LAMBERTATHON:

HiGHLANDER

john cribbs

Christopher Lambert first appeared on the big screen swinging into audiences' hearts as Tarzan, lord of the apes. Since then he has enjoyed a successful 25-year career as an actor, producer and occasional thunder god. Although he counts himself among the star's many fans, Lambertathon mastermind John Cribbs has actually only seen a handful of Lambert's more popular movies (the Highlanders, basically) and therefore made the questionable decision to embark on the ambitious and possibly pointless task of seeing all the French-American's films from Greystoke on. That's over forty films, but John isn't sweating it. It's time for a new kind of magic. Nothing in the world has prepared you for this. John is building a fortress for the ultimate takeover... of your mind! This is his own personal... LAMBERTATHON.

HiGHLANDER

russell mulcahy, 1986.

I've been hesitant to tackle Highlander for our decades-spanning Lambertathon. The reason is simple: I've approached this unremitting writing experiment armed with the cowardly excuse of being a casual Christopher Lambert devotee to fall back on. At the start of this project, I could count the number of non-Highlander Lambert movies I'd seen on one hand, thus positioning the bulk of the series to be exploratory and not regarded as authoritative in any way. But when it comes to his flagship film, I have no such pretext to neophytism. Highlander has been a part of my life for at least 25 years and has always been the source of my esteem for the grinning Great Neck native to whom this entire enterprise (which now features invaluable contributions from Marcus Pinn, Kevin Sturton and Martin Kessler) is dedicated. It's one of those movies that means something in my life that can't be abbreviated with a mere "thumbs up." To this day, it tempers my tolerance for convoluted mythology, informs my appreciation of fun goofiness (yes, I'd say my excitement for glorious fluff like Deep Blue Sea and the Final Destination movies has Highlander to thank) and stands as a solid foundation in my relationship with my brother, which is obviously very important to me. I might be able to detach myself from responsibility in reviewing an underseen movie like I Love You, the same way I can walk around in a Speedy Ortiz shirt and shrug off my Serious Music Geek pals with a non-committal, "Whatever, I just know the one album but I think it's pretty great." But screw up a deep dive into Highlander? That's a risk I wasn't keen to taking, at least not glibly. And yet, here we are. Born to be kings. Princes of the universe. Here we belong: still watching Highlander, 30 years later, while dropping Crunchy Cheddar Jalapeño Cheese CHEETO crumbs between the cushions of the same seat where we sat watching this movie in the late 80's. (Figuratively that is, my couch is relatively new and I prefer Pringles.) Where does one start with Highlander? It's the most expansive fantasy franchise that I can't imagine many people actually care about. The 1986 commercial flop has gone on to spawn two direct sequels, three spin-offs, two television shows, an animated series, two animated movies, over 20 tie-in books, eight audio plays, two comic book miniseries totaling 19 issues, three video games and a card game. But who has watched, read and played all of these? I consider myself a Highlander fan, yet I've only seen 3 1/2 of the 6 movies (not even the Brett Leonard one), never watched any but the original more than once, have not sat through a single episode of the six-season (!) Highlander: The Series * and, of the extended "Immortal" verse, read only the first film's novelization (of course). Until starting this article, I was completely unaware of a Japanime Highlander movie from 2007 - is that any good? It must not be, right? To have heard exactly nothing about it whatsoever? I'm not saying that an enthusiast living in a heavily-carpeted townhouse filled with replica swords, Kurgan-based Burger King glasses and an Adrian Paul cardboard stand-up with a lock of the actor's hair covertly purloined at a St. Louis comic con scotch-taped to the top doesn't exist, but I've certainly never met him. If there are Connor MacLeod cosplayers, they're overwhelmed by the Trekkies, the Warsies, the Ringsies, the Marvelies, the Mangaphiles, the Whovians and that convention-fetish flasher attendees mistake for Inspector Gadget (and these days people would probably take nerds costumed in kilts for Outlanders rather than Highlanders). Yet the legacy of this secret society of sword-swinging immortals endures to this day. Although the franchise seems to have officially dried up after 2007's straight-to-ScyFy movie and a canceled video game, talks of a reboot involving big names like Justin Lin and Dave Bautista (and most recently John Wick helmer Chad Stahelski) have been kicking around the last few years. People still care about this concept, and while you probably don't have to scroll too far down a comments page to find fervent defenders of Mario Van Peebles as Kane in The Final Dimension, it all stems from the appeal of Russell Mulcahy's 1986 original. This is a movie that has everything a 13-year-old boy could want. In the first 10 minutes alone, we've got a slamming Queen song, a tag team wrestling match, backflips, a swordfight with flying sparks, a decapitation in which fireworks shoot out of the loser's neck cavity and a Medieval battle scene attended by a giant warrior wearing a skull helmet. If they moved the sex scene to the front of the movie, it would be the most unbashedly preteen-friendly 10 minutes ever captured on celluloid. And yet for all its lightning-enhanced heroes and castle-demolishing duels, Highlander has a more adult tone than your standard 80's fantasy film. I don't just mean the beheadings, which earned an R-rating for, among other things, "strong and intense action fantasy bloody violence." (The theatrical cut was released as PG, proving how eager studio execs were to sell this thing to kids.) It's got very grown-up themes of mortality and personal responsibility more in common with contemporary movies like Chronopolis and Where Is the Friend's House? than, say, Hawk the Slayer. That meant something at the time, since so many films in the wake of the Star Wars trilogy practiced a safe, non-confrontational approach that employed bloodless violence, clear lines drawn between good & evil and fade-outs on any potential love-making session. ** There were exceptions, but for every Excalibur or Conan the Barbarian there were a dozen Krulls. The villains were tyrannical monsters with hordes of minions while the good guys were almost always virginal, long-haired dweebs (sleeveless V-neck optional). And they were all about the journey, the mission. Save the unicorns. Heal the Dark Crystal. Find a cure to revive the Childlike Empress. The journey itself is an escape: just as Luke Skywalker dreamed of abandoning his dead-end desert planet, Alex Rogan the blue collar confines of his trailer park, Paul Atreides the dull dunes of Arrakis, so could the empathetic viewer vicariously flee the doldrums of his humdrum existence for 101 to 124 minutes of pure movie magic. There is no journey in Highlander, no mission, no goal, no quest for immortality. Immortality has been given, or rather levied onto the heroes. And there is no escape. The only escape is death, a particularly brutal one in a parking garage, back alley, wrecked castle or abandoned building that results in your opponent being swept up above your lifeless corpse in the He-Man version of an elaborate Odell Beckham-style victory strut. All the hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge in your immortal noggin are sucked right out and bestowed upon your enraptured rival. This ritual is known as The Game, and guess what - you just lost. The alternative is to fend off wave after wave of blade-brandishing challengers with their eyes on The Prize for your whole life, which will last hundreds of years (and based on what we see in the movie, you can probably expect to be crossing steel at least once a week). Meanwhile, everyone you love ages and dies, or sees you as a freak and banishes you from your home. Effectively you have no real home and every euphoric victory is fleeting - this is the best party you'll ever go to, and all you can hope is not to die with that silly look in your eyes.

