All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S04E04.Classic.Movies.Highlander.1986.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Yah!

Highlander is one of a kind,

a strange and arousing fantasy epic

about immortality and sword fights.

Rediscovered again and again
since its release in 1986,

it has the soul
of a true cult classic.

I think that Highlander
lives up to the status

of being a cult classic
because it is...

I mean, it's very much in the eye
of the beholder with these films,

but it is about enjoyment.

It's about the kind of thing
that you get from having home video,

versus in a cinema, where you
can watch something with friends

and laugh about little things,

and it doesn't take away
from your enjoyment of the film.

It doesn't mean
that you're completely
not taking the film seriously.

Something happened to Highlander
that actually made people

who'd actually seen it in the cinema
and perhaps dismissed it,

suddenly want to reassess it

because the cult
was growing fairly steadily.

So how would you say Highlander
lives up to its billing

as a true cult classic?

I think a true cult film
has to be...

they will never, ever, ever
become truly mainstream,

and they mustn't because they must
be loved by those who love it.

This thing we love,
this thing that is ours,

that we cherish and nurture,

and we will pass it very carefully
on to select people

but we can't let everybody
into this.

It needs to have its secrecy.

The plot tumbles
back and forth in time,

from contemporary New York,
to 16th-century Scotland.

The tale of deathless warriors
who must fight one another

until only one remains to receive
a magical gift from the universe.

There is only one way
these living gods can perish -

by losing their head.

Now!

Get out!
No!

Help! Help!

Help!

Help!

Help me, I'm drowning!

You can't drown, you fool!
You're immortal!

I'm drowning!

You cannot die, MacLeod.

Accept it.

I hate you.
Good.

That is a perfect way to start.

The enigmatic French actor
Christopher Lambert

stars as Connor MacLeod,

the Highland clansman
who learns he will never grow old,

while an ebullient Sean Connery
almost steals the show

as his mentor Ramirez.

Few films can boast
a Frenchman playing a Scot,

and a Scot playing a Spaniard
who is actually an ancient Egyptian.

The following around Highlander,
which came out in 1986,

has only grown over the decades.

It was one of
the early VHS sensations

and has kind of gained
this cult status

where people rewatch the movie
again and again,

they quote it at length,
they know all the dialogue.

And you know,
I think there's like a sense

of older people who are fans of it

then introducing it
to a younger generation, like,

"You've never seen Highlander?
It's so much fun."

I remember it at the time
when it came out,

and it got very badly reviewed.

I probably reviewed it
not very well myself,

but at the same time,
there are elements in it

that are very praiseworthy,
you know,

and it has great people in it.

It just didn't seem to sort of
come together as a film.

However, over a period of time,

people have basically started
to see different things in it.

They have been viewing it
with different eyes,

to the point where it has become
a very successful cult movie

and in fact, changed people's minds.

Add to the exotic mix...
hyperactive action,

a set of songs
by the ever-enthusiastic Queen,

and Clancy Brown playing an ice-cold
Barbarian known as The Kurgan,

whose blade is almost
as tall as he is.

At last... the gathering.

Hi. I'm Candy.

Of course you are.

For better or for worse,

the myth of the Highlander is never
really fully explored in the film.

This is a film which has heard
of the concept of exposition,

but decided
to abandon it completely.

There is no... We're not told
why these immortals exist,

and we're not told why
they're fighting for this prize.

What we do is we accept this concept
as just being there.

It's a little bit, if you like...

fairies, you know,
running alongside us.

This community of people
who live amongst human beings

and aren't of them.

And the final goal is really

the fate of humanity
is in the balance.

These people are fighting.
There is a good side and a bad side.

If the bad side win the prize,

then we will fall under the dominion

of this absolutely just outrageous
character called The Kurgan,

who is just terrifying,

or we could fall under the aegis

of the decent,
strangely-accented Highlander.

And that's sort of...

They are fighting for our souls,
but we don't know that.

This is a blockbuster
fuelled by anachronism.

