Sean Connery's Cult '70s Sci-Fi Movie Is The Perfect Goofy Watch On Prime Video

John Boorman was already difficult to pin down before he directed "Zardoz." By then, he'd made "Catch Us If You Can" (the Dick Clark Five's shot at matching The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love"), the avant-garde noir "Point Blank," the intense (if creatively compromised) World War II drama "Hell in the Pacific," and the bizarre morality play "Leo the Last." Everything changed when he landed a primo studio assignment with "Deliverance," which earned him Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. In the early 1970s, Boorman was a hot New Hollywood property, but he had the loftiest of ambitions.

After "Deliverance," Boorman wanted to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," but United Artists, which, less than a decade later would kneecap itself by backing Michael Cimino's Western "Heaven's Gate," got cold feet. So, since he couldn't tackle Tolkien, Boorman decided to create an original fantastical universe set in the distant future and addressing adult, dystopian themes. He dreamed big, although it wound up being too big for his "Deliverance" backer Warner Bros. So, his agent David Begelman, who later developed a bad habit of endorsing checks written to Cliff Robertson, got him a meeting with 20th Century Fox.

His idea, "Zardoz," is a richly imagined tale set in the year 2293, where society has splintered into a haves/have nots dispute between Eternals and Brutals. The latter are immortal with multiple caveats (life gets boring when you can't die), while the Brutals are encouraged to kill each other by a floating stone head (Zardoz) that exhorts "The gun is good, the penis is evil." Fox greenlit this absurdity on a $1.5 million budget, and Boorman got Sean Connery to star. The result was one of the greatest cult movies ever made, and it's currently streaming on Prime Video.

I was around 10 years old in 1983 when I fell asleep in front of the television while watching "Saturday Night Live" and woke up to a late, late night broadcast of "Zardoz." I couldn't figure out why Sean Connery (who made the movie to escape his James Bond legacy) was running around in a red, bandolier-equipped onesie complemented by knee-high leather boots, but I did know I was watching something special. Once I established I wasn't dreaming, I locked into one of the weirdest films I'd ever seen.

Since I'm writing this for people who've never seen "Zardoz," I'm not going to spoil the mind-blowing reveal. Just know that John Boorman whips the carpet out at a certain point, which causes a massive reframing of everything you've been watching. It's fascinating to watch Connery vacillate from Brutal to a more enlightened being, and he strikes up some zesty chemistry with Charlotte Rampling's Consuella (an Eternal). Dramatically, the film lags at times. Boorman takes pains to explain the minute details of what it means to live forever, and the concept is intriguing. It's like a slow-going rendition of Stephen King's yet-to-be-adapted short story "The Jaunt." It's longer than you think, and, at a certain point, catatonia seems like a pretty sweet deal.

"Zardoz" isn't a movie you'll want to revisit often, but it's one you'll want to kick over in your head for the rest of your life. It's classic Boorman. He didn't make it to get the next greenlight. He made it because he couldn't leave it festering in his brain.