively underrated film, with a few critics calling it Boorman’s best film. Some still saw this as a bad film, even disastrous. Undeniably, though, there was an urge to seek it out for being such a big swing for the fences. It’s most definitely an ambitious film, and it’s time to dive into a world “Beyond 1984, beyond 2001, beyond love, beyond death…”

So… It’s time to dive into this mind fuck of a movie. Wish me luck… I guess.

The movie begins somewhat infamously with the floating head of Arthur Frayn, aka Zardoz. He says he’s been alive for 300 years, and he cannot die. In fact, he longs for death. This is ultimately his story that he is here to present. Though… If I’m to be honest, the story of Zardoz isn’t exactly his story. He’s the one telling the story, and I guess that means it is his story he’s sharing with everyone, but it’s not really a story about how he became a 300 year old immortal who longs to die.

Also, what is it with bad movies and floating heads that are simply here to dump some exposition on us? Zardoz, David Lynch’s Dune… Probably some other bad movie that starts with a floating head giving an exposition dump… It’s kind of a calling card of bad movies, ain’t it?

Anyway, ol’ Artie here says that he is ultimately the puppet master behind the scenes of this movie. He’s going to manipulate our cast of characters into the situations that will play out before our eyes. I like that he calls the audience “poor creatures.” It’s like he is fucking warning us that things are gonna be rough going if you don’t know what you’re in for.

Giant floating head of Zardoz.

So we begin the movie proper out in the irradiated wastelands of the world. Here, the “Brutals” run around like crazy people and live relatively simply. Some of the Brutals farm and grow food for the elite “Eternals” who live in a place called the “Vortex.” Other Brutals wear red diapers, bandoliers, ride around on horses, and carry rifles and other weapons like spears. These Brutals are always excited to see Zardoz. They worship the big stone head who calls the Brutals gathered here his “chosen ones.”

What makes them Zardoz’s special chosen ones is that the Brutals gathered here are his Exterminators. Whenever the other Brutals that are not these more violent Exterminators go around and fuck too much, Zardoz commands his Exterminators to kill them. He gave them the gift of the gun to carry out his divine will. As he is about to puke out a bunch of rifles and bullets, he reminds the Exterminators that the “gun is good” and the “penis is evil.” The penis shoots out seeds that create more life, while the gun shoots out bullets to end life.

Also Connery is here to fucking shoot us in the fucking face.

Later, Connery’s character, Zed, gets a little curious. After the other Exterminators went off to kill, Zed climbed inside Zardoz and stowed away under the grains the Exterminators tossed into the flying head. Inside the head, Zed finds strange things. For one, he spots several naked men and women that appear shrink-wrapped. They breathe, but they don’t seem to be awake or cognizant of the Brutal that is now aboard. He also looks out the eye of Zardoz to see that he is flying above the clouds. He takes a little pleasure in that view from the eye.

He’s quick to act when he hears someone else walking around inside Zardoz. He jumps down and fires his gun, wounding Arthur Frayn. He tells Zed that he was a fool for what he’s done. He could have shown this Brutal all sorts of things, including the inner workings of this world. Without Zardoz, Zed is nothing. Frayn falls out of the mouth of the stone head, seemingly to his death.

So… Yeah, the guy who told us not ten minutes ago that this was his story just died. Great!

The stone head lands in a green countryside. This place looks not just greener but way more alive than the harsh world of the Brutals. One of the buildings looks like a mill that seems to be operating automatically. Inside the bubbles that look like a butt, Zed discovered green plants hanging inside bags. Various liquids and fluids are being collected from the bags. He later discovers these crystals, which display holographic monitors. These screens display the inventories and needs of various vortexes.

Zed recognizes that this is a list of food. In fact, “Food” is the first word muttered by Connery in this movie. He then asks himself, out loud, who lives in this house he’s in. That’s when one of the crystals answers his question. This was the home of Arthur Frayn. The realization that he’s in the home of the man Zed might have accidentally killed bothers the Brutal.

Soon, there’s a great deal of activity outside as people from the various vortexes seem to arrive to collect supplies. These people carry the supplies into these small pyramids that are placed around the grounds of Frayn’s estate. These pyramids are the entry points to each of the various vortexes. Zed also learns that these little crystals can be worn as a ring and will give him information, as in the case when he points the ring at a flower and asks what this thing is and its purpose.