As for an aw-shucks, self-sacrificing, world-saving hero? You could say that Connor MacLeod, born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel, isn't much of a hero at all. He doesn't do much in the movie besides tooling around his five-story Bold Tuscan SoHo antique shop having fishtank-transitioned flashbacks, waiting for more pro-active immortal opponents to challenge him to a swordfight. He does go to save Brenda by confronting the Kurgan in the film's epic climax, but he was going to have to do that eventually anyway (if they're the last two standing, why would Kurgan even need to call him out?) In the meantime, he runs a farm, gets into drunken fencing matches and tries his best to keep a low profile. The most heroic thing he does is save little Rachel during WWII, in a scene that didn't even make the theatrical cut! Whether he would have lifted a finger to save her without the instant heal-factor to protect him from Nazi bullets is debatable - I'm kind of thinking it's a good thing we don't have to find out. I'm starting to notice a pattern in the Christopher Lambert protagonist: a post-heroic malaise. His Tarzan gets transported from being Lord of the goddamn Apes in the other-worldly African wild to the object of amusement for a bunch of snooty rich assholes at a sterile manor in Scotland. Subway's Fred commits some kind of daring off-screen heist, but then turns into the ultimate existential slacker, hiding out in the tunnels of the Paris Métro with nothing to do but hang with some vagabond musicians. Even in his romantic films: his young heartthrob in Love Songs is somehow already past the phase of having stormy relationships with gorgeous 18-year-old groupies and he's happy to just bum around the couch of a mature woman with two children, and in I Love You he's moved on from women entirely so he can have a relationship with a keychain. To hang up his warrior boots so early is akin to Jim Brown retiring before turning 30 (in fact Lambert was right at that age when Highlander came out), but it's consistent with his character's tendency to just sort of hang back at the center of the action while events transpire around him. Which isn't to say that he doesn't do anything in Highlander, far from it. But think about it: Connor doesn't even have to travel to get to The Gathering - he's lived in New York for two centuries, they bring The Gathering to him! *** And even then he looks grumpy to have to go to Madison Square Garden to cut off a guy's head, even though he probably only had to drive his Porsche like 20 blocks to get there. His combatants do all the leg work. In 16th century Scotland, his mentor - whose guidance he needs in order to survive - seeks him out, not the other way around. Dagobah came to him. Even the love interest has to run a full investigation to track Connor down and get him to show her his sword (I assume she also pays for both tickets to get into that zoo on their date). MacLeod just can't be bothered, if he's going to maintain the actor's trademark mellow Lam-bearing. You could complain that his subdued performance harnessed on such lack of adventuring is at odds with Queen's rollicking soundtrack and Mulcahy's sweeping camera movements, but really it nicely balances everything out, grounding the grandiose style of the film to allow quieter emotional moments to sneak in and stop it all from going too over-the-top. This newfound understanding of Lambert's character niche (the experiment is working!) made me notice something new on my most recent viewing of the film: MacLeod's reluctance to fight. While it's clear he's a weary warrior of 500 years of combat, there's more to his brooding at the beginning of the movie than mere disgust at the wrestling crowd screaming for blood: he's genuinely not looking forward to duelling with flip-based baddie Iman Fasil. He even mouths a reluctant "Wait..." before Iman starts swinging! Assuming he's not simply ill-prepared for the fight, is he seriously going to try and talk his opponent out of it? How has he lived this long? Has he just been hiding out all this time, avoiding confrontation with other immortals? Notably, he doesn't appear to be fighting anyone over the course of years covered by the "Who Wants to Live Forever" montage. **** Although Brenda asserts that he's "afraid to live," Connor's not a coward. Even prior to his career as head-rabbeting kill-bot for the Powers That Be, he stands in the middle of battle demanding enemy soldiers fight him. But he clearly prefers to make love as opposed to war. Fresh insight into this can be found in Chapter 2 of Garry Kilworth's novelization, in which Connor and his pals are ambushed on the highlands by rival clansmen. Connor not only spares the two enemies he bests, he rebukes his friend for brutally slaughtering one of them after he lets him go. And leading up to his first battle, Kilworth has Connor realizing he no longer romanticizes war - before he even kills anyone! At heart, he's a conscientious objector to all this Gathering and Quickening. The Game is a drag, man! And like the dimpliest of Lambert heroes, Connor is just a big goofball, he doesn't want to take things too seriously. Even in the final fight with the Kurgan, he makes a joke about Brenda just barely saving him in the nick of time ("Ha ha - what kept you?") He's a cheerful optimist who makes the best of a crummy fate, it's almost tragic that he wins The Prize and we see him corrupted by Absolute Power that comes in the form of flying demons from inside the Lost Ark, in a frightening transcending orgasm that freaks Brenda the fuck out.

