Queen - Princes of the Universe

Highlander III: The Sorcerer

Lacking both the confused audacity present in any version of The Quickening or the pure, kinetic energy of the original Highlander, Andrew Morahan's Highlander III: The Sorcerer (viewed here in a European theatrical cut, also known as Highlander 3: Die Legende, that includes a number of expanded sex scenes when compared to the US cinema release) settles for the dilatory pace of a televised police procedural. Although Sorcerer, like the two films before it, peeks into the memories of these battling immortals, these recollections are used to prop up present-day elements rather than really nose into the private mental space of someone who, despite living for centuries, hasn't yet been able to die. Sorcerer is a much more ordinary film then, one built out of pure exposition. Building blocks are dutifully doled out alongside handsome music video imagery to serve a wistful, erotic thriller-level plot. It's an approach distinct from (but inferior to) the frazzled, kaleidoscopic fragments that electrified Russell Mulcahy's swaggering rock operas. 

Christopher Lambert's Connor MacLeod and Mario Van Peebles' Kane are arranged as competing monsters in an investigation that naturally centres - but doesn't delve too deeply into - Deborah Kara Unger's Dr Johnson, a famous archaeologist puzzling through the discovery of an obscure tartan pattern within a Japanese historical site. MacLeod maintains an amiable but strangely distant presence - essentially pottering around until he's able to re-forge his broken sword - while Peebles, despite his character's pointedly Biblical name and a look best described as bubble money barbarian, isn't asked to do much more than growl his way through a Clancy Brown impression. Neither competitor has much in the way of an interior motor then. This pervasive sense of detachment is exacerbated in MacLeod's case by the crude fixes employed to nudge him towards something recognisably human. As well as a supernatural connection to what we presume is one of Dr Johnson's previous lives, MacLeod now also has an adopted pre-teen son who, really, only makes us wonder whatever happened to Rachel, the little girl MacLeod rescued from the Nazis in occupied Europe who grew up to be the executor of his vast estate? 

Highlander II (Renegade Version)

Only available now in a reorganised edit called the Renegade Version, Russell Mulcahy's mid-90s director's cut (which was further tweaked with CG additions focused around the film's light palette and background plates in the early 2000s) of Highlander II seeks to mitigate the wilful damage perpetrated on the series by a bizarre theatrical release that - in a rough, up-front, spill of treacly exposition - demanded viewers now consider Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery's immortal swordsmen as deposed alien warlords, banished to our planet for the crime of mounting a deeply unsuccessful insurrection. Mulcahy's subsequent assemblies junk this intergalactic aspect, tweaking the story so the film's fallen future has roots in some long-forgotten, technologically advanced, Earth-based civilisation; one that apparently predates women (but not the Genbaku Dome). 

Although ill-considered these attempts to reframe Highlander in sweeping, science fiction, terms are at least audacious. They represents a colossal overhaul of expectation that, surely, tracks into an expanding, operatic, canvas? Not a bit of it. The distant past and Planet Zeist both serve the same mechanical function - they provide a separate location from which enemies with similar abilities to our heroes can invade from. Highlander II barely even plugs into the promise of further battles between semi-invincible swordsmen. Only three immortals cross over, two airborne splatter-punks (quickly dispatched) and Michael Ironside's cackling General Katana. Given that the film is set forty years after the first, trapped in a ruin organically connected to MacLeod's interpretation of The Prize, why not make Connor's foes a trio of immortals born (or realised through the kind of near death Connor suffered on a 16th century battlefield) too late to stake a claim on their birth right? 

Youth and bitterness could be stressed; a rootless fanaticism aimed directly at MacLeod, an ageing relic who, quite apparently, has sucked the life force out of countless rivals (and perhaps even the world itself) then squandered this unfathomable triumph by allowing himself to moulder. Unfortunately Highlander II betrays no such interest, battering through half-formed characters and orphaned scenes until it reaches a state of conceptual tedium. The film even in its longest, most complete form is clearly unfinished, lacking not just basic transitional and connective information but, obviously, entire episodes. It's a lumpen, discursive, film then but this misbegotten sequel is home to one genuinely spectacular sequence - a metamorphosis that sees a wheezing, decrepit, MacLeod see off multiple assassins to stand dead centre in a series of thunderous detonations that bestow upon him the smirking vigour he allowed to slip away. MacLeod immediately takes advantage of this rejuvenation to hurl himself, pelvis first, at Virginia Madsen's Louise Marcus, the beautiful (but completely underwritten) terrorist who had, just minutes earlier, been demanding that this shuffling old Highlander stand to attention. 