Where else would you see a duel to
the death in a Manhattan car park?

It's a film about a man who is
ostensibly an antiques dealer

living in '80s New York,

who we learn,
through a series of flashbacks,

that his real identity
is that he is a warrior

who is set on a mission
to fight other immortal warriors

and to sort of battle
for the future of the Earth.

There is going to be a time
at some stage in the future,

according to the mythology
of their kind,

that they will have to reduce
their numbers down to one.

That one will be
the sort of master of the universe.

But in order to do so,
they have to, over the centuries,

basically eliminate
their competitors.

It's almost in the nature
of a kind of mythical game.

And it has, of course, you know,

certain undertones
of seeking nirvana.

I mean, you know,
once you're down to one, it becomes,

and you are all knowing,
whenever you kill an opponent -

and the only way to do that
is to decapitate them -

you absorb their power

through something which is kind of
lightning that comes out...

It's almost like the soul of the
person who's dead pours into them,

which increases the power
of the victor.

The concept of Highlander is,
there is a young Scottish...

well, he's not quite a warrior,

because the clans
don't go to war full time,

but he's about to go into
his first battle.

And this is 16th-century Scotland?
16th-century Scotland.
Kilts and claymores and so forth.

And he's marching out of the castle
with his clan,

off to the first battle,
and they're asking if he's scared.

He goes into battle
and no-one will fight him,

and he can't work out why this is
until he discovers

that there is a knight
who is after just him.

This turns out to be
the baddie of the piece.

The Kurgan.
Yes.

And the...

So when he's stabbed,
but not beheaded -

and this is the critical part
about the Highlander -

the immortal characters
in Highlander,

have to be beheaded to die,
otherwise they cannot die.

So he is stabbed but not beheaded,
gets better,

and everyone in the town says,
"This is a bit spooky, you're"-

The devil's work.
Clearly the devil's work.

And they hurled him out of town.

And he is then visited
by Sean Connery,

who plays a Spaniard
who's really Egyptian,

who then educates him.

And what he says is
all across this world

there are immortals
just like you and me,

who have to wander the world
fighting each other,

cutting off each other's heads,

until there comes a time, the end,

and then we gather together
at an unspecified location

and there will be only one.

Only one of us will survive

and that will be the determining
point in this story.

Directed by the Australian,
Russell Mulcahy,

it is a film of contrasting
locations and contrasting styles.

New York is enveloped
in a neo-noir cool.

The breathtaking
Scottish mountains and lochs

are resonant
with historical realism.

The film pulls together
motifs and myths

from King Arthur to Count Dracula,
from Jung to Bladerunner,

while beneath the dashing surface,
it ponders life and loss.

Who wants to live forever?

Highlander has become
its own metaphor,

the striking adventure story
that will never die.

There is one
called Connor among them.

Aye.

Remember our agreement, Murdoch.

The boy is mine.

It's begun.

Death to the MacLeods!

Fight me, damn you!

Connor! No!

Come on! Quick!

There can be only one.

Another time, MacLeod!

It all started when a former
firefighter from California

named Gregory Widen

took a tour of the Royal Armouries
in the Tower Of London.

He imagined
what it would have been like

to have owned all these weapons

and somehow to still be alive
to tell the stories.

Those daydreams took shape
in a class assignment

while on a screenwriting
programme at UCLA.

It was not always
as easy as it is today.

Sometimes in our modern journey,
we see a reminder of a past

when it took many days or sometimes
weeks to cross this countryside.

This is the old road,

which was built in an attempt
to pacify the Highlands

by General Wade
after the rising of 1715.

Today a new road capable of carrying

tens of thousands
of buses and motorcars a year,

leaps and stretches
across the moor of Rannoch

and into the dark defile of Glencoe,
the glen of weeping.

Beside it,
and like a ghost from the past,

the old road meanders
and turns its ancient way.

This is about myths, isn't it?
Yeah.

They're playing around
with big concepts.

King Arthur, Count Dracula,
you know, the major myths.

Yes, absolutely. These warriors
that are fighting great fights.

