Zachariah

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.

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.

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.

Oh, how I love late 60s/early 70s Hollywood! When the studios figured to capture the turned on youth market, but had NO CLUE what was really going on! Great era when almost anything could be passed off as psychedelic, and weirdos like the Firesign Theatre could co-write a movie and GET IT MADE. Grooovy!

'Zachariah' is a unique, rock'n'roll western, which is so lame brained and misguided it turns out to be one of the most entertaining movies of the period. Just check out the cast! Pretty boy Don Johnson, TVs John Rubenstein, Country Joe and The Fish, and DICK VAN PATTEN! Add to that a Who-inspired James Gang (with a young, clean shaven Joe Walsh) and Coltrane's legendary drummer Elvin Jones, and you've got a truly, er, UNIQUE proposition!

Make a great double-bill with 'Tommy'!

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.