Upstream - S3E10.5: Zardoz [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

This is a preview of a bonus episode! find the rest at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ John Boorman directed the movie Deliverance. Because of this, he was given access to 1.5 Million Quid and told to just fuckin make another movie. This is what he created... Zardoz. Yeah thats right, youve gotta pay us for it. The patrons got basically nothing in December so they get this one exclusive. Don't look so hard-done-by, some podcast listeners are starving for a single upload, yknow. ------ FREE PALESTINE palestineaction.org/donate https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Kill James Bond is hosted by Alice Caldwell-Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

The gun is good wood, the gun is good! The penis is evil, the penis shoots peace, and makes you like to poison the earth with a plague of man as once it was. But the gun shoots death and purifies the earth of the field of brookles. Hello and welcome back to the first episode of Kill James Bond recorded in 2024. I am Alice Cordo Kelly. I am joined as always by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hello, gentle listener. How the hell are you doing? How are you, how are you, sort of bearing up under the psychic assault of the 20 best seconds of Zados.

Yeah, follow shortly and by every other 20 seconds of Zados. It's true. A succession of 20 second moments where you think, sick, hell yeah. Yeah. It's just like lay out cards that might have stopped. Yeah, it's all that's rules.

This rules, this movie rules, it's so good. I really like it. It's fucking rich's rules. This movie rules, it's so good. I really like it. This fucking rich. Holy shit. Yeah, absolutely. Let me just be absolutely upfront about this. I believe that Zardos is great. It's a great time.

I believe this to be a good film. I'm glad I watched it. I enjoyed it. It would be so easy for us to do a kind of like nostalgia critics that are like, what the fuck, this movie's so weird, it's like trippy, like, were they like smoking weed, were they made this? Using grudge?

Yeah, yeah, maybe they were, who gives a shit? It's a good film, I like it. They were. And harder, canonically. This was all in the director's commentary. Oh, you've heard the director's got a fantastic... I have not heard it. I have heard of it and I wanted to get to it before this episode.

We'll talk about it. The thing is, Zardo's has been on the docket for a long, long time for the obvious reason, which is if you haven't seen it, you may have seen a picture from it, which is Sean Connery with a ponytail, a hand-of-art mustache wearing a kind of like strappy red combat beach ensemble holding a Webley Fuzzbury revolver. Yeah, like if the Borat Mankeenie was being used in like an amphibious assault. Yeah, so his fit in this is like,

he's got some red above the knee riding boots. He does. Red speedos, crossed red bandoliers, nothing else. There's a way this for the entire mood. The whole mood. Very, very sort of like prominent dick bulge also. And you think, oh, that's funny, that's weird. It's interesting that Sean Connery did this like after Bond, after Diamonds are forever. Right. What a fun little like additional bit of canon to Bond that like the guy did this. It's

in the same sort of space as universal soldier for Laisenby, right? Where it's like, he get out of bond, you do a weird one, and it's kind of funny, and we can laugh about it. No, no, this is, I'm not gonna say it's not a weird movie, right? But it's trying to make points,

it's trying to do something with this. And I engaged with it seriously, rather than sarcastically, and offering that level of sincerity to it, I really enjoyed it. Definitely. I think a lot of our movies we've talked about that you don't have to watch them before you

listen to the episode. I think if you have the opportunity to watch Zardos before you listen to this, I would recommend it more than anything in the world. Yeah. Do some drugs. Going into that movie, knowing what you're about to see next is going to ruin it for you. Yeah. The experience is just being like, what can this man put in front of me?

Yeah. I watched this movie Stone Cold Soba, I have to say. And I still very much enjoyed it. So did I, yeah. Well, the thing is, right, this movie was like, it didn't do very well at this time. And I think part of the reason why is that there's a technological disparity, right? Because they had the drugs available to make this movie,

but they lacked the crucial technology of watching it with two to three clouted up transactuals, which is what I did. And having access to that technology really enhanced. Yeah, the transsexual discord server makes our doors. Yes, the cinema, but I think it was always meant to be definitely. I think I think if this inspires you. We should do a screening. Actually, sure, it would be great for genuinely. If this inspires you to do

anything, it should be to institute a kind of clouded up transactual movie night. I actually know somebody who does trans movie nights and London, we could do like a Zodos screening. Yeah, okay, offline this, we should have 100% to go across the screen. So yeah. To set the scene ever so slightly.