I mean, there are the concepts
of the swords that they all have,

the sword that's passed on -

Sean Connery's amazing
Japanese Samurai sword,

which then MacLeod takes on
after Sean Connery's character dies.

These sort of...
almost Excalibur-style swords

that they're carrying around,

it's very, very epic
in its backroom conceit,

even though the scenes and the
moments are actually oddly domestic

and oddly incredibly normal,
incredibly...

well hyper-real perhaps,
in certain scenarios.

But when we're dealing with the day
to day life of people, very real.

And then just all around it
there are these quite insane

spark-filled clashes between
these warriors with mighty swords.

The sword, the sword.

Known at first as Shadow Clan,

a key inspiration was Ridley Scott's
gorgeous Joseph Conrad adaptation,

The Duellists,
about two Napoleonic soldiers

trapped in a series
of ever-escalating duels.

Widen had also read
Joseph Campbell's

seminal study
of mythical archetypes,

The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

Renaming his script Highlander,

agents began to take notice.

In '80s Hollywood,
fantasy with a twist was bankable.

So Gregory Widen
was actually a student at UCLA

when he was working
on the screenplay

for what would become Highlander.

And partly he was inspired
by a trip to the Tower Of London,

where he was on a tour and he was
looking at all the medieval armour
and swords and so forth,

and he wondered
what would it be like

if there was simply one person who
owned all of these different items

and had worn them all throughout
these various periods of history,

a sort of a time traveller,
who was then taking someone through

as though it was
his personal wardrobe and saying,

"These are all
the different times and situations
I wore this armour in."

And so that was a big part
of his inspiration for Highlander,

along with the film -
the first film of Ridley Scott -
The Duellists,

which also features two characters
who are kind of locked in

a lifelong battle
duelling one another.

So he presented this
to his professor

and his professor said,
"You should sell this screenplay.

It deserves an agent."

And he went on and did so.

He had also taken a trip to Scotland

and was very impressed
with the Scottish Highlands.

There's a wonderful scale
on the Highlands

and that sort of stuck in his mind.

And all these things
sort of came together in his head.

I think he said,
"What would happen, you know,

if you had someone
in a suit of armour

who actually sort of had
to live in that, you know, create...

"What would happen
if they went across time in that?"

And he created the idea
of an immortal,

or a race of immortals.

The film also has a very unusual,
almost anachronistic structure

and it makes a benefit of it
because it's set in two...

or along two timelines.
A number of timelines, yeah.

But principally
contemporary New York,

and the 16th-century story
you've been talking about,

the back story of MacLeod.

How do those two timelines
kind of relate?

I mean I suppose
the back story in the Highland era

sets up the tragedy of the film,

which is that if you are immortal
and born to live forever,

then you will lose everyone
who you love.

And so we see him discover
that he's immortal, train,

but lose Sean Connery,

and then the woman
he falls in love with,

who gradually grows old and dies.

And they have this
very, very sad final sequence

where he says, you know...
She doesn't want him to see her die,

she wants him to light a candle
on her birthday every year,

and he promises he will.

But that sort of ends off this...
bites off that story.

Then, in New York,
we see the burgeoning of a romance.

The love of a woman, I suppose,

is the two kind of
contrasting themes.

One love which is doomed
and one love which is the purpose

that will in fact give him
a meaning and a reason to fight.

Because otherwise, really,

if you do win -
we discover at the end -

you are finally given
the power of fertility,

which means
that you can have children.

But of course, if you don't have...
if you're entirely single,

then it's a fairly wasted gift
because...

So he has this love affair, which
develops in contemporary New York.

So they sort of... they run parallel

but in opposite directions
in terms of that love.

By the time we get to New York,
he's very skilled,

he's very knowing,
he's very world-weary,

and there are a couple
of very rapid -

and quite funny in one case,
quite dark in another case -

flashbacks to other periods.

We see him fight a duel
in 16th century France,

where he's drunk,

and the guy who he's fighting
keeps stabbing him

and he keeps falling over
and he keeps getting up

and going back into the combat.

