Category: Oh Good Lord More Highlander

Last time: Insults! Underwater adventure! Impending swordplay!

16. The time of the blathering

After the underwater hijinks, Connor finally gets around to asking why there are immortals in the first place. Ramirez…kind of answers!

Thankfully, there’s a YouTube video, and one that also tacks on the later instance where I feel he’s maybe not doing all he could as a life coach. Relevant part is from beginning to 0:18, since I’m pretty sure Connor already knows that people are awful:

Okay, I’ve quit rolling my eyes, probably.

Two things here:

1) Even though I’m not any good at it either, sometimes it’s better to just admit you don’t know something. This was one of those times, and someone 50+ times older than I am should know that.

2) This is our exposition character, and he’s not doing a very good job. I take this seriously, because I’m that weird viewer who adores the part of movies where you find the person who knows what the heck is going on. Jezelle in Jeepers Creepers. Monologuing villains. That one witness in a murder mystery who knows why everybody is mad at everybody else. Even weird presentations of the idea, like the princess’s opening exposition in David Lynch’s Dune or the “…everybody got that?” gag from Dark Helmet in Spaceballs, and of course Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers franchise. I love ’em all.

You can have Connery read the title card all you want: Ramirez is still a sucky exposition character. Though he does redeem this scene a little by telling us about the Gathering, which is what’s going on in the 20th-century part of our plot.

There follows a training montage with duels and drills, in some ways mining the subgenre Peter Jackson would later perfect: Sword & Scenery. At one point, Connor asks if Ramirez would take his head if they were the last two immortals: given that he is teaching him to fight, I would guess no? We also learn that immortals are prohibited from fighting on holy ground, which must make religious wars interesting for everybody.

Connor’s final lesson in this weird Rocky/Iron John mashup is, as far as I can tell, to read/enter the mind of a helpless, bystanding deer. If you’re wondering whether this will clear up any of the questions around immortals sensing each other, etc., that I’ve mentioned before, all I can say is: not much. But the Highlander is at the top of his game…so you just know the next part is going to be a downer.

Next time: * whistles TV theme song*

Next time on TCBOM!: The only sterile condition in 16th-century Scotland turns out to be Connor’s.

 

I’ve written fifteen of these? Yikes.

Last time: I felt so bad about not liking Ramirez that I had an all-Connery week on the blog.

15. The Loch ????? Monster

Ramirez starts Connor’s training in the most picturesque way possible, with a scenic boat ride. It’s probably not that picturesque for our hero, who is being made to balance on the sides of the boat while holding an oar. Connor complains about…everything, really, and calls Ramirez a haggis. (He’s clearly not. Haggis is tasty. And quiet.)

They bicker some more, during which we learn 1) the composition and chief use of haggis; 2) Ramirez is Egyptian; 3) Connor can’t swim.

Ramirez addresses the first and last points by rocking the boat until Connor falls off, but not before what may be his best line: “You have the manners of a goat, and you smell like a dung-heap, and you have no knowledge whatsoever of your potential.” Note that down, gentle viewer; it’s the first indication we get that Connor might be special, even for an immortal.

Connor flails and screams for help. “You can’t drown, you fool!” yells Ramirez. “You’re immortal!” The Highlander sinks to the bottom and realizes that there might be something to that after all.

This is perhaps my favorite part of the entire “Ramirez trains Connor” sequence, for two reasons. One is that once he realizes he’s not drowning, Connor genuinely appears to be enjoying himself in the murky water. Second, me being me, is that now I’m busy imagining a secret society of underwater immortals just hanging out somewhere and giving the whole duel-to-the-death thing a miss.  If you made that into a miniseries (Wetlanders? Who Wants To Swim Forever? A River Runs Over It?), I’d watch the heck out of it.

While I’m envisioning SeaQuest: Really Low-Tech Edition, Ramirez has made a nice fire by the water’s edge. Connor emerges like the Creature From the Probably Really Cold Lagoon and tries to whack his tormentor with his sword. Ramirez is way ahead of him—by which I mean already behind him—and disarms him easily.

Connor stands there, fish falling out of his kilt, and slowly comes to terms with his lot as an immortal. “I hate you,” he tells Ramirez, who replies, “Good! That is a perfect way to start.” He’s going to teach Connor the art of swordsmanship—and only five years after he really, really needed it.

