Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0024543013051
Format: Anamorphic
Label: 20th Century Fox
Manufacturer: 20th Century Fox
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: 20th Century Fox
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2001-03-27
Running Time: 106
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Theatrical Release Date: 1974-02-06

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Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Classic Film
Comment: I discovered this movie around 10 years ago. It captured my interest because
the storyline was great (very imaginative). As soon as I saw it I wanted to own it but the movie wasn't available on DVD. A couple of weeks ago I made a search and lo and behold there it was (ON DVD); I would like to see it restored and in bluray, but DVD definition will do just fine. Buy it, it is
an interesting movie with interesting plot and ending. Kudos to Connery!

Customer Rating:

Summary: Maybe in a dorm with lots of alcohol
Comment: Zardoz just might be entertaining if watched by a group of jeering college students fueled by copious amounts of alcohol. A bonus in this situation is that any female students who are watching will become amenable to slipping off to another room. I can't recommend it in any other context. It's plain terrible, and not in one of those ways that it's so terrible that it becomes good. Too bad there's no "zero" star ranking. Or negative stars. And don't think Sean Connery saves the film somehow. You would think he would, but no.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Thank You, John Boorman
Comment: The director's commentary track alone on this dvd has paid for itself. It gives credit to my view that "Yes, I *got* the movie, but I still find it amusing".

Customer Rating:

Summary: A 1970s kind of future
Comment: Like H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, this posits a future in which the human species has divided itself into Eternal, immortal lotus eaters and Brutals, the under-class that has to work for a living. Zed (Connery) is one of the exterminators, killing Brutals under orders from a renegade Eternal. This renegade gives the first hint that the Eternals have a problem: there is dissent, an all-but-capital crime. There is also ennui, with no hope of ending their endless lives for release. Then Zed enters the Vortex ...

The scantily clad twenty-somethings of the Vortex remind me of the self-concious physical freedom of the post-hippie 1970s. They also remind me that a slim bust is a lovely one, something easy to forget in our era of implants. The youth culture of the Eternals, like that of Logan's Run from about the same time, also celebrates the era before the boomers found themselves graying. And, by the standards of today's special effects, 1970s opticals and mirrored walls look more campy than special.

Then there's Connery himself. In the 1960s, he defined the dashing, adventurous role of James Bond. At the end of the 1980s, he would mature into a senior statesman of cinema. Think of Zardoz's unfortunate time as Connery's mid-life crisis. Why he agreed to run around in that red panty, I'll never know.

But, if you take it as an artifact of its era, it can still reward the viewer. Maybe we can't suspend disbelief the way it original audiences could, but maybe we can see it differently than they ever could, as a future that only the 1970s could have predicted.

--wiredweird

Customer Rating:

Summary: It's Different, I'll Give You That
Comment: I'll be the first to admit this one takes an acquired taste and is not for everyone. It's not your standard science fiction. I wouldn't call it a thinking man's movie, but it is full of metaphor, irony and interesting observations on the human condition. Ladies and gentlemen: you have been warned.

Zardoz has set in a post apocalyptic setting, but doesn't really get into that scavenger roaming the earth theme like Road Warrior or Waterworld. Instead you have one "primitive" surrounded by the evolved "eternals". In other words Mad Max type PA fans should look elsewhere. No spectacular special effects. Actually there are hardly any special effects at all. The futuristic sets aren't anything to write home about, though the on location landscape is pretty enough. Like I said... this isn't your average sci-fi.

What Zardoz really puts on the table is content more of the mind-bending nature. The movie is about manipulation on several levels as well as the consequences of a conditioned society and how it reacts to change. There isn't a lot of action, and the action you get isn't enough to satisfy any adrenaline junkies out there. The events unfold more like a ballet, using symbolism as much as conventional actions.

Bottom line this is a very different kind of Sci Fi. For those of you who like exploring new ideas then this movie is for you. I know this is probably the most vague review I have done, but I just can't describe what I got from the movie. It took me a while to figure out how to rate it. All in all I enjoyed watching Zardoz. It was a fascinating trip down a unique setting and society. I can guarantee not everyone will agree, but at least it successfully pulled off what it attempted in my eyes.

More Reviews

Editorial Reviews:

A bewigged Sean Connery is Zed, a savage "exterminator" commanded by the mysterious god Zardoz to eliminate Brutals, survivors of an unspecified worldwide catastrophe. Zed stows away inside Zardoz's enormous idol (a flying stone head) and is taken to the pastoral land of the Eternals, a matriarchal, quasi-medieval society that has achieved psychic abilities as well as immortality. Zed finds as much hope as disgust with the Eternals; their advancements have also robbed them of physical passion, turning their existence into a living death. Zed becomes the Eternals' unlikely messiah, but in order to save them--and himself--he must confront the truth behind Zardoz and his own identity inside the Tabernacle, the Eternals' omnipresent master computer.

A box office failure, John Boorman's Zardoz has developed a cult following among science fiction fans whose tastes run toward more cerebral fare, such as The Andromeda Strain and Phase IV. An entrancing if overly ambitious (by Boorman's own admission) film, Zardoz offers pointed commentary on class structure and religion inside its complex plot and head-movie visuals; its healthy doses of sex and violence will involve viewers even if the story machinations escape them. Beautifully photographed near Boorman's home in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains by Geoffrey Unsworth (2001), its production design is courtesy of longtime Boorman associate Anthony Pratt, who creates a believable society within the film's million-dollar budget. The letterboxed DVD presentation includes engaging commentary by Boorman, who discusses the special effects (all created in-camera) as well as working with a post-Bond Connery. --Paul Gaita