And another time
he's in the Second World War

and he finds a young girl
hiding from the Nazis.

And so, you know, he sort of dots
around the history of combat really.

He's always fighting,
always involved in combat.

We never see him
chilling by the pool.

Backed by Thorn EMI,
the script gained emotional depth

through the input of writers
Larry Ferguson and Peter Bellwood.

The character of Ramirez
became crucial,

mentoring Connor MacLeod
in the ways of the immortals.

The idea of the gathering was added,

a final showdown
destined to happen in New York.

So when Thorn EMI got involved

and it was clear
that the film was going to be made,

Widen was asked
to sort of collaborate

and change the concept a bit
with other screenwriters

because, frankly, it was already
a very ambitious project

with a big scope, big historical
settings, a lot of extras.

And he was interested in it
from an historical perspective,

where he wanted to give it
a real kind of sense

of crunchy, dark reality, and back
history for these characters.

And ultimately,
some of that kind of had to go

because the film is an action movie,
a fantasy movie,

and it is sort of a good versus evil
narrative in many ways.

So some of the complexity, I think,
probably went by the wayside.

Thorn EMI had
put up the money for the film,

and then got Larry Ferguson

and Peter Bellwood,
as writers, on board,

to basically shape the script,

which was, you know,
in an interesting form,

but needed to sort of be fine-tuned

into an actually working script,
shooting script.

So, between the three of them,
including Widen,

they hammered it out.

A lot of the things
from Widen's original script went.

His original script was much darker,
much more violent.

I mean it was
a pretty gloomy prospect,

according to everybody else.

And they injected...
They toned it down.

They brought in female characters -

Hannah wasn't in
the original screenplay -

and basically made it more
sort of, I suppose,

palatable,
audience-friendly, more...

something that would actually
make a film that, you know,

might be considered commercial.

The producers decided
that Highlander needed a director

who could boldly
mythologise reality.

While inspired by
Ken Russell and Fellini,

Mulcahy had gained a reputation for
his stylised music videos on MTV...

...a realm infused with the retro
futuristic palate of Ridley Scott.

Mulcahy was responsible
for the iconic imagery

of Ultravox's Vienna,

and Bonnie Tyler's
Holding Out For A Hero,

and had stepped up
into feature films

with giant boar horror Razorback.

So Russell Mulcahy was perfectly
placed to make a film

so synonymous
with 1980's kind of pop culture

because he was in on the ground
floor at MTV and the rise of MTV.

He was a music video director
who had worked with Elton John

and Duran Duran,
and countless other...

sort of heavy-hitters
in the music industry at that time.

And he adapted that style
to his filmmaking.

He made films
that were quickly edited,

that had a lot of kind of
visual information in each moment,

that were often
about imagery and about look

as much as they were about content.

And it spoke to people.

People were
interested in seeing that

because they were becoming
acclimated to MTV culture.

The search for the ideal Connor
MacLeod had led to Kurt Russell...

but myth has Goldie Hawn
talking him out of it.

Then Mulcahy saw a picture
of Christopher Lambert

as the hero of revisionist
Tarzan epic Greystoke.

The director claimed that these
were the eyes of an immortal.

Lambert's quirky intensity
in Luc Besson's thriller Subway,

added to his appeal.

He was both heroic
and not exactly of this world.

Whoa!

Greetings.

I am Juan Sanchez-Villalobos
Ramirez,

chief metallurgist
to King Charles V of Spain,

and I'm at your service.

Tonight, he's due
to be made a Freeman of the city,

joining distinguished ranks that
have included Winston Churchill,

but excluded the Prince of Wales.

Every time I come back,
I always get a terrific charge

coming back to Scotland, and...

But the reality is that as long
as I am still enthusiastic

about what I do in work...
I don't live anywhere, really.

The mature Sean Connery was cast
as much for his mythological heft

as his fit for the character.

He was already immortal.

