I’ve seen some weird stuff in my day as a film critic, but Zachariah takes the cake. The first and — thank the gods — only “electric western” ever made, this is kind of like Help! in the Old West, only not good, not funny, and featuring bands you’ve never heard of, rocking the tumbleweeds and pebbles out in the middle of the desert.
When gunslinger wannabe Zachariah (John Rubinstein) finally receives his mail-order gun, he can’t wait to show it off to a friend, a slender, very pretty bottle blond with a shag ’do. After you recover from the shock of realizing that the friend is Don Johnson, Zachariah and Matthew (Johnson) ride off to look for trouble, Zach with his white-boy ’fro and his shirt in that particularly hideous shade of burnt orange that I believe was banned by a special session of the Geneva Convention in 1975, and Matt looking like Mark Hamill in Corvette Summer.
The gun — which Matt proclaims “faaaarrrrr out” — immediately makes Zachariah a murderer when he defends the honor of the famous robbery gang–cum–rock band The Crackers (Country Joe and the Fish) from an old coot who grumbles, “Ya call that music?” It’s a peacenik hippie’s secret wish: to keep The Man from hasslin’ The Kids once and for all, via superior firepower.
It’s The Quick and the Deadheads! Zach and Matt join up with The Crackers, hoping for some action. They rob Pony Express offices and banks and groove to some happenin’ tunes, man, like campfire songs about reefer and cattle ranches in Beverly Hills. “High” Noon, indeed. But when the boys meet up with legendary gunslinger and drummer Job Cain (Elvin Jones) — a big bad black dude in a silver lamé vest and no shirt — these two friends find themselves torn in different directions. Matt goes over to Cain’s dark side, and Zach ends up hanging out with a creepy, Yoda-esque old man, called The Old Man (William Challee), who feeds Zach dinner for no discernible reason.
Not quite a hero’s journey, Zachariah is more like a hero’s trip. It probably helps to be stoned while watching this — I’m sure there’s some deep meaning here that I’m missing in my geeky squareness. Surely, that interlude in which Zach gets it on with hooker Belle Starr (Pat Quinn), in which the band serenading them gets naked, too (ewwww), isn’t meant to be quite so disturbing, right?
Did I say Zachariah wasn’t funny? Strike that: this flick is hilarious, if you’re of a Mystery Science Theater bent. Co-written by the band of lunatics who called themselves The Firesign Theater, you’d expect the film to be funny of its own accord, but it’s much more enjoyable if you supply your own snarky running commentary. In fact, how can one resist talking back to a movie in which half-naked girls with helmet hair dance in cages in the middle of a dusty main street of an Old West town?
This review originally appeared at the now-defunct Apollo Guide.
