 | |
List Price: $14.98 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 27825
Released: August 24, 2004 |
| Our Price: $5.99 |
| Used Price: $4.29 |
|
MPAA Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
Firepower meets flower power in this "outrageous western" (Motion Picture Herald) about two thrill-seeking cowboys who rock the range! Starring John Rubinstein, Don Johnson and Dick Van Patten, and featuring legendary musicians Country Joe and the Fish and White Lightnin', this psychedelic trip through the Wild West is an utterly "unique film experience" (Variety)! Two cowboys (Rubinstein and Johnson) set out for adventure and join up with a band of rock'n'roll outlaws. But as the two friends are seduced by their own quick-draw ambitions, a deadly rivalry grows betweenthem, and they must struggle to find a path to peacebefore they lose more than their reputations and kill more than their friendship!
Description of Zachariah:
Advertised in 1970 as "the first electric Western," Zachariah is an endearingly pretentious effort that prefigures such genre oddities as Jodorowsky's El Topo and Alex Cox's Straight to Hell. The story is the archetypal one about two friends who become gunslingers and must inevitably face off against each other in the finale. But it's treated here as if it meant something deeper, which means that after enjoying 75 minutes of violence we can all agree that peace and love and harmony is on the whole better for children and other living things. Curly haired farm boy Zachariah (John Rubinstein) and eternally grinning apprentice blacksmith Matthew (Don Johnson) are the fast friends who run away from home to join up with a gang of outlaws known as the Crackers (played by hippie folk-rock collective Country Joe and the Fish). These apparent 19th-century Westerners tote electric guitars and are given to staging free festival freak-outs at one end of town to distract from the bank robbery at the other. The boys soon hook up with Job Cain (Elvin Jones), an all-in-black master gunfighter who is also an ace drummer (his solo is impressive), but then drift apart as Zachariah has a liaison with Old West madam Belle Starr (Patricia Quinn) in a town that consists of fairground-style brightly painted wooden cut- out buildings (a gag reused in Blazing Saddles), then gets rid of his outrageous all-white cowboy outfit to settle down on a homestead and grow his own dope and vegetables. Matthew, of course, goes for the black-leather look after outdrawing Cain, and comes a-gunning for the only man who might be faster than he, but the hippie-era message is that once these kids have killed everyone else, they can still make peace with each other and the desert or something, man.
Aside from a Beatle-haired teenage Johnson making a fool of himself by overly emoting to contrast with Rubinstein's nonperformance, the film offers a lot of beautiful "acid Western" scenery and excellent prog rock and bluegrass music from the James Gang, White Lightnin', and the New York Rock Ensemble. Comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre (huge on album in 1970) provided the script, which explains satirical touches like the horse-and-buggy salesman (Dick Van Patten) spieling like a used car dealer and the madam's claim to have had affairs with gunslingers from Billy the Kid to Marshall McLuhan. --Kim Newman
Zachariah Reviews:
wow! 
2009-03-29 - Anyone who thinks CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, STAYING ALIVE and ZERO PATIENCE are the last word in homoerotic musicals is just a Bad Movie buff who has not seen the 1971 epic ZACHARIAH. Hollywood fired up this fat doobie of a rock-and-roll Western by hinting to the press that George Harrison would compose the score and "a younger Jack Nicholson" would star. When all that bogus smoke cleared, what emerged was a veritable stoner's crash pad of a movie that wobbles woozily from one hoot to another.
Set in a fever-delirious Old West that we suspect was dreamed up on way too much acid, Zachariah opens with lithe Jewish cowboy John Rubinstein galloping across the desert towards a mysterious, giant, 2001-esque slab. On closer inspection, the slab turns out to be a huge speaker for a rock group that just happens to be loitering about, ready to play the psychedelic opening number. The appropriate atmosphere now having been established, our hero Rubinstein soon opens a mail-order parcel containing his new gun, which he practices yanking again and again from his trousers before rushing to show it off to androgynously pretty local blacksmith Don Johnson, at whom he makes goo-goo eyes and cracks feeble jokes. After Rubinstein has let this fellow buckaroo fondle his shiny new pistol, Johnson bats his long lashes, whispers "Far out," and the guys chase each other around in a Love Story-style montage. Later, Rubinstein queries philosophically, "Which do you think it would be easier to shoot it out with, the sun or the moon?" Rubinstein answers his own koan all by himself. It's the moon, of course, because, "It's old and it's dead." Unlike, say, Hollywood.
