Filmmaker Paul Duane revisits a cult movie classic, filmed in Wicklow by director John Boorman, ahead of a rare big-screen outing for its 50th anniversary.
When I was a kid, the phenomenon of 'ballast comics' was in full swing – American comics and magazines that made their way to Ireland as ballast in the holds of cargo ships. Large quantities of unsold Marvel & DC comics found their way to rural Ireland in this way, long after publication date, along with stray copies of the legendary horror movie magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, with its beautiful hand-painted cover illustrations.
That’s where I first heard of Zardoz, in an issue of FM with a painting of demon-possessed Linda Blair from The Exorcist on the cover, an image that scared ten-year-old me out of my wits.
The film had long vanished from cinemas by the time the magazine found its way into my hands, and it took decades for me to finally see it. I've watched it many times since then, and the opportunity to introduce the fiftieth anniversary screening at the IFI, which I’m doing on Feb 6, is a genuine privilege. I think it’s one of the most original and adventurous films of the 1970s and definitely the strangest film ever made in this country, and I’m excited to finally see it on the big screen.
So here’s a brief intro to Zardoz for the uninitiated.
Filmmaker John Boorman had just spent years working on an unfilmed adaptation of Lord Of The Rings, and he threw his fascination with world-building into this relatively low-budget project, which 20th Century Fox offered to fund after LOTR foundered because of costs.
Boorman’s interest in myth, Jungian archetypes and the destructive nature of capitalist society found their outlet in a story set far into the future, when the very rich have become basically immortal, and discovered that immortality renders life uninteresting, and destroys the urge to procreate. See Mark O’Connell’s excellent book To Be a Machine for contemporary examples of this type of thing.
This elite class, the Eternals, rules the world with the aid of their military force, the Exterminators, who keep down the world’s impoverished savages, known as the Brutals, in a vicious form of population control. The lead character, Zed (played by Sean Connery) is an Exterminator whose curiosity leads him to discover far more than he ever wanted to about how his society is run. He learns that his entire belief system is a fraud, designed by the rich and powerful to keep him in ignorance.
Yes, Zardoz is a political movie. Boorman said in 2014, "it was becoming clear that the gap between the privileged and the underprivileged was getting greater, and that the well-off were living longer, and the poor just weren’t living at all." I think we can agree that this is a story as relevant in 2024 as it was in 1974.
He wanted his Deliverance star Burt Reynolds for the lead, but Reynolds dropped out for unspecified reasons. Sean Connery had left the Bond franchise and was having difficulty getting work because he was so closely identified with 007, so he jumped at the chance to replace Reynolds. Connery is arguably better casting – he approaches the often deeply bizarre role with impressive seriousness, while it’s difficult to imagine Reynolds pulling that one off.
The shoot took place all around Wicklow and in Ardmore Studios, where – when I first filmed there many years ago – long-standing crew pointed out a covered-in spot where a massive hole in the studio wall had been made for Zardoz itself. I really wish there were photos of the iconic stone head being pulled around the car park of Ardmore for the process shots (impressively, nearly all the VFX shots in the film were achieved via in-camera effects work, only one was done in post-production). There’s a Facebook group called The Making Of Zardoz which has some cool behind-the-scenes shots, and is worth checking out, though.
Locations included Lugalla, Lough Tay, Old Conna House in Rathmichael, and the Brennanstown Riding School – Boorman, probably still exhausted from filming Deliverance in the Appalachians, made the entire movie inside a ten-mile radius from his home in Wicklow.
(Pic: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The film came out in 1974 to what could be described as a muted reception. Without checking exhaustively, I would say that it’s the most abstract & experimental film ever to bear the 20th Century Fox logo. Nobody really knew what to make of it. Even Boorman himself, in later interviews, says he doesn’t know what to make of some of it himself.
It would be silly to pretend that Zardoz isn’t occasionally silly – there are moments in it (Connery in drag in a wedding dress?) that court ridiculousness, and Boorman’s films aren’t noted for their sense of humour, so I assume it wasn’t deliberate. But the outrageousness of the costumes (and some of the rather dated 1970s sexual politics) shouldn’t obscure the fact that this is an ambitious, visionary fantasy film unlike any other.
Boorman chose to base his narrative on Carl Jung’s famous archetypes, characters that turn up consistently in the mythology of many different cultures. A couple of years later, George Lucas would base his own far-future fantasy Star Wars on The Hero’s Journey, an arguably more simplistic approach to the universal myth propounded by author Joseph Campbell.
It’s fun to imagine a world where Zardoz instead of Star Wars was the basis for endless sequels, spin-offs and ‘extended universe’ adventures, but instead of that we just have this one, fascinating, puzzling, sometimes unintentionally hilarious but truly original and ground-breaking movie.
I have a replica prop head from Zardoz on my wall, looking balefully down at me while I type. The originals have mostly disappeared, but I really hope there’s a big stone Zardoz head in some back garden in County Wicklow, mystifying passers-by. Despite appearances, it wasn’t based on Karl Marx – it was cast from Boorman’s own face. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.
Zardoz screens at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin, on Tuesday 6th February 2022, with an introduction from filmmaker Paul Duane - find out more here. Revisit more Irish Cult Movie Classics with Paul Duane here.
