Enjoyed your discussion of Zardoz, and I was amused when Flesh Gordon was mentioned. I thought I’d add a couple of little details about that unusual film. It began life, it seems, as hardcore porn, but during production, when it was discovered how good the special effects were turning out, the budget went up and the sex was toned down. These FX were by Jim Danforth and David Allen (probably best known for their work on Hammer’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) and Greg Jein (who has worked on Dark Star and various Star Trek movies). Not only was it nominated for a Hugo (that was news to me, I must say), but it would have been up for an Oscar, too — for Visual FX. The only problem was, there weren’t any other worthy competitors that year.

Anyway, the FX are indeed very good, especially the Ymir-like monster who shows up at the end. Just to make things better, this beast is voiced by Craig T. Nelson. You can find this sequence on YouTube. It’s probably not what you’re expecting. But then, that shouldn’t be too surprising in a movie that features such dialogue as, “You can wear this dress. It was my mother’s. She was buried in it.”

121. Zardoz — A Torture Cinema “Adventure”

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Sean Connery in a super special mansuit! Julia Rios and Keffy join us to talk about this 1974 science fiction wonder-child. If the cover doesn’t tell you all you need to know about Zardoz, then you’ll just have to listen for our in-depth, slightly raunchy, slightly wrong analysis.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

(FYI: Some of the audio isn’t as strong as I would like. Hopefully it doesn’t hurt the episode too much.)

Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show!

Here’s the episode (show notes are below):

Episode 121 — Download (MP3)

Intro and Discussion (0:00 – 1:36:22)

You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible. Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone.

Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3 .0).

That’s all, folks! Thanks for listening. See you next week.

bad, bad cinema, cinema, discussion, genre, Genre Fiction, improv, Interview, movie reviews, Movies, mst3k, podcast, Science Fiction, Sean Connery, torture, Zardoz

Skiffy Fanty

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0 Responses

davidannandale says:

December 14, 2012 at 2:35 am

Enjoyed your discussion of Zardoz, and I was amused when Flesh Gordon was mentioned. I thought I’d add a couple of little details about that unusual film. It began life, it seems, as hardcore porn, but during production, when it was discovered how good the special effects were turning out, the budget went up and the sex was toned down. These FX were by Jim Danforth and David Allen (probably best known for their work on Hammer’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) and Greg Jein (who has worked on Dark Star and various Star Trek movies). Not only was it nominated for a Hugo (that was news to me, I must say), but it would have been up for an Oscar, too — for Visual FX. The only problem was, there weren’t any other worthy competitors that year.

Anyway, the FX are indeed very good, especially the Ymir-like monster who shows up at the end. Just to make things better, this beast is voiced by Craig T. Nelson. You can find this sequence on YouTube. It’s probably not what you’re expecting. But then, that shouldn’t be too surprising in a movie that features such dialogue as, “You can wear this dress. It was my mother’s. She was buried in it.”
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