Sean Connery teaches Christopher Lambert that there can be only one
HIGHLANDER (Russell Mulcahy, 1986)
Valentino Pier, Red Hook
Van Dyke St. & the Brooklyn Waterfront
Tuesday, September 6, free, 8:30
www.redhookfilms.org
When we were in Cape Cod last month, we passed by an inn called Highlander 2, which seemed so wrong to us, since we all know there can be only one. In 1986, music video impresario Russell Mulcahy, who created such MTV classics as the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese,” and Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” made one of the cheesiest, most beloved sci-fi fantasies ever, the one and only Highlander. The instant cult classic stars Christopher Lambert and Clancy Brown as a pair of really old-timers battling it out for the ultimate supremacy. Decapitations, time traveling between 1536 and 1985, a potential romance with forensics expert Roxanne Hart, a special appearance by Sean Connery, and a title song by Queen help lift Highlander to another stratosphers, one occupied by the likes of, dare we say, Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break (1991) and Don Coscarelli’s The Beastmaster (1982). Mulcahy tried to ruin everything by making a sequel, Highlander II: The Quickening, in 1991, with Lambert, Connery, Virginia Madsen, John C. McGinley, and Michael Ironside, but the less said about that the better. And let’s not even talk about the potential 2014 reboot of the franchise. The original Highlander will be screening on Valentino Pier on September 6 as part of the Red Hook Summer Movies series, which concludes September 13 with Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985).