Now, I know you’re probably sitting here and thinking, “Geez, Geoff… You’re several hundred words into the plot of this movie, and you’ve yet to really bring up the red diaper outfit of Sean Connery. What gives?” Well, yes, I made a passing mention that the Brutals mostly wear red diapers with bandoliers. I hadn’t yet mentioned the kinky boots that complete the outfit. But here’s the thing… Yes, if you first see this outfit that Connery is wearing, and between that and the floating stone head of Zardoz, you likely know of the movie at all because of those two visuals, it’s jarring. It’s something to snicker at.

But here’s the thing… It’s a thing I still look at and snicker at to this very day, years after seeing the movie for the first time myself, but it’s deliberate to show him in such attire. The movie is bonkers, yes. It’s hard to understand fully, sure. However, there is a lot of subtext and a lot of room for interpretation of what you see and experience in the movie. I’ll elaborate on this later, but I don’t want to take the low-hanging fruit of talking about Connery’s red diaper. That’s the least of this movie’s memorable attributes, or, depending on your point of view, detractors.

While Zed was watching the other Eternals carry food and supplies to their various Vortexes, he spotted a topless woman named Avalow riding a horse. He follows her into the wooded area around the country house. By the time he arrives at a lake, he’s lost Avalow, but is soon approached by a more clothed May. His first instinct is to shoot the woman he doesn’t recognize. When he does so, there’s something of a feedback loop that ends up causing him to collapse and drop his gun.

May asks if Zed knows where he is. He says he’s in the Vortex. He explains his religion to May. He says that if he obeys Zardoz, he will be taken to the Vortex, where he will live forever. However, he believed that the Vortex was something more like heaven, a place you go after you die – which he doesn’t really know if he has died or not.

May brings Zed to a place where she and Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) can view his memories. It’s now that these two Eternals learn of the farming that is going on outside in the Outlands. Consuella does not approve of forced farming, while May says they always knew the Outlands needed to be controlled. May is excited to study Zed. No Brutal has ever traveled to the Vortex. They should investigate because Zed’s memories show the first data from the Outlands since Arthur Frayn was tasked as Zardoz to manage the Outlands and the Brutals. Consuella thinks they need to close themselves off from the Brutals.

Soon, Zed is used as almost entertainment for other Eternals to see what the Outlands are like. The Eternals seem to have almost no empathy for the farming Brutals being whipped, tortured, or killed by Zed and the other Exterminators. It’s as if it’s totally alien to them, or that they aren’t even actually living things. May is interested in how Zed keeps replaying a scene in which he raped a woman on the beach. Zed explains that his father and mother were chosen, and the chosen ones are the only ones who are allowed to breed. May wonders if Arthur has been doing some strange shit as experiments on the Brutals. After all, he was the only one who ever wanted to be in charge of the Brutals.

Speaking of Arthur Frayn… He did indeed die in the fall from the stone head of Zardoz. However, he really isn’t dead. The moment he died, he began being reconstituted and reborn. The computer that May and Consuella used to read Zed’s thoughts told them that Arthur died and pointed out that a new fetus growing in a plastic sack is Frayn being reborn. But with him currently, for a lack of a better term, gone, some of the other leaders or those better suited to ask the questions of what the hell is going on out in the Outlands are beginning to ask questions and try to figure out how the arrival of this Brutal, mixed with the tampering Arthur Frayn has done out there, is going to affect them.

Zed reveals exhilaration from killing, raping, and pillaging. Zed is, again, for lack of a better term, a savage. He is a creature of want, desire, and violence. May, being a scientist, seemingly wants to study Zed, but Consuella believes she has more “destructive” motivations. May had already wanted to introduce a breeding program, but Consuella convinced others to shut her down. Consuella is most interested in the balance their society currently has. They can’t die, which means they need to keep a careful balance with what they consume. Simply introducing one Brutal might upset that already, let alone knowing how May’s possible desire to fuck the shit out of that Brutal could really throw things into turmoil.

Consuella is quickly outvoted. The pure animalistic nature of Zed has other women in the Vortex curious. If for nothing else, they could look into more of his memories for entertainment. You see, when you live forever and always have everything you need to live, life gets REALLY boring. May is given three weeks with Zed. At the end of those three weeks of study, Zed will be exterminated.

During that three-week period, Zed does menial tasks like a beast of burden. Another member of the Vortex, named Friend, is a peculiar one. In one regard, he uses mental powers to hurt Zed. He refers to the Brutal as “Monster.” He seems like the type of higher-class person who looks down on the poor or simple.

