Zardoz (1974)

Zardoz is a 1974 Irish-American science fantasy film written, produced, and directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, and featuring Sara Kestelman. The film, Connery's second post-James Bond role—after The Offence—was shot by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on a budget of US$1.57 million as it depicts a future world where a stone image called "Zardoz" instructs the "Brutals" to kill each other for eternal life.

The film received mixed-to-negative reviews. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it a "genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful Deliverance." Jay Cocks of Time called the film "visually bounteous", with "bright intervals of self-deprecatory humor that lighten the occasional pomposity of the material." Nora Sayre, in a 7 February 1974 review for The New York Times, called Zardoz a melodrama that is a "good deal less effective than its special visual effects"... a film "more confusing than exciting even with a frenetic, shoot-em-up climax." Decades later, Channel 4 called it "Boorman's finest film" and a "wonderfully eccentric and visually exciting sci-fi quest" that "deserves reappraisal".[4] Despite being a commercial failure and mostly panned by critics, Zardoz has since developed a cult following and found success on the home video market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zardoz#/