EPISODE 103 — Zardoz

[WayneMiller 37]

After looking at their site, there's about five or six podcasts I wanna listen to right off the bat.

[peterman_lp 3]

While listening to the HDTGM team trying to figure out what Zardoz was about, I was reminded of another film that has a similar plot line. In 1988, Donald G. Jackson wrote and directed "Hell Comes To Frogtown," a movie that is set in a post apocalyptic world starring WWE superstar "Rowdy" Roddy Piper.

 

Due to nuclear fallout, there are very few fertile men and women in the new world but a band of warrior-nurses form to track down the fertile men for breeding stock. Piper plays a character named Sam Hell, a wanderer who is tracked and captured by the nurses because of all the pregnant women he left in his wake. I can only assume that one or two of them were raped Connery style. The nurses only want Hell for his sperm and fit him with an explosive cod-piece in case he tries to escape. He is then forced to rescue captured fertile women from a group of outcast mutants, who are forced to live in the deserts away from civilization. The head nurse -played by Sandahl Bergman- originally has no interest in Hell, but soon falls victim to his sexuality and the two presumably fall in love.

 

So we have a badass running around banging everyone, who is then captured by powerful women and forced into doing their bidding, and an outcast group punished by banishment.

 

Could it be the Donald G. Jackson is a fan of Zardoz and used the movie as inspiration for his own tale?

 

Maybe I'm only seeing the similarities because I want too.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Comes_to_Frogtown

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

What the fuuuuuuuu... ?

 

[WayneMiller 37]

Rowdy Roddy Piper is the only fertile man in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, in a world run where women are dominant and the it's run by giant alien frogs.... He also has to wear a nuclear jockstrap... What's not to like?

[AndyReichel 16]

I love Hell Comes to Frogtown.

[MikeWhite 3]

Thanks for sharing The Projection Booth. This is one of my favorite episodes.

 

 

i say; check out a podcast called projection booth, they actually interviewed the director about this movie: http://projection-bo...148-zardoz.html

its soooooooo interesting.

 

he basically says that alot of the stuff didnt work,and then he wanted to edit it totally different.

 

 

no im not affiliated with the guys doing that pod,i just think its interesting

[Wignke 3]

With regards to the boner lecture, it seems to me that Connery isn't turned on by the images on screen because the women shown are enjoying themselves. Being a stone cold rapist, Connery picks the one one woman who seems most repulsed by him. Only then can he become arroused.

[Cockney Mackem 514]

I loved the clips they played of Boorman's commentary "You might want to fast forward this bit..."

[paultab 225]

I loved the clips they played of Boorman's commentary "You might want to fast forward this bit..."

 

"...It didn't work..."

[JobianDay 5]

Stuff from Zardoz that needs to be shouted-out.

 

I had seen five seconds of this and “the apple” at a hipster bar night like 14 years ago and I have tried to figure out what it was (not too much clearly,) but thanks for finally getting this super important disaster out there.

 

PS Boormans son is in the best reality adventure show ever made.

• 
  The Tabernacle is essentially Google or Siri.
  
• 
  This movie is actually a man’s attempt at helping feminism.
  
• 
  That as stupid as all the hand gestures were - the play-alongy improv type shit they did making the weird barking and noises actually works. It does (albeit in a way that makes one shudder) work..
  
• 
  the real movie here was Fynn’s journey to being Zardoz .
  
• 
  Sean Connery is the WRONG type of sexy for the character in that Zardoz actually seems like a strong verile genetic character .. and Connery is like a super lothario hair and Hawaiin Tropic style greasy ..
  
• 
  There are like at least 5 concepts here that are pretty bold to have put in a movie like this .. One being that women are oppressed by men- and that it’s wrong. Two - Genetics and computers will build a class of elite apart from Human devopment Three - that food and luxury is often built on the back of slavery four: violence is what restrains humanity and cleanses it - and five : that the old and elderly are useless burdens on the youth - only kept around by neccessity .
  

 

This movie is fucking ambitious and over the top. I love it ..and so much awesome inner side boob.

ugh it's great .. and SOAPY TITS!!? like it's givin you everything.

Thanks again Jobian Day.

[JobianDay 5]

OH -- AND:

 

Friend does the fucking awesomest job at selling the worst ad lib lyric poem for the girls in the bread room and they fucking die for it then he puts his hands up in a way that we do today. this was 4o years ago.. not bad.

[JobianDay 5]

MORE:

 

The two sided Zardoz mask that the Exterminators wore is essentially the same as the mask from the Village of the Crazies in GymKata

[qrter 79]

PS Boormans son is in the best reality adventure show ever made.

 

Really? I always thought Charlie is a bit of a prat.

[JobianDay 5]

Thanks for sharing The Projection Booth. This is one of my favorite episodes.

 

That was a really good call.

[GetReady 2]

If anyone has a little photoshop skill and a little free time, I'd love to see a political poster for:

 

The NRA Supports

Zardoz/Zed 3016

"The Gun is Good"

[Lando 2019]

I saw this headline and thought "JUST LIKE ZED AND CONSEULA!!"

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/relationships/husband-and-wife-die-holding-hands-within-hours-of-each-other-after-67-years-of-marriage/ar-BBhZPe0?ocid=ansIndependent11

[MikeWhite 3]

If anyone has a little photoshop skill and a little free time, I'd love to see a political poster for:

 

The NRA Supports

Zardoz/Zed 3016

"The Gun is Good"

 

THis is something similar...

[SheRaPoP 1]

http://tamgifs.tumbl...st/112568246450

 

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

Okay, the plot and theme of this movie aren't THAT out there. In fact, it's almost an exact melding of Logan's Run and Dune, and not really any more trippy.

 

A high technology society needs resources outside its domain to maintain their cushy lifestyle while not dirtying their own hands, so they cut a deal with local warlords to supply them with weapons so they can control the local destitute population and ship the resources back. The allegory is about as obvious as Dune's "conflict over a desert area containing a vital natural resource and local jihadi populations".

 

The only slightly confusing part was the high tech society of immortal telepaths. That embodied the typical generation clash, the younger generation's frustration that the older, ruling class doesn't just step aside and die already (you hear it today with people saying gay marriage and religion won't be an issue once the boomers die off). They're stuck in groupthink (communal telepathy), all free thinkers are punished, stuck reliving some reactionary bygone era (the aged immortals forever dancing at a party), and a totally puritan hostile attitude towards sex (pretty much every imperialistic society for the past 2000 years).

 

Immortality and its stagnation went against the natural order of things, so a group of the immortals engineered Zed to destroy the system by making him immune to the telepathy powers. Zed was able to destroy the computer since it was the collective consciousness of the immortals, and all the immortals secretly WANTED to die. Once their immortality was gone, the cycle of life went back to normal. People instantly started fucking and dying again. It's summed up by Zed and that chick having a child at the end, watching him leave, then growing old and dying together.

 

I love a lot of the over the top aspects of this movie, but it's really not any more trippy and impossible to understand than any classic sci fi like 2001 or Dune. I guess maybe in comparison to modern sci-fi stinkers with on the nose commentary like Surrogates and Ellysium.