There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, it’s hard to subvert old tropes, even if you have a good beat that you can dance to…
Zachariah (1971)
Distributed by: Cinerama Releasing
Directed by: George Englund
By the late-1960s or so, the West wasn’t all that golden anymore.
Years after seeing Westerns on the big screen in such works as Stagecoach, The Searchers, Shane, and How the West Was Won, and supported on the small one in Gunsmoke and Bonanza, there was a different vibe in what was coming out. Works from Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah were finding audiences, and even lighter fare like Support Your Local Sherriff! were making the rounds.
During that time, DC’s predecessor National Publications had a Western comic hero, Bat Lash, a gambler and fast talker who would try and talk his way out of a mess before he needed to draw his guns. On every early cover he appeared on, the same legend would show up: “Will he save the West… or ruin it?”
Which we could probably ask of the characters in this film:
Under the opening credits of this Western fantasy (and really, you could make the case that all Westerns are fantasies…), we watch a lone rider heading out over the sagebrush. It’s our titular character, Zachariah (John Rubenstein), whom we ultimately get to see more of as the camera closes in on him while at times cutting to a performance by the band the James Gang:
Having received his Colt .44 pistol via mail order, he rides into town to show it off to his best friend, the blacksmith Matthew (Don Johnson). They go off together to practice using the gun, deciding that they should leave behind their small town lives and become gunslingers, together.
Soon after they make plans to do that, into town ride a Wild West gang, the Crackers, played by Country Joe and the Fish. Unlike a lot of desperados in Westerns, the main way they cause trouble when they ride into town is to begin a jam:
The encounter with the bar patron (Lawrence Kubik, the film’s co-producer in his only on-screen credit) gets uglier when he calls Zachariah and Matthew gay. This leads to Zachariah’s first gunfight, which he wins, though Zachariah don’t feel right having gone done it.
The first big step Zachariah and Matthew commit to together is joining with the Crackers. The life of an outlaw out on the range can be desperate, especially as the Crackers are some of the ineptest sidewinders west of the Mississippi; we watch as the reward listed on their ‘Wanted’ posters actually declines during a montage showing their crime spree.
Their one big success comes when Zachariah and Matthew convince the Crackers to perform a free show on one side of town to draw out a crows while they rob the bank clear over on the other side. The plan’s a success, but the Crackers don’t much seem able to learn nothing from it.
Looking to get more drink, Zachariah runs into a fiddler (Doug Kershaw, whose only other theatrical appearance was in the Western Days of Heaven), with wild eyes and a knowing air of destiny about him. He sings to Zachariah to convince him not to go to Apache Flats where Job Cain, a gunslinger with a rep, is holed up, right ready to be challenged by anyone coming on by.
He tells Matthew about his encounter, and despite some of Matthew’s misgivings, they both head on over to Cain’s place, a dark saloon party space where the James Gang jams (this time in period appropriate costumes). While there, Cain (jazz drummer Elvin Jones) fends off a man gunning for him, and winds down after the encounter with a two-minute drum solo:
When Zachariah and Matthew try to join Cain’s gang, the two are given a test: to draw against each other to see who’s faster. Zachariah has an epiphany: if he keeps following this path, he will some day have to kill Matthew. At that moment, he gives up wanting to join with Cain, but Matthew stays in Apache Flats and ingratiates himself with his new boss.
Feeling empty inside, Zachariah finds out in the desert an old man (William Challee) who takes him in so long as he leaves his gun outside. He spends some time with him before checking out El Camino to see if what he’s looking for to fill the empty spaces can be found in the arms of Belle Starr (Pat Quinn), the soiled dove that prefers the company of gunslingers.
While Zachariah and Belle are making love as the band the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble are playing in the bedroom with them, Cain decides to visit Belle himself, and leaves Matthew to manage Apache Flats till he comes back. By this point, we see Zachariah wanting to abandon his goal of being a feared gunslinger, while Matthew is embracing it.
Can the two of them have one final encounter, where Zachariah’s epiphany doesn’t come to pass…?
It might be slightly spoilery to point out that the film is based for the most part on Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, although the screenplay does put a lot of distance between itself and its sources. Joe Massot, who worked on the screenplay, claims he got the idea for the film after going to Rishikesh at the time John Lennon and George Harrison were having a “meditation duel” to see who could do it better. (Massot got invited through working with Harrison on Wonderwall.)
During pre-pro, the script was considered for Apple Films, the Beatles’ film production office, but ultimately got dropped as Apple started to studder as the band disintegrated. Before that point, the film was envisaged as being a vehicle for Bob Dylan to take the title role, with the Band playing the Crackers and Ginger Baker as Job Cain. (Ironically, the film El Topo, which is the closest film out there similar to Zachariah, gets produced by Beatles’ manager Alan Klein, and would premiere one month earlier).
Jacket for Firesign Theatre’s second album, released in 1969
The script got shopped around and was ultimately picked up by ABC Films, who decided that it needed to be funnier. To that end, the members of Firesign Theatre were brought in to punch it up. And there are a few bits in the final film where you can find the troupe’s signature humor, despite Englund’s radical re-writes during shooting. There are just gaps in the story as you watch it where it feels like there should have been more to them, but were just left there unfinished.
Amazingly, while Englund didn’t care for any obvious subversive jokes, he kept in the implied relationship between Zachariah and Matthew, one that suggested that they were far more than just friends. It comes in most every scene Rubenstein and Johnson share, especially through Johnson, who does most of the heavy lifting on screen with his character. This was picked up by many critics and audience members at the time, giving us a strong gay relationship in a Western thirty-five years before Brokeback Mountain.
The end result, a fantasy where current rock bands dot the Wild West and them old tales they spun ain’t here for any of this, is an uneven film. What it lacks in polish and plot it compensates for by having an interesting soundtrack hanging on an effort to upend the Western. Coming a few years too late to be associated with A Fistful of Dollars and too soon before Blazing Saddles, the movie just sits there, not quite able to give us anything to grab no matter how hard it tries.
If you go checking this out, you won’t find much gold in them thar hills…