Oh yeah… Friend has mind powers. That’s barely explained.

Yet, on the other hand, he educates Zed about their world. He explains how crime and punishment are handled in the Vortex. You don’t get jailed or executed; whenever you’re found guilty of a crime, they age you. They’ll make you old, but will not allow you to die. Zed asks what stops people from killing themselves. Friend says it doesn’t. He’s died multiple times, but the Eternal Tabernacle rebuilds those who die – much as we saw with Arthur Frayn. He explains what happens when you grow old. They become what are called Renegades. They are malicious and vicious. They are shunned, but fed by the Eternals.

Friend also shows Zed another group of younger folks who are not compatible with the Eternals – the Apathetics. They basically just stand around in catatonic states. They react to nothing. Even when Zed attempts to rape one, he stops because she shows no sign of resistance or passion. Friend explains that what is inflicting the Apathetics is a disease. That’s why the Brutals are tasked by Zardoz to grow food. The Eternals need to feed the Apathetics and Renegades. It seems almost a certainty that Eternals will become one or the other. In a fit of rage, Zed starts knocking stuff over and trashing one of the food storage barns of the Apathetics. This actually gets a response from the girl Zed tried to take as she reacts and becomes curious by the Brutal smashing their stuff.

Consuella discusses how she’s studied for years how a penis goes from flaccid to erect. She understands the physical stimulus that creates the erection, but here’s the thing… Eternal men cannot get hard. You see, after hundreds of years of no longer needing to procreate because of their forever lives, the men are no longer excited by anything. Therefore, the concept of mental stimulation is lost to them. She is curious how Zed could basically get an instantaneous erection without the physical stimulation part.

So, she breaks out the porn to further study this. She shows Zed a video clip of a woman in a shower soaping up her tits. It doesn’t do much for him. He’s not looking away, but he’s not interested. Next, it’s time for naked mud wrestling. Nothing. What does work? Just looking at Charlotte Rampling.

Further studies reveal that Eternals do not sleep. They meditate instead. A lot of the reason why Zed is different is discovered by May. He’s a mutant. He’s enough generations down the line that his genetics are now stable. She is very disturbed by these findings. She figures that Zed is actually superior to the Eternals. She figures that it will soon be necessary to destroy him, as he is very much a threat to their entire way of life.

May attempts to protect Zed despite the danger he poses. However, Friend attempts create something of a mutiny to have Zed destroyed. When he’s outvoted by the other Eternals, he is cast out as a Renegade. When Zed visits him with the other Renegades, endlessly dancing at a New Year’s Eve party, Friend says that what he wants more than anything is death. Zed tells him he must fight for death if that is what he really wants. One of the Renegades is a man who helped give everyone immortality. He says that May is the one who holds the secrets of death.

I kind of love the idea of the aged Renegades basically celebrating New Year’s Eve eternally. It’s part a physical representation of the passage of time, as we often see the end of one year depicted as an old man, while the start of a new year is depicted as a baby, both wearing sashes of what year they each represent. On another level, it represents the melancholy that always lies underneath the surface on New Year’s Eve. Again, it’s the passage of time. One step closer to your grave. It’s just… the Renegades never die. There’s a lot going on there. But I digress…

Zed goes to May and reveals a secret part of his memories that led to his evolution. He was with Exterminators carrying out the will of Zardoz by killing Brutals who procreated. He saw a man wearing a mask who led him through a maze of books. He doesn’t fully know why he allowed this masked man to live, but what this chase did was introduce Zed to books. He learned ot read. He read whatever he could, including a book that revealed a secret to him that led Zed to murder his own God.

Annnnnd what was that book? What book would reveal to him that everything Zardoz was turned out to be a fabrication? What book could possibly lift a veil, a curtain if you will, to show a man hiding behind a great and powerful alter ego?

Yes. So there was a quick succession of events that led to Zed wanting to climb aboard the floating head of “Zardoz.” First, He discovered that Zardoz took his name from the L. Frank Baum Oz series. That, hidden in plain sight, was the clue that the great and powerful Zardoz was really just an average man behind a facade. Then, Zardoz told the Exterminators to no longer kill. Instead, they are to round up prisoners and put them to work as farmers. Zed was insulted by this. They were hunters, not farmers. Brutals don’t even eat what they farm. They ate meat. His purpose, the only thing Zardoz ever told him he was, was stripped from him. He was angry, and he wanted retribution or answers, whatever he could get.

