BAD MOVIES THAT SHOULD BE SEEN (18 OF 100)

"Highlander 2: The Quickening" (1991), Dir: Russell Mulcahy

 

$34 million in Budget vs. $15,556,340 in Gross

 
Oh, the cunning Franchise Killer. Yes, the Richard Donner Superman franchise and Tim Burton's Batman franchise were among many of its victims (arguably surviving, just to run the same course again), but some victims of this murderer of artistic merit never even had a chance. The Highlander franchise is definitely one of those victims...

Having aged greatly on my part and seen the first Highlander movie several times now, the most credit I can give the original is that it still holds up as a neat idea. Immortals walking amongst us to do battle in the streets with swords is pretty cool. The rest of the original is a bad 80s special effects film (looking a lot like a Queen/Pink Floyd video) with a soundtrack by Queen (arguably the best part of the movie). But in the end, Connor MacLeod (Christoper Lambert) conquered the bad guys, was granted the ability to live a normal life, and retired to Scotland. How could they ever imagine bringing the character back after all that? Well, they couldn't really, but did anyway, resulting in this giant, unimaginative, steaming pile of stool.

One of the charms of the first Highlander film for me was its narrative simplicity. Early on in the film, we are introduced to MacLeod, learn that he is immortal, and that the Kurgan (the unforgettable Clancy Brown) wants MacLeod's powers for himself. Four hundred years earlier, Ramirez (played by Sean Connery) gives us a quick rundown of the rules of the immortals, so the cards are on the table and we're set to take part in this badass game of elimination. Simple. Effective. To the point. The subsequent sequel, however, had to get fancy and throw all that simplicity out the window for stray cats to nibble on.

Highlander II: The Quickening is set in a future where the ozone layer has evaporated and a force field is the only thing keeping earth alive (invented by Connor MacLeod, who was an antiques dealer in the first movie and never mentioned anything about having a scientific background). Now much older, he is hated by everyone and treated like garbage for saving human existence... Ungrateful jerks. No wonder he's looking forward to dying. But suddenly Connor has a whole whack of problems when the evil immortals from his home planet come to earth to f%$& sh$% up... 

Wait. Let's back up a second. The Highlander is an alien?! Really?! Since when did that happen? The first movie made no point or hint of that. Most audiences would've thought "Wait, isn't the Highlander from Scotland?", hence the name Highlander and most of the first film taking place in Scotland, but no, this Highlander's apparently from Planet Zeist... So yeah, this second movie just slips in some crappy alien origin storyline as if none of us with a working brain would have even noticed. Now, apparently back on Planet Zeist, MacLeod and Ramirez (not the most alien-sounding names) were captured as part of some treacherous rebel group and exiled to be reborn on earth. How they accomplish that God-like feat (not to mention the evil immortals would've had to do the exact same thing for all the other hundreds of immortals who were somehow magically reborn on earth for the first movie) is beyond me. But all that aside, this entire subplot is, well, a rip-off Superman's origins... Yeah, I know. Who cares?

Anyways, led by everyone's go-to-casting-choice-for-a-villain, Michael Ironside, General Katana and these evil immortals somehow manage to penetrate the shield protecting earth's atmosphere. From there, they fail at killing a very tired, very old man, and accidentally restore MacLeod's powers of immortality so he can be young and handsome again. But while MacLeod does the old Highlander electric-light-show song and dance, following the advice he got on Planet Zeist, MacLeod screams out Ramirez's name. Then (somehow) brings his old friend back from the dead... so they can kill people and make hammy jokes about it... and then Ramirez just dies again...

Yeah, this whole movie is just a mess. As well as being one of the elusive Franchise Killer's many victims, it's also early signs of Sean Connery's inability to recognize a bloody awful script from the 1990s (having three of his films from that era on this list). The latter Highlander films aren't much better. From this one, I enjoyed seeing MacLeod as an old man (for fifteen minutes), learning insults of the future ("Hey, cheese-di$%!"), and enjoyed the future battle between Old Man MacLeod and the two meth-head immortals with jet packs. What I didn't enjoy was the lack of coherence for one, the fact that there was no gratuitous Highlander sex scene (as in the first, third, and fourth), and a sore lack of Queen soundtrack.