 

Next time: It won’t be Disney, that I promise.

Next time on TCBOM!: The Katana Kid.

 

Last time: Connor had a mountain of artifacts and the occasional happy flashback.

14. Let me explain…

So it’s time for Ramirez. And it won’t be a big surprise that I don’t especially like the character, but it always gets me that I feel so darned guilty about it. He brings verve to parts of the movie that could use it, which is good. He’s an exposition character, which is something I usually love. And the casting that causes a character who is an Egyptian-born Spaniard to have the strongest Scots burr in the movie is the kind of inspired (or possibly “inspired”) move that usually wins me right over.

And so I try to break it down, only to be thwarted at every turn by things I do like. Is it the cheese factor?

Guess not. The bombast?

Nope.

Anyway, Ramirez (Sean Connery, which is the one fact about Highlander even people who’ve never heard “Princes of the Universe” know) rides into Connor’s life on a white horse.

At this point, I was going to make an Old Spice joke… and that’s when it hit me. Ramirez is supposed to be a Mr. Miyagi figure, but with the velvet suit and the booming voice, he reads like Lord Flashheart from Blackadder, right from the beginning.

Ramirez introduces himself as “Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, chief metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain,” working his red velvet suit and peacock cape for all they’re worth. Connor’s wife sums it up succinctly: “Who?” I generally spend this part of the movie wondering whether Connor and Heather know anything about Spain. (Presumably blacksmith Connor knows some metallurgy, but I’d bet you a zillion skull helmets he wouldn’t call it that.)

Ramirez proves that he knows Connor’s backstory, and then—somehow—gives Connor a Quickening.

This is something I’ve been trying to figure out. A friend of mine has a theory that an immortal can trigger a Quickening at will if they have one “on deck,” so to speak, but this means what? Ramirez saved up the results of his last duel for what is basically a sales presentation? Is it like those PSAs from my childhood where the drug dealer gives you the first one free?

As the lightning subsides and the rain falls, Ramirez looks up to the sky and shouts, “We are brothers!” It looks like he’s going to embrace the Highlander, but the scene cuts before he does. I wouldn’t press that guy against a nice suit either.

Meanwhile, in the ’80s, Brenda bribes Moran with lunch and snoops through his desk; in his treasure cave, Connor sharpens his sword in front of a fish tank I bet he doesn’t maintain properly and looks at Brenda’s picture on the back of a book about sword-making.

Next time: For Found-Again Friday, I assuage my guilt about Ramirez by taking on a Connery movie I loved…when I was nine.

Next time on TCBOM!: It’s like Rocky, but with kilts and topography.

Last time: the pseudo-martyrdom (and painful repeated head-butting) of Connor MacLeod.

Back in the ’80s, Connor lopes down the street as dawn puts an end to what I think we can all agree was a long damn day for him. He’s going home at last.

And like every other supernatural humanoid in fiction, he is clearly enormously wealthy: we see him descend an elegant staircase on his way to a sitting room that is basically a treasure vault filled with antiques (to the mere mortals in the story)/relics of past stages of his existence (to those of us in the knowing audience).

It’s at this point that I usually start complaining about the rich-immortal phenomenon in general, so I’ll say it here too: won’t somebody, sometime, write a story about a vampire who’s just really bad at investments?

Connor sits down, stares off into the distance, and summons another 16th-century flashback, in which he’s a mere blacksmith with a pretty wife named Heather…and an enormous tower to live in. Setting aside that sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar, how did a smith and a…farmer?…manage that? Is Heather the last bit of some sort of Tess of the D’Urbervilles fallen-family situation? Are they squatters?

Whatever they are, they’ve just finished a spot of al-fresco sex when a horse leaps over them. You know what that means.

 

Next time: I actually haven’t the foggiest.

Next time on TCBOM!: Anybody heard of this Connery guy?

 

Bonus goofery: Rewatching for TCBOM! (I try not to watch the whole movie every week, but I like seeing swords clash as much as the next person, and indeed a little more so—occasionally it gets away from me) has meant that I sometimes have Highlander playing while I also have headphones on. This has led to some interesting action/music combinations over time, so much so that I regret I have the mashup-making skills of a dead worm. Instead, we’ll make do with music videos.

