Zachariah

There's a certain type of late 60s film that tries to communicate some kind of heavy psychedelic truth (El Topo, The Trip, 2001, World on a Wire).

And then there's the kind of late 60s film that's about irreverent psychedelic whimsy, nonsensically waving its freak flag high (Skidoo!, Head, Putney Swope, Brewster McCloud).

"Zachariah" aims to be both, and unfortunately fails at both. The whimsical parts seem to be based on the idea that combining rock music and the Old West is a hysterically funny idea. It isn't. The heavy parts reach for hippie cosmic-consciousness wisdom but come off very cliche.

A compelling narrative might make up for these two failures, but the acting and plot doesn't engage, either. (There is an implied homoerotic romance, but that's not developed enough to become interesting.) So the viewer is left holding the bag -- a horse feed-bag of dumb jokes, fake tripiness, and bad writing.

Oh I forgot -- the single redeeming element is Elvin Jones. Elvin freakin Jones, the greatest jazz drummer ever! And he's great! He should have been in more movies.

Siddhartha done as a Rock and Roll Comedy Western by two of the members of the Firesign Theatre - What's there not to love.

Even if you don't recognize the themes of self discovery based on Herman Hesse's classic story of the Buddha's early journey, this is still a fun movie featuring the classic American western outlaw story done as a send-up.

It's like a light hearted version of El Topo only it made me laugh where the other made me squirm - in a good way. This is not to say that the story is the same as either. It merely shares the same themes.

Particularly amusing are the scenes with Country Joe and the Fish as the bungling highwaymen. Louisiana Man Doug Kershaw as the lone fiddler in black and the James Gang's opening scene are breathtaking and funny at the same time. It reminds me of Hesse's line in Steppenwolf when Mozart laughs at the hero in his dream because he can't hear the music through the static on the radio. This music celebrates the joy of life that epitomized the counterculture rebellion against the darkness of the times.

Max Frisch, the Swiss author, defended an attack on the silence of the Swiss writers during the horrors of Nazi Germany by saying he wanted to set up against that all the other things that still can be called life. This movie was part of that movement -- forget superficial commercial ventures like Hair or JC Superstar or the Tommy movie -- this was the musical of the rock and roll generation as much as Rocky Horror was the musical of the Glam Rock generation. Only back then young people were just grateful to be alive and have any dreams at all. It's no wonder that the votes on this one has old farts like me rating it much higher than anyone else. I guess you had to be there back when these musicians couldn't even get radio airplay. I haven't seen this in nearly twenty years when it last played at one of the revival houses but it's one of the few movies whose scenes I can replay in my mind an laugh out loud. This is how we celebrated all those other things that we still called life.

Although I would no longer condone such practices, this film appears to have been made to also be enjoyable under the influence of the popular psychoactive alkaloids of the era.

I saw this movie when it first came out, and I must say that it never tried to appeal to everybody's taste, perhaps not even mine.

However, one thing that has stuck with me for more than a third of a century is that someone in the group of about a dozen people that I was with suggested that this was in large part a remake of Siddhartha, just transposed into an off-beat western. Ultimately, the whole group concurred in this assessment, including myself (I had just finished reading the work by Hess -- the year being 1971). I got the feeling it was an effort to concoct a cult classic that just didn't hit the mark. Still, the cast is very representative of a group that would make such an effort, while not taking itself too seriously. Not great art, but a great page from the scrapbook of a counterculture.

I've never seen this movie, but I had to jump in to the defense of the Firesign Theatre, and the popular misconception that they wrote this movie. In reading interviews with various members of the comedy team, the Firesign Theatre wrote *the first draft* of this movie which was meant to be a comedic adaptation of Sidhartha, set in the old west. Then what seems to have happened was that the studio executives assigned another writer to do a re-write (and probably tinkered a bit with the script themselves) and the final product bore only a passing similarity to the original script.

I do not think that the Firesign Theatre are in any way proud of this movie and don't mention it on their web-site.

Remember Easy Rider? Remember Beyond the Valley of the Dolls? Remember Fistful of Dollars? Now, put all those movies in a blender, hit frappe, and you'll get Zachariah. Once you get past the fact that they're playing electric guitars in 1880's, it's an enjoyable film.