Why there’ll nev­er be anoth­er action fan­ta­sy film quite like Highlander

It may seem a bit dat­ed 30 years on, but at the time of its ini­tial release High­lander marked the cul­mi­na­tion of many firsts. It was the first major fea­ture film made by Aus­tralian music video direc­tor Rus­sell Mulc­ahy, who used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inject fast-paced flash-cut­ting tech­niques which gave High­lander a fresh and excit­ing visu­al nar­ra­tive. The script was a col­lege assign­ment writ­ten by UCLA under­grad Gre­go­ry Widen – his first sale – and it was also only Christo­pher Lambert’s sec­ond Eng­lish-lan­guage fea­ture after Tarzan epic Greystoke.

High­lander was also among the first films to employ Gar­rett Brown’s cut­ting-edge Sky­cam tech­nol­o­gy – what could eas­i­ly be mis­tak­en for drone footage today was in fact shot by a com­put­er-oper­at­ed cam­era sus­pend­ed on wires. This new tech­nol­o­gy cou­pled with Mulcahy’s inno­v­a­tive approach meant that High­lander looked as styl­ish as one of his music videos with­out lack­ing in substance.

The film’s core theme – immor­tal­i­ty – is uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing and brings with it a host of poten­tial sce­nar­ios which have been exten­sive­ly explored through­out cin­e­ma his­to­ry. But in Widen’s unique take on the sub­ject, High­lander is, in the end, a sto­ry about love and its exis­ten­tial flip-side, lone­li­ness; which might just be the key to the film’s mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional appeal. At a recent screen­ing of a stun­ning new 4k restora­tion of the film, Christo­pher Lam­bert said that over the years, peo­ple have come up to him say­ing how their father showed them High­lander, and they in turn intro­duced their sons to the world of Con­nor MacLeod and The Kurgan.

Despite span­ning hun­dreds of years and var­i­ous glob­al loca­tions, High­lander is pre­dom­i­nant­ly set in 1980’s New York City and 16^th cen­tu­ry Scot­land, where Lambert’s Con­nor MacLeod dis­cov­ers that he is not like oth­er men. Men­tored by Sean Connery’s Juan Sánchez Vil­la-Lobos Ramírez, MacLeod learns the art of sword fight­ing and the secret to har­ness­ing his spe­cial pow­ers. With a French­man play­ing a Scot, and a Scot play­ing an Egypt­ian, it stood to rea­son that Amer­i­can Clan­cy Brown should play the Russ­ian vil­lain, The Kur­gan. One of cinema’s all-time great bad guys, Brown’s turn as the twist­ed killer spawned two of the film’s great­est lines, which along with the icon­ic tagline ​‘There can be only one!’ are still quot­ed with rel­ish by fans today.

The immor­tals must bat­tle until only one remains, and to them go the spoils of ​‘the prize’. If The Kur­gan is the last man stand­ing the world is doomed, and so it’s up to MacLeod to ensure Kurgan’s defeat and his own sal­va­tion. Lam­bert and Brown were dan­ger­ous­ly involved in the spe­cial effects that were used to cre­ate the elec­tri­fied sword fights. The swords were rigged up to hid­den bat­ter­ies so that when the blades clashed, sparks (and a few shocks) lit­er­al­ly flew.

Though it rep­re­sent­ed new ground for many, High­lander was not a first for rock group Queen. The band had pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed the sound­track to Flash Gor­don, and had promised Mulc­ahy one track for High­lander. The offer to con­tribute music for the film was orig­i­nal­ly turned down by Mar­il­lion due to their tour­ing sched­ule, but the oppor­tu­ni­ty was not wast­ed by Fred­die Mer­cury and co. In fact, the band were so impressed by the rough cut that they decid­ed to make music for the entire film, which end­ed up form­ing the basis for their top-sell­ing album ​‘A Kind of Mag­ic’. With a total of eight Queen tracks, High­lander also fea­tured a score by Michael Kamen (Die Hard, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves); no doubt one of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the film’s endur­ing success.

Elec­tric sword fights, ancient bat­tles and trag­ic love; what’s not to love about High­lander? A hearty blend of action, fan­ta­sy, romance and humour, Widen’s screen­play con­tains authen­tic­i­ty and wit in good mea­sure, matched by Mulcahy’s fear­less film­mak­ing. It may have spawned a wave of car­bon copies and a few infe­ri­or sequels – not to men­tion long-stand­ing rumours about a remake – but the orig­i­nal ful­ly deserves its lega­cy as a sem­i­nal piece of action fantasy.

A new 4K restora­tion of High­lander is avail­able on Blu-ray/D­VD 11 July.