You'll find countless reviews of this film that criticize the guidelines of Highlander head severing, a typical example being "Well, what if he lost his legs, wouldn't he die from blood loss or, at least, have no fucking legs?" Fair enough, I suppose - it's difficult to maintain a hard set of rules for immortality in a genre film (not so much in Wings of Desire or Orlando). Personally I'm fine accepting that it's just the biological finality of the head becoming detached from the body that ends the life of an immortal, a gaping hole in the neck the best way to get to that sweet Quickening juice. But why specifically beheading? Well for one thing, beheading plays an important part at the end of Macbeth, the most famous Scottish tale of all time. Lots of countrymen have had their block knocked off over the ages, from Mary, Queen of Scots and lots of guys named "William" to Maggie Smith at the end of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (pretty sure I'm remembering that right). The real question is, who's asking for all these heads to roll? Who's giving these orders that the immortals seem to blindly follow? Zardoz? Would make sense, he's a giant floating head. And why is the whole thing taking so long? Ramirez claims to be over 2400 years old, so immortals have been around for nearly 3000 years at least, a long time to locate, then decide to either befriend or behead each other. Connor pops up about 2500 years into this; how often do new immortals surface? Does an individual only become immortal after his initial resurrection? Are they somehow chosen at the time of death (this would explain the various ages of the Highlanders)? I always assumed Connor survives being skewered by the Kurgan because he's immortal, but maybe it's the other way around - the immortal force resurrects him at that time. Connor seems to die, taking an entire night to succumb to his wounds whereas later, in the French duel, he's getting up immediately after being stabbed through the heart multiple times. So do you have to be killed by an Immortal to become an Immortal, keeping with the film's connection to vampire mythology? No, because why was the Kurgan gunning for MacLeod on the battlefield? For The Game, right? Or does he simply recognize somehow that Connor's been slated for immortalization and figures he'll get to him early? He's still looking for Connor after the battle, but then apparently gives up for 500 years. Why??

Look, I'm not demanding explanations - those who did got what they deserved with Highlander II (starts with "Z" and rhymes with "Christ...") We the audience have a tendency to respond to loose mythologies like the members of MacLeod's clan who suddenly turn on him when he's inexplicably resurrected: we jeer and boo because it doesn't make sense. (And really shouldn't they be excited to have an unkillable bastard on their team? Seems like it could only be an advantage for the clan - their superstitious asses are going to get wiped out by the Murdocks if they keep up that mentality, especially if the 'docks keep bringing Kurgan ringers to the battles). Better to stick with what Ramirez tells Connor when he asks him to clarify the existence of immortals: "Why does the sun come up, or are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night? Who knows?" Good enough for 1536; if Ramirez had lived long enough to learn that the planet rotates around the sun and that stars are luminous spheres of plasma only appearing as fixed lights in the sky due to their immense distance from the Earth, he'd probably feel a little embarrassed. I actually prefer Connor's similarly vague but more charming explanation: "Hey - it's a kind of magic." Right? Everybody relax before somebody breaks out a bullshit term like "midi-clorians." And as I said, the plot ambiguities are integral to what sets Highlander apart from the standard fantasy fare of the time: it's fun to see the extraordinary abilities of these sword-brandishing demigods revealed by writers who are sort of making it up as they go along. Of course we're aware of the immortal's Wolverine-style healing factor, but forget that they also borrow animal powers ***** (speed o' the stag) and breathe comfortably underwater like a fish. (That must be a superpower. Sure they're immune to fatal injuries, but don't they still need to breathe oxygen? They may not be able to suffocate to death, but I imagine drowning still wouldn't be very pleasant.) They can apparently phase from one place to another, as Ramirez does when Connor sneaks up from behind and tries to bisect him with his sword. ****** Connor demonstrates the ability to "read" air from an open wine bottle and instantly know things about that year. This may just be Connor showing off by remembering that particular year, but I like to think it's a superpower (in the same scene he walks into Brenda's apartment and instinctively finds where she hid the tape recorder and the gun, like he's a character in Melville's Le deuxième souffle - magical trait, or just 400 years worth of experiencing where folks typically conceal their weapons and recording devices?) Highlanders have their limitations - they're not allowed to fight on holy ground for some reason (reflection of vampire myth, or just common courtesy?) - but for the most part they seem to have a surplus of untapped super abilities before you even consider their fancy fighting skills, which they're proud to display from the summit of the Devil's Staircase in a scene that's cool but not very practical. It's a big step for Connor to disarm Ramirez atop that tall mountain, but dammit he's gonna have to go get that priceless sword (maybe it's a disposable practice blade?)

Highlander is all about breaking the rules. Connor knows he shouldn't fall in love with mortal women, but he can't help himself. He's not supposed to be chummy with his rival immortals, but he pals around with Ramirez and later this guy Sunda. Sunda makes a joke about Connor trying to poison him (dude, you should both know poison doesn't kill you) on the brink of the two of them being forced to fight and at one point Connor flat-out asks Ramirez if he plans to take his head one day (Ramirez avoids the question and lucky for him gets his own head collected before it comes down to that, ditto poor Sunda). Again, Connor seems like a laid-back fellow who just wants everybody to get along and quit killing each other to no ultimate purpose. But of course that's the whole point, as Highlander is a film about the nature of conflict and the endurance of trivial combat. We see it right from the git-go: the epic battling between MacLeods and Murdocks (Frasers in the novelization) as part of their unexplained 1536 Scottish feud is likened to a rivalry in the ring in a brutal modern day wrestling event. We even catch a glimpse of an old school rassling match in the Scotland scenes in case our brains missed the connection:

These two drunken old guys are the Fabulous Freebirds of 16th century Scotland. This is a favorite theme of Russell Mulcahy. The clashing of immortals who find themselves drawn to destroy each other branches from the same fateful force that pits Cullen against the boar in Razorback, Styles vs Blake in Ricochet, the two bikini models pillow-fighting on the hotel patio in Rod Stewart's "Tonight I'm Yours" video. ******* These confrontations rise from a natural inclination to seek out one's double in order to annihilate them, and demonstrate the futility of such a gesture. This of course would be better explored in an expansive writing on Mulcahy's work, but the personal wars of his protagonistic and antagonistic foils are a manifesting of inner conflict. I'd love to see a cut of Ricochet with John Lithgow taken out entirely: who would Denzel have to blame for his drug addiction and corruption? How about a Razorback without the pig? The characters would be forced to deal with personal loss without a grubby, grunting, tusked Moby Dick on which to avenge their anger. Or imagine a Highlander with 70% more moody Lambert pacing the halls of his lonely building wondering where his old life went, finding no cathartic closure by severing the head of the man who played a part in taking it all away. That these bouts, stretched over years, decades, even centuries, are just big vicious circles played out on a global gladiatorial ring doesn't seem to deter the involved combatants. Why can't the Kurgan find MacLeod until The Gathering nearly half a millennia later? Well, why couldn't Cullen find the razorback for 2 years? Massive boar, doesn't exactly keep a low profile or seem to be making an effort to hide, Cullen's life is dedicated 24/7 to tracking it down - the Outback is big but it can't be that fucking big! In Ricochet, Blake languishes with an evil patience in prison, waiting for his moment to escape and make Styles's life a living hell (Mulcahy returned to this revenge story in his Tales from the Crypt episode "People Who Live in Brass Hearses", with ex-con Bill Paxton and brother Brad Dourif out to get the ice cream truck driver who put Paxton away). Likewise, Karen "The Real" McCoy's enemies wait for her release from jail to renew their antagonism with the famed bank robber. Both The Shadow's Shiwan Khan and the immortal monster of Tale of the Mummy wait hundreds of years to break out of their respective sarcophagi and challenge their Alec Baldwins and Louise Lombards in a bid to take over the world. The feuding of Mulcahy's enemies spans time. So do Lambert's: White Eyes in Greystoke lets his resentment simmer from when Tarzan's a kid to when he's a fully-grown ape-immobilizer. The Mortal Kombat competition pitting representatives of Earth and Outworld was conceived by the Elder Gods to withhold Outworld's invasion of the planet, essentially buying time. In Knight Moves, Lambert's chess grandmaster finds himself pitted against a childhood enemy whose intricate, 20-years-in-the-making revenge framing positions the two in a Styles-Blake dynamic. When the final battle happens it isn't important; its inevitability however is resolute.