• Coolest: Kurgan’s entry into present day + “Stand For the Fire Demon” by Roky Erickson (honorable mention: “Bungle In The Jungle” by Jethro Tull).

•  Most disturbing: Kurgan and Ramirez duel + otherwise excellent jazz song “Set In Motion” by Steven Emerson, which is both completely out of place and just thematic enough about winning at life to be completely unnerving.

• Most surprisingly on, er, point: Connor and Fasil duel + “In For The Kill” by La Roux.

Last time: My scorecard for the scene we talked about in part 11:

• Atmosphere/Creepy appearance of villain: +4
• Girl actually assists in fight instead of just screaming: +2
• Pointfulness of fight, hero or villain side: -4 (-2 apiece)
• Random helicopter: -2
• I want the Kurgan’s evil laugh as a text-message notifier noise: +1
• Total: 1

That’ll do, Highlander. That’ll do.

12. Maybe I’m an optimist at heart after all.

We go to another sixteenth-century flashback, in which the other MacLeods gossip about Connor—and if I’d only started this series earlier, I could be making a nice Christmas-dinner analogy right about now.

The gist of this particular gossip is Connor’s untimely aliveness (to borrow a phrase from The Tick), and how it’s probably all the work of the devil. This part of the movie always throws me into a mild philosophical confusion: I think of myself as a mildly to moderately superstitious person, and also a bit of a pessimist. Yet I think my response to a relative’s revival would be something like this:

In the event the MacLeods lost the battle: “Well, he seems the same. It’s a little weird, but at least that guy with the helmet didn’t kill everybody. Praise god!”

In the event the MacLeods won the battle: “God shows his favor on us again! We thought we’d lost Connor, but he’s alive through a miracle! Praise god!”

Last resort? Pull a Dracula and splash him with holy water to see what happens, since the clan’s priest has been prominent in every flashback sequence. These people have to be getting their demon lore from somewhere, right? Instead, the priest is just as spooked as everybody else.

I’m willing to believe, after shivering in Inverness in July back in my college days, that people in the highlands of Scotland are probably even more pessimistic/colder than I am. I’m just not used to feeling like Pollyanna.

Connor shows up with no apparent idea about any of this (and he’s smiling! make a note!), which is odd: the other MacLeods, especially Dugal*, do not seem to be masters of hiding their feelings. They certainly don’t hide them in the dialogue that follows, which ends with Connor being conked on the head with a jug.

And you know, I want all this not to be a plot contrivance. I try to imagine what it would be like to be, say, Connor’s girlfriend (wife? betrothed? do we know what that relationship is?): there was a huge wound in him, he was grey, not breathing, and now none of those things are true and it’s creepy. So maybe you would want to burn him as a warlock. But no matter how many times I start out saying “It was a more ignorant time,” I always end up at “The MacLeods have lost their damn minds.**”

Connor is tied to a yoke and taken outside, where the idiots of his village—you guessed it—beat the ever-loving shit out of the Highlander. (They also scatter a few chickens.) The intent is still to burn him, but his cousin Angus, voice of reason and approximate Robin Williamson lookalike, pleads him down to exile—not, however, before he’s punched by Dugal and attacked by Random Headbutt Guy.

I find Random Headbutt Guy fascinating because until now, we’ve never seen him. I can’t find him in the battle scenes, even though he’s clearly a lover of violence. He doesn’t wear a clan tartan. I’m half convinced he just saw an angry mob and joined in because head-butting people is his most cherished hobby.

If you want to see him yourself, he appears from 2:27 to 2:30 in this montage. Head-butting is a lot more common in movies than I thought.

Bloodied and still yoked, Connor leaves his village forever and leans against a rock, the movie cutting back to the present day by having his face fade into a mural on the side of a building. It’s of Mona Lisa with bloodshot eyes, and I am kind of offended on her behalf.

 

 

*This is how the character’s name is spelled according to IMDb. This annoys me disproportionately. Did the O freeze off?

** Especially if, as we see in a later flashback, he’s a blacksmith. Enjoy trying to shoe your horses using only collective anger!

