Last time: The saddest anyone has ever been at the farmers’ market.

18. Finally! Part 1

Connor is gone—though I can’t figure out where. Do blacksmiths go on business trips?

Ramirez is having supper with Heather in the tower of Why Is There A Tower. He tells some sort of swashbuckling anecdote about an assignation gone wrong (also known as the part of the movie where I start muttering about who is and is not Errol @#!&ing Flynn). Heather laughs and pours more wine from what looks a lot like a present-day pinot noir bottle.

Ramirez’s immortal sense suddenly goes off, a few seconds before the birds notice a disturbance in the air and fly up: remember that when Connor can’t seem to notice anything more than 20 feet away. He tells Heather to escape, but it’s too late: the Kurgan bursts through the door—literally—and his eyes light up with unholy glee when he sees Ramirez.

As you might imagine, this is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Someone is going to make Ramirez stop talking!

Er, also, the Kurgan continues to look good. He’s down one sleeve (and, sadly, one magnificent skull helmet), though, and I can’t help wondering why. In fact, I wondered it on the phone for about two hours last summer, which inspired me to write There Can Be Only Monday! in the first place.

It frees up his sword arm, but you’d think someone as old as the Kurgan would’ve figured out details like that before now. That, coupled with the fact that it took him five years to find Connor’s house when the Highlander never left Scotland, raises the question of what he’s been doing all this time.

My top 5 explanations:

• It took that long to find a bookie who would take payment in armor, and dude has no idea how to handicap Shetland ponies beyond the literally and cruelly obvious.
• He melted the sleeve down to make action figures so he could relax Dark-Helmet style. Yes, for 5 years. Being the strongest of the immortals is totally exhausting.
• Looking for/fighting/learning to ride the Loch Ness monster. (Note: not only would I watch this movie, I would invest in it.)
• Sold it for bagpipe-making supplies so he can also terrify people outside Scotland.
• Weather was so awful he got his tongue stuck to his own sleeve for 5 years. (What? it’s not like he has to eat.)

At any rate.

“The Highlander! Where is he?” barks the Kurgan, presumably thinking That’s weird: do blacksmiths go on business trips?

Ramirez says, “It’s too late; I’ve prepared him for you!” in full High Drama mode, so naturally the Kurgan has no choice but to chop a table in half with his sword. The fight is on…which is more than we can say for the wine bottle.

 

Next time: Good question!

Next time on TCBOM!: Sweet mother of mercy, I think I’ll be stretching this scene out over three blog posts. Is this where the whippersnappers put “#sorrynotsorry”?

 

 

 

 

 

Last time: Eye of the tiger, or whatever similar carnivore is to be found in Scotland.

17. To market, to market, for some heartfelt bad news. And no doughnuts.

Connor, his wife Heather, and Ramirez go to market, and I am full of questions. Where is this market? It must serve a big area: we see a lot of different clan tartans. How far do Connor and Heather live from a village generally? From this village in particular? Is it possible someone from the old village might see Connor there, and what would happen if they did, given that they think he is a demon? And wouldn’t a crowd like this be likely to make fun of a guy in a red velvet suit?

These questions (other than an apparent “no” to the last one) go unanswered. As they walk past the vendors and other buyers, we see what looks like doughnuts. I don’t know if kettle doughnuts would be historically accurate, but having tasted a fresh-glazed one at a farmer’s market, I don’t care. If I were making Highlander, they’d be the focus of the scene: Connor and Ramirez would be eating them while all the emotionally heavy talk happens.

“But what I  want is a family!” Connor tells Ramirez. Had there been vampire novels in the sixteenth century, he might already have been aware that immortality occasionally comes at a reproductive price—although the, er, rise of supernatural romance has sort of put paid to that idea in the last 15 years.

Ramirez, to his credit, doesn’t do what my father would have done (i.e., say something about people in hell wanting ice water). He just breaks the bad news that immortals can’t have children. Connor points out that that will disappoint his wife—who at the moment seems to be buying the only live chicken at the poultry stand. As she shops, Ramirez lays down the immortal version of the Sex Talk, telling Connor he should leave his wife and sharing that over his 2,437 years, he’s had his heart broken repeatedly by marrying mortal women.

“I would save you that pain,” Ramirez says, and you don’t have to be 2 millennia old to know this advice is going to go totally unheeded. It does make Connor mopey(-er than usual), though. He should go get a doughnut.

Later, Ramirez asks Connor about his death on the battlefield and gives him a brief rundown on the Kurgan, which can be summarized as: ancient, powerful, really really dangerous. (As a side note, since I saw the movie late, I first encountered Kurgans in this book, which I heartily recommend.) Connor asks how one fights something like that, and is rewarded with the scoutmasterly speech at the end of the video I included last week. But hey, it gives Connery what I assume is a contractually promised opportunity to say “There can be only one.”

Next time: It’s a different sort of musical interlude as I look at my Valentine’s Day tradition.

Next time on TCBOM!: And now we can start the party.

 

 

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.