Connor's own time-spanning, destructive Other is the Kurgan, and equally if not more important as Lambert to the success of Highlander is Clancy Brown's engaging performance. I really can't say enough about how great he is, how decisions he makes as an actor clearly shape this character to be so intriguing, particularly in the present day scenes in New York when we see how Kurgan, still sporting the neck-slash from his duel with Ramirez, his eyes dilated into two solid black orbs, has nosedived into a hedonistic wreck. His broken warbling of "New York New York" tells you all you need to know as to how far he's fallen. (Has a movie character ever sung or danced to this song who wasn't a complete mess? Liza Minnelli in the eponymous Scorsese movie, Raul Julia and his goats in Tempest, Carey Mulligan in Shame, the Kurgan; I guess the Gremlins are comparatively well-adjusted.) The character Brown's psycho most strongly resembles is Will Smith's alcoholic superhero John Hancock who, in the kind of excellent first half of that movie, is also immortal/indestructable and callously terrorizing the city due to frustration over his mysterious endowment. Like Hancock, Kurgan's debauchery makes him weirdly endearing and the perfect antithesis to Connor's clean, quiet existence but he's just as fun to watch lurching about the city on his own; I almost wish it was another enemy who attacks Connor at the construction site early in the movie, that the paths of MacLeod and the Kurgan in the present were kept separate until the final confrontation. Brown softens the character's edge with his clumsy impudence, at once towering menacingly over his opponents and acting like he's about to topple over himself. It's such a charming display of instability that he's almost not quite villainous enough. Sure he's got the skull helmet like the one worn by General Pauline Kael in Willow and a sword larger than your average-sized adult but he's more of a softie than it would seem. For example, most movies would exhibit their knave's wretchedness by having him cut the hand off a meddling priest (even Hancock, the good guy of his movie, cuts off an opponent's hand). Instead, Kurgan licks it. So ok, you wouldn't invite him to a dinner party, but is he really that bad a guy? He rapes Heather but leaves her alive, he didn't have to do that! (And let's be honest, was rape not standard fare in the 16th century? I'll bet Connor and Heather fell in love after he initially raped her. Aren't toxic cultural norms the real villain here?) Leaving Heather's severed head for Connor to find would be much more malicious, or to simply kill Brenda in the present day rather than take her on a fun roadtrip. Kurgan also doesn't kill Candy the prostitute, even though it's a classic "establishing villain's psychopathy in a cheap motel room" scene a'la Waynegrow in Heat; we're told Kurgan and Candy just get up to some "kinky" stuff and she lives to gossip about it. He stamps out the candles Connor lit for his loved ones, which is obnoxious, but is that proof of amorality? Connor could do with some of the starch taken out of his stuffed shirt at that point anyway. Ramirez claims Kurgans throw children into pits full of hungry dogs, but that reeks of racial profiling (after living over 2,000 years soaking up other lifestyles in Spain, Japan and Scotland, you'd think Ramirez would be more tolerant). And speaking of stereotypes, it's notable that Kurgan hails from the border of the Caspian Sea in what's now considered Russia: the fear he arouses in modern day Americans taps into that mid-80's cultural mistrust of everything associated with that area. The guy who shoots him in the alley even has an anti-Soviet shirt that reads "Hey Moscow, up yours!" This would explain a lot: Kurgan's not necessarily bad, he just becomes the heel by default, a sword-swingin' Nikolai Volkoff.

He spends the film trying to kill Connor, Ramirez and Sunda, but isn't that what he's supposed to do? Isn't that what they're ALL trying to do? Didn't he do Connor a favor by offing his buddies before he was forced to do it? I guess Kurgan did knock down a castle. Connor is not getting the security deposit back for that. Rude. Anyway my point is, what's really at stake if the Kurgan wins The Prize? There's some talk about how, if he does, "mortal men would suffer an eternity of darkness." But look at the guy by the time the 20th century rolls around - he's a goddamn ruin. He does not seem nearly ambitious enough to bring about Armageddon, even with the benefit of lightning-bestowed godhood. Unlike Connor, he's constantly hurling himself into duels-to-the-death, plays "chicken" with TWO oncoming trucks in mid-city traffic and quotes Neil Young-by-way-of-Def Leppard. Sure it's a bit hypocritical, considering he's been around for hundreds of years and has quite stubbornly refused to burn out OR fade away, but he's clearly got "self destruct" written all over his large forehead. He smiles contently when Connor slices his head off for god's sake! He may have even secretly hoped that Ramirez had beaten him all those years ago. 'Cause here's yet another question: Does Kurgan expect to find Ramirez when he arrives at the castle? He's clearly looking for Connor, but Clancy Brown has a perfect "pleasantly surprised, but not at all shocked" reaction to seeing his old foe. And to steal a joke from Joe Bob Briggs, where the hell is Connor anyway? Was it bowling night? ******** Couldn't they have sent one of those pigeons with a message for him to get back there asap? (Just as dogs warn humans of the presence of Terminators, castle pigeons seem to have an inherent alarm for Kurgans.) At any rate, their pre-fight exchange is entirely about Connor and suggests that Ramirez isn't so much interested in teaming up with his young charge against their common enemy (if it takes an additional 450 years to whittle down all the immortals, surely stopping Kurgan in the 16th century couldn't have been that urgent a priority) but rather protecting him. For his part, expecting to find Connor only to discover fancy "Spanish peacock" Ramirez lounging all cozy in McLeod's castle, Kurgan may very well have killed Ramirez out of jealousy.