Next time: Found-Again Friday goes animated again.

Next time on TCBOM! Doesn’t everybody have a room for treasure and flashbacks?

Last time: Brenda is a woman on a mission: Connor is a creeper who dilutes his single-malt.

11. A helicopter?

Brenda leaves the bar, and Connor tries to follow her—but she is hiding and trying to follow him instead. This part does fulfill my definition of “meet-cute,” in a detective sort of way—both of them stalking around each other, thinking, “What do you know about that sword?!”

Connor’s immortal-sense appears to go off, so he grabs Brenda and tries to get her to go away. Too late, though—the Kurgan pops up next to them like the world’s evilest, happiest jack-in-the-box. This is a good time to reiterate that it’s nice to see someone actually enjoying himself in this movie, given that Connor has variously scowled and glowered through professional wrestling, a duel, an arrest and interrogation, quality booze, a semi-flirtation, and some small portion of 1536.

They fight (Connor doesn’t have his sword on him…at night…during the Gathering; maybe Brenda should have walked him home instead), with Connor using first a firehose, then a metal pipe handed to him by Brenda. Have I mentioned all the cheap Freud in here lately? In this scene, it’s even cheaper than usual.

A chase ensues, with the Kurgan literally pursuing Connor down a dark alley; it’s very effective. Connor attacks with the pipe again, but it’s wrested away from him, and the Kurgan adds “beat” to his list of options for “[verb] the ever-loving shit out of the Highlander.” He also demonstrates that he has learned nothing constructive about not gloating/roaring out movie taglines at crucial moments. The Kurgan steps toward Brenda, which is a profoundly stupid order of operations when being the ruler of the world is on the line, and Connor tackles him.

…And then a police helicopter appears, for some reason, and the Kurgan utterly fails to take advantage of the surprise and make this one of the shortest action movies on record. Instead, he runs away, leaving Connor with a pipe and Brenda with a bunch of questions—none of which Connor will answer even though she helped save his uncooperative, trenchcoated skin.

 

Next time: Found-Again Friday.

Next time on TCBOM!: More violence, plus: does that guy even go here?

 

Last time: The Kurgan turned up, and this author lost her head. Fortunately, this caused absolutely nothing to explode in a blatantly Freudian way.

10. In which various people act like dorks.

As our villain makes himself…comfortable?, we find Brenda in her lab, looking through a microscope. A guy who is clearly some sort of lab tech steps in, delivers traces of metal they found in Fasil’s body, and makes a “really close shave!” joke about the beheading while looking like a complete goob.

This brings up one of the things I love about Highlander: it has a lot of memorable minor characters. (We’ve already seen one of my favorites, the old guy in the flophouse lobby; he’ll be back.) Anonymous Gallows-Humor Forensic Tech Guy is my least favorite by far: It’s probably a tribute to either the writers or the actor that, in the 15 seconds he is onscreen, I just despise him, more than the cop who sexually harasses Brenda, more than the actual villain of the movie, and more than the folks we see in the next Connor flashback, who are some stiff competition.

Brenda, probably thrilled to have policework to do in her actual area of interest, runs some tests on the sword bits. In addition to sending me off to the dictionary to confirm that “absorbance,” so spelled, has a specific scientific meaning, the results intrigue her enough that she returns to the crime scene—a parking deck probably built with huge quantities of rebar and studded with trace metal from all those exploding cars—with a metal detector.

Still, fortune favors the bold main character; the metal detector leads her to a notch in a concrete pillar filled with more traces of Connor’s sword. She extracts them and is almost surprised by Connor, who has come back for the sword he hid. He hides instead, then retrieves his weapon.

Excited about her discovery, Brenda goes to what seems to be her local bar—she’s greeted by name—for a large drink to steady her nerves. Connor turns up, trying to figure out what she knows (being 450 years old doesn’t make you subtle, apparently; he asks if she goes to Madison Square Garden a lot). He also orders a Glenmorangie on the rocks: research suggests ice in Scotch is less of a no-no than I’d supposed, but I did think Connor would have slightly less…mainstream taste in spirits.

