Cowboy Rock [Zachariah (1971)]

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Dir. George Englund

USA

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It was this exact DVD, which is the first image for this review, that enticed me to Zachariah in a second hand DVD store, an odd looking spine in the Z section that lead to a fascinating cover, a brilliant one, and the promise of ‘the first and only Electric Western’ in the back cover blurb. The subversion of the Western, the archetype genre of American cinema, is an obvious concept to do. In American B-cinema itself it was subverted with films such as Johnny Guitar (1954). Many other countries, especially Italy, made their own, and numerous revivals and twists to the genre had been done up to the current decade. It seems obvious that, on the cusp of the Seventies when alternative culture was ripe for film, that something like Zachariah was made, combining rock music with the genre.

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When he acquires a gun, young Zachariah (John Rubinstein) in tow with his friend Matthew (Don Johnson) becomes a gunfighter, first encountering the incompetent but musically talented bandits The Crackers (the band Country Joe & The Fish) before continuing on in a journey of self discovery including notorious gunfighter Joe Cain (Elvin Jones) and dancer Belle Starr (Patricia Quinn). As they continue though, Zachariah and Matthew start to drift apart. With an opening image of a horseback rider travelling through a barren landscape, accompanied by an electric guitar riff, the film starts off swimmingly. A blasphemous juxtaposition to the traditional, John Ford-lead western yes, but with an awkward combination of full drum kits and guitars in a traditional frontier western setting, this is far from a conventional piece within the genre, trying to meld both sides together. It has the look of a traditional Western, closer to the classic American ones of the 1950s than something from the same decade it was made in like El Topo (1970), but with rock music and groupies of the period as well as the attitudes of this era. When Zachariah goes to a border town to Mexico, the film is almost about to hit its stride, its colourful, flat dimensional architecture for the outdoor and interior scenes gingerly toddling towards a Ken Russell film but with less confidence and a lower budget.

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The film has the materials to be great, Rubinstein and Johnson generally likeable in their roles, while the late drummer for jazz musician John Coltrane Elvin Jones makes a formidable gunfighter who gets a chance to show his impressive skill with a drum kit as well in one scene. There is a great choice of music and musical acts scoring the film that push the film over to a musical as well as a western even if no one suddenly bursts into song mid-dialogue. Only an attempt to combine Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture with rock guitars fails, potentially kitsch in its most awful form, but something that could have been impressive if it wasn’t half heartedly attempted when scored over an attempted wagon robbery. The film sadly though feels incredibly convoluted, undermining its potential to be good. It is clear it is supposed to promote the bands and musicians involved – also including The James Gang and The New York Rock Experience – but the film comes to a screeching halt at many points when the musical numbers are played. The story itself goes in unnecessary and completely pointless directions, such as Patricia Quinn’s entire contribution to the film, and the true plotline of the film, of Zachariah and Matthew’s relationship being tested by the chance that one of them will shoot the other dead, is killed by a New Age message introduced in the last act that, while attempted in a subtle way, feels undercooked. Even the potential gay subtext to Zachariah and Matthew’s relationship, which would have been a great flourish for the film, is inadequately dealt with because of the pointless tangents. Sadly it is also another potentially great genre film failed by its director not allowing the locations around the characters to breath and flex on camera; baring some good moments, including those moments when it is about to become a Ken Russell made western, the closed-in use of the camera, fixed on the actors baring an occasionally establishing shot, kills the sense of grandeur an ‘Electric Western’ could have used to its advantage. This is worse when you consider how landscape and its character is one of the most significant aspects of the western genre.

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There is a sense that, sadly, the cover and tagline promised a film that Zachariah is not, although this is probably what producer-director George Englund thought the words ‘Electric Western’ conjured. With a tagline like ‘A head of his time’ however, you are expecting a psychedelic western in what those two words mean. Zachariah could have been good on its own terms regardless of this, but excluding the music, it feels far too mellow for a film which combines two things, rock music and the western, that could be perfect fellows for their hardened, world weary tones and complete lack of compromise.

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