We're talking the OG movie here.



It starts off with some Sean Connery narration of the words written on the screen, letting us know that these guys are really really old. (And, alas, as best I can recall, all of the immortals are all dudes. *le sigh*)

Then we get some rockin' ass QUEEN - "Here we are! Born to be kings!" That leads us into Madison Square Garden and some extremely '80's pro-wrestling. I remember seeing a version of the original script somewhere and this was a hockey game instead of wrestling. Supposedly changed b/c they couldn't get NHL approval - the NHL thought the film would portray the sport as violent. And, since they were going to essentially mirror it with a battlefield, they may not have been wrong there. (Though, the imagery, movement-wise, would've worked out really well.)

At this wrestling bit, is where we first meet our protagonist who is incredibly not interested in wrestling at all. He's thinking back to a battle from many years ago - guys in kilts with swords and shields.

So our protagonist - Connor MacLeod - goes out to the parking garage to find the reason he's actually at the Garden. There's a fella named Fasil who's so cool he has to wear shades inside until they fall off his face for a convenient 'cool' camera reflection shot. To prove that these guys are long-time sword fighters, they run along the hoods of the cars and scream a lot. Fasil is apparently some sort of acrobat or some shit, because he does backflips every chance he gets. No, there's like a full minute of backflips for this guy. In the middle of a parking deck. With the emergency sprinklers dumping water everywhere. I guess when you can't die, you don't care about slippery concrete.

But, his backflipping days are over, because MacLeod takes his head, then gets hit by the weirdest, most destructive lightning storm seen inside a parking garage. Whose insurance covers the damage to all of these vehicles though? I don't know that MSG has 'immortal quickening' coverage in their policy.

Now, here's a thing that gets conveniently 'handwaved' a lot in the tv series - MacLeod tucks his katana out of sight before he leaves the parking structure, because he knows the cops are going to be around and if he gets stopped, well, he can't be walking around with a big ole sword. This doesn't seem to be a thing the immortals in the tv show much worried about (though it should have been - up the stakes!).

More on that in a bit. But first - we have to go visit an 18 y/o Connor MacLeod on his way into his first battle with his clan back in Scotland. They're marching off to battle a rival clan... apparently with some geese? Also, peeing your kilt jokes and harhar sex jokes when Connor's girlfriend says for his cousins to bring him back in one piece.

For some reason, it's suddenly stormy over the battlefield. Is this a Kurgan thing? Does he bring thunder and lightning? B/c I think that's Thor's thing. The battle starts and poor Connor is left like the last kid picked for kickball b/c the other clan has been told to leave him for the Kurgan. Then, bro has like no idea and gets stabbed right in the torso before he can even raise his sword hardly. Did you even train, bro?

Mulcahy likes these weird transitions between the flashbacks. Into this one was a cool pan up through the parking deck. Out of it focuses back through Connor's eye. (And I'll probably flip back and forth between calling him 'Connor' and 'MacLeod'.)

Anyway, it's good he stashed his sword, because he and his sweet little Porsche get stopped on their way out of the garage - not sure if it's b/c he's leaving or he's leaving in a damned hurry. And this beat cop has the WORST trigger discipline.

Then we blink over the cop car lights back to old Scotland and someone playing some sad bagpipes, because Connor's dead. I don't know if they care about the other guys who died in the battle, or maybe Connor was only mostly dead and they brought him back to try to save him and he all the way died. Except for that breathing as we camera flash back to MSG and the cops looking at the crime scene.

Brenda Wyatt - part of the forensics crew - shows up to do her job, while the beat cop dude is making jokes and being a douche. She finds a sword - rare and expensive. This is Fasil's sword, not Connor's.

One of my favorite things about Connor is how little he actually speaks. He's got the beat cop guy all off balance just by looking at him and saying nothing. And when he does speak, a lot of it is straight up deadpan as hell. He's being interrogated by the cops and the head guy puts the rare sword on the table and asks Connor "What's that?" Connor's answer: "A sword." The cops don't think he's funny.

Beat cop guy - in a flash of 1980's homophobia - thinks Connor is gay and was cruising in the garage. Connor objects, cop throws a bunch, Connor charges him. Somehow Connor hits 2 cops and doesn't get arrested. He is, however, the hero of every hooker and street thug in central booking.

There's a voiceover news report while the Kurgan is driving through town. Then he puts in his Queen tape at full volume. (Queen wrote like 8 songs just for this movie b/c they liked it so much.)

Also, have I mentioned that Clancy Brown is fucking creepy as hell as the Kurgan in this thing? He's that good. But then it's undercut slightly by the sword that would NEVER work. It comes apart. How is that stable? Sure, cool movie prop and explains how he gets it places, but still.

I love this movie, but omg, there are some dreadful lines.

Connor goes back to the parking deck for his sword and Brenda shows up looking for metal shavings. Then she's at a bar and so is Connor - ordering his Glenmorangie - and he's asking questions. Then, lord, the cheese, "I'd like to walk you home." This being the one time his corny lines don't work. Or, it works exactly the way he expected it to, knowing she would follow him.

One of the things I have a problem with in this movie is how much Brenda screams just for the sake of having a woman screaming in terror at random shit.

But god this backlit scene is gorgeous. The flashback dude's teeth are not. Connor's back and everyone thinks he's the devil or something. So they want to burn him or some shit until his cousin insists they banish him instead. Which seems to work out, since he finds a wife and most of an old castle.

