Zachariah

Starring: Barry Melton, John Rubinstein Director: George Englund Original UK Premiere: 1970 Dvd Release: 8th April, 2002 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding

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Advertised in 1970 as the first electric Western, Zachariah is an endearingly pretentious effort that prefigures such genre oddities as Jodorowskys El Topo & Alex Coxs Straight to Hell. The story is the archetypal one about two friends who become gunslingers & must inevitably face off against each other in the finale, but its treated here as if it Meant Something Deeper, which means that after enjoying 75 minutes of violence we can all agree that peace & love & harmony is on the whole better for children & other living things. Curly haired farmboy Zachariah & eternally grinning apprentice blacksmith Matthew are the fast friends who run away from home to join up with a gang of outlaws known as the Crackers . These apparent 19th-century Westerners tote electric guitars & are given to staging free festival freak-outs at one end of town to distract from the bank robbery at the other. The boys soon hook up with Job Cain , an all-in-black master gunfighter who is also an ace drummer , but then drift apart as Zachariah has a liaison with Old West madame Belle Starr in a town that consists of fairground-style brightly painted wooden cut out buildings , then gets rid of his outrageous all-white cowboy outfit to settle down on a homestead & grow his own dope & vegetables. Matthew, of course, goes for the black leather look after outdrawing Cain, & comes a gunning for the only man who might be faster than him, but the hippie-era message is once these kids have killed everyone else they can still make peace with each other & the desert or something, man. Aside from a Beatle-haired teenage Johnson making a fool of himself by over-emoting to contrast with Rubinsteins non-performance, the film offers a lot of beautiful acid Western scenery & excellent prog rock & bluegrass music from the James Gang, White Lightnin & the New York Rock Ensemble. Comedy troupe the Firesign Theatre provided the script, which explains satirical touches like the horse-and-buggy salesman spieling like a used car dealer & the madames claim to have had affairs with gunslingers from Billy the Kid to Marshal McLuhan.

The DVD extras are skimpy, but the print quality is outstanding.

Barry The Fish Melton was the co-founder & original lead guitarist of Country Joe & The Fish. Barry appears on all the Country Joe & The Fish recordings & he also wrote some of the songs that the band recorded. He appeared in the films made at Monterey Pop & Woodstock & also appeared as an outlaw in the neo-Western film, Zacharia & other films in which Country Joe & the Fish appear. Melton is also a founding member of The Dinosaurs, the Bay Areas only psychedelic music supergroup. He has been a criminal defense lawyer for over 20 years & he currently serves as the Public Defender of Yolo County, California. Barry also continues to be active in music. In 2003 & 2004 he performed in Italy, England & France. Earlier he performed in Russia, playing with the Russian band, Crossroadz, in Moscow. He often appears with his own band, mainly around Northern California & generally tours Europe briefly in the summer. Peter Albin of Big Brother & The Holding Company has continued to play with Barry for over 35 years.

Editors Choice: Zachariah, View DVDology

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