John Boorman, the man who directed "Deliverance" which included a scene of male rape, has made another controversial film. It is called "Zardoz" and is set in a "technological commune" in the 23rd century by which time an intellectual elite is ruling the earth.

To control the masses, the elite foster a new religion embodied in the god Zardoz, a huge stone head that flies by means of gravitational power. It brings terror to the ignorant masses in a world dying from pollution and lack of resources, commands their obedience and is used, according to Boorman, "as a means of repression and exploitation."

Boorman made his film in the summer of '73 in the devoutly Catholic Irish Republic with the sanction of the Irish authorities. He denies it is an attack on the Catholic Church or that it is irreligious.

"I am not a Catholic but I was brought up by Jesuits," he says:"I have always had a nostalgia for the rituals and ceremonies of the Church and I would rather spend all evening with a good Jesuit priest than with any atheist I know. But it's a fact that religion has been used at times as an instrument of repression and my film overtly says so. Yet it's a film about man's search for meaning, it's about life, death and rebirth, and it's about the need we all have for one another. I don't think you can be irreligious about subjects like that."

"Zardoz," which stars Sean Connery, is released by 20th Century-Fox. It premieres ...... at the ....... Theatre.