Highlander
Throwback Tuesday takes us back 40 years to the days when movie stars attempted to behead each other for a prize. When I think over the Highlander franchise I'll admit I have more of an appreciation for the TV series that came after the movies which allowed time and space to delve into the long lives of the immortals who swordfight to the death before beheading each other to elaborate pyrotechnic performances and blasts of music from Queen.
Released in 1986, with a definitive beginning and end (which would become immediately problematic starting with the first sequel), Gregory Widen's tale introduced us to an immortal born in the Scottish Highlands in 1536 who has survived to the 1980s to battle the last of the immortals to the death. The original Highlander doesn't have the strongest sword fighting sequences or the best special effects (although the final Quickening, the electrical-caused explosion following a kill, is certainly one of the better staged moments), but it does offer fun B-movie vibes contrasting the beauty of the Scottish Highlands with the grunge of 80s New York City.
Nearly half of the small cast are love interests for our Highlander, Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert). Celia Imrie is his original woman (who led the mob to shun him from the village after his impossible resurrection). We also get Beatie Edney as his wife and great love of his life, and Roxanne Hart as a forensic weapon expert interested in both the man and the weapon he used to cut off the head of another immortal in the Madison Square Garden parking garage.
The other characters of note, other than the thinly-written cops interested in him as a possible murder suspect, are Sean Connery as a friend and fellow immortal who helped train Connor for the Gathering and Clancy Brown as the most evil among them, slaughtering the field until only he and MacLeod remain. There's no doubt to where the film is headed, but there is some fun in getting there.
Set to to pretty good soundtrack by Queen, the film leads up to the eventual showdown between the final two immortals and a "prize" which will later be thrown out for its sequels and later TV reboot. Of the films, Highlander is easily the best (although I have some B-movie guilt pleasure fondness for the second and fourth films). The original had fun with the rather brutal concept of men beheading each other in alleyways and rundown factories by injecting some bombastic effects and unexpected humor into the story (most notably MacLeod's duel on Boston Common and his suggestion to the cops on how the victim in the parking garage ended up without a head).
Highlander had mixed success both at the box office and with the critics, although it quickly found an audience on home video who enjoyed the absurd over-the-top action and humor eventually leading to a problematic sequel in 1991 reimaging the immortals as aliens (which would later be retconned in the director-cut of the film and completely ignored in its further sequels). Reboot attempts have ended up in development hell for the better part of two decades, but it appears we may finally be getting one in the near future with the likes of Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista. Karen Gillan, and Henry Cavill as MacLeod. If true, it appears we haven't seen our last Quickening after all.
- Title: Highlander
- IMDb: link