Because it's unavoidable: there really is a gay subtext to be read in this film with its all-male gang of sword-slingers. ********* No less an authority than Highlander superfan Nick Offerman has called attention to its "homoerotic" leanings, and I wouldn't argue against such an interpretation although it's important to mention that it's not necessarily informed by Mulcahy, who I didn't know was gay prior to a recent read of Craig Marks & Rob Tannenbaum's I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of The Music Video Revolution. But I think it's fair to say his personal life is very much linked to his professional one. I had a film professor in college who insisted it didn't matter that Sergei Eisenstein was gay, that it wasn't an important aspect of his artistic voice, but with Eisenstein in Guanajuato it's obvious that Peter Greenaway doesn't agree. So while you don't normally hear his name being knocked around with Bill Sherwood and Gus Van Sant, it's not entirely unreasonable to suggest Mulcahy had a voice in the emerging queer cinema of the 80's and early 90's. He did at one point intend to direct an adaptation of William S. Burroughs's The Wild Boys and had Duran Duran write a song for the film. The Mulcahy-directed music video for the eponymous song (the movie never materialized) features Simon Le Bon, dressed in road warrior leather, bound and rotating on a windmill over a body of water until he falls in and gets attacked by a penis monster. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when you consider other imagery from Mulcahy's storied career as a music video director: bare-assed beefcakes showering in Billy Joel's "Allentown," the sheer number of speedo-wearing young men in body paint and shirtless bellboys choregraphed into a hip-swinging orgy in Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" (described by Mulcahy as "super, super, super gay" in Marks & Tannenbaum's book) and shots of gorgeous young choir boys with shining eyes running around a church in the middle of the night to the tune of Bonnie Taylor's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (according to Mulcahy, Taylor accused him of being a "fucking pre-vert.") And of course it's appropriate that the music of Highlander would be by Queen, whose queer-empowerment anthem "We Are the Champions" has been pulsating through testosterone-housing sports stadiums and scoring montages of Gatorade and Viagra commercials ever since its 1977 release. Like the underlining sexual drive of professional sports, it's cool to think there's a powerful, unspoken force behind the motivations of Highlander's century-traversing gladiators. This angle makes you reconsider a lot of things about Highlander, certainly its reputation as a "dude movie." (The proudly gay Jean Girard should have better appreciated Ricky Bobby's recommendation of Highlander, winner of the Academy Award for Best Movie Ever Made.) That opening duel really does seem like a tryst: two men meeting in private in a parking garage, one of them in a trenchcoat? The prejudiced mid-80's cop isn't completely off the mark with his guess they were up to something seedy, although a blow job gone wrong is a pretty baseless theory (but what a missed opportunity that he doesn't accuse Connor of receiving "head" from Iman). Coming into the movie cold, the last thing you expect these two guys to do is pull out swords. Meanwhile Kurgan comes off like a jilted lover when he hits New York, still holding a torch for his first unrequited obsession after 400 years, that crazy ex who just won't go away. Ramirez insists Connor dump Heather, urging him not to become too attached to a companion who'll grow old and die, but it could be that he's interested in developing an Interview with the Vampire-style immortal father figure/constant chum relationship with his protégée. **********

All three female characters are largely relegated to the background. Despite the beautiful Brian May composition "Who Wants to Live Forever" (orchestration written by Highlander score composer, the late Michael Kamen), Heather is just an idea, something that keeps Connor distracted from the fact that he's an inhuman monster (I guess that's the perceived function of most wives, right?) Despite attempts by the script to make Brenda seem important and independent (her investigation of MacLeod, her expertise in metallurgy), she's ultimately relegated to kidnap victim/damsel-in-distress, forced to watch as the long-gestating lover's duel between Connor and Kurgan plays out. Brenda, played by an actress with the impossibly 80's name Roxanne Hart, is not a weak character - I tend to always misremember her as an April O'Neil-type reporter getting to the bottom of things, but she's a forensic scientist, a cop and a published metallurgist. It's easy to forget her cool backstory when she's screaming for MacLeod to save her or instantly dropping trou when Connor makes with the magic (nothing sexier than stabbing yourself in the heart in front of a lady). Then you've got Rachel, Connor's personal assistant/familiar, who for those only aware of the theatrical version is practically non-existent. The director's cut offers a cool flashback to Connor saving her life from a Nazi in WW2, *********** suggesting they may have shared some Lone Wolf and Cub-style adventures for a while (easy to imagine a series of fan fiction based on that concept). Lambert's characters typically have no problem charming kids, based on his effect on dour Charlotte Gainsbourg in Paroles et Musique and that weird Asian kid who hangs out feeding a baby pig in Lambert's loft in I Love You, and young Rachel is likewise instantly won over by her bullet-riddled savior. But as an adult she's just a quietly sad secretary yearning for a man she can never have. The WW2 scene ends with one of Mulcahy's signature innovative transition shots, an "explosion" wipe that shatters the flashback and returns us to a relatively tranquil modern-day Manhattan. Even more effective is the "fish tank transition", with which Mulcahy leaves a brooding MacLeod in his lonely 20th century apartment by tracking into an impressively-sized aquarium and surfacing from a loch in 16th century Scotland, the first flashback of the movie. The seamless shift not only bridges past and present, it presages future events (Connor sinking to the bottom of the lake and discovering his immortality, which I guess is really a future PAST event) and links the Connor of the two periods: one surrounded by kinsman in wide-open spaces and another self-exiled to anonymity in a confining city packed with strangers. Then there's the lovely dissolve from clansman Connor's face into the visage of the Mona Lisa mural on the side of a building in SoHo. We're in the 16th century, then move into the present via a 16th century painting, its indelible subject's face as timeless as Connor's is ageless.