So, he and his other usual riding mates, when they were all Exterminators, came up with a plan. When Zardoz made his appearance to gather the grains they farmed, he snuck aboard. Zed and his friends were all mutants. They were part of a eugenics plot by Arthur Frayn. Zed and his buddies were genetically bred to be supermen who would be able to get into the Vortex and basically fuck all the shit up. Arthur, like Friend, and so many others, grew tired of immortality and the status quo of their way of life.

Consuella discovers May and Zed in a heated embrace after she was able to pull the memory of what led him to the Vortex to the forefront of his mind. Consuella threatens May that she will be aged 50 years so that no man, woman, or beast would ever desire her again. Consuella and Zed engage in a mind vs. muscle battle that ends with Zed getting blinded. Exactly how, I cannot say. I do know that Consuella effectively sees this as the end of their society because she says that soon, they must become hunters as Zed was.

Zed’s vision is restored, and Avalow, the girl who rides horses topless, who first saw Zed, sees him for what he is… He is deliverance. He is death. He’s the end of the Eternals and the beginning of something new. She explains to him how they got here. Basically, as the world was crumbling around them, the rich and the powerful built a wall between them and the poor and less fortunate. They became the Brutals. In time, the people inside their oasis saw themselves as custodians of a future, the keepers of knowledge and civilization. However, she understands now that Zed is the price they paid for shutting people out and ignoring their pleas for help.

While Avalow hopes Zed will deliver her to death, the Eternals at large now see him as their destruction. A few see him as a good thing, while many want to kill him. Zed signals to other Brutals to begin their assault on the Vortex as the Eternals chase Zed to where the Apathetics live. The Apathetics surround Zed, drawn to his hairy chest and passion. When they taste a bead of sweat from his body, they all wake up and find newfound spirit. I’m not kidding, this turns into a chick kissing Connery, then kissing another chick, who kisses another, then kisses a guy, who kisses a guy, and so on. It becomes an apathetic orgy with Sean Connery stuck in the middle of it.

Consuella chases Zed into the woods and well into the night. That night, the Renegades take Zed to Friend. As they walk him, disguised as a bride while the Eternals search for him, he discovers the Renegades are excited about death, while the Apathetics are excited to fuck and kill whoever they want. Friend brings May to Zed. May says she has her own followers. If he impregnates all of them, they will pass along the knowledge they have collected for centuries via osmosis. This will ultimately destroy the Tabernacle and bring death to everyone.

Zed learns about science, math, languages, music, art, and basically everything they ever knew. Friend explains that they even tried building a spaceship to explore the stars, but that was also another dead end. They just weren’t able to master it, even with infinite time and knowledge. The first Renegades were the men who created all their technology and unlocked the secret of immortality. However, they were already middle-aged and did not want to live forever. The rest of the Eternals were effectively their offspring and therefore never knew anything but immortality. To basically link everyone to each other and all to the Tabernacle, all the Eternals were implanted with a small crystal into their foreheads. So that largely solves the mysteries around why they all have certain powers beyond what any normal human would.

Arthur returns and confronts Zed. Zed proves his newfound intelligence. Arthur says that he no longer has anything more he can tell him. Consuella catches up with Zed, but cannot bring herself to kill him. She does not want to be what he was before his world changed. He tells her that he wants them to live together, and she agrees to lead her followers away from his location.

Zed figures out the final mystery of the Tabernacle, which leads to a mindbending confrontation between the accumulated knowledge of what was and the future that will be. He’s found by May, Friend, and Consuella, and they escape the Tabernacle before the other Eternals can come and kill Zed. Zed visits the original scientist who created immortality. The scientist dies, revealing that Zed has indeed ended immortality so that they can actually live a true life once again. The Renegades all begin dying one after the other quickly.

Avalow asks Zed to make good on his promise and liberate her from life. Even with Consuella telling him to go through with it and do as she asks, he can no longer bring himself to do it. He is no longer a hunter and killer. However, the walls keeping the Brutals out of the Vortex are gone. The Brutals arrive to kill most of the remaining Eternals, Apathetics, and Renegades as Zed and Consuella escape to the remains of the Zardoz head, where they make love and remain for the rest of their natural lives, while the women Zed impregnated earlier are now living on the outside in the Outlands.

