Episode 9

Zardoz (1974)

Published on: 18th March, 2022

A story about guns, projections, reflections, and Sean Connery's body hair.

Listen in as me and returning guest, Peter, become one with the Tabernacle and aim our kaleidoscopes at this trippy piece of 70s sci-fi.

Written and directed by John Boorman (Deliverance, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Point Blank), Entertainment Weekly called the film "silly [and] impenetrable," while the New Yorker said it was "a glittering cultural trash pile." Man, even the "nicest" review from Entertainment Weekly was harsh.

It tells the story of a future where man has separated in to small bands of immortal folks living in medieval-style villages with killer wifi and an omnipresent AI caretaker, and the rest of humanity has been left outside the walls to roam the lands as killers, rapists, and brutes. Hm... Kinda sounds like a commentary on the 1% or something... Anyway, the barbarians worship a floating stone head controlled by an aforementioned immortal. This faux religion is used to control the barbarians until one day, mustachioed Sean Connery sneaks aboard and is taken to where the immortals live. It just gets weirder and more colorful from there.

The film is currently available on Prime Video for rent or purchase.

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About the Podcast

Subversive Cinema
The show about the weird, whacky, and downright wrong entries in cinema history.
There are a lot of films out there, so it's only natural that a decent amount of strange content exists. These are the films we examine.

Each week, I sit down with a guest and we take a look a one of these weird, whacky, or downright wrong cinematic entries. Each of them has something about it that makes it special — I call it the "Subversive Sauce" — and that is recipe we try to break down.

Is it scientific? Absolutely not. Will you learn things you didn't know? Maybe. Might you hear about films worth checking out? Most definitely.

Tune in and see what the subversion is all about!
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About your host

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Art Hall

Art started in the podcasting ecosphere back in 2007 with the outrageous, yet short lived, scripted variety show "WBKR: Buckwilde Radio," which claimed listeners from over 20 different countries. After hanging up his headphones and heading west to move to Los Angeles, he kept podcasting in his heart but only made appearances rather than producing or hosting. It only took a global pandemic, boredom, and the pleading from his buddy, Joe, to get back into the mic booth.