Mulcahy loves bending time in his editing: just think of the transition in Razorback where a guy fires a bullet and hits a bottle sitting on the road weeks later. Possibly his most successful use of this tool is a transition early in Ricochet in which Blake pulls a bloody piece of Chewalski's newspaper "armor" off, revealing a picture of the newly-mustachioed Styles. The picture fades into a shot of Styles delivering his closing statement in court, beautifully moving us into the film's second act. There's so much information contained in this simple dissolve - years have passed, Blake is still dangerously obsessed with Styles, Styles has moved from hero cop to hot shot attorney - and all without a word of exposition. It could only have been concocted by a deviceful young filmmaker at the top of his game and still in complete control of his work: one of the biggest disappointments of The Shadow is that it's filled with cleverly-conceived but badly-executed transition shots that seem placed for showiness rather than thematic connectivity. Ricochet's occidental samurai fight between John Lithgow's Blake and Jesse Ventura's Chewalski in the prison cafeteria, with phone books and newspapers for padding, giant ass swords (how'd they smuggle those in there anyway, or are they just really big shivs?), sparks, back-lit windows, short-circuting florescent lights, low-angle tracking shots, is all you need to make a strong case for Mulcahy as auteur. His 1991 film (his first following Highlander and its disastrous sequel) is a spirtual cousin in style and structure: both movies have heroes villified and sought after by cops and include a scene where the villain kills the hero's best friend in an alley before their final confrontation. The fight in Ricochet was choregraphed by prolific stunt/second unit director Charlie Picerni, and Highlander's steel-crossing came courtesy of olympic fencer Bob Anderson. Anderson served as fencing coach on Barry Lyndon, fight arranger for Star Wars (as well as stunt double for Darth Vader in Empire and Jedi), sword master for The Princess Bride, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Marty Campbell Zorro pictures. Mulcahy (whose "Total Eclipse of the Heart" video includes some fencing) brings to Anderson's swordfights an urgency that never feels too light or inconsequential in spite of the seemingly undisciplined looseness with which they're shot. At this stage in his career Mulcahy's was an untamed camera; at the time it could be said that he was as bold a kinetic visualist as Sam Raimi, or Raising Arizona-era Coen Brothers, or early Peter Jackson. For all its silliness - and in all honestly I would submit that there's nothing in Highlander any cheesier than the cheesiest aspects of Blade Runner, Aliens or even Die Hard. ************ - the film never loses its sense of the grandiose, swordfights filmed in sweeping crane shots, the frame constantly filled with the majesty of picturesque Scottish countrysides. If you're inclined to argue that it's all so much overstylization, I'd point out that there's at least a hint of self-awareness in Mulcahy's cameo as a pedestrian who gets plowed down by the Kurgan in his car - the director sets things in such frantic motion that the movie literally runs over him! (Note: In my article on Cronenberg acting roles - Cronenberg acted for Mulcahy in Resurrection, the director's only non-Highlander teaming with Lambert - I brought up how rare it is for directors to kill themselves off in their own movies. Add another one to that list.) If there are problematic identity issues in this British-American film directed by an Australian starring a US-born French actor playing a Scottish guy and a Scottish actor playing an Egyptian living in Spain (both wielding a Japanese sword), they don't show up in the New York scenes. Highlander doesn't belong up there with the best New York movies, but it's not Eyes Wide Shut-level shameful. The city scenes are grimy and dark, even in the daylight, more Taxi Driver than Crocodile Dundee (Mulcahy would later make his fondness for Scorsese's movie clear by casting Peter Boyle as a taxi driver in his New York-set version of The Shadow). Even though most of it was shot in the UK (the church is St Augustine's in London, the Silvercup rooftop was shot on a soundstage at Elstree Studios) and the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, which doubled as Madison Square Garden, the fictional New York of Highlander fits right in that of Frank Henenlotter, William Lustig, Larry Cohen, Abel Ferrara, Amos Poe and James Glickenhaus. The line overheard in the police station - "a Vietnamese neighbor ate his dog" - would be at home in a film by any of these native New Yorkers (I like that in 70's movies, NY avengers wanted to clean up the streets and that, starting in 1979 with The Warriors moving into the 80's, the freaks seem to have taken over). Kurgan's stay at the Ansonia Hotel reminds me of Duane Bradley at the Hotel Broslin in Basket Case (somebody should work on a coffee table book of fake sleazy New York hotels from movies, assuming of course that Kurgan's room isn't located in the actual Ansonia building uptown). I've theorized before that Highlander is like a noble serial killer movie (years before they created Dexter, an actual noble serial killer) and would further suggest that if the first scene was the police at the crime scene of the MSG parking lot, it wouldn't be much different from underbelly-of-New York 80's movies that open with body parts being discovered, like New York Ripper and Cruising.

Mulcahy and Lambert's own serial killer movie, Resurrection (set in Toronto-posing-as-Chicago), deals with a maniac building his own personal Jesus out of mutilated body parts, so that one's much more interested in religion. But Highlander's not slacking in the messianic metaphor department - the difference is that Connor's crucifixion comes after his resurrection. (Hey, how does he get out of that yoke anyway? He just wanders off with his head and hands stuck inside it. Kilworth to the rescue: apparently Connor uses the sharp crags of some rocks in a cave to free himself, sort of a lame explanation that would only work in a novelization. Immediately afterwards, he comes upon a farm and meets Heather - wouldn't it have made more sense to have her take pity on him and remove the yoke, a 16th century version of "meet cute"?) He obviously doesn't feel forsaken, since years later he's still going to church to light a candle for Ramirez, slain centuries earlier by the Kurgan and told, "Tonight you sleep in hell." So Highlanders go to hell - interesting! ************* Hell could only be an improvement for 16th century MacLeod, humilated and exiled by his clan as a sorceror after his wounds miraculously heal (interestingly, the 2006 Christopher Lambert-starring Day of Wrath, another sword-fighting epic set in the 1540's, borrowed its title from Carl Dreyer's classic tale of witch persecution in the 1620's). He's doing much better for himself in the 20th century, where he's flush and lives in a kind of manor, like a Glenmorangie-drinking Bruce Wayne ("on the rocks" - seriously, MacLeod? That's single malt whisky. Faux pas! Faux pas!) But even though he looks out for Brenda, he's not exactly playing superhero - he's still got sights on the final goal. But what is The Prize? Ultimate Knowledge or something? An answer to what it's all been about? *************** For Connor I guess it's just a relief from the violence he's known for 500 years and possibly a psychic connection with his long-dead mentor. As ghost-Ramirez tells Connor after winning The Prize, he's "at one with all living things. Each man's thoughts and dreams are yours to know. You have power beyond imagination." "Hearing secret harmonies," as Queen puts it in "A Kind of Magic," a song that also suggests the burden of immortality has been lifted by The Prize ("This rage that lasts a thousand years/Will soon be done.") Still, is this peace worth all the fighting? What is there really to gain? Humanity? I mean let's face it, The Quickening is some freaky shit. It blows off manhole covers and vitalizes the victor via blue lightning, not unlike the effect when space vampires consume the lifeforce of their victims in Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce from the year before. **************** This select group are a bunch of energy-sucking Frankenstein, with pretensions to cosmic importance. I found an interesting image thanks to pause button technology during Connor's ultimate Quickening-elation: a Lambert head, like a slightly-melted wax figure from Madame Tussaud's, visible for a fraction of a second before it explodes. It looks creepy as hell, turning Connor colorless and almost without features - its destruction must be symbolic of his vampire-self being wiped out for good, or at least his chronic, unending case of the blues. Between this and the mural in I Love You, we're building up quite a collection of Lambert-inspired art in these movies; I'm curious to see if anyone attempts a Lambert-themed collage or extended photography project based on him in later films.

