In 1986 the fantasy genre was dead, even though the eighties had started so promisingly. The decade saw “Conan – The Barbarian”, there was “Clash of the Titans”, then “ET – The Extraterrestrial” in 1982, and later Steven Spielberg gave his greatest hero a fantastic touch with “Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom”.
But it was precisely the most expensive films that disappointed from 1984 onwards. The Michael Ende adaptation “The Neverending Story” was a nightmare to watch, while David Lynch’s “Dune” was a vision – but also one of the biggest failures that Universal had to cope with at the time.
Director Ridley Scott, of all people, went to town in 1985 with the beautifully designed, but rather empty, poorly edited elf against the devil film “Legend”. The final curtain had fallen on the subject.
Then out of nowhere came “Highlander,” which on paper read like a flop with an announcement, like genre trash: Scotland, swordsmen condemned to immortality in a constant lightning storm, Sean Connery plays an Egyptian nobleman with a Spanish name!
And a Frenchman without much knowledge of English, Christophe alias Christopher Lambert, shines his way through the field in the main role.
Without a great knowledge of English? Without any knowledge of English! The 32-year-old was hired without even having mastered any script speaking rehearsals.
And yet “Highlander” became a hit. Not just a hit in video stores, a “cult hit”, but a real box office hit that many people are talking about 31 years later and that no director dares to approach with a remake idea. The imdb film database lists it as the tenth most popular work of 1986 among users, in a year densely packed with “Top Gun”, “Pretty In Pink” and “Ferris Makes You Blue”.
The phrase “There Can Be Only One” has probably been said billions of times in human history. And yet today he is only known in connection with “Highlander”. Even geeks would now find it embarrassing to hurl the phrase at each other with a wink, so inflated has this tagline been used.
How did this success come about?
Like no other film of the year, “Highlander” served fanboys’ longing for the late Middle Ages, for weapons and knights; The Scottish Highlands, inhabited by farmers, were a fairly new setting for Hollywood. In addition, there were lightning bolts that were used like lasers – special effects that were triggered whenever one of the immortal swordsmen beheaded another swordsman. The epic takes place in 1536, 1541, 1783, the 1940s and 1985. So the Middle Ages plus time travel, and the result was science fiction.
Plus the song soundtrack by Queen, and everything directed by Russell Mulcahy. The Australian came from music television and directed “Hungry Like The Wolf” for Duran Duran. Mulcahy was a MTV-Man who put as much thought into the use of lights as he did his actors’ dialogue. As unimportant as music television has become today, are there any directors left who come from MTV and end up in Hollywood? “Highlander” was a rock musical film in kilt.
The soundtrack came too late
Everything good is brought together in the most beautiful scene. The Highlander holds his old, in contrast to him, mortal wife Heather (Beatie Edney) in his arms, she wonders one last time about his eternal youth, our gaze wanders over the hills, Lambert speaks in the off-screen, Freddie Mercury sings “Who Wants to Live Forever”, and Michael Kamen orchestrates a sad melody. Those four minutes were like the best music clip of the year.
The score “A Kind Of Magic” – with these words McLeod had declared his immortality to a girl – with nine Queen songs was only released in June, three months after its theatrical release. This delay could never happen again today, either something was missed – or the effect of “Highlander” was underestimated.
No less effective was the opening credits, in which Queen intoned “Princes Of The Universe” – and which did not show the band or actors in action, but rather blood-red writing against a black background, plus Mercury’s powerful text from the summit of the chosen ones. Just not an MTV editing spectacle with inserts of the stars. Fully trusting in the effect of the song, doing everything right.
What’s clever about “Highlander” is that it throws the viewer straight into the mythology of the story. The film feels like an adaptation of a novel for which passages were deleted due to time constraints – a film adaptation of a novel that still works in a sub-two-hour format. “Highlander” doesn’t want to answer some questions at all, which is what makes it so appealing to this day.
Some things are ignored with great self-confidence. Why is the Highlander McLeod befriending this other immortal, Kastagir, instead of killing him? Why does Sean Connery’s Spanish Egyptian have so much knowledge of the world? Where does the film’s major antagonist, Kurgan (Clancy Brown) come from? “From The Dawn Of Time We Came…” says Connery, the old nuzzler, in the text panel prologue. And then talks a bit more, but that’s about it for Backstory.
Christopher Lambert’s role name Connor McLeod still sounds distinctive, but Sean Connery’s role name Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez sounds more like it was thought up by a child while playing with action figures. If the Spanish nobleman were not a Spanish nobleman, but a German nobleman, he would probably have been christened Wolfgang-Heinrich Schmidt-Schmitzen.
Lambert could not prevail
Sean Connery’s career was in something of a limbo in 1986. His comeback film “Never Say Never Again” was already three years ago, and what was remembered from that film was that he was getting old, wearing a toupee and hopefully would never be seen on screen without a beard again.
It wasn’t until a year after “Highlander” that Connery would begin his golden autumn; there was a supporting role Oscar for “The Untouchables”, and two years later, at 58, he played Indiana Jones’ father. From then on, Connery was an elder statesman in Hollywood. Christophe Lambert, however, was denied another major leading role, English cramming or not.
End and new beginning of fantasy
Although there was another drought in the fantasy sector right after “Highlander”, Rob Reiner’s brilliant, charming, hilarious film adaptation of William Goldman’s “Princess Bride” flopped in 1987. But since the turn of the millennium (“Lord of the Rings”, “Panem” and Co.), fantastic cinema has become indispensable.
Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery were supposed to get together again in 1991 for “Highlander II”. The old Spaniard – or was he Egyptian? – lived again, although Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez was beheaded in part one. But that didn’t matter at all, no matter how this sequel did. “Highlander” couldn’t be repeated.
The same applies to the Highlander in real life: there can only be one.
