I’m a big fan of The Golden Girls. Though I followed the series back in the 1980’s, I still enjoy watching episodes in syndication today and every so often I catch something I didn’t notice years ago. For instance, in the 1987 episode “Whose Face Is This Anyway?”, Rose (Betty White) mentions the 1974 Sean Connery science fiction film Zardoz.

In the episode, the vain Blanche (Rue McClanahan) attends her college sorority’s reunion thinking she’ll be the most beautiful one there. When she gets there, she feels that her natural beauty is nothing compared to the other women, who’ve all had plastic surgery. When she returns home, she tells her friends that when she got to the reunion, it was as if time stood still for 30 years and the other women looked like they’d hardly aged at all.

That’s when the airheaded Rose (played by Betty White) says these women sound a lot like the ones from the movie Zardoz. She asks Blanche, “Did any of them mention a leader named Zardoz?”

For those of you unfamiliar with Zardoz, it starred Sean Connery as a scantily-clad Exterminator, a member of a warrior class who worship a God head known as Zardoz on a futuristic post-apocalypse Earth. I’ll tell you right now, this move is horrible and basically unwatchable. Zardoz spews out teachings such as “… The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was…” So, not only is this an obscure reference for The Golden Girls to have to begin with, but to think that Rose actually sat through this movie is truly amusing.

Watch this Golden Girls episode here below. Click here to go to the exact moment that Rose talks about Zardoz (around 6 minutes 30 seconds into the video).

Video

Golden Girls: Rose talks about Zardoz (around 6 minutes 30 seconds into the video).

Zardoz Speaks: Check out Zardoz’s basic tenets, including the evils of the penis and much more!