The movie ends with Zed and Consuella giving birth to a son, the son aging and eventually leaving, and the couple growing old and dying of very old age. Even their bones eventually disappear as if they never existed

Alright, so check it out. Zardoz is not a bad movie. It’s strange to be sure, but it is far from a bad movie. It’s also not an entirely successful movie. It doesn’t deserve much of the negativity it received for decades until more recent critical reappraisal. I’d rather there be 100 movies willing to be different and take chances like Zardoz than to have one movie think it’s heady and brilliant but is ultimately just sniffing its own farts.

Where this movie succeeds is giving you interesting concepts to ponder over, one hell of a beautiful fade of watching a couple live the rest of their lives as husband, wife, mother, and father, and a lot of welcoming lack of bras on some extraordinarily pretty British baddies. Two of those things are summed up in just that sentence. Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman (the beautifully befreckled May), and Sally Anne Newton (Avalow) are just pretty. I need to say nothing more about that (though I should not forget Jessica Swift as the lead Apathetic that comes to life thanks to Sean Connery’s sweat as she’s a smoke show too). Those final transitions, as we see Zed and Consuella live out the rest of their lives, are poignant and beautiful and a little sad.

As for the ideas and concepts to consider, Zardoz is a little like 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s not here to spell out everything for you as to the greater meaning of the narrative. I found myself thinking a lot of different ideas that I think any (or all) could actually be true about what’s going on in these 105 minutes. There’s an element of Prometheus here. Arthur Frayn is granting Zed knowledge, which leads him onto the path of forging a new humanity from the ashes of another form of that humanity that lost its way. There’s an element of playing God with the concept of eugenics being used that will lead to the end of civilization. Basically, a creation run amok. I thought about this movie as being something of the ultimate atheist movie in which one character, once realizing a great trick played on him, decides to kill God and destroy heaven. I also thought about a societal element in which the rich and perceived powerful are turning their backs on the rest of society, so it’s time to motherfuckin’ eat those rich fucks!

None of those things I thought about is the real meaning of Zardoz… at least from my perspective. I think it’s an angry movie about a lot of things that are rotten within human society, and Boorman just wants to stick his middle finger up and scream “Fuck you!” into a void while he had a chance to. Now, the movie is good at making me, and a few other people I know, think about all those ideas and come to a more or less shared conclusion. It’s not so great at being overly cohesive at exactly what we want to take away from the movie.

Are we to tear apart our own society to steer clear of complacency? Are we to eat the rich and make sure we take control over our own best interests from their cold, dead hands before they kill us? Are we to avoid messing about with medicine to provide longer lives at the risk of losing our own humanity? Are we supposed to tear apart God and religion and approach everything with pure, emotionless logic and science?

I don’t really know what the movie is asking me to do or feel. On a personal level, I do know I’m already in the boat of “I sure as fuck don’t want to live forever.” I’m not sure I want a violent death. I’ll take one of those disintegrating into a pile of bones deaths the movie shows at the end. I don’t want to be the bringer of death to people either. I can think of a civilization (read: empire) or two I could see some benefit of being torn down, but am I to be the one who puts on the red diaper and kinky boots to do it? Eh… Maybe not.

Again, I would much rather have Zardoz swing for the fences than play it safe. This is a bit of a treasure. It’s a mind fuck. It will make you think, even if you aren’t so sure exactly how you are supposed to feel at the end. Connery is pretty good in this. Rampling and Kestelman are great as well. No matter what, John Boorman will direct the shit out of a movie even if that movie is ultimately shit (see Exorcist II for exactly that effort and end result). If you are at all interested in seeing true 70s big try cinema, something that is beyond the indie or smaller, more introspective films, but that really big production that is crazy to think a studio got behind it, Zardoz really should be on your list. There aren’t truly original or big swing movies like this one anymore. It’s worth your time even if you don’t end up having any idea what’s going on or even like the movie that much.

Next week’s movie is not one of those big swing attempts at a truly artistic vision of a dystopian future. Instead, it’s a pretty poorly reviewed horror flick about dystopian shit that is going on in our present. Yup, AI has arrived at B-Movie Enema in the form of the 2024 stinker Afraid. So be sure to get your butts back here in seven short days for that, while I get my hairy-chested, tits out, diaper-wearing, kinky boot-lovin’ self over to the Vortex to check out all the ladies who refuse to wear bras.