Zachariah (film)

Production

The film is loosely based on Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha, surrealistically adapted as a musical Western by Joe Massot and the members of The Firesign Theatre comedy troupe. Massot said his inspiration came from when he joined the Beatles in India, when they were studying Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in early 1968. Massot said he arrived to find only George Harrison and John Lennon there, after their bandmates had left the course early, and the two Beatles "locked into some sort of meditation duel … to see who was the stronger character".

Massot initially asked Harrison to provide the film's soundtrack, following his work on Wonderwall, which Massot directed. According to Levon Helm of The Band, Harrison discussed making Zachariah as an Apple Films project starring Bob Dylan and The Band, in late 1968. The following April, Rolling Stone announced that Cream's drummer Ginger Baker and The Band were to be major players in the film.

This film was billed as "The first electric Western". It features appearances and music supplied by rock bands from the 1970s, including the James Gang and Country Joe and the Fish as "The Cracker Band". Fiddler Doug Kershaw has a musical cameo as does Elvin Jones as a gunslinging drummer named Job Cain.

Soundtrack

The Minneapolis group White Lightnin' performs their rock and roll version of the William Tell Overture on the soundtrack and the New York Rock & Roll Ensemble perform Grave Digger. The soundtrack features songs by the James Gang, Joe Walsh, and Country Joe and the Fish.

The soundtrack album was released as a vinyl LP by Probe Records, a subsidiary label owned by ABC Records.

Reception

Don Johnson later said in a 2014 interview with The A.V. Club "I was sort of the Govinda character."

Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote in a review of the film "It is, at least in my experience, the first movie to parody the Western with the apparent intention of propagandizing homosexual love. I am aware that male relationships are a stock in trade of most Westerns and that, in Andy Warhol's brilliant "Lonesome Cowboys," there has already been a homosexual parody."

The film recorded a loss of $1,435,000.

DVD

Zachariah was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on August 24, 2004 as a Region 1 widescreen DVD.