Zardoz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god

who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a

frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to

a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often

an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time

and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling

Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.

In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]

In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden

Jessica Swift as Apathetic

Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.

As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed

that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a

commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to

a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often

an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time

and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling

Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.

In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]

In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden

Jessica Swift as Apathetic

Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.

As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed

that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a

commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to

a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often

an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time

and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling

Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.

In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]

In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden

Jessica Swift as Apathetic

Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.

As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed

that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a

commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to

a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often

an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time

and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling

Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.

In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Release dates
Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]

In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.
As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden

Jessica Swift as Apathetic

Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.

Zardoz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the computer security mailing list, see Zardoz (computer security).
Zardoz

Theatrical release poster

Directed by

John Boorman

Produced by

John Boorman

Written by

John Boorman

Starring

Sean Connery
Charlotte Rampling
Sara Kestelman

Music by

David Munrow

Cinematography

Geoffrey Unsworth

Edited by

John Merritt

Production

John Boorman Productions

company

Distributed by
Release dates

20th Century Fox

February 6, 1974

Running time

105 minutes

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Budget

$1,570,000[1]

Box office

$1.8 million (US/ Canada)[2]

Zardoz is a 1974 science fiction movie written, produced, and directed by John Boorman. It stars Sean
Connery,Charlotte Rampling, and Sara Kestelman. Zardoz was Connery's second post-James
Bond role (after The Offence). The film was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of
US$1.57 million.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Reception
4 References
5 External links

Plot[edit]
In a future post-apocalypse Earth in the year 2293, the human population is divided into
the immortal "Eternals" and mortal "Brutals". The Brutals live in a wasteland, growing food for the
Eternals, who live apart in "the Vortex", leading a luxurious but aimless existence on the grounds of a
country estate. The connection between the two groups is through Brutal Exterminators, who kill and
terrorize other "Brutals" at the orders of a huge flying stone head called Zardoz, which supplies them
with weapons in exchange for the food they collect. Zed (Connery), a Brutal Exterminator, hides aboard
Zardoz during one trip, temporarily "killing" its Eternal operator-creator Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy).
Arriving in the Vortex, Zed meets two Eternals Consuella (Charlotte Rampling) and May (Sara
Kestelman). Overcoming him with psychic powers, they make him a prisoner and menial worker within
their community. Consuella wants Zed destroyed immediately; others, led by May and a subversive
Eternal named Friend (John Alderton), insist on keeping him alive for further study.
In time, Zed learns the nature of the Vortex. The Eternals are overseen and protected from death by the
Tabernacle, an artificial intelligence. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored and
corrupt. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent and meditation has replaced
sleep. Others fall into catatonia, forming the social stratum the Eternals have named the "Apathetics".
The Eternals spend their days stewarding mankind's vast knowledge, baking special bread for
themselves from the grain deliveries and participating in communal navel gazingrituals. To give time
and life more meaning the Vortex developed complex social rules whose violators are punished with
artificial aging. The most extreme offenders are condemned to permanent old age and the status of
"Renegades". But any Eternals who somehow manage to die, usually through some fatal accident, are
almost immediately reborn into another healthy, synthetically reproduced body that is identical to the
one they just lost. The innovative nature of the film extends to technology as well, where a precursor to
a search engine (in combination with voice recognition) is shown for the first time in film. One of the
characters requests information & all results are displayed in a way recognizably similar.
Zed is less brutal and far more intelligent than the Eternals think he is. Genetic analysis reveals he is
the ultimate result of long-running eugenics experiments devised by Arthur Frayn the Zardoz god
who controlled the outlands with the Exterminators, thus coercing the Brutals to supply the Vortices with
grain. Zardoz's aim was to breed a superman who would penetrate the Vortex and save mankind from
its hopelessly stagnant status quo. The women's analysis of Zed's mental images earlier had revealed
that in the ruins of the old world Arthur Frayn first encouraged Zed to learn to read, then led him to the
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Zed finally understands the origin of the name Zardoz
Wizard of Oz bringing him to a true awareness of Zardoz as a skilful manipulator rather than an
actual deity. He becomes infuriated with this realisation and decides to plumb the deepest depths of this
enormous mystery.

As Zed divines the nature of the Vortex and its problems, the Eternals use him to fight their internecine
quarrels. Led by Consuella, the Eternals decide to kill Zed and to age Friend. Zed escapes and, aided
by May and Friend, absorbs all the Eternals' knowledge, including that of the Vortex's origin, to destroy
the Tabernacle. Zed helps the Exterminators invade the Vortex and kill most of the Eternals who
welcome death as a release from their eternal but boring existence. Some few Eternals do escape the
Vortex's destruction, heading out to radically new lives as fellow mortal beings among the Brutals.
Zardoz ends in a wordless sequence of images accompanied by the sombre second movement
(allegretto) of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (snatches of which are heard throughout the film). Zed
and Consuella, dressed in matching green suits and having fallen in love, then sit next to each other in
the cave-like stone head and age in time-lapse. A baby boy appears, matures and leaves his parents.
The couple eventually decompose into skeletons and finally nothing remains in the space but painted
hand-prints on the wall and Zed's Webley-Fosbery revolver.

Cast[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed

Charlotte Rampling as Consuella
Sara Kestelman as May
John Alderton as Friend
Sally Anne Newton as Avalow
Niall Buggy as Arthur Frayn / Zardoz
Bosco Hogan as George Saden
Jessica Swift as Apathetic
Reginald Jarman as voice of Death

Reception[edit]

Sean Connery as Zed, wearing what the UK'sChannel 4 described as "a red nappy, knee-high leather boots, pony
tail andZapata moustache."[3]

The film received mixed reviews. Roger Ebert called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that
seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often
an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less hadcarte blanche to do a personal project after his
immensely successful Deliverance."[4] Whilst Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with
"bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." [5] Nora
Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good
deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a
frenetic, shoot-em-up climax."[6] Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a
"wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal". [3] Despite being a
commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found
success on the home video market.