I picked this up in the $5.99 bin at Best Buy, and watched it this afternoon. Seriously--if you want to see what audiences will think of Matrix Reloaded twenty years from now, watch this. My God.
Okay--problem number one is, you have to look at Connery in this outfit for about two-thirds of the running time. Later on, he puts on more clothes, but not before he wears a wedding dress, complete with a train and veil. I am not making this up.
Essentially, Zardoz covers all the same philosophical territory as the Matrix films, in the same lightweight, pseudo-profound way--free will vs. determinism; the Nietzchean "new philosopher" business (Connery even quotes Nietzche); the question of how we know we live in the "real" world. Connery plays a barbarian named Zed (get it? Zed's the last letter of the alphabet in British English? It's almost as obvious a name as "Neo."), who worships a god named Zardoz, which is embodied by a giant stone head.
In the beginning of the movie, this gang of barbarians is riding around on horseback among the hills, having a good time and raising hell, and then the stone head descends out of nowhere and gives a turgid philosophical speech that includes this line:
Giant Stone Head said:
Then, honest to God, the giant stone head starts puking up hundreds of pistols and rifles and shotgun shells. And the barbarians grab them up and yell, "Zardoz!" and go on a killing spree. That scene alone was worth the $5.99 I paid for the DVD. And it's only the beginning. Any film that has this:
is worth $6.00, easy.
It's not only that the film is pretentious in that Matrix-like way, but it has that whole '70s sexual revolution vibe that's ruined many a good film from that period (and there are a couple of screen caps I'd post to illustrate my point, but they'd get me banned). Beneath all that, though, there is some actual, legitimately interesting stuff. There's a group of people in it that've discovered the secret of immortality, including this guy:
and the way that that part of the story is treated puts an interesting twist on the common SF "immortality is miserable" theme. But getting to that part involves wading through a total mess of a movie that is dated beyond belief (though once Connery becomes "The One" and the mayhem kicks off, there's some fun times). Still, it's kind of worth watching in a weird way, as long as you squint whenever you see half-naked middle-aged Connery.