Highlander

Even in its longer, so-called International Cut, Russell Mulachy's Highlander is a fragmented experience. Characters - and their subplots - come and go, briefly touched upon but always just out of our reach. This structural collapse isn't a failure of plotting though, it's a mode of communication explicitly tied to the film's lead character: an immortal swordsman named Connor MacLeod. We meet MacLeod during a wrestling match in Madison Square Garden. The camera's viewpoint becomes untangled from the ground-level brawling, lifting into the air then surging upwards towards the balcony seats, before crashing into Christopher Lambert's lulled observer. While the in-ring action works an ugly Southern pride angle, MacLeod disassociates, dreaming of a youth spent fighting for a 16th century Scottish clan. 

Connor MacLeod has over four hundred years of memories behind him. Desperate battles on muddy fields mingle with a long, blissful, relationship with a woman who adored him. There's even a brief interlude in occupied Europe of the 1940s that sees MacLeod rescue a child then machinegun a Nazi officer to death. It makes sense that this immortal is untethered from this pantomime present and therefore a firm narrative procession. MacLeod's daydreaming overwhelms, not just him, but the film itself. Flashbacks are not only geared to dole out the exposition required to make sense of an apocalyptic battle of multinational immortals, they also put us in the headspace of someone grappling with their own massively extended lifespan - the friends and lovers that they have buried, the thwarted human connections that he hopelessly clings to. This sadness underlines Lambert's blurry-eyed performance. As the cosmic competition that he finds himself a part of begins to wrap up, what does he actually have left? 

MacLeod and the film's other undying swordsmen battle for a vague power known as The Prize. When one man fells another by decapitation the winner is consumed by light and fire; an ejaculatory possession that mingles the strain of crucifixion with an almighty, building-shaking, orgasm. Sean Connery's Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramirez, whose primary function in Highlander is that of a knowledgeable mentor, is a Christian despite the fact that his birth comfortably pre-dates that of the faith's founders. Run through and close to death, following a castle-toppling fight with Clancy Brown's unstoppable Kurgan, Ramirez drops to his knees and raises his hands in prayer. A supplication seemingly rooted in the only rule that all of the game's participants, good or irredeemably evil, will not break: battle cannot be joined on holy ground. 

These notes lend Highlander a strange, semi-religious aspect. MacLeod's declaration upon vanquishing his final enemy - that he not only knows and feels everything but that he actually is everything - positions the character as a kind of bloodied Messiah. This supernatural survival of the fittest has facilitated the rise of an all-knowing leader for mankind, one who has built himself out of centuries of toil and torment. It makes you wonder about what sort of Creator inhabits this universe? Certainly not a merciful one. The Prize was anyone's to claim. MacLeod's eventual victory was hard-fought rather than pre-ordained. Indeed at the moment of his ascension, MacLeod is lifted up and consumed not by heavenly apparitions but by smoking phantoms and regurgitating beasts; visions of rot that try to take hold of his body before they are, themselves, absorbed. This incredible power is portrayed as violent and ugly, a crashing wave to be tamed by someone worthy. In the film's epilogue MacLeod chats merrily with the spirits of his departed friends about his Godhood. He sits with his new love, Roxanne Hart's Brenda, on a Scottish hillside, finally at peace. This unshakable connection with the land that birthed him is deployed in the reassuring, picturesque, terms of a romantic picnic but it also underlines something human and imperfect about MacLeod: his greatest dream was to live in his memories. 

Highlander: The Search for Vengeance

Kawajiri's preoccupation with combative, unkillable men meets an undying 80s fantasy franchise. Retail opportunity! The future is rubble, policed by Fourth Reich spider-bots and ruled by an ageless, Saturn worshipping, strat-shredding, Ziggurat dweller. Into this predicament wanders a trench coat wearing ronin who quickly hooks up with a pragmatic female soul, then establishes strained ties with the local freedom fighters. Forever war flashbacks detail a millennia long feud between the two lead immortals, of which this is but the latest stage.

Both have stuck to their roots: the Scottish stray seeks to keep himself ostracised, whilst the Roman imperialist throws in with whatever ideology is currently pushing an expansionist agenda. Highlander: The Search for Vengeance's hysterical highlight comes in the form of a near-miss memory reel - the token MacLeod pursues his quarry over endless continents and centuries, relentlessly coming up short. It's a believable insight into the psychotic urges of these eternal, grudge holders. They're all each other's got. As this is a Kawajiri flick, action is brisk and accomplished. It's a shame his Western paymasters took it upon themselves to hack out chunks of nuance though. There's tell that it was all restored for a vaporous Director's Cut edition available in Japan. If I ever track it down, I'll let you know.