Russel Nash appears to be a successful antiques dealer in New York in 1985. But when Brenda Wyatt, a forensics expert with the police, begins to investigate his possible role in a series of beheadings across the city, she uncovers the unbelievable possibility that Nash is in fact Connor MacLeod, a Scottish man nearly 470 years old. Even more astonishingly, he isn’t the only immortal man walking the streets of New York…
Highlander was moderately unsuccessful upon its first release in 1986. Directed by Russel Mulcahy from a story by Gregory Widen, it quickly achieved a sort of cult status. It was followed up with four sequels, none of which are very good.
There was also a TV series that was hugely successful and acclaimed before it limped to a halt, having spawned a very ordinary spin-off series of its own. Some years later we got a short-lived animated series. Interestingly, the tagline for the first movie – “There can be only one!” – appears to have been regarded by subsequent production teams as more of a challenge than a mission statement.
Highlander was initially scripted by Widen while he was in film school in the 1970s. He got the idea watching Ridley Scott’s debut movie The Duelists, about two men who duel each other across early 19th Century France. And before you start to complain about there being no more originality in storytelling today, The Duelists itself was based on a short story by Joseph Conrad called “The Duel.” Conrad himself got the idea from an article in Harper’s Magazine about two French officers who maintained a dueling feud across two decades. That feud started because one of the officers, Pierre Dupont de l’Étang delivered a message to another officer, François Fournier-Sarlovèze, that was received poorly. I have not been able to find out what was in the message.
Anyway, Widen sold his script (initially titled Shadow Clan) for $200 000 and watched as it lingered in preproduction for several years. If you ever get a chance to read it, you probably should: it differs quite dramatically from the finished product, but it tells a quite interesting story of its own. The essential gist of the story is there but in a dramatically different shape.
In Widen’s original story, for instance, Connor has a family that he has accumulated across his lengthy life (in the film, the immortals cannot have children). However, those children are all mortal. When two immortals meet in the original script, the combatants feel a sensation that alerts them to the presence of the other. When they slay one another, there is no light show showing the release of energy, unlike the film which presents the decapitations with a surprising lack of gore but with a tremendous amount of reasonably competent special effects. Finally, the film details the quest of immortals to survive until there is only one of them left – who receives something known as The Prize (which will grant them dominion over the Earth); Widen’s draft indicates that what we are seeing is just another episode in the life of Connor MacLeod, with no further meaning to it. Honestly, I enjoyed the original draft, but it would have made a better novel – or television series – than a film. The additions that the film makes heighten the tension and reinforce that MacLeod is pretty much on his own for this conflict.
At any rate, the script was hammered into something acceptable for film by Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson before being handed off to Russell Mulcahy to film. Mulcahy is an Australian director, best-known for producing music videos for the likes of Elton John, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones and Duran Duran (although I believe his clip for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” is his masterpiece). He directed his first movie in 1984, the creature feature Razorback. It’s not a very good film but it does have some striking visuals that make it far more interesting than it initially appears (the novel it’s based on is a half-decent read, too).
Mulcahy initially considered Kurt Russell and Mickey Rourke to play the part of Connor MacLeod, but when he saw some photos of Christopher Lambert from his most recent movie (Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan, Lord Of The Apes), he quickly decided upon him. Lambert prepared for the film by training with the legendary Bob Anderson (swordmaster for nearly every movie with duels in it from the second half of the twentieth century). The final cast included Sean Connery as MacLeod’s mentor Ramirez, Clancy Brown as The Kurgan (the villain of the story), and Roxanne Hart as Brenda Wyatt, the scientist who uncovers MacLeod’s secret. Filming was conducted in New York, Scotland and London.
The film received a mixed reception upon release: general praise was heaped upon the cinematography, fight sequences and the general atmosphere, while there was some praise for the acting of Connery and Brown. I recall reading at least two reviews that warned audiences going in that the story was baffling and complicated. It really isn’t: it tells two stories chronologically – one in the past, one in the present – and unites them in a thematically pleasant manner.
While it was a disappointment at the box office, the word of mouth was solid, and it did good business on home video (I had a copy of it) so a sequel was soon greenlit.
It was a mess.
Set in “the future”, Connor, aging like a normal human, gets into a fight with some henchman who has travelled from the planet Zeist on the orders of Michael Ironside, playing the main villain. This restores Connor’s immortality… he then has to save the world from… something… and he gets into another fight… and then another one. Somehow, Ramirez is resurrected to help him out as well. And there are some stunts. It is a terrible film in which the early reveal that the immortals are all aliens that have been exiled from their home planet is far from the worst creative decision made by the production crew.
Look, at the time of its release I read a review in a magazine that said, “Highlander II sees Russell Mulcahy go from ‘promising’ to ‘has-been’ without ever passing through ‘success’.”
However, having read that – and several other deeply unflattering reviews – I still paid money to watch it in a cinema. Enough people were also encouraged by its existence to put together what is known as the “Renegade” cut so that it makes more sense, but I just haven’t had the energy to watch that: once bitten, etc.
I also rented the third movie when it came out on video, and watched the TV series whenever I could find an episode. The TV series followed the adventures of Connor’s cousin, Duncan MacLeod. It was hugely entertaining (in the early seasons, at least) and treated the subject matter quite seriously, exploring a lot of themes and ideas that the movies didn’t have time for. It was also, for a time, the most violent show on television.
