Zardoz
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Omega Man
John Boorman Productions, 1974
Hairy Sean Connery in orange Speedo
for an hour-forty-five, & a flying godhead
spitting rifles: all I recall from the first time
I saw it. I was on hard dope then &
thought the director must have blown his budget
on cocaine. Sober now, I understand it better:
the irony of immortality as de Beauvoir
wrote about in All Men Are Mortal,
the wizardly chicanery with a nod to Emerald Oz.
Lots of innuendo, too, although most of the sex,
like everything else, is telepathic, tantric,
distinctly 1970s. Yet there goes Mr. Bond himself
resembling a grizzly tangled in a grocery bag:
purest antihero, negative protagonist.
I wonder if he was in on the joke or in it
like that chicken bounding forever
back & forth across the lonely road.
American International Pictures, et al., 1977
No one loves the animal in animals.
Who prefers their manic howl? Their lust?
More an impression that they understand us,
want what we do, mourn us when we’re lost,
as we for them. Seems to be the point:
we can’t excise the beast from bears,
tigers, swine, teach them religion, law,
a language that we share, then cuddle them
like puppies—believed to be in a bond with man,
though they, too, will eat their masters
if left too long in a locked home with a corpse.
Walter Seltzer Productions, 1971
What’s not said: he cared about his monsters
though he slaughtered as many as he could, &
they him in the end. Cultish, shadowy,
ominous—they stalked the night like Dracula,
but with Harker’s fright-white hair.
He loved them because it’s better
to be in the company of devils
than playing hide-&-go-seek alone:
when depression hits, the isolation anguish,
he might end it all if not for truth
that killing himself’s the same as genocide.
Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire, 2003). He is an ex-con, ex-husband, ex-reporter and completely exhausted by all the things he isn't anymore. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
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