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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie Oleson" data-source="post: 434367" data-attributes="member: 8">Zardoz (1974)[ATTACH=full]58121[/ATTACH]Based on images and perhaps a few clips I had already seen, I started watching this film with the wrong expectations.To me it seemed like an entertainingly atrocious cult film that every self-respecting fan of seventies cinema needed to watch at least once, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes it looked like I was going to get exactly that.But as the story unfolds from one wondrous and eccentric scene into the next it becomes clear that this is not a piece of half-baked rubbish to laugh at.I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's deeply  profound, but it does tap into the interest in cult-following and alternative ideologies that seems so strongly connected with the late 1960s and 1970s.Whatever you make of the stories and/or its characters, I think ZARDOZ has a lot to offer.It's a film with great rhythm, plenty of intensity, it never runs out of steam and not once did I get the impression that the actors don't believe in what they are doing - the kitsch and bizarre goings-on notwithstanding.The film takes itself seriously enough, but not to the extent that it becomes its own sounding board or critic - and it feels perfectly all right to laugh at whatever moment of ridiculously ceremonial posturing.Apparently it was made on a relatively low budget but that takes nothing away from its cinematic awesomeness, and once again it proves that a lot can be achieved with camera technique and physical trickery.It goes without saying that Sean Connery's hairy, in-your-face masculinity and Charlotte Rampling as the cool bitch in white boots are a winning combination.Logan's Run (1976)[ATTACH=full]58122[/ATTACH]Logan's story takes place only 19 years before Sean Connery's adventure - I found that peculiar - and just like the intelligence witches in ZARDOZ they are living in a big bubble that protects them from the post-apocalyptic outside world.There's even some overlapping in themes: eternal youth (and eternal elderly for those who need to be punished) versus the never-growing-old-policy in Logan's world.It's a fascist world with soft-core undercurrents and perhaps even with a nod to the Baghwan cult, but Logan's Run looks way too clean, more like school kids on a day off. Nevertheless, it looks like a lot of effort has been made to create their physical world. One set looks like an abandoned shopping mall dressed up like Epcot Center, and everything glows and bleeps and with buttons for identification. In other words, the disco interpretation of "science" fiction.A super-naff computer needs to know everything and yet refuses to process any new information. Such a contrast with Proteus in Demon Seed.Citizens are required to perform a ceremonial suicide shortly before they reach the age of 30, which will increase their chance for "renewal", probably another word for "reincarnation".And this is all very well filmed but I would expect it to be more sinister and grotesque.Some citizens have second thoughts and run away and hide in the outskirts of the dome where they cannot be found (?).Like many sci-fi stories it sets itself up for a much ado about nothing scenario: the realisation that we're not yet ready for the future and that the world as we know it is still the best option for humans. Oceans, trees, cats, what more do you want.And so it takes a second apocalypse to bring Logan's people back to where they really   belong and where they are allowed to grow old.The most lively characters are played by Richard Jordan and Peter Ustinov but they can't prevent the film from being sluggish and stilted.It's not a matter of what should or shouldn't be in the film, and on the surface of it I think it mostly succeeds in what it sets out to do (depending on the ambition) but it just doesn't have any swing.I often found myself mentally pushing the story, dialogue and characters forwards.Which brings me to the obvious conclusion: this should have been a musical.</blockquote>

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