YMMV / Zardoz

• Anti-Climax Boss: All it takes to destroy the Tabernacle is one gunshot.
• Awesome Music: Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd Movement, used in the opening and the ending.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The entire film feels like a BLAM, but Friend talking backwards at the bakery stands out.
• Cult Classic: Fitting since it's a film about a literal cult.
• Ending Fatigue: The scene where Zed reveals the terrible truth about Zardoz and his reasons for being in the Vortex seems like the second act turning point, but the film still has another hour to go.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Given that he's the title character, it's strange that Arthur Frayn disappears for more than an hour after the opening scenes. Niall Buggy's Large Ham performance as Arthur is very entertaining, and makes you wish he had a bigger on-screen role.
• Faux Symbolism: This film is packed to the brim with it. For instance, some Exterminators are shown wearing helmets with a face on both sides. Is it supposed to be evocative of the two-faced Roman god Janus? Who knows...
• Fetish Retardant: Connery's costume.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Some of the text displayed by the Tabernacle, such as "karatz" (carrots), "solt" (salt), and "lethur" (leather), seems oddly evocative of Leet Lingo today.
  • Frayn saying in the opening that "Merlin is my hero", since it's directed by the man who went on to direct Excalibur.
  • The aged Friend after he's declared a Renegade looks like modern-day Paul McCartney.
  • Zed paraphrases Friedrich Nietzsche's "He Who Fights Monsters" as "He who fights too long against dragons, becomes a dragon himself." Sean Connery (Zed) later provided the voice of the dragon Draco in Dragonheart.
  • Arthur Frayn is shown tossing around a glass globe, which brings to mind Jareth from Labyrinth. And like Zardoz, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is shown as an influence upon the story.
• I Am Not Shazam: Sean Connery's character is Zed, not Zardoz. Zardoz actually is the floating stone head; a fake deity whose name comes from the The Wonderful Wi-ZARD of OZ. This confusion is probably why, in the studio-mandated opening monologue, Boorman had Arthur Frayn identify himself in the very first sentence as Zardoz.
• Jerkass Woobie: Zed. He's spent his whole life in a world of shit, only improved his lot by becoming a killer/slaver for Zardoz, ends up in the captivity of Eternals who view him as little more than an animal, ultimately learns that everything he's ever done was what Arthur Frayn (in the guise of Zardoz) manipulated him to do, and in the end decides to just finish Arthur's plan to end immortality for humanity. Despite all the crap he goes through, he is at no point particularly likeable.
• Memetic Mutation: "The gun is good! The penis is evil!"
• Narm: John Boorman himself sums it up nicely: "A lot of this can be very laughable, really, if you don't enter into the spirit of the thing."
  • When Friend sternly declares he won't meditate on second level, the other Eternals punish him by... chanting "renegade!" while twiddling their fingers at him until he passes out.
  • And of course, there's the film's most infamous line of dialogue, about the goodness of the gun and the evilness of the penis. What really racks up the unintentional humour of the scene is that Zardoz's worshippers suddenly go from chanting his name and repeating his proclamations to being completely silent, thus making it seem less like they're in awe at the word of Zardoz and more like they were stunned into silence by what just came out of his mouth. It doesn't help at all that the scene ends with Zardoz spewing a bunch of guns out his mouth for his followers to use.
  • And there are plenty of other insane bits of dialogue, delivered with complete sincerity.
    I am innocent of psychic violence!
• Nightmare Fuel: Sean Connery in a wedding dress.
  • The movie hints that the "old folks" trapped in eternity in their senility are at least somewhat aware that something is horribly wrong and that it will never, ever stop.
• Quirky Work: This is, quite literally, a film made on drugs.
• Padding: Even Boorman agrees the Hall of Mirrors scene goes on too long, suggesting in the DVD commentary that viewers just fast-forward through it.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Since he replaced Burt Reynolds as Zed, it's probably not a coincidence that Sean Connery looks a fair bit like Reynolds here.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • If May sounds familiar, there's a good reason: her actress Sara Kestelman went on to play Kreia.