So I was optimistic about the fourth movie, which welded the TV and film series’ continuities together… until I watched it. I turned the fifth movie off after fifteen minutes.
I have not seen the animated series, nor have I read the comics, or the novels based upon the TV show.
But I did read the novelisation of the first film. And I have the soundtrack albums for it, as well.
They are wonderful things. Michael Kamen’s stirring music adds so much value to the scenes they are scored for, but it’s the songs by Queen that everyone remembers and which, arguably, made the film the ultimate success that it has become. The album that the songs feature on, A Kind Of Magic, isn’t an official soundtrack (it also features “One Vision” from the movie Iron Eagles). From the opening title, “Princes Of The Universe”, (later used as the theme for the TV series) to the haunting “Who Wants To Live Forever?” through to the closing track “A Kind Of Magic”, it is a delight from start to finish. The only thing lacking from it is a recording of Freddie Mercury singing “New York, New York” which has become a musical white whale of mine.
But let’s go back to the movie.
When I saw it on video, I absolutely loved it. It looked amazing, the story was smart, the characters were intriguing, and it was of a much higher quality than a lot of genre films that we got at the time. My only major issue was probably with some of the acting and direction. Lambert’s accent is all over the place throughout the movie. You can excuse that in the modern-day sections of the film as he’s a guy who has lived a long time in, as he says, “lots of places,” but his accent in the early parts is inconsistent. Other actors come off somewhat better, but the direction of some scenes is wooden and stagy: the otherwise wonderful scene on the construction site where Brenda becomes embroiled in The Game features a clunky piece of direction that involves an awkward moment where the Kurgan is chasing MacLeod and Brenda while they are in his reach; the scene in the church between MacLeod and the Kurgan is ruined by the priest coming to remonstrate with the two after standing in the background clearly waiting for his cue.
These are pretty minor faults, though, frankly, and can be largely laid at the door of a director working on only his second feature and who hadn’t had a lot of experience working with actors and who is also working to a strict schedule in a public place. There are other moments that look amazing for a film of its budget and there are some amazingly edited shots and transitions between scenes that are still effective now.
But what I really love about Highlander is its heart: For all that The Prize marks how the future of the world is going to play out, the story is really about one man being forced back into a conflict he’s quite happy to stay out of.
It’s also a surprisingly modern film. The cast features three major female characters, two of whom (Connor’s first wife, Heather, and his adopted daughter Rachel) are defined in the film by their relationship to MacLeod, but who do have personalities of their own. Brenda, the third, is a capable professional in her field and is even deferred to and respected by Moran, her superior officer on the beheading case. And when Bedsoe, another cop who works with her, speaks with or about her in a way that indicates his attraction to her, the performance, camera and direction do not treat him kindly.
The New York that the characters live in is also remarkably diverse: Moran finds himself teased by a West Indian newspaper seller who he treats with politeness; we also meet Kastagir, a fellow immortal with whom MacLeod has reached an “arrangement” in regard to The Game. The scene where he and MacLeod meet on the bridge in Central Park feels as though it could have come from a film made in more recent years rather than four decades ago. Kastagir does not survive the movie, but he manages to beat a particularly tired movie cliché by not being the first to die.
It’s also a rather chaste film by 1980s standards. There isn’t a single swear word in there that would have had me glancing nervously at my parents during its running time, while a sex scene that comes across as quite explicit and graphic for the time is filmed largely in shadow so that you can barely make out anything that would cause you to wear out the freeze-frame on your VCR (or have you glancing nervously at your parents).
These are what make the film essentially rather timeless (as well as modern). Despite the year being name-dropped early on, the modern-day characters do not dress or speak in a way that screams the decade it was made in in the same way that other films from the same period do (although there are some hairdressing decisions that could only have come from the 1980s).
And these virtues come across in the aforementioned novelization of the film. Written by Garry Kilworth under the pseudonym Garry Douglas, it follows the movie quite faithfully. But it is a superb example of that often-derided form of literature. Kilworth gives quite a lot of detail to the characters and settings, which adds to the epic feel of the story. We learn more about MacLeod and the Kurgan’s histories, as well as that of other characters (Kastagir probably features the most heavily in those scenes that don’t involve the four leads) and it makes you feel as though you have been dropped into a proper novel rather than something that has been slapped together for a movie.
I don’t think I would be lying if I said that I am more of a fan of the film because of the novelization than through the film itself. Kilworth leads you through the scenes of the film quite effortlessly, adding details where necessary and treating the story with as much seriousness as if he were writing one of his own novels. I was a keen reader of movie novelizations at the time, and I’ve always held this one in very high regard. As I said above, they are regarded as a disposable form of literature in some circles but before the advent of affordable home video and streaming services, they were a reminder of a fondly remembered film.
And like a lot of genre films of the time, it is quite highly regarded now, almost forty years after its release. In a time when genre films have taken over the media landscape, Highlander is a reminder of a time when movies like this were made with a much smaller budget and with lower expectations, but with an incredible amount of enthusiasm. Given the number of sequels and spin-offs it has generated, it’s clear that it has a devoted fanbase that would rival many other more successful franchises regardless of the poor overall reception of these projects. And from the buzz around the recent announcement that Henry Cavill has been attached to a reboot, it seems that we will continue to hope that there won’t be “only one.”
You can find out more about Highlander at: https://www.highlanderworldwide.com/
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