Lambert's performance is commonly thought to be a detriment to the overall awesomeness of Highlander, typically getting a cold reception even from fans of the movie. While this series wasn't created to defend Lambert's acting, I have to disagree: I think he's pretty good in the movie. He does a nice job switching between playing naïve in the flashbacks and seasoned in the contemporary scenes. He even looks totally different in the two time periods, and not just because of that wild highland wig. Something hopeful and impudent gives way to a weathered, weary face; he really does look like a man whose eyes have beheld 400 years worth of swords and sorcery; Mulcahy obviously recognized the same ageless grace in the actor's face when he connected it with the facsimile of the Mona Lisa (according to an interview with highlanderheart.com, Mulcahy recognized an "eternal quality" in Lambert). Especially considering English is already a second language, Lambert's Scottish accent is as good as anybody's, except for Sean Connery, and he even gets to speak a little German (as far as his American accent, Lambert figured U.S. audiences would think, "He's from a strange part of the States.") He gets to play a broad range in the film. He's incredibly funny in the scene partying drunk in 1783 France (which almost plays like a stretched-out Family Guy joke). ***************** This is particularly impressive when you consider how dangerous he's meant to be throughout the film, a stoic cross between Rick Deckard and the Terminator. He can effortlessly go soft or hard: his speech to dying Heather is some nice expressive acting while the look he gives Kurgan after his sexual assault on her is revealed is silently crushing. Let it be said: whatever problems Highlander has, its leading male is not one of them. The film's costuming of its leading male might be. You can't complain about the raggedy look from Connor's tatterdemalion days in Scotland, but the trenchcoat, jeans and bright white sneakers that serve as his armor in lower Manhattan don't successfully complete the warrior look. Let's start with the shoes: we've heard in a flashback that Connor makes boots for Heather - that's right, he's a goddamn cobbler! So the only explanation is that Connor made his 20th century fortune in the sports shoe industry, and wears his own product out of some misplaced sense of pride. Coupled with the coat, the white sneaks are a disaster. And while the dark trenchcoat worked for Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, the tan raincoat doesn't work so well for Lambert. It makes him look like a flasher, I'm sorry. Introduced sitting in the audience of the wrestling match in that coat, he looks like a pervert in a porno theater. The coat and gloves he throws on for the big final battle is an improvement (they go much better with the shoes) but all his modern ensemble is particularly weird considering he's a polymath and Renaissance man, you'd figure he'd care a little more about his appearance. He does rock an Armani suit on his date with Brenda, but the collar of his shirt rides really high on the coat. I suspect the suit's not fitted to Lambert, although it works in the same way the well-worn tux does for Fred in Subway, fashion being secondary to Lambert's trademark classiness.

Speaking of which, the actor was quoted in the April 1986 issue of Starlog: "For me, acting is BEING. I've no method. You are the part, or you aren't the part. And, when I'm on set, I'm the part; when I'm off the set, I'm me. And that's all." This nonchalant approach is in keeping with the characterization of Connor MacLeod: quiet, laid-back and letting the world come to him. Lambert is an embodiment of the Movie Star over the Thespian, or presence over performance, the difference between good acting (the way one delivers lines or taps into a character's emotions) versus good film acting (an assuredness, a measure of charm and, dare I say it, natural photogenicism). Lambert was made for film acting; he's a muse of the directors he's worked with. And at this point in his career he's clearly evolving: in Greystoke, where he played a Lowlander (in this movie he has no problem with PDA - his hands land low on his wife's ass more than once) and now he's a Highlander. He fits the role like a glove, even if he has Goldie Hawn to thank for it, as she allegedly talked boyfriend Kurt Russell out of accepting the role. ***************** I was worried going into this that I wouldn't do proper service to Lambert, Highlander being his most popular movie and what pretty much everybody knows him for. But the truth is, while Highlander is inextricably a part of the actor's career, it's not the best or most interesting work he's offered to the screen. But his muted performance works, even if he's often outshone by the intensity of Clancy Brown and, of course, a seasoned Connery. Is he upset about being part of this iconic film? "No. It's like, would people like Clint Eastwood be upset because they talk about Dirty Harry? Or Mel Gibson because they talk about Mad Max or Harrison Ford because they talk about Indiana Jones? I think in some ways it's good to have at least one thing for which you could be really immortal, you know?"

