I really have no concept of what this movie is about. I think Mame is an outrageous character and I think this has the reputation of being an overblown production heralding the collapse of the musical bubble like Hello Dolly was.
I don’t know if I’m more surprised to learn this is starring Lucille Ball (not someone I think of as a singer) or that there was a nonmusical stage play and nonmusical film before this show. Or that this version is just “Mame”, not “Auntie Mame”.
The discourse around Zardoz typically begins and ends with Sean Connery’s outfit. Nobody has anything to say about Zardoz other than how bad it is, and at this point I wonder how many people saying that have actually seen it. On paper, there are a lot of cringeworthy elements, but I have to wonder how it manages as a cohesive whole. I have to know for myself what Zardoz is like.
After watching the movie:
In 2293, most humans live in a brutal, uncivilized state. A chosen few are selected by their god Zardoz, a flying stone head, to use weapons to exterminate the rest, in the belief that humans only destroy nature in their existence. Zed, one of the Brutals, hides inside the stone head to gain entrance into a Vortex, a utopic village of the elite Eternals who control the Brutals and force some of them to grow crops for them. Almost immediately, Zed shoots Arthur Frayn, the Eternal in control of the stone head and Zardoz identity, and Frayn falls to a death below. However, Eternals have developed a life without natural aging, where those who manage to die are immediately reconstructed in new, identical bodies. The scientist Consuella and her assistant May capture and pacify Zed with telepathy in order to study him and subject him to menial labor within the community. Another Eternal, Friend, plans to use Zed to overthrow the social order the Eternals have been imprisoned in for hundreds of years. But none of the Eternals suspect that Zed is not as mindless and savage as he seems.
At least in the British Isles, there was often a dreamy, new-age aspect to science fiction in the 70s. I feel like, by watching this movie, I’ve seen several episodes of “The Prisoner”. And I think I would have rather watched The Prisoner. This movie is full of trippy visuals that don’t make much sense, trying for something more artful and psychedelic than representative. Everything hinges on crystals, video projection is used to paint walls and people, and everything in the world of the Eternals that isn’t straight out of an 1800s Irish countryside feels so technologically advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.
The other aspect that came to dominate 70s movies was an overindulgence in the evolution of social mores caused by the sexual revolution. This movie sets up a society of haves and have-nots where the haves are as repressed and oppressed by their lifestyle as the have-nots they distantly rule over, but rather than explore that very much, it would rather exult in explicit assault and meditate on the collision of raw sexual power with a world that has bred reproduction and desire out of itself. I don’t think there’s a single woman in the movie that doesn’t spend at least a third of her screen time topless. The result is both deeply uncomfortable to watch and dramatically disappointing.
There is also an incredibly frustrating mix of over-explanation and drawing out mysteries so long the viewer decides they aren’t important. I finally found something really interesting to watch in the third act, when Zed begins to really develop into his full potential and explain his intentions, but the mysteries and tensions that set that up are so buried by exploring the Vortex and the pretenses for nudity that it affords that I had thought that Zed’s origins were just unimportant.
There’s an interesting spin on the kind of social commentary that’s been a part of science fiction since The Time Machine here, but unfortunately, it’s held back by the extravagances and limitations of the 70s. Maybe a modern remake could salvage this, but I’m sure it would be so different that it would be rejected as a remake. I’ve seen Zardoz, and in that knowlege, in this form, I can’t recommend others do so.
This is based on a book that I’ve read, but I don’t remember very much of it. A gang of misfits that I recall as fairly large decides that instead of stealing from a bank, they’ll steal the bank itself, thanks to its temporary home in a trailer. Beyond the premise, I only remember one particular scene, and that while it’s a comedy, it was the kind of comedy that I had to keep stopping to remind myself that this wasn’t a drama with a bunch of one-off comic relief jokes. The situation sounds farcical, but in context I took it completely seriously. On the other hand, I was just a little too young to get it. I think I wasn’t even in middle school yet, and it’s definitely a book for adults.
I discovered it as an automatic recommendation along with other George C. Scott movies when I saw They Might Be Giants. The actor is probably the only similarity between the two movies.
Dark Star. Jack H. Harris Productions/University of Southern California 1974.
Before watching the movie:
This movie is selling itself to me hard as a comedy, and I see the potential, but it’s working so hard on that that I don’t have much else to go on but the genre. Apparently the main plot concerns a planet-destroying bomb stuck in a colony scouting ship that gets delusional and considers exploding in the hold. Like I said, not much to go on. It sounded like a fun movie, and one I’d probably have a lot to say about, but leaves me even more uninspired than usual in this section.
Bearing in mind that it’s a student film, but one of high acclaim and penned by some famous names in sci-fi, this could get interesting.
The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers. Este Films 1973/1974.
Before watching the movie:
A large-budget film with a star-studded cast and strict attention to period accuracy could go poorly in all sorts of ways. The actors could fight for attention to the detriment of the film, the visual appeal could be lost in gritty details or vice versa, and the effort put into the enormous practical concerns could stomp out any entertainment value of the film.
These worries are only enhanced by the subject material. I vaguely recall an adaptation of The Three Musketeers in that a young man wants to be a Musketeer, gets in a fight with some, and then they all have adventures together. Rather dull, especially if one isn’t into swashbuckling tales.
I recognize many names, but I can connect hardly any of them with anything I know. At least it’s sold as a comedy, but I don’t expect much out of a 70s film.
Usually, I avoid sequels, but this pair was intended to be a single film, so I am taking it as one.
Back when I was in a film studies class, I was shown a movie titled His Girl Friday. Apparently, this movie is a more faithful adaptation of the play that movie was based on. As my professor was also apparently a fan of Billy Wilder, I’m not sure why this film didn’t come up in a way that I remember.
Also, this one has Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Carol Burnett, and Susan Sarandon, a trainload of fun people to watch. I didn’t know Matthau and Lemmon worked together outside of The Odd Couple, but the box seems to imply they were a popular comedy team.
Yesterday's Movies 