10 Things You Didn’t Know About Highlander

Highlander is a movie that completely changed me. I suddenly found myself wanting to learn more about my Scottish heritage, swinging various plastic swords all throughout my backyard, fighting and taking the heads of imaginary immortals in search of The Prize. It combined elements from many of my favorite things; history, sword-fighting, and Christopher Lambert. I’ve often said that the Stephen King film Maximum Overdrive has the greatest movie soundtrack of all time but it’s impossible to watch Highlander, hear the majestic sounds of Queen, and not be convinced that Freddie Mercury and his band were made for such a film.

With all the sequels; half of them mediocre, the other half absolutely terrible, it’s hard to comprehend how this first film could go from such a bonkers story to a series of films that continue to be developed into reboots and remakes to this day. It took a great cast, fantastic music, and a really ambitious group of filmmakers to pull off something as unique as Highlander. It’s my pleasure to share with you 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Highlander.

1. They forgot to record the opening narration done by Sean Connery so they had to record him reading the lines in his bathroom in Spain.
2. Director Russell Mulcahy’s second film after the Australian movie Razorback.
3. The sword fight in the parking garage was filmed in a car park in London which was made up to look like the parking garage of Madison Square Garden.
4. The movie used various different moving cameras. In many scenes you’ll notice that the camera pans and moves unlike many other films of the early 1980’s. The sets were created, in fact, to showcase the techniques that Mulcahy and his crew used. The set coordinator would later go on to do The Mummy series.
5. Sean Connery only shot for seven days.
6. The sword work was done by veteran sword master Bob Anderson. Anderson previously worked with Errol Flynn, and on films such as The Mask of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, and The Princess Bride.
7. The Director’s Cut features several new scenes that were missing from the American release. One scene shows Connor saving his blonde lady friend Rachel when she was just a little girl from Nazi’s during World War 2.
8. By the time that the actors fought in the ‘blue room’, they had both been training for so long with the swords that they were very good. The director had them do the scene several times, placing cameras around the room, and just editing together the various shots.
9. The sparks on the swords were done by putting a car battery down by their feet and putting wires up their arms to produce the current and cause the spark from the touching of the swords.
10. Christopher Lambert barely spoke any English when he got the part. His only other English language film was in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and he only had a few lines of dialogue in that film.