{"id":218507,"date":"2026-05-03T21:41:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T21:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/218507\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T21:41:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T21:41:42","slug":"highlander-the-story-behind-the-classic-80s-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/218507\/","title":{"rendered":"Highlander: the story behind the classic 80s movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty years after its original release, and with a TV reboot in the pipeline, Highlander stands as one of the great cult movies of the 80s \u2013 an epic fantasy involving sword-wielding immortals doing battle across centuries, with a memorable soundtrack by Queen. In 2019, Classic Rock talked to director Russell Mulcahy about swordfighting, accents and Freddie Mercury\u2019s breakfast-making skills.<\/p>\n

Russell Mulcahy remembers attending a typically opulent party at Freddie Mercury<\/a>\u2019s West London mansion, Garden Lodge, sometime in the mid-80s. After the festivities wound down, Mulcahy crashed in one of the singer\u2019s many guest rooms. He was woken the next morning by the bedroom door opening. It was the host, in ebullient mood.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cHe went, \u2018Come on dear, come downstairs, I\u2019m making you breakfast,\u2019\u201d Mulcahy tells Classic Rock. \u201cAnd so I\u2019m in his kitchen, just him and me, he\u2019s making me eggs and bacon. I\u2019m sitting thinking to myself, \u2018Freddie fucking Mercury is cooking me breakfast. Wow.\u2019 It was so surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article continues below <\/p>\n

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Mulcahy was no stranger to working with stars of the Queen<\/a> singer\u2019s calibre, even if they weren\u2019t normally frying up a couple of rashers of Danish for him. The Australia-born filmmaker had made his name as the wunderkind director behind groundbreaking promo videos for the likes of Duran Duran, Elton John<\/a> and Rod Stewart before graduating to full-length movies.<\/p>\n

We had a French guy playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spaniard. Who cares!<\/p>\n

Russell Mulcahy<\/p>\n

His first film had been low-budget homicidal-pig-in-the-outback horror flick Razorback, released in 1984. But it was a very different film two years later with which he made his name \u2013 and provided his entry to the world of Queen.<\/p>\n

Highlander was a time-hopping sci-fi fantasy in which a group of immortal beings battled each other with large swords, each ultimately trying to decapitate the rest. If the premise sounded preposterous, the cast list was anything but \u2013 it starred rising French actor Christopher Lambert as the film\u2019s protagonist, 15th Scottish clansman Connor MacLeod, and former James Bond Sean Connery as his mentor, a Spanish-Egyptian buccaneer named Juan S\u00e1nchez-Villalobos Ram\u00edrez.<\/p>\n

It also had a solid gold soundtrack featuring five new songs from Queen, whose career was back on a vertiginous post-Live Aid<\/a> upswing. The songs would appear later that year Queen\u2019s new album, A Kind Of Magic, an unofficial soundtrack to the movie that would become the band\u2019s most successful studio album of the decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cQueen\u2019s music was the icing on it,\u201d says Mulcahy, as he prepares to look back at this cult classic. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have hoped for a better band.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Metal\n<\/p>\n

How did you get involved with Highlander?<\/p>\n

I had done videos for Duran Duran, who were on EMI. And EMI were connected to Highlander in some way. So they sent me the script and I read it and totally fell in love with it. I went for a meeting and it went fantastically, and they said, \u201cOK, great, you\u2019re in.\u201d And that was that.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

How did you pick Christopher Lambert for the leading role?<\/p>\n

Well, we were sitting around going, \u201cWho\u2019s going to play the Highlander?\u201d And the obvious list of the usual Top 20 in-demand actors from that time got passed around. Then I was flipping through this magazine and I came across this photo of Christopher from Greystoke, the Tarzan film. He had the most incredible eyes \u2013 they had this eerie immortality about them. So we met him, he loved it\u2026 and that\u2019s when we found out he could hardly speak a word of English! So we had a French guy playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spaniard. (Laughs) Who cares!<\/p>\n

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\"A\n<\/p>\n

Highlander star Christopher Lambert (right) with Beattie Edney (Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n

The real-life Scotsman would be Sean Connery. What was he like?<\/p>\n

I remember going off to meet Sean, who had read the script, at the Savoy Hotel in London. I get to the door and my knees are shaking, I\u2019m pissing my pants, I\u2019m petrified. All I can think is, \u201cOh my god, I\u2019m going to meet 007.\u201d And the doors opens and there\u2019s this six foot three man standing there. He invites me in, we have a coup of tea and sandwich, and he turned out to be the most wonderful, wonderful gentlemen. He was into it a hundred per cent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fairly crazy plot. Did he tell you what he saw in it?<\/p>\n