Then the Egyptian Spaniard shows up. No, seriously, he shows up, says his name is Juan Sanchez Villa Lobos Ramirez, but later tells Connor he's Egyptian (and in one of the books, his name is revealed to be Tak Ne). Anyway - bro shows up to teach Connor all about being immortal and how to 'feel the stag, Highlander'.

How -- or why -- do the cops have front and profile 8x10's of 'Nash' (MacLeod) when he was never under arrest or booked? He might be a suspect, but they don't actually have anything on him, so - are the cops in the practice of randomly photographing suspects? I understand the 'story' reason - it's so Brenda can see who Nash is and that he looks a lot like the guy from the bar that the ugly guy (Kurgan) called 'MacLeod', but still. It would've made more sense if they had a newspaper clipping or something of him. Not 'we took these photos in the precinct' type glossies.

"I'm a man, not a fish!" And this movie is where I learned what haggis was. Thanks, Connor. This is also the only time immortals in the Highlander universe can breathe underwater. Throughout the tv series, they all seem to 'drown' and come back.

2437 years ago, Ramirez was born. He tells MacLeod about his 3 wives and how he has learned from the mistake of being immortal and loving mortal women. However, this whole sequence is kind of a 'MacLeod is the idiot' who needs to be told things so the audience can learn stuff. The creative and smart way to do exposition. MacLeod just learned all of these things about himself, so he has questions - the same questions the audience would have.

Connor manages to make a date with Brenda. Then we have Connor's assistant come in to tie his tie and a flashback to the day he found her in Nazi Germany when she was about five years old. (A scene, by the way, that was removed from the US release of the film because someone thought it would be 'too confusing'. I... I'm not really sure how.)

OMG Brenda's outfit is so 80's. I mean, I know it's the 80's, but holy wow. Come to think - so is Connor's suit. OMG wtf are those pants?

God I love the camera work in this movie.

And Connor is super observant. He's been around for 400 years, he's learned to keep an eye on his surroundings.

Then, as he leaves Brenda's place, we have a flashback-montage-y thing set to "Who Wants to Live Forever" while Connor's first wife, Heather, dies. (Btw, I can't listen to that song except when watching this movie b/c the fucking series over-played the shit out of it.)

Then to prove Connor isn't some lonely schmuck, we're introduced to his old friend, Kastagir. Which, of course, leads to a flashback to a drunken party and an even more drunken duel (at least on Connor's side) - where Connor can hardly hold his sword and keeps getting stabbed to death, only to come back again and again, until he stops the guy and apologizes for the insult that started the duel. Then he just walks (stumbles) away.

Kurgan is now fighting with Kastagir - it's not going well for MacLeod's friend here at all. And there's some PTSD-having ex-Marine who's hunting around for the 'head hunter', I guess? (I'm assuming that's what he's doing with a car full of guns.) Things don't go well for that guy either. Nor the Kurgan - since his bullet holes on his shirt move around. But also - this is the most delayed quickening ever! It not only waited for the Kurgan to come back to life, it waited for him to stab the Marine and fling him across the alley.

These cops want the head hunter bad guy to be Nash (MacLeod) so hard they're trying to get the stab-inated Marine to finger him with their 'mug shot'. But he's like 'nah man, it's a guy with a big scar on his neck'.

Brenda's still digging and stumbles across another thing that gets left out of the tv series - immortals changing their names. Connor has a list of aliases dating back over 200 years, just in the States. They forget how important this part is in the series.

Also - it's been 30 years and we still can't make computers that won't overheat?

I think Clancy Brown had an absolute blast with this role. He's so over-the-top, but in the best of ways.

Connor not backing down from the Kurgan and his threats is one of his best character traits (that gets utterly assassinated in that piece of shit they tried to pass off as the 4th movie).

Now we're at that great scene in Connor's room of collectibles where he tells Brenda he can't die and it's the biggest turn on ever, because her immediate reaction is to almost cry and kiss him. (This is pretty much Connor's MO in all the movies - 'hey, i can't die, get on me'.)

This scene at the zoo is cut out of the US version too - no idea why. It has the Kurgan seeing that Brenda matters to Connor, otherwise, why would he even go looking for her? The part they could've cut was the 4 minutes of Kurgan driving through NYC w/ Brenda screaming at the top of her lungs. We get it - the Kurgan's a dick and wants to scare her. We don't need 4 minutes of that shit. The only good part of the scene is after Brenda stops screaming and Freddie Mercury is singing "New York, New York".

Connor's getting ready to head out to save Brenda and fight the Kurgan. Rachel (his assistant) knows he's not coming back to the shop or his apartment after this. (Though, he does have this same apartment in Highlander II. It's a pretty fucking sweet apartment.)

So let's talk about Connor's wardrobe for a bit. I kind of love it. It's simple, not stylish. He wears jeans and sneakers. A pull-over shirt or a button-front shirt depending on where he's going. Then he has a leather bomber jacket and his tan trench coat. He's got a very simple wardrobe and it works so well for him.

And now the big warehouse fight. The camera work here is fun too. The shots from floor level were done by 'kicking' the camera so it moved along a track (according to the commentary) and makes for a nice, smooth tracking-type shot. And it's really great with this shot where the Kurgan doesn't realize he's been beheaded and he's standing there like he's gonna keep fighting, then his head falls off and that's the game. Then the windows all explode and Connor gets the biggest quickening known to man. (It's still the biggest even after all of the ones in the tv series.) This is supposed to be the end - no more immortals and quickenings, but then someone wanted a tv show, so this ending got retconned into a 'mini' Gathering.



And, just because: Highlander in 30 Seconds Re-enacted by Bunnies.

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