Highlander II

School of Movies

[School of Movies 2019]

Five years after the original film lost money, the producers, director and stars were all back with a much higher budget for a Blade Runner-chasing dystopian tale of Connor MacLeod in the future and suddenly Ramirez. In a baffling move they backpedalled on the original premise making all Highlanders in fact (this works best when you say it in a booming B-movie announcer voice) aliens from the planet Zeist!

There are so many problems with this one from the word go that it's a challenge to separate them out. They have a knock-on effect of making things more confusing with a wildly mismatched tone between trying to be taken too seriously and pushing the humour to absurd levels. Nothing makes sense and none of the performances match each other, and the Argentinian shoot was plagued with troubles including crew injuries, ecological disasters and a spiralling budget.

Four years after the sequel lost even more money than the first movie, director Russell Mulcahy went back in for a new edit with reshoots and a forced change of plot to make something called "The Renegade Cut" which was more in-line with the rest of Highlander canon. Wherever this is mentioned online the attitude seems to be "This makes the film finally good." We're here to tell you today that it doesn't.

BUT all that effort ultimately wasn't for nothing because watching either version is unintentionally hilarious, and this podcast was an absolute blast to record.

Guests:

Jesse Ferguson of Recorded Tomorrow