Yes, it was a crazy story, this fantasy that spanned centuries. But the thing that grabbed me, and grabbed everyone, was that there was a tragic romance to it. This guy MacLeod falls in love with a girl in Scotland in the 1500s. He can\u2019t get old and die, but she does. So he can never really fall in love again. It was this wonderful tragic love story.<\/p>\n

What was it like working with Connery?<\/p>\n

It was fantastic. I remember we got on a small plane to go up to Glencoe in Scotland, where we were filming. He gets in there, hands me a little glass, pulls out a bottle this very special Scotch someone had made for him. He said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to try some of this, laddie\u201d, and he gives me a shot. My god, this thing must have been 300 per cent proof or whatever the fuck it was. I was singing the blues all the way up to Scotland.<\/p>\n

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\"A\n<\/p>\n

Sean Connery and Clancy Brown in Highlander (Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n

What was the shoot itself like?<\/p>\n

Brilliant fun, but there was one hairy moment. The was one sequence featuring the Kurgan [the film\u2019s towering barbarian villain]. It was the big entrance, where he bashes through the door of this fort and says, \u201cWhere\u2019s the Highlander?\u201d<\/p>\n

Queen were a little sceptical at first, but we showed them 20 minutes of footage. They came out and said, \u201cThat\u2019s really cool.\u201d <\/p>\n

Russell Mulcahy<\/p>\n

Clancy Brown, the actor who played The Kurgan, was meant to leap from the stairs and cut this table in half. But this was Clancy\u2019s first day of filming with Sean, and he was so nervous. As he bashed through the door, he didn\u2019t cut the table straight down like he was supposed to, he swiped across it. This candelabra went flying over the crew, the sword breaks and a shard flies over Sean\u2019s head. At which point Sean quietly walked off the set.<\/p>\n

Poor Clancy\u2019s in the corner, going, \u201cWhat the fuck have I done?\u201d Sean\u2019s in his trailer, he\u2019s taken his costume off, and he says to me, \u201cYou need to talk to this young lad, because that\u2019s not what we rehearsed.\u201d And him and Clancy had a chat. Clancy was so apologetic, but Sean understood, and everyone was the best of friends again.<\/p>\n

Clancy Brown was the perfect person to play The Kurgan \u2013 big, menacing, strange-looking\u2026<\/p>\n

He was totally into it. There\u2019s a bit in the film where his head is shaved, and he was totally into that. He would sit there, taking bits of pins and sticking them into his costume. I went, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d And he says, \u201cIt\u2019s all part of the ritual man, Kurgan\u2019s ritual.\u201d I\u2019m, like, \u201cOkay, whatever, sounds good\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Queen\n<\/p>\n

Queen in 1986 (Image credit: Dave Hogan\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Can we talk accents? What instructions did you give to people, given that none of the actors were from where there characters were meant to come from\u2026<\/p>\n

With Sean we both agreed we didn\u2019t want to force any accents. When you get Sean Connery, you get Sean Connery. He didn\u2019t attempt to do any Spanish-Egyptian thing. That would have faked it out a bit \u2013 I mean, come on, it was Sean Connery. The rationale is addressed in the movie. There\u2019s one scene where a cop says to Christopher Lambert, \u201cYou talk funny, where you from?\u201d And he replies, \u201cLots of different places.\u201d These guys have lived hundreds of years. They\u2019ve probably lived in every bloody country in the world.<\/p>\n

How did Queen\u2019s involvement in the soundtrack come about?<\/p>\n

I loved Queen, I was a huge fan of their music, and I really loved the soundtrack they had done to Flash Gordon. So we contacted them and I think they were a little sceptical at first, but we invited them over to the edit studio in London and we showed them 20 minutes of cut footage \u2013 six or seven different scenes. All the band came over, and they came out and said, \u201cThat\u2019s really cool.\u201d So I thought we\u2019d get one song out of them. But two days later we got the message back that they all wanted to write a song: Freddie wanted to write as song, Roger wanted to write a song, so did Brian and John. I ended up getting five songs in the end, which was amazing.<\/p>\n

\n

\"A\n<\/p>\n

Eilean Donan castle in Scotland, where some of Highlander was filmed (Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n

Were they your first choice? There\u2019s a rumour that Marillion were in the running to do it.<\/p>\n

I think there was some talk of Duran Duran being involved early on. I love Duran Duran, but we wanted something with a heavier edge. Queen had that, but then they also gave us a song like Who Wants To Live Forever, which was just beautiful. I also got Freddie to do New York, New York, which he didn\u2019t want to do: \u201cOh god, come on\u2026\u201d I had to convince him. There\u2019s a snippet of it in the film, where MacLeod crosses the bridge at the end.<\/p>\n

Freddