The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time: Zardoz
After watching Death Sentence, a terrible movie starring Kevin Bacon as a father in search of vigilante justice directed by Saw's James Wan, Gabe embarked on The Hunt For The Worst Movie of All Time. This is his sad journey.
This week's film, Zardoz, has the dubious distinction of being the most commonly nominated movie in the Hunt so far. Yikes. Sucks to be you, Zardoz. It's also the oldest film we've talked about, made in 1974. That's why they refer to the years between Zardoz and Baby Geniuses as "the Golden Age of cinema" (no they don't.) Now, usually I suffer alone, in silence, as I was taught to do, but this week my friend Scott was in town visiting and I forced him to share my pain, and let me just say that he couldn't have picked a better weekend. The idea of sitting through this by myself, without anyone there to make jokes with or clean out the barf bucket is untenable. You know how Ian Curtis supposedly watched Werner Herzog's Strozek the day he killed himself? I'm just saying Strozek isn't the only movie that has a loosely drawn casual connection to suicide. Not anymore. Because I'm drawing it for Zardoz. With a knife. In my wrist skin.
Zardoz is the name of a God in a magical floating stone head full of sand who pukes guns onto a tribe of "brutals," all of whom look like Burt Reynolds in red speedos, thigh high boots, and silk bandoliers, and then Zardoz instructs them to shoot anyone running on the beach wearing a blazer. One of the brutals, Sean Connery, hides in a pile of sand in the stone head and shoots a jester who falls out of the head's mouth and the head is also full of people wrapped in saran wrap. When the head lands next to a lake, Sean Connery gets out and runs around a house that's decorated like a hippie's dorm room, and he finds a Google ring that answers all of his questions. The house is part of a castle where the "eternals" live. There are two factions of eternals. One who wants to kill Sean Connery, and one who wants to study him because he gets boners and they're like "check out his boners." When "eternals" commit crimes, their punishment is to age, and when they get very old they are banished to a carnival where all the old people dance and get angry. Eventually, it turns out that Sean Connery is actually really smart because one time in a library he realized that Zardoz is really a play on the Wizard of Oz, and that's why Sean Connery has come to destroy the Vortex (which is the name of the castle where the eternals live), and the eternals are actually kind of happy because they all just want to die, and then Sean Connery and this lady go live in a cave and have a baby and turn into skeletons.
Sure.
Zardoz is not entirely unique. It fits into a common trend of late '60s and '70s filmmaking, which was to somehow capture the experience of all the great drugs everyone was doing and to further explore the cocktail party philosophy of campy alternative religions. But even that can't be a satisfactory explanation of why this movie exists. Because drugs only last for a few hours, while movies take months to make, and hundreds of people. Surely someone must have stopped at some point, looked around them, and said "no, David Blaine." Because this shit is unacceptable.
While you're watching it, at first you can't help but wonder what Sean Connery was thinking, but as the movie goes on, you start to realize that probably he just wasn't. He's the purest form of "actor," in the sense that every facial expression he makes and line reading he delivers is so clearly guided by the director's demands. "Look surprised, Sean Connery. Look confused, Sean Connery. Put on this underwear, Sean Connery. No nothing else, just this underwear." I haven't had a chance to revisit any of his other movies yet, but I'm pretty sure I've cracked the Connery Code (one of the most ancient and mysterious of codes). He's a cipher. Make of him what you will, a cool spy, a master-criminal, or, in this case, an incredible buffoon. He will hit his mark.
Look, I'm all for trying to do something big and bold. And I respect writer/director John Boorman's unrelenting attempt to bring his vision to life. He was trying to tell a story about class (the whole thing takes place in the future after a cataclysmic world event, the eternals are the wealthy, who have shut themselves off in a false paradise, while the poor are left to kill each other under the guidance of the rich), and that's fair enough. But what part of your instructional parable about class explains the floating stone Zardoz head? What does the empty dream of eternal life have to do with a subpar junior high health ed class?
All in all, as painful and incomprehensible as it is, and as misguided and foolhearty in its ambitions as it was, Zardoz may have escaped the title of TWMOAT simply by being old. It stands now as some kind of cultural artifact. It's like an old ad telling you that four out of five doctors prefer Pall Mall cigarettes. Sure, an ad like that is ridiculous, and was probably harmful in the time it was published, but now it's just a funny little artifact reminding us how we used to be cavemen, and how our children will think the same kinds of things when they see our art. That we're insane. And retarded.
Next week: Crash (2004). As always make your suggestions for TWMOAT in the comments or in an email. If you have not before, please consult the Official Rules.
Posted by Gabe at 4:45 PM in The Hunt For The Worst Movie Of All Time
Tags: John Boorman | Sean Connery | Zardoz
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Are you kidding me? That has to be one of the absolute worst. Just that scene was the most worthless five minutes of my life. I can't imagine what watching the rest of that movie is like.
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Gabe, I'm pretty sure I was forced to watch this movie when I was younger by my father who thought it was legitimately great (yes, he should probably be killed for that, but I can't do it because he's my father, and I'm not into that).
But more to the point, I don't think that you should be allowed to disqualify a movie from being TWMOAT just because it is old. Either that, or you should rename this the Hunt for the Worst Movie of, Oh, I Don't Know, Recent Times (TWMOOIDKRT). Just saying. I guess you can make up whatever arbitrary guidelines you want. I'm just going to then tell you that your feature has a misnomer. So take that...
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Thank you for risking your life by taking on Zardoz. I personally recommended this one at least four or five times, and I'm glad you were up for the challenge. However, I'm unsure why this is suddenly out of the running for the WMOAT just because it's old... Isn't the idea to find the Worst Movie of ALL TIME? That time does include the 60s and 70s, right? Just think, out of all the movies you've watched so far, did any of them cause you as much downright pain as Zardoz? I'm guessing the answer to that is no. Because that's what Zardoz does - it makes everyone who watches it want to kill themselves! What other, better qualification could there be for the WMOAT?
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It's not out of the running because it's old, it's out of the running because it's so particular to a time period that it becomes an artifact. There are plenty of horrible movies from the '70s that would be equally painful but without any of the curiosity or idiosyncratic novelty. It was painful to watch, yes, but not without its enjoyments (as long as there is like-minded, willing company.) Unlike, for example, Alexander, which is just endless suffering.
Also, please revisit rule 6.
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I agree. If you didn't have a cut-off date the worst movie released to the masses is definitely something to do with racism..and the south..and blacks who rape because they're free..and the Birth of a Nation.
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the absolute worst thing about the piece of my life lost during that clip was the entirely disappointing death of the pink-robed man who wouldn't go to the goddamn second psychic level or whatever, after maybe two minutes of painful finger-wiggling buildup. I only finished the full 6:00 of it in hopes of some mad eye-popping, brain-splattering action. instead he drooled. not satisfied.
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I still can't believe Crash is being seriously considered for the Worst Movie of All Time. I think you'll be disappointed. Its a lot of things, primarily overrated and heavy-handed with its shocking "racism = bad" message, but the people who think its terrible are just upset that they got swept into the "you have to see this movie" hype. Its a melodrama tailor-made for the Oscars, and it certainly doesn't hold a candle to The Wicker Man.
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I have to completely agree here. Crash may be Oscar-baiting tripe, but it's nowhere near the worst movie of all time.
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holy spirit fingers.
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A Sound of Thunder.
Ed Burns and Ben Kingsley and terrible CGI.
DO IT GABE!!!!!!
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this is one of the best movies ever. it's fantastic in it's horribleness. i love when they fight in the giant flowing head, and all the boner sequences. and the random fetuses stuck in goo on walls. and the growing pods. the whole thing is phenomenal lol
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yeah it's amazing, but it's only amazing if you are pot stoned.
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MANOS: Hands of Fate.
Worst. Movie. EVER.
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it's weird how just being from a different time makes movies harder to appreciate.
my husband bought the 'billy jack' box set, and we watched the first billy jack movie and it was fucking WRETCHED. a total WMOAT, except for the fact that it's a really good snapshot of the time and it actually has some admirable goals, which it hella fails at, but still. it's going for it, despite that fact that it's in a way that is deeply painful to modern eyes. also it has no stars in it, so duh, but still. there's a song called 'a rainbow made of children.' so so much the worst. and yet billy jack is a total bad-ass and i could see why my husband would have thought he was the best when he was little.
also, 'billy jack' was an indie that made a jillion dollars, at a time when no one was releasing indies successfully, which is interesting and admirable...
and yet the film is absolutely ROFLMAOLOLOLZ bad.
i still would like to renominate 'miami vice.' i still get smad when i think about how fucking bad it was. and justin theroux is in it! WTF?! HTH, right?
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I have to second "Manos" (notice the quotation marks)-Hands of fate. Even Mystery Science Theater 3000 couldn't make it semi-watchable
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can someone explain that floating weiner?
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From Justin to Kelly is AWFUL. Totally WMOAT material.
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I'm surprised that no one's nominated Ultraviolet yet. It fits the criteria: It stars a "well known" actress (Mila Jovovovovich) and received theatrical release. And it isn't a superhero movie (unless you really stretch the definition of super hero). Within those parameters, it's probably the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life.
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