He then says “I’d like to walk you home.” That’s not at all creepy from an apparent stalker dressed like Columbo! Still, if you’ve ever seen a movie in your life, you know these two are going to get together—and in fairness, that isn’t even going to be his worst pickup technique: that would be the one that works, later in the film.

Bonus Important Life Lesson I learned from writing this: Don’t do an image search for “ice in Scotch” unless you have an urgent, visceral need to see the entire world supply of whiskey stones all in one go.

 

Next time: Found-Again Friday.

Next time on TCBOM!: Violence!

Previously: It wasn’t exactly Law & Order, y’know?

9. Admittedly, I really liked the armor

As Connor presumably…actually, that’s a good question, since the next time we see him, he’s out of jail with no ill effects after hitting at least two cops. Did he call a lawyer? Does he have a lawyer? Did his poor assistant Rachel have to run over there with bail money?

Anyway, as Connor begins the process that mysteriously ejects him from the police station, a car radio announces the headless-guy news before a tape is put in, and a sneering voice is heard in the land.

Yes, it’s the Kurgan, rolling into the city in one of those enormous cars you see in ’80s movies and blasting his stereo (he has the best song on the soundtrack, in my opinion; I wish it were possible to take this song, load it into a rifle, and shoot “Who Wants To Live Forever” with it). He’s eschewed his old armor for leather punk attire, and not a skull helmet in sight.

I miss Zorro’s horse already.

Like a lot of shy people, I have always entertained a hope that someday I’d be the kind of person about whom people say, “Hey, it’s J.A.! Now we can start the party.” I don’t know if I’ll ever get there personally—probably for reasons encompassing my use of “about whom”—but that’s the feeling I always get when I watch this part of Highlander. Anything can happen on a battlefield, but here in the modern age: Hey, it’s the Kurgan: Now we can start the party!

The Kurgan takes a room at a flophouse, signing in as “Victor Kruger” and flashing money at the desk clerk while looking like a god.

Okay, I’ll admit it: from the moment I first saw this scene and every time since, I have had a very…er…strong reaction to the Kurgan. I can’t put it into words, but I can definitely illustrate it:

Clancy Brown is a handsome actor, but this goes above and beyond that somehow. (Also,  since I noted that Connor at the wrestling match had the facial expression I have at parties, I feel compelled to note that the Kurgan pretty much has my work expression down—kind of a perma-“Oh, for god’s sake.”)

The clerk is sufficiently impressed to offer sleazy concierge services, one of which we’ll see in action in a bit.

What happens when he gets to his room is exactly the sort of thing that drove me to write these posts: a series of things that, taken by a receptive viewer in the right frame of mind, are splendid, and only on repeated viewings do doubts creep in. The first time I saw the Kurgan put together his sword and swing it around, it was unabashedly awesome. About ten viewings later, however…

• Is a some-assembly-required sword really a good idea for fighting? Especially the kind of fighting these guys do? We’re going to see a flashback in which a swordfight causes A TOWER TO FALL DOWN!
• What is the point of some of those exercises he does? Some of them are probably relevant to combat, a few are at least good for coordination, but there are a couple that seem purely in aid of saying, “Look who has really pretty arms! This guy!” Well, noted, movie. Noted back in the flophouse lobby, for that matter.

When he’s done with this display, the door opens and a hooker enters, presumably fresh (er, “fresh”) from the desk clerk. “Hi, I’m Candy,” she says.

“Of course you are,” the Kurgan growls with more or less the same level of better-than-this nihilism I had when muttering in the back of my fifth-grade classroom. Yeah, yeah. You despise humanity. Join the club, Captain Pretty Arms.

In conclusion, I’d like to leave you with this bit of meta-commentary, since I knew writing this post was not going to be my finest moment as a sane human creature:

 

Next time: I scrounge up something for Found-Again Friday. I still can’t believe I watched Mister Frost!

Next time on TCBOM!: I wouldn’t call it a meet-cute…

Last time: Brenda found a sword and demonstrated some basic knowledge of police procedure. Hurrah!

8. Sword and farcery.

After the introduction of Brenda and her discovery of the sword, we move to Connor at the police station, being stared at by Garfield, the cop who was holding a big gun and doing a terrible Dirty Harry impression back when the Highlander was apprehended. Connor stares back, and Garfield begins to blink nervously.