  • To the detriment of childhoods everywhere, Friend's actor John Alderton later narrated Fireman Sam.
• So Bad, It's Good: It represents the perfect collision of high ideals and questionable execution, and contains the line: "The gun is good — the penis is evil!" Also, Sean Connery in a red diaper.
• Squick: A few scenes will make you queasy, particularly the Apathetics getting awakened from their stupor by licking Zed's sweat.
• Strangled by the Red String: Even though May is the one who clearly has affection for him, Zed ultimately hooks up with Consuella in the end, and even has a son with her, even though she spent the entire film not only demanding that Zed be killed, but reacting to him with almost primal disgust.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some reviewers have said that some ideas of the story, like an infinitely powerful upper-class manipulating and living at the expense of everyone else in the lower class, with the lower class striking back, could have made an interesting movie, but instead it's muddled terribly by its incomprehensible plotting.
  • It also raises a lot of interesting ideas about whether or not immortality is a good idea, the necessity (or lack thereof) of human drives such as lust and hunger, and whether societies should preserve their past or accept the present and try to change it. Again, muddled terribly by its incomprehensible plotting.
  • The science fiction elements aren't bad either by the standard of other movies of its time. The Tabernacle crystal computer, interfaced with rings with built-in projectors, simplified future spelling, etc.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: No, really. John Boorman WAS on drugs when he made this, and admits he has no idea what much of it is even about.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • Sean Connery. The poor guy is trying his best, though he's clearly embarrassed by the costume. It's been said he did the movie to avoid being Typecast as James Bond. So it's possible he wasn't even considering the role itself so much as what it wasn't. It's also been said that at the time Connery was actually having trouble getting work because the historic paycheck he cashed for Diamonds Are Forever made him too expensive for most filmmakers to want to hire him, so director John Boorman was actually able to get Connery on the cheap for what was a very low-budget film. In fact, the budget was so low that Connery sacrificed most of the comforts an actor of his standing was supposed to get, such as having his own driver, in favor of just rooming with Boorman and hitching a ride to work with Boorman on the condition that they split the cost of gas.
  • On the whole it's a well-acted film, with a cast full of estimable British stage actors, who gamely try to sell the monumentally muddled script, and a talented director for whom this was clearly a passion project and is firing on all cylinders and clearly believes in what is film is saying, even if what exactly it's saying is anyone's guess.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Even though the movie's set in a post-apocalyptic future, its '70s influence shows everywhere.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • Many of the special effects, even if they're being used to depict imagery that's bizarre bordering on being ludicrous, are actually pretty impressive considering the film's budget and when it was produced.
  • Zardoz itself stands head and shoulders (and floating head) above the rest, the shots of it levitating eerily and effortlessly through the smoke, and addressing the assembled Exterminators, are utterly seamless.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Just read that monologue from Zardoz about penises being evil because they impregnate humans and guns being good because they kill humans.
  • You can discern some kind of commentary on modern society in the relations between the different groups. The Eternals as the self-absorbed cultural elite, the Apathetics as the numbed, lifeless middle class, the Renegades as the shunned, neglected elderly, the Exterminators as the military (or the government), and the Brutals as the working class. But it all gets lost in the shuffle as the story dives deeper into Mind Screw mode.
  • It's been pointed out that the Zardoz head looks a bit like Karl Marx. So much so, that a French Communist newspaper supposedly sent a letter to Boorman, asserting they were willing to give his film a much-needed positive review, but only if he would sign a document stating that the resemblance was unintentional.^note (Which, for the record, it was; some sources say the head was modelled after Boorman himself, while others claim it was modelled after Arthur Frayn's actor, Niall Buggy)
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Everything, but special mentions go to Connery's orange nappy, the Eternals wearing boxer-shorts on their heads, and Arthur Frayn's hilariously obvious sharpie mustache.

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