APPENDiX

I feel like I have to say a few words about the Mulcahy-directed music video for "Princes of the Universe," since Lambert is in it. His appearance is disappointingly brief: independent of clips from the movie, he's only in about three shots for a total of maybe 10 seconds worth of screentime. But it's memorable. Another beautifully-constructed Mulcahy transition shot tracks from the band to Lambert facedown on the ground; when he pops up, he's in a clip from Highlander. And in a magical moment, he walks out of the movie (the scene in the parking garage) and into the video to confront the band just as they're singing, "I have no rival." Wanna bet, Freddie? No reason is given for Lambert to have a beef with the band, although in a documentary on the creation of the Highlander music, Roger Taylor reveals that Lambert is, like most actors, a "frustrated rock star." So I guess he decided to vent that frustration on Freddie Mercury, the biggest rock star in the world at the time? The ultimate victor is not revealed, but I like to think they would have billed such a match as "The Smile takes on The 'Stache!" Other highlights of the video: Lambert and Mercury lock sword and mic stand. Brian May's V-neck rocks down the walls of the castle. The Madame Tussaud-Lambert makes a cameo appearance. And also Queen sings a slamming ballad about fighting to survive in a war with the darkest powers, sorry what more did you need? The band perform on the Silvercup rooftop set constructed at Elstree Studios. On the DVD commentary, Mulcahy & co. complain about what a headache it was filming both the finale and the music video there, having to deal with the flooding and electricity and the wind machines and the giant letters threatening to squash the actors. (On the other hand, they claim Lambert exhibited a childlike heedlessness in climbing all over the unstable structure.) The final swordfight was supposed to take place on the Statue of Liberty, but it was a better choice to go with the Silvercup Studios building appropriately enough - Queen in Queens! NEXT: Swordplay enthusiasts as well as film buffs who wonder "What happened??" with every White Squall, A Good Year and Alien: Covenant will get their fix when we revisit Ridley Scott's excellent first film and Highlander-precursor The Duellists. (Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping I'd follow this up with The Whoopee Boys, the Michael O'Keefe-Paul Rodriguez buddy comedy, famous for being that other 1986 movie with a fencing scene.) ~ JANUARY 23, 2018 ~

* I did have a high school friend who owned the VHS set of the first season for some reason. It was massive, made up of something like a dozen individual tapes, and took up all the space atop a large dresser in his bedroom. They were literally the only videos he owned, and I'm pretty sure he never got through half of them. I later gifted him a bargain bin copy of Aliens, just so he'd never have to fess up to owning no videos but the first season of Highlander: The Series. (One summer we literally watched Aliens every single day for 2 months. Because of that, I will never in my life see another individual movie more than I've seen Aliens.)

** I imagine older fans of this in the late 80's going around boasting, "Oh, you're still watching that baby stuff where they cut each other's hands off with lasers? Whatever, that's cool...I'm watching this movie where they cut each other's HEADS off with fucking SWORDS."

*** when I hear the word "gathering," I think of more than just four people, unless it's a gathering arranged by a particularly unpopular person. They should call it The Get-Together or The Huddle. Or is it just that a ton of immortals RSVP'd and nobody showed up? Is The Gathering actually considered really lame, only losers like Iman and Sunda actually take it seriously?

**** Missed opportunity: it would have been funny, in the middle of the montage, to include a moment where he clips off some dude's head, absorbs his lifeforce, then turns around and gives Heather a casual shrug, causing her to roll her eyes: Oh, that Connor!

***** Unfortunately this ability doesn't do much for Connor in the largely wildlife-free modern day New York City. I guess he could tap into the powers of a rat, maybe burrow through a steel pipe if necessary or eat three times his own body weight, should that somehow give him the advantage over his enemy. Power o' the... pigeon?

****** This scene always bothered me: since Connor has no idea Ramirez can "jump" or whatever you call it, he clearly meant to straight-up murder him right there by the lake. He playfully resents Ramirez at that point, but for what reason would he be harboring homicidal intentions??

******* The good guy in many of these events are fostered by a veteran fighter: MacLeod/Ramirez share a bond like Winters/Cullen in Razorback, with similarly tragic outcome.

******** I can't beat Joe Bob's original line: "What'd he do, run down to the Renaissance Faire and dance with a fat girl playing the recorder? Where is there to go in the middle of the misty crags?" According to the novelization Connor was off hunting, but he must have had a bad night of it since he returns with no apparent game.

********* Later on there was a female Immortal, former Miss America/Bill Clinton fling Elizabeth Gracen, who had a recurring role in Highlander: The Series and starred in its short-lived spin-off show Highlander: The Raven. Gracen also appeared in Marked for Death, meaning at least 2 women who've had sex with future presidents have appeared in Steven Seagal movies (the other being Marla Maples, who was in Executive Decision which - despite its title - does not feature an actor playing the president).

********** The mentor/protege relationship was big in 80's movies: Alan Bates and George De La Pena in Nijinsky ('80), Frank Langella and Tom Hulce in Those Lips, Those Eyes ('80), Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita in The Karate Kid ('84), Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in The Color of Money ('86), Gregory Harrison and Matt Adler in North Shore ('87) and Robert Duvall and Sean Penn in Colors ('88) being other examples of varying importance.

*********** The Nazi is played by Waldo Roeg, son of Nicolas Roeg and Theresa Russell who ended up as an assistant/second unit director on a plethora of cool films including Return to Oz, My Beautiful Laundrette, Hellraiser, Paperhouse, Velvet Goldmine and Resurrected (Paul Greengrass's first movie, not to be confused with the Mulcahy/Lambert film Resurrection). This is his sole acting gig.

************ Well, one scene that could be excised for the 40th or 50th anniversary dvd: the antiquated "matching the handwriting" scene. I don't usually complain about outdated computers in movies ( except when I do ] but jeez is that one clunky machine. If I were Mulcahy, I'd George Lucas the shit out of that scene: cut it from the next Special Edition or put a wookie in front of the computer screen or something.

************* So do Ewoks: when Han's heading out in the wilderness of Hoth to save Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, he tells naysayers, "I'll see you in hell!" Purgatory apparently exists in Star Wars mythology, so it's odd that when Darth Maul shows up the Jedi aren't like, "Oh shit, it's the fucking DEVIL!"

************** I was delighted to find recently that the locked-in-mortal-competition characters of Stephen King's The Long Walk are similarly after some undefined reward called The Prize, and even moreso to see Tasha Robinson made the connection in her piece on Long Walk for The Dissolve.

*************** Lifeforce's space vampire hunter Peter Firth played an Immortal baddie on an episode of the Highlander TV show.

**************** I had planned to crack open a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône from Les Garrigues d'Eric Beaumard, a vineyard Lambert is partnered with, during this scene while watching it this time. Sadly it didn't pan out.