Stars: Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling, Sara Kestelman, John Alderton, Bosco Hogan, Bosco Hogan, Niall Buggy, Sally Anne Newton, Jessica Swift

Director: John Boorman

Summary: Sci-fi story of life in 2293 when the Earth has become wasteland, and the 'Brutals' are ruled by the 'Exterminators'.

When Sean Connery abandoned the James Bond series to seek out new challenges, he turned to director John Boorman's sci-fi project, ZARDOZ. Connery stars as Zed, one of a carefully bred race of supervisors, the Exterminators, who oversee the agricultural labour of the neanderthal Brutals, since in 2293, with most of the Earth's surface off-limits as a polluted Outlands, industrial society has been abandoned. All worship Zardoz, a huge flying stone head who makes periodic visits to Earth to pick up grain consignments and issue bizarre statements involving the male anatomy through the voice of Arthur Frayn (Niall Buggy). An increasingly skeptical Zed decides to stow away inside the head, which deposits him in the Vortex, a commune of scientists and intellectuals who are ruled by the ever-youthful and asexual Eternals. They capture Zed, allowing geneticist May (Sara Kestleman) to use him as a research subject for a limited period, but he begins to arouse more than scientific curiosity in the commune's supposedly nonsexual female population.

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A box office failure at the time, John Boorman's 1974 cult science fiction film Zardozis an entrancing if overly ambitious project that 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.

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. --Paul Gaita

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen, 16:9 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Audio Commentary, Four Radio Spots, Theatrical Trailer, Still Gallery, Scene Access, Interactive Menus
Subtitles:	Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish
Year:	1974
Release Date:	June 30, 2003
Runtime:	101 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	01208 D V D
Keywords:	General, Wide, Screen, Zardoz, Horror, Occult, Sci, Fi
Genre:	Horror/Occult