The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their favourite comfort watches is a journey back to the unusual sci-fi antics of 1986
W
ith all due respect to Flash Gordon, there is only room in my heart for one maximalist 1980s movie blending science fiction, fantasy and romance with a banging Queen soundtrack. That film is Highlander, the stylised but strangely lofty 1986 wannabe blockbuster with a premise so ridiculous – immortals tussle throughout human history in a beheading battle royale – it is often deployed as a pop culture punchline. (In the Nascar comedy Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell’s blowhard racer confidently asserts that Highlander won the Academy Award for “best movie ever made”.)
Even Highlander’s production history sounds like a mistranslated joke about national stereotypes walking into a bar. Australian director Russell Mulcahy chose French-American actor Christopher Lambert to embody the titular mythic Scottish hero, then cast actual mythic Scottish hero Sean Connery as his preening Egyptian turned Spaniard mentor. But the key to unlocking the mood-improving pleasures of Mulcahy’s offbeat epic is not to stress too much about the arcane mythology or hopscotching chronology. For all its sweeping romanticism about love and loss down the centuries, it is a film suffused with a quirky self-awareness beneath the 1980s music video sheen.
