Highlander II: Special Edition (1991/2004)

Remember those immortals in the first Highlander movie; you know, the good Highlander movie? Ever wonder why they were immortal? If you’re like me, the answer is: no. No, I’m willing to accept that there are immortals that have to kill chop off each other’s heads. I’m cool with that. In Highlander II: The Quickening, filmmaker Russell Mulcahy tried to answer the question that no one asked, and came up with this brilliant idea: all of the immortals are exiled aliens. Perfect.

Highlander II: The Quickening is just an awful, awful film. The filmmakers involved, though, were never satisfied with the final product. In 1994, Mulcahy released Highlander II: The Renegade Version, in an attempt to mulligan the first film. With a word like “renegade” in the subtitle, it was bound to attract interest; too bad it also sucked. The major change in the Renegade version is the editing around the origin of the Immortals: no longer are they aliens from another planet, but instead come from some time in Earth’s distant past. Instead of being exiled to Earth, they’re exiled to the future. Now, I see the attraction in this approach: now, the Immortals are no longer aliens. And that’s a good thing. But what the alien explanation had going for it was the simple fact that it was an explanation. Why are there immortals? Because they’re aliens, that’s why. Now, there’s still no explanation for why they’re immortals. Like with the original movie, there just are immortals--so deal with it--but now there’s the added confusion that for some reason they were sent to the future (our present) and if they win the contest they can go back to the past and … fix history? I don’t even know. But at least they’re not aliens, right?

Not satisfied with this cut, either, in 2004 Mulcahy and his crew revisited Highlander II for (please God) the last time, adding new visual effects, which augment the visual appeal of the film, and do nothing for the story. This latest edition is called Highlander II: Special Edition, and it makes one wonder where the fuck Mulcahy keeps getting money to put into this film.


The basic story goes like this: it’s 2024, Connor MacLeod, once immortal, is now an old man, and the world has gone to shit. Then immortals from “the past” arrive to fight him, and he’s young again, so he and Louise Marcus (Virginia Madsen) team up to take down the evil Shield Corporation. That’s the sensible part, at least.

The film seems to have a thing or two to say about wealth and capital. The first Highlander begins, rather memorably (for me, at least) with Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) watching the Fabulous Freebirds wrestle at Madison Square Garden. This film, on the other hand, opens up at the opera. I would say that this is a clever contrast, on the part of the writers--one way of showing MacLeod’s movement up the social ladder--but if I remember correctly, MacLeod was independently wealthy way back in the 80s anyway. Still, plunk Christopher Lambert into a tux and put him at the opera, and the audience gets the idea pretty quickly: MacLeod is now important, and rich(er). Ramirez’s return comes during a performance of Hamlet, and a scene excised from the original script was set at “an elaborate wine-tasting sequence” (according to wikipedia). One can only lament the change from Queen and the Freebirds to Wagner and Shakespeare.

The narrative itself takes place in 2024. We are told that industrial pollution has destroyed the ozone layer, which has been replaced by “the shield,” an electro-magnetic field designed by MacLeod to act as an artificial ozone layer. Remember the ozone layer? It was big news in the 90s. Or at least the holes in it were. We don’t hear much about the ozone layer anymore. I think it’s because doing something about it was too hard, and thinking about it was too depressing. But I digress. The shield is controlled by The Shield Corporation, which charges for maintaining the shield. We soon learn that ozone levels above the shield have returned to normal (though it’s not explained how--perhaps this ozone layer was banished to the future from Earth’s past?), but that the Shield Corporation keeps the shield in place to keep taxing the people. Corporations are bad. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, then, that when the evil General Katana (Michael Ironside, who seems less like a samurai than his name would imply) comes to the future, he soon becomes best buds with the head of Shield Corp (John C. McGinley).


Since Louise Marcus is an eco-terrorist, she begins as a promising prospect for a strong female lead. That doesn’t last long. As soon as she confronts MacLeod, he’s attacked by some weird hedgehog-men, sent from his home planet, er, the past by General Katana, his nemesis. I guess they had hedgehog-men in the past. Soon, MacLeod is demonstrating his value to Marcus by expertly beheading both men; impressed by his new looks (MacLeod is re-immortaled by their presence, and becomes younger) and his prowess with the broadsword, Marcus immediately begins to make out with, and dry-hump, MacLeod. Having thus engaged physically with Marcus, MacLeod begins to nurture dependence by explaining how there can be only one, and it’s him, babe. Thus, within five minutes of meeting Marcus, MacLeod is already half way through the D.E.N.N.I.S System.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Highlander movie without Ramirez, the only actor in the film played by an actual Scotsmen (Sean Connery), even if he’s portraying a Spaniard. Who is really an Egyptian. Who is really an … alien? Anyway, Connery returns, for, as Mulcahy explains in the extra features, no one would finance it otherwise. He returns to modern day Scotland, I guess because he was killed there, but since he’s a Scottish actor he fits right in. Then, he flies to America, hooks up with McLeod and Marcus, and sacrifices himself to save them from a giant fan. It’s kinda like how Obi-wan Kenobi sacrifices himself to save Luke and Han and the gang, except in this instance he’s saving the heroes from a giant fan, and not Darth Vader.