Two sequels followed this,  a bad TV series and some animated films. The franchise clearly peaked after the first entry and has been in a state of decay ever since. Last year, there was rumors of a reboot with Taylor Lautner  in the works, but those have disappeared, thankfully. I'll stick with my VHS copy of the original, thanks...Wait a minute. This franchise has for the most part sucked ass. Maybe it's ripe for a fixin'... or maybe not and just come up with something original.

And for your viewing displeasure, the opening of the movie including the Planet Ziest storyline, bad voice-over narration, and crappy special effects...

PROPS DEPT - THE CAREER AND CHARACTERS OF CHRISTOPHER LLOYD

Hollywood has some great character actors such as Dick Miller and John Goodman (both seen in this photo here). These are the people who are never truly recognized as leading men, but rather the faces of classic characters that stay with an audience long after a movie's success. There is one gentleman who contributed to many of your typical stock characters and gets little recognition for his work. That gentleman is Mr. Christopher Lloyd.

With little known about his personal life, most of what audiences know about Christopher Lloyd comes from the variety of characters he's played. Probably most revered for his role as Dr. Emmett Brown in Back To The Future, Lloyd has contributed to a much greater landscape in his career than just "The Doc." His first appearance was in Milos Formans' One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, where he played Taber. (Some people look like they came out of the womb fifty years old! I'm talking to you too, 22-year-old Gene Hackman!) Hardly noticeable in that role, he jumped between bit-parts in movies and TV westerns, notably playing The Calico Kid in the short-lived Best of the West (1981-82), until eventually he would land a part in the long-running sitcom Taxi (next to co-stars Danny Devito and Andy Kaufman). In Taxi, he played the outlandish ex-hippie cabbie Reverend Jim Ignatowski and also played himself playing that character in a cameo in Milo Forman's Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carrey.

 
But in 1984, Lloyd would play one of Star Trek's forgotten villains and a tribute to the make-up effects of the 1980s, bringing fans their first Klingon villain since the 1960s original series. But the big break that would keep the pay cheques coming until the end of time would be in 1985 with Back to the Future and his role as Dr. Emmett Brown, "a conductor of time" as Lloyd described it. The pairing of Lloyd and Robert Zemeckis would be the turning point in his career. It would be four years before the two would team up again (the only really notable role in that gap being Professor Plum in Clue), giving Lloyd the part of Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a half-cartoon, half-psychopath that would give children (like myself) nightmares for generations.

In 1989-90, Dr. Brown would return for the other two Back to the Future installments (second being the best, third being the worst). In 1991, he would team with wrestling superstar Hulk Hogan for Suburban Commando before undergoing an entire physical transformation into Uncle Fester for The Addams Family movies, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (former Coen Brothers' cinematographer). The mid-90s would also see him teamed with two famous child actors, first being premature teen heart-throb Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Angels in the Outfield, second being weirdo, pervert Macaulay Culkin in The Pagemaster. Lloyd played Mr. Dewey, aka The Pagemaster, as you can see in the cartoon image below.

Unfortunately, from there Lloyd's career would become mostly voice work on children's cartoons and video games, namely involving the Back to the Future franchise or some kind of homage or parody of such. The two most recent films and TV shows I can remember seeing him in are Piranha 3DD, playing an eccentric man of science (sound familiar?), and in a split-second cameo as one of the Santa Claus's coming to cheer up Charlie's mom in The Always Sunny in Philadelphia Christmas Special (which I imagine came through his friendship with Danny Devito, going back to Cuckoo's Nest).

Nowadays, people don't hear much out of Christopher Lloyd. He's gotten older. The talks of the potential Back to the Future sequels (starring Lloyd and Sarah Michelle-Gellar) were thankfully quashed. And in our technologically-driven society today, science is not such a mystery anymore. The role of a wild-eyed scientist seems somewhat out of place, with the exception of Piranha 3DD. But, in support of Mr. Lloyd's work, I still find myself quoting Dr. Emmett Brown from time to time, as well as urinating myself when I think of Judge Doom and those cartoon eyes. For those lasting impressions, I give props to Christopher Lloyd.

Enjoy this clip reuniting Back to the Future stars Christopher Lloyd, a man of few words, and Canada's own Michael J. Fox. Love these guys.