Mindless Entertainment

One should never underestimate the therapeutic powers of mindless entertainment. I had caught the flu over two ago and it is still with me. I believe I'm on the mend because I'm no longer coughing up gobs of phlegm that look like florescent green chunks of chicken fat. I'm just starting to eat, drink and sleep normally though I have a persistent earworm of KISS singing It's Cold Gin Time Again. The thought of gin right now is enough to make me nauseous.

So bring on the mindless entertainment. Something that passes the time but doesn't tax the audience with a complicated plot or meaningful subject. Now when it comes to empty vacant mind calories nothing beats the schlock value of pretentiously bad science fiction. The 1974 movie Zardoz is the king of the heap.

This was Sean Connery first starring role after he left the James Bond franchise. As a testimony of how good an actor Sean was, his career survived the fallout from this Golden Turkey. But every good to great actor has at least one Golden Turkey hidden in their past. One of those "I can't believe they did that" moments was when John Wayne played the role of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956).

I will not give any spoilers to Zardoz. Though I will mention it does have the right blend of laughably bad campiness mixed in with enough sex and violence to elevate the dopamine levels. I am surprised this movie does not have a cult following.

I found this one still photo from Zardoz. The actress's name is Jessica Swift and her character was Apathetic -and if you look real close at her hair are those "cinnamon buns", you know the Princess Leia hairstyle that George Lucus is going to make famous several years off in the future?  Maybe Zardoz is more influential than I first thought.

Now that I'm thinking of Star Wars, another film I can recommend for passive consumption is Disney's recent venture into classic science fiction - John Carter Of Mars. It was in and out of the movie theaters faster than corn through a goose. That would make you think it's a really bad film -but it's not. It's not a good film either and you see where Disney made all kinds of mistakes in the production and marketing of what was a famous and popular series of novels from a century ago.

This is all connected now because Disney owns the Star Wars franchise. Some of the Star Wars purist are talking about an untimely death of a galaxy far, far away. But John Cater Of Mars is very entertaining under the influence of over the counter medications.


Of course I'm sure you have your favorite  camp classics of science fiction. Hopefully later this week I will be working with Ash - a  cafe owner and Chad Repko -a local entertainer. They are starting a film club. These days it's pretty easy to rent or download what where once hard to find or forgotten movies. You can stay at home and watch digital copies on the kind of big screen TVs that Ray Bradbury wrote about in Fahrenheit 451.

You can have the movie experience at home but doesn't it feel kind of empty if you're alone? The idea of a film club or any club is to get together with other people and have a shared experience. These days we have Netflix giving us film suggestions instead of our friends.


Well, I'm always looking to hear back from the people who read these posts. If you have any suggestions on what you would like to watch if you were in a film club -feel free to contact me. Or if you are a member of a film club and want to talk about it -you know where to reach me.