Highlander II has had about as many do-overs as Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner. The major difference is that Scott keeps improving on a great film. Mulcahy, on the other hand, has taken a massive pile of shit, and through re-editing, new special effects, and other bits of movie magic, has managed to turn it into a slightly smaller pile of shit.

If there is any upside to this film, it's the presence of Sean Connery. I'd love to praise Christopher Lambert, but let's face it, he's a pretty terrible actor. The weird thing is, though, that his presence almost guarantees that I'll enjoy the film. Highlander II: Special Edition, is one of those movies that actually fits the "so bad it's good" label. Really, I spent the entire film laughing my ass off, and whether that was intentional or not, it meant that I had a great time.

Word is that Hollywood is rebooting the Highlander franchise. I say, let 'em. Sure, some people will claim that a Hollywood re-imagining will devalue the Highlander series, but I say that the series was doing a pretty good job of that itself (see also: Star Trek).

Bloody Nightmares #3: Nightmare Asylum (1992)

An entirely unpleasant viewing experience, Todd Sheet's Nightmare Asylum strongly resembles a particularly violent high school play being performed in a haunted house, but with little of the entertainment value that might suggest. Every line is shouted, punches miss by a foot, and generally everyone just seems embarrassed to be involved. Sheets has spoken of his affection for Italian horror directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, but this effort is artless and (even worse) tedious despite its hour running time.

To create the proper nightmare atmosphere for his film, Sheets has made a conscious choice to nearly completely avoid a plot. We follow Lisa (Lori Hassel) as she wanders from room to room in a demented funhouse (with wax museum!), occasionally being pestered by a creepy family (and their son Spider) or terrorized by a group of killers who are intent on dispatching people in the messiest way possible. There's plenty of corn syrup and organ meat on display, and it frankly gets to be a tad nauseating. Eventually, the big baddies (think a really talkative Leatherface with long blond hair and his mullet zombie sidekick) drag everyone to the zombie pit (not as fun as it sounds) before we're treated to not one, but two shitty fake-out endings.

According to the credits, Nightmare Asylum was filmed at The Devil's Dark Side Haunted House. It looks like a lot of fun. It has a wax museum ("Look, it's Pinhead! Cool, Linda Blair from The Exorcist!"), and a creepy morgue and all sorts of gory fun. However, it is not a movie set, and while Sheets gets plenty of mileage out of colored lights and fog machines, the rest of production is painful to sit through. While the cast is obviously speaking as loud as possible, it's only occasionally intelligable which makes long scenes of dialogue (much of which seems to have been made up on the spot) a garbled mess.

There is plenty of gore, including a severed tongue, guts being strewn about, and a stick being shoved up an ass and out a mouth, but it's all ineptly filmed or sabotaged by choppy editing. Occasionally a scene will be broken up by a seemingly random shot of a part of the haunted house, but such moments (along with the predominance of lit Exit signs) tend to remind the viewer of just how cheap looking the production is.

The acting is terrible, though Matthew Lewis as Spider at least seems to be trying, even if what he's trying to do is annoying. The nastiest of the baddies (Blonde Leatherface and his Mullet friend) have intolerably long scenes together, and the rare occasions when you can understand what's being said ("Oh, your aching banana! Well, my aching cumquat you piece of dookie!"), may make you long for the times that it's incomprehensible.

Make-up is mostly of the white face-paint variety, and the special effects are what you would expect from a Halloween haunted house. We get a few zombies at the end, but by then even viewers with the strongest fortitude will be crying out in pain.

Nightmare Asylum appears to have been shot on a camcorder, and it has a comparable image quality to low budet porno of the era. The Bloody Nightmares DVD transfer appears to come directly from a home video release, even including the FBI warning at the beginning. There are a few small glitches throughout, but considering the awful production as a whole it would seem petty to pick on them.

Almost the entire soundtrack is taken up by what seems to be a ten second loop from a quite familiar piece of soundtrack music. It's invasive, and seems to have been placed at random. There are some other original pieces of music that appear throughout composed by Enochian Key or Sheets himself, but it serves mostly to drown out dialogue. Thankfully.

On his website, Todd Sheets refers to himself as a "master of splatter". I respectfully disagree. From looking at his filmography, it seems like the films of Mr. Sheets appear again in this collection. After watching Nightmare Asylum, i'm suddenly starting to worry about what i've gotten myself into.

Oh so very bad.