I’m pretty sure this exchange is supposed to signify that Garfield is alarmed at some instinctual level by confrontation with an eldritch entity he can’t understand, but it also works at a level where Garfield is just a giant weasel with a limited supply of intestinal fortitude.

Lt. Moran tries in the most transparent ways possible to get Connor (or rather, Connor’s current identity as Russell Nash, antique dealer) to admit that he might, just maybe, be involved with making the headless Fasil headless. I’ve spent the past year listening to old-time radio mysteries, so I can say with some authority that this part makes detectives played by Jack Webb look like masters of subtlety. What I can’t believe, though, is that Moran has the sword. You know, that million-dollar Toledo Salamanca from last time? To his credit, it has been placed in a plastic bag, but I have serious doubts about whether in another interrogation room someone is, say, waving a Picasso canvas around and yelling at a suspect. Times were hard in the ’80s in the Big Apple, even without a bunch of immortal weirdos running around, but has no one in the NYPD got a camera these guys could borrow?

To add insult to injury, since it’s Fasil’s sword, it very clearly hasn’t beheaded anyone, yet no one thinks to ask Connor if he’s missing anything sharp.

The cops start tossing around theories of the crime, the first of which is that the two men fought over the valuable weapon in an antiques deal gone bad, and Connor/Nash killed Fasil—but not with that sword!—and then left the scene…but not with that sword.

This is where I start to wonder if they are spelling Moran wrong.

Connor, as they say, gives this opinion the consideration it deserves, sarcastically suggesting Fasil did it himself to protest the wrestling match they were both attending. Garfield suggests a sex-crimes angle, because Garfield is a giant weasel, and Connor slugs him. If you’ve spent the last few years reading any urban fantasy or paranormal romance, it seems odd that an immortal would take issue with someone suggesting he was gay now that we as a culture are knee-deep in fictional pansexual vampires, but I suppose that’s the ’80s for you.

There’s a suggestion of super-strength as Connor tosses police around, and every civilian at the station seems to be cheering him on.

 

Next time: I attempt to make it through Mister Frost again for Found-Again Friday.

Next time on TCBOM: The Kurgan enters the 20th century, and I try to control my glee.

 

Last time: Law & Order: Jackasses

7. Enter the nerd.

Now arrested, Connor is presumably dragged off to the police station—and the first time I saw this, it did my heart good, because Highlander: The Series never seemed to spend a lot of time on things like disposing of headless bodies. I had almost begun to assume immortals just dissolved, so the cops finding Fasil and wanting to know what happened was like a little beacon of logic shining out of the movie.

Cut to the crime scene: a headless body (yay!),  a lot of angry people who would like to know why their cars exploded, and the heroine/love interest of the movie, Brenda Wyatt (we can tell she is going to be the love interest because she looks like a cleaned-up version of Connor’s 16th-century girlfriend: the guy seriously has a type). She’s a consultant/crime scene investigator, which is good since the police at the scene are played by Alan “the captain on Police Squad!” North and John “Always put one in the brain!” Polito, who need all the help they can get.

After being harassed by the idiot cops, Brenda starts to look around the scene and finds what everyone else apparently missed: a giant, shiny sword lying around. Admittedly, she is later revealed to be a weapons specialist, but I like to think I’d have noticed that too. There are a lot of things I love about this scene, though: she is obviously excited by her discovery, she uses gloves like a real technician…mostly I like that they have an expert at something, since so far we’ve seen bumbling policemen, charging Scots, Fasil losing his duel, and the Kurgan losing his chance by making a villain speech. She’s a nerd about something, in an era when you didn’t always see that in movies.

Then the following exchange takes place:

Lt. Moran, who cannot parse the words “Toledo Salamanca”: A what?

Brenda: A sword, Frank. A very rare sword.

Moran: Worth much?

Brenda: Only about a million bucks.

Am I crazy for thinking that there would then be some extra care taken with that sword? As we’ll see next week, I totally am.

 

Read the next one: Connor vs. Police Squad.

Next time: Still trying to pick a Found-Again subject for this week.

Next time on TCBOM: Connor vs. the cops. A battle of…wits.