The droll Ramirez might be
a 2,437-year-old Egyptian,

by way of Spain,

but here was the former 007
with a van Dyck beard

and a lightness of touch,
for which he is rarely given credit.

So Sean Connery was a great get
for the filmmakers of Highlander,

and was, by all accounts,
only on set for seven days,

and that was for a million pounds.

But he brings such a lot
to this film.

It's kind of like
the key scenes in the film

in which our hero learns his destiny

and becomes equipped
to fight for his destiny

because he's been trained
in sword fighting and so forth

by this mentor character.

And he's having a bit of a laugh
with his accent and his costuming

and it's all very flamboyant

and all very kind of maximalist
and very high 1980s style.

But it's also kind of...
it's quite a lovely role.

Like, he's this paternal presence

and the loss of his character
is another huge part of the tension.

And the one who,
in a sense, brings the fun

and brings a sense of entertainment
and says, "This is nonsense

but you've got to kind of
live up to it," is Sean Connery.

It's one of his most
pleasurable roles, isn't it?

For me - and I know this is
a controversial statement -

this is my favourite
Sean Connery role.

I just...
I think he is superb in this.

He doesn't... In his career,

Sean Connery does not play
light comedy, really, as a rule.

He doesn't play mischievous
and impish as a rule.

He plays hard and dark, you know.

And so the idea of him in eyeliner,

running barefoot
across a Scottish beach,

whooping and cheering and having
clearly the time of his life,

it's an absolute joy.

He's smiling throughout the film.

Sean Connery doesn't smile
enough in his career.

When he smiles in this film,
he's so charming.

And he lifts the film.

I mean, this absolutely
effervescent character.

Now this is Sean Connery
who has been

out of Scotland for a long time,
invited back into Scotland to shoot.

He's only in the film for...
They've got seven days to shoot

and they're gonna pay him
a million pounds for seven days.

He's clearly having
a good time with that.

The crew, legendarily,
would turn up to work with whisky

and they would, you know,
hand it out during filming.

So it is possible that he was
a little tipsy in some scenes.

And it just looks like
an enormous ball of fun

that they're all having,
particularly in the Scottish scenes,

when Sean Connery is sort
of lifting up the whole vibe of it.

And he kind of picks up the swash
and the buckle of the film.

There's a way in which this film
could be quite Terminator-y,

which it does have
those elements to it,

but what Sean Connery adds
is the Errol Flynn

and he adds the Inigo Montoya.

He's got that kind of charm
and suave and debonair

that I think the film really needs

otherwise it becomes a bit
mechanistic in its destruction.

Get out!
What's wrong?

Get out!

Kurgan!

Ramirez.

An approach had been made
to Arnold Schwarzenegger

for sadistic immortal, the Kurgan,

but he was getting out
of the villain business.

Sting, of all people,
recommended Clancy Brown.

The singer had played opposite
the Ohio-born actor's monster

in Frankenstein adaptation,
The Bride.

As with Connery,
Brown adds a dose of irony

to Highlander's
potentially deadpan conceit.

It's very important
in a movie like Highlander,

where the stakes
are very good-versus-evil,

that the villain is scary
and fun to watch

and that we believe
that he is, you know,

this kind of cackling psycho.

And Clancy Brown brings that.

He brings a real sadism
to this part.

You know, you believe
this person is a ruthless,

ancient warrior
who is dead set on power,

and does not care
who gets in his way,

and will behead anybody.

And, you know, there is not
a lot of shading to that.

And apparently Clancy Brown -

and the original writer,
Gregory Widen -

both wanted a little bit more
to the idea of the character.

You know, they wanted more
psychological complexity,

they wanted it to be more about
the darkness of a person

who had lived across centuries
being in this kind of, you know,

within this kind of role,

but ultimately,
the character is, you know,

I think, a fairly cartoonish
depiction of evil.

Still good fun though.

Now I think there's something
about Brown's performance also

that he, rather like Connery,

thinks, "I've got to send
this stuff up a bit

otherwise it's gonna
become deadpan."