The two boys ride off in tandem and join up with the outlaw gang the Crackers (played with mind-bending self-satisfaction by the rock group Country Joe and the Fish), who alternate stickups staged to the "William Tell Overture" with rock numbers dealing with such topics as what one might want from the cowboy life ("I want to wash in a bathtub of gold... I want 97 kilos already rolled").
Rubinstein earns a rep as a gunslinger, impressing reigning gunfighter Elvin Jones, who, after indulging in what feels like a 20-minute drum solo, is challenged by the newcomer to a quick-draw contest. All this competition makes our lads restless, however. When Rubinstein proposes that he and Johnson strike out on their own, he goes too far for even the most accommodating cowpoke: he tells Johnson, "I love you." This prompts Johnson to utter aloud the words that everybody's got to hear sometime: "You and me are not on the same trip."
When Johnson splits, Rubinstein decides to investigate sex with a woman. Enter Pat Quinn, for whom Rubinstein gets bathed by hippie hookers to the strains of sitar music and decks himself out in rhinestone cowboy drag fit for Liberace. Quinn responds with a bizarre go-go dance and beds Rubinstein, aping Mae West as she declares, "Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Lash LaRue, Bat Masterson--you're better than all of them!" Alas, Rubinstein doesn't feel the same way; he hightails it out of town to shack up with older man William Challee. When this duo isn't dancing together in the desert, the old codger is wowing Rubinstein with words of wisdom like "Hurry up and die, hurry up and die" -- which, of course, is what the film is doing.Back into Rubinstein's life struts Johnson, now sporting an earring with his rough-trade black outfit, and boasting, "I've got it together. I don't know if I'm the same, but I'm where I want to be and I'm on my way up!" He then announces that he, too, is through with women, whereupon he says to Rubinstein, "Strap on your gun."
When Rubinstein responds prissily that he has renounced violence, Johnson throws a hair-pulling, scenery-chewing hissy fit during which he blurts, "Zachariah, come back. I can't do it alone!" How will it all end, you ask? We don't want to spoil the finale for you, but if you've guessed that the lads hug meaningfully while riding side-by-side atop their matching steeds and then gallop off into the sunset, well, you're quick on the draw.
A western on something interesting .... 
2008-12-19 - 'Zachariah' was recommended by my lady to purchase. It's an unusual western, complete with early performances by John Rubinstein and Don Johnson!! It could be described as an 'acid western'; of course, certain drugs do appear being used. The other interesting element is music, with appearances by The James Gang and Country Joe and the Fish. A time capsule with a decent plot, peppered by unusual characters. Sit back and enjoy.
Just like Head
2008-06-01 - This film is a hoot and is a cult classic, much in the same vein as the Monkees' Head. It's camp, it's corny, yet at the same time poignant, with some stunning cinematography. I just want to know where I can get the soundtrack. Hmmm. I have the LP. I'll have to get someone to digitise it for me.
Jung at heart, but a little Freud at the edges.
2007-10-12 - If you enjoy action, suspense, drug use and pointless violence,
watch this DVD at the same time. The story of a young man wanted
for a crime he was too wasted to commit. A non-stop rollercoaster
ride that explodes from the screen, drinks all your beer, and makes
lewd suggestions to your life-partner. Color by Sandoz Laboratories.
With a gripping climactic scene, reputedly the inspiration for the
Sergio Leone classic: "I KEEL YOUR VEGGIE PATCH", other special
features include the fact that it is not "THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER",
and Alec Baldwin isn't in it. As your attorney, I advise you to
purchase this DVD. OK.
Classic Western Electric
2007-01-03 - A really cool film portrayal of Hess's Siddhartha.
Whatever happened to the New York Rock Ensmeble?