This is back before the current media model of trapping promising young directors in the Marvel minds. Yeah. This is back before the current media model of trapping promising young directors in the Marvel minds. Yes. At this time, the basic mode of the industry was, you made one hit movie, you had Carp Lodge, just to do fucking whatever you wanted. So John Bournemann made the movie Deliverance, and it was fantastic.

We were in Rambo with the little down down down down, yeah, fantastic. It was so successful. For his next movie, the studio gave him one and a half million and he did, he did Zardos. They gave him one and a half million and we're like, do whatever the fuck you want. This movie cost one and a half million dollars to make. One and a half million. Is that it? What's that in today's money? Be trimming, trying to fix that. Give me a second. One and a half billion dollars.

I die, I don't know, but the thing is, you can't go back. Right, you can't go back to the 70s drugs. Like you can't even get quailudes anymore. The weed is too good. The weed's too strong now. Yeah, basically. You wouldn't do great. You're just wanna have a little sit down.

Yeah, this is the products of, like, and I'm not a drug person, so it's foolish for me to speculate about the precise intake of drugs that led to this movie being made. But I will say that a sceneau quite non for making this movie is the weakest, shittiest, most ditch weed in the world being smoked constantly.

You want to all be on it. I just, I just liked it up. One and a half million in 1974 is $9.6 million today. That is nothing by movie budgets. That's like, I can't believe they made this for so little. And they did so much with it, right? It's incredible.

Sean Connery must have done this for cheap as well, especially since he asked for a million for diamonds or my pussy or whatever it was. Well, apparently he had difficulty getting work after diamonds and my pussy, which is I don't think surprising given first of all that the movie was called diamonds and my pussy but second of all because he's fucking James first he's James Bond and second of all he's now looking old as fuck. So you can't even really convincing the customers James Bond. Yeah, he's still aging into old man Connery. Yeah, he's still aging into old man Connery. Knowing that.

Yeah, um, Bournemann originally considered the, but Reynolds to play Zed, it really does illuminate that the character was chest hair out. As it's... Yes, yeah. It's a very, very, very masculine. It's the hairiest mother fuck we've got.

All right, we can't get him. Who's the second hairiest? That's not what I'm talking about. Connery or me? Those were the three choices. But nowadays it'll be me. Yeah. We begin with a sort of bouncing DVD logo of a guy's head.

I'm so glad that you wrote that as well. Yeah, yeah, I was waiting for it to hit the corner. This man is wearing a pair of blue silk underwear on his head. Yes. And this is Arthur Frein or Zados, who introduces us to the fact that the movie is set 2293 in the distant future. So he does this kind of like foe-shick-spirion monologue. Yes.

Like, you know, my name is Arthur Freyne or Zardo's, I'm a fake god by occupation. And you will see my story play out over the course of this film and then He he talks vaguely about Filming a means of social control and it and the monologue ends with a line is God in show business too Which I was like okay Huge inhale of the worst we go Yeah, it's got a Shakespearean chorus coming out and be like, this is what you'll see in the better.

It's pretty good. Every man imagined the fowl and you know, it's good. Yeah, and then it drops a kind of like hair-messal logo of the word Zardo sunscreen. And we go to rural Ireland where all of this was filmed on the cheap. That's right. Where you are about to receive a message from the big giant head. And I, The giant hair rise, my note says, huge fan of this fucking thing. I love the big giant head.

So that we're 2293 and there are men riding in the kind of red manquini things. And they yelling, Zahda! They're really excited, right? And this giant stone head, which kind of looks a bit like the moon from Majora's Mask, descends from the sky.

And like, this is their god. Got King of all Cosmos, E, as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the big giant head plays them, the message that I played you at the beginning, the gun is good, the penis is evil. And then it... They sacrifice people to him.

Yeah, they, they, they, they like vomit they've, they've, like vomit, a shitload of guns out of the mouth. Yeah, fires, guns out and go, go kill. Just do some killing, lads. Yeah. And honestly, like, first of all, this is one of a number of lines in the film which go insanely hard. And second of all, this is the moment where I realized, oh, we're like, we're up to something here. We've got themes. We might even have like multiple themes. This is really cool.

Halt! I am Zardos. Now listen to the rest of this episode. You're going to have to go to patreon.com slash cural James Bond. on slash curule James Bond. Oh, one word, and sign up today for five pounds a month.