“I have seen the future and it does not work…”

The ’70s were the decade when America officially lost faith in the myths of the Eisenhower Era. They had it all: an energy crisis, contentious battles over civil rights, religion encroaching upon government, a futile and ill-conceived war, a rancidly corrupt president, and The Gong Show.

In the Double ’00s, everything old is new again.

The way forward is the way back and all the answers to our current plights are a NetFlix click away: the failed aversion therapy of A Clockwork Orange, genocidal race wars of The Planet of The Apes series, King Kong enslaved as Big Oil’s unwilling corporate spokesmodel, and Charlton Heston (of all people) playing a corporate whistle-blower in Soylent Green and the emancipator of an Earth-inheriting group of… the brown people… in The Omega Man.

And then came Zardoz.

Thousands of years after global wars have nearly eradicated humanity, Earth’s vestiges are divided into two factions: the Brutals – lowly, debased agrarians whose numbers are held in check by Uncle Tom members of their own ranks dubbed the Exterminators – and the Immortals, a ruling class of intellectuals dwelling in decaying opulence within a green zone called the Vortex. God has (finally!) made himself physically manifest in the avatar of an immense levitating head called Zardoz.

The Ten Commandments can suck it now that the world’s flimsy pretense of social order has crumbled. All the Bible-thumping fire and brimstone bullshit has lashed-back on itself. Murder really is the answer to dealing with our conflicts. Zardoz may be divine, but he sure has some earthly vested interests, mainly in having in the Brutals’ crops shoved into his maw as tribute. Best of all, the meeting of peen and snatch is now the ultimate sin, each new birth an abomination in the eyes of Zardoz.

The gospel according to Zardoz:

“Zardoz speaks to you, his Chosen Ones. You have been raised up from brutality to kill the Brutals who multiply and are Legion. To this end, Zardoz, your God, gave you the gift of the Gun. The Gun is Good. The Penis is Evil. The Penis shoots seeds and makes new life to poison the earth with the plague of men as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth…and kill!“

In what can only be termed as an N.R.A rally meets an abstinence assembly, Zardoz projectile vomits firearms into a wildly enthusiastic death squad congregation of nearly-nude cavaliers. Since only men are his favored acolytes and bitches are off-limits, it’s a foregone conclusion that these bullet-happy bastards are banging haunch post-haste in a masked man gang bang once they’re done airing out every living being in sight. Chief among them is Sean Connery as Zed, who, as he aims his pistol directly at the audience, seems to be simultaneously parodying and salting the earth of his star-making Bond tenure.

Few established actors in their 40s would agree to put it all out there (the role had been offered to post-Cosmo Burt Reynolds) and don a ponytail hairpiece, Pancho Villa ’stache, mutton chops, a bandolier, an abbreviated red clout, and kinky boots for an arty sci-fi epic, but in the midst of a career slump, Connery was game to say “I will wear the fuck out those thigh-highs…basssstards!” His hale, fur-lined brawn is his greatest asset in Zardoz and as Zed — in a crisis of faith — gets up in Zardoz’s face (literally), both men are venturing naked into the unknown.

Of course many of us suspect that the pious country club image of Heaven we’ve been sold by the moral majority would be beyond tedious to exist in; Zardoz boldly proves it by depicting an Eden in retrograde. The Vortex is supposed to be the Nirvanic Afterlife Zed abandoned his free will to gain entry to, but what he finds is a brokedown palace riddled with entropy. Within its environs, no one takes risks, gives a damn, sleeps, dreams, or even remembers how to fuck. The Immortals are a culture on the skids: everyone wears same sexless attire and has matching Satyricon hairstyles, the daily violence and suffering beyond the Green Zone is little more than a source of casual amusement, sex is a primitive throwback, and life itself is one long lost highway with no vanishing point in sight. The Neo-Con goal of a society stripped of any dissent, racial/ethnic divisions, pesky poor people, or individual identity has perversely been achieved by those who once resisted it.

There’s trouble from the get-go as Trojan Horse Zed finds his entree into the Immortals’ den. What does one with do a barely-clad slab of beef if you can’t lay into him? Thinking Man’s sex symbol and arthouse fave Charlotte Rampling as resident bitch Consuella (drawing comparisons at the time to militant anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin) thinks Brutal men are vile animals and wants him exterminated, her scientist gal pal May wants to keep him as a lab rat, and everyone else starts feeling the long-dormant tinglings of being turned on and can’t keep from running their fingers through Zed’s pelt. Blond John Alderton as the wily “Friend” (“Hello, Friend…”) immediately slinks up to the group’s new plaything. “I like you, you sly old monster,” he purrs, spurring Zed — in a fit of inspiration — to coin what should be the new go-to gay handshake: licking his hand.

It’s hard to pick a highlight once Zed starts to navigate this high-strung scene. See! Zed sprout wood before a mortified Consuella as she shows him porn on the Immortals’ immense flat screen. Marvel! as Consuella performs a demonstration of the erectile response using a visual aid that must presumably have been unearthed from an ancient pre-apocalyptic remnant… like a junior high bathroom stall. Stiffen! when Zed’s sweat is able to cure the zombie-like Apathetics of their lethargy. Freeze-Frame! at the pivotal Apple Dumpling Gang moment when Zed and a geezerfied Friend evade a torch-wielding throng of Immortals by dressing up as bride and groom…with Zed as the bride!

The movie’s perfect Eye of the Duck reveal comes when Zed’s memory bank is plumbed and his true motivation for penetrating the Vortex is discovered. Bred by a swishy rogue Immortal scientist to be the Death Sower and later taught to read, Zed is shown the terrible secret of Zardoz: the omniscient deity whose teachings led Zed to kill in his name is nothing but a sham concocted by the Immortals who simply took their deism to its most practical implementation. The ruse’s epicenter: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, itself arguably as much as an eolith in terms of its mythical place in 21st Century society as the Bible.

The curtain torn down, lapsed Zardozite Zed’s all “Bitch, I know what I saw!” up against the Immortals’ telepathy and with that defiance the crack of doom sounds for the Vortex. In this moment we have perhaps moviedom’s most profound rumination on the essence of God, not as an omnipotent Daddy, but as the summation of an ancient (or just long-dead) culture’s hopes and superstitions used by a contemporary ruling class to justify its thirst for control. Not only do we create our own Gods, but we can give the lie to them when the fail us. Ours is the power that delivers our own Redeemer when the GodFather’s strings begin to fray.

Few movies would dare to close with the most ecstatic mass murder/suicide ever after that revelation, but Zardoz does nothing if not go all in. Sure we’re left feeling like the DVD sleeve was laced with LSD, but with the American Empire apparently at the crest of a fateful decline, the environment in collapse, and what maybe the most defining election in our history being engaged between two diametrically opposed ideologies, Zardoz is as of the moment as anything could be. What is Zardoz? Mind trip? Schlock cult opus? Neglected masterpiece? Brilliant watchword for wary iconoclasts? Ultimately it’s the free-for-all IMDB — wherein the most infrequent shafts of brilliance will manage shine through — that devises critically-scathed Zardoz’s perfect cultural catchline over thirty years later:

“Never forget this about Zardoz haters… Bush would hate Zardoz too.”

Amen.