You've got to give it a bit of -
as you say - comic-book energy.

Yes, he is... I mean, it's almost
as if he's seen Terminator

and he thinks, you know,

"I've seen the moments
that this film gets laughs,

and it's when the Terminator
does the odd funny line.

I'm gonna push those funny lines."
So he does.

He checks into a deadbeat hotel
in New York for the gathering,

which... surely he's had time
over the countless years
to do some long-term investments,

he could stay somewhere
more expensive, but he doesn't.

He chooses to stay
in the deadbeat place.

And he just generally
throws people around.

He really does enjoy being awful.

And he's also helped a lot
by the director,

who just gives him these sequences
where he's fighting in sparks.

I mean, every time he fights,
there's sparks all around him,

so he's almost like a 1980s
pop video version of a villain.

And he really rises to that.

And he's not taking it seriously
in any way at all.

He uses his tongue quite a lot,

you know, in a kind of way
to show his depravity.

And I think that he's just
incredibly dark, beautifully dark.

It's as if Arnold Schwarzenegger
was, as The Terminator, going...

Oh, please, put it away!

What do you want?

Your head.

And the prize.

For a series
of inventive transitions,

the film flashes back from New York

to tell MacLeod's origin story
in Scotland.

Filmed in the remains
of Eilean Donan Castle

in the Western Highlands,

and such scenic treasures
as Glencoe,

the emphasis is on
battle-torn authenticity.

It is in the autumnal highlands
that MacLeod meets Ramirez.

Connery looks thrilled to be home,

running barefoot on the chilly beach
of Loch Duich, his grin a mile wide.

Mulcahy consciously leaned into
his MTV skill set

for a New York all dry ice,
neon and silhouettes.

His cutting was faster
and more expressionistic.

Not only does the location change,

but the genre -
from epic to neo-noir -

as the cops investigate
a headless corpse

and close in on an antiques dealer
with a haunted look.

It is as if the ageless hero
now perceives reality as a dream.

Mulcahy is very clever in the way
he actually frames both eras -

16th-century Scotland
and 20th-century New York.

He's very, very good
at the contrast,

but he's also very good
at the similarities.

And the first similarity
is that in Scotland,

which are of course huge vistas,
huge vistas of the landscape,

whatever, but it always seems
to be covered in mist.

There is always a mist going
across the screen somehow or other.

In the urban centres of New York
in the 20th century,

yes, it's more confined,
everything is sort of covered -

it's usually shot at night,
most of those scenes -

but there's a tremendous
amount of steam

that's all coming out of the vents.

That steam and that mist
is the common element.

And it's something that he can
easily sort of negotiate

when he makes
his extraordinary transitions.

For the titanic sword fights,
they were trained by the best -

Bob Anderson,
a former Olympic fencer.

Anderson had staged
lightsaber duels in Star Wars,

and would choreograph
flashing blades in everything

from Barry Lyndon
to the Lord Of The Rings.

His perfectionism
could drive directors mad,

but the sword fights in Highlander
were the whole point.

They mix brute force
and weird flares of special effects

with the climactic showdown
on the rooftop

of the Silvercup Bakery in Queens.

How important was the contribution
of Bob Anderson,

who was the sword-fight trainer?

I mean Bob Anderson is...
I think it's safe to say,

the greatest sword-fight trainer
in the history of Hollywood.

Someone who had...
I mean, he did the Princess Bride.

He did the Lord Of The Rings films.
He did Star Wars films.

If you've seen a sword fight
in the last what, 50-odd years,

he will have choreographed it.

And he choreographed these
to the extreme.

I mean this is... Possibly one of
the Princess Bride fights

is a little bit more extreme
than that, but I don't think so.

I think this is where he's just put
every single one of his skills

and just all the things
that he wanted to play with.

And he's so playful in this.

I mean, he was a stickler,
as a trainer,

and frustrated a lot of directors

because of the time he took
over the fight choreography

and the perfection he demanded.

Lambert had been practising
with the sword master, Bob Anderson,

for four hours a day for weeks,
in order to get the fights right.

Connery arrived and of course
thought he knew everything

and said I don't need to practise,
I know how to use a sword.

And so in the first rehearsal
of the first battle

of the sword fight
that they were going to have,

Lambert nearly decapitated Connery

cos he was... he couldn't
defend himself properly.

And Connery realised
that he's gonna have to practise.

I know all this
because Russell Mulcahy told me it.

And he said, you know, he went away
and he practised and practised

and practised at every available
moment that he had

in order to be able
to not look a fool.

He realised that he was being
a little bit sort of blase about it,

that this... whatever else
you do in this film,

you take the sword fighting
seriously.

I think that that gave Lambert...

It gave Connery
a huge respect for Lambert,

and they became
very firm friends during it.

Amazingly enough, Connery also
rather liked Russell Mulcahy

because Connery doesn't waste time.

He doesn't like to hang about
and he doesn't like multiple takes.

He had seven days for filming only

and he made a bet
with Russell Mulcahy

that they would never get
all his scenes done in that time.

Mulcahy won that bet,

and he won it
because he knew how to work fast.

He was very prepared,
he never overshot.

He knew... All he needed
was the pieces of the jigsaw.

The film would be made
in the editing suite,

but as long as he got what he wanted
for that jigsaw, then he was happy.

Yargh!

Yargh!

The film dwells on themes
such as heroism, power,

and mankind's
eternal yearning for battle.

But the heart of the story
is the idea of immortality,

and therefore mortality.

In the vein of vampire films,

the price of eternal life is seeing
those you love grow old and die.

Lambert captures the poignancy of
a man who never chose to be a god.

There is something of the Anne Rice,

certainly if in no other way
than in Christopher Lambert's hair.

He's quite like
a hunky Anne Rice type.

You can imagine him
playing a vampire.

But the film, the concept,
is very interested in the idea of -

in a quite like
a high concept fantasy way -

age and loss and death.

And so immortality fundamentally
might seem like quite a silly thing

to have as a plot point in a film,

but when you're dealing in these
kind of metaphorical genres,

like horror with vampires

or this kind of fantasy thing
with Highlander,

you're also using it
to talk about the sadness of loss,

the sadness of outliving others.

Neglected on its release in 1986,

it was the rise of VHS
that brought Highlander to life...

and it is the perfect fit
for a cult film.

Be it the pleasure
of Connery's company,

the obscure mythology,
the songs, the silliness,

or its ecstatic celebration
of the tradition of the sword fight,

a huge following has grown up

around the film's
unconventional brand of escapism.

Now the film didn't succeed
on its initial box office release,

but it was rediscovered
as sort of VHS became a big thing.

Tell me a little bit about
the journey the film took

subsequent to coming out.

Well, I think it missed its time

because it was just between
the big peaks in fantasy.

But it was also
a very difficult film to follow,

partly because of its refusal
to give you any exposition.

There was a sequel, Highlander II,

which then did create an exposition,
which fans of the first film hated.

They said the immortals
came from space,

which everyone hoped
they would pretend didn't happen
and tried to erase it.

But it was...
Just there was something about it.

It was a perfect Friday night
VHS movie.

I mean, in the UK and in America,

Subway - the Luc Besson film that
Christopher Lambert had been in -

was also one of those films.
It was passed around.

You would go around
to friends' houses in the '80s,

on a Friday night watching videos,

and it would be one of those films
that you would watch.

Films like The Terminator,
films like this,

are films that I didn't see
in the cinema.

I saw them on video
at people's houses afterwards

because they were
absolute word-of-mouth must see.

Not because anyone would say
this is the greatest film ever made,

but they were just perfect
for Friday night entertainment.

They were absolutely
over-the-top enjoyable.

And it just grew
and grew from there.

It was the kind of film
that needed to be rediscovered

and the way to rediscover a film
was to find it in a VHS hire store,

or whatever, and have the guys
behind the counter -

who were kind of film geeks...

who would love niche films
and cult films -

you would go in and talk to them
and say, "What can we see?"

And it was almost like a club.

It was like a sort of
fraternity of people

who didn't really care
for the mainstream product

that was coming up, but they wanted
something a bit different.

Highlander fit right into this
very, very well,

and so basically the...

it became a kind of...

It grew as a cult, the more people
started to take it out, watch it,

share it amongst their friends,
talk about it and then pass it on.

It was almost like a sort of secret
that you could pass on to other...

other film geeks, cult people,

people who actually enjoyed defying
the conventional sort of wisdom

of what makes a successful film.

The rise of home video, I think,
is completely concurrent

with the way we look
at fandom today,

which is to say that when people can
physically own a VHS or a Blu-ray,

it means that they have
a sort of curator's,

or a collector's mentality,

and that means that they are likely
to rewatch the film again and again,

something which wasn't possible
prior to that,

and that means that their
familiarity with that thing

makes them notice
new things about it,

makes them see themselves in it,

makes them have
little kind of in-jokes about it,

watch it with friends
again and again.

And so that gave people something
personal to hold onto about movies.

Attempting to build a franchise
out of Highlander

has only served as proof
that it remains a true original.

As the script makes clear,
there can be only one.

There is no source novel
or comic book.

Highlander was brewed
out of wildly varied ingredients

to create a strange
and enchanting personality.

The sequels to Highlander
are completely unnecessary

and also they're illogical.

At the end of Highlander, he wins.

He is the only one left.

And the irony of that is
that he knows everything.

He says I can hear, I can understand
everybody in the whole world,

but he has become mortal.

So he's going to die.

He actually is going to die
of old age eventually.

And I love that.

I love that sort of... of seeming...

you know, the fact...

OK, you get to this stage where
you know everything and then...

but also you're no longer immortal.

So that is the logical sense
of the film.

And if there's one thing
about this film -

considering it's created mythology
out of nowhere -

it obeys the logic
of that mythology.

To have a sequel is nonsense.
It's nonsensical.

Amazingly enough, Connery agreed
to be in the sequel, Highlander II,

along with Lambert, and it wasn't...

I don't think really that it was
completed in any way, shape or form

that made any sense at all,

and of course,
was pretty well a disaster.

However, it didn't stop those
who owned the rights to Highlander

to actually then creating
a Highlander franchise for TV.

There was a TV series.

So somebody was still
making money out of it.

But these are all
fairly redundant exercises.

They're nothing more than sort of
just a way of extending it.

The true ownership of a film
can only come from a film

that not everybody knows about,
or they don't...

nobody ever really has a take on.

Highlander is one of
the very first of those.

The fandom, the horror fandom,
they are genre fans

and this is not a genre fandom.

It's a hard genre to place.
Yeah.

What would you say it was?
I don't know what its genre is.

I mean, it has got
elements of horror.

It has got elements of sci-fi,
elements of fantasy.

You know, actually, I mean,
it's got everything, it really does.

It samples in a very eclectic way
from every form.

And this is, you know,
the MTV video director's skill,

to go, "I'll put a bit of that in.
I'll put a bit of that in."

And it plays with all of them.
You discover it, it's mad.

You share it with people,
everyone loves it

and you start to find
your little community.

This is even pre-internet.

People found it
and found each other

before you could use,
you know, online chat groups.

And it had built up a head of speed

by the time
that the internet came around.

And it is without doubt one of
the very early devotees' films.

Highlander also endures

because it taps into
the roots of story-telling -

tropes that go back to the Iliad

and Jungian ideas
about the universal monomyth,

the lone hero, the call of destiny,

the apocalyptic battle with evil.

These are the heroic features
that unite King Arthur,

the Man With No Name, James Bond,

Luke Skywalker, Mad Max,
and Connor MacLeod.

In every sense,
Highlander is timeless.

♪ QUEEN: A Kind Of Magic

♪ One dream

♪ One soul

♪ One prize

♪ One goal

♪ One golden glance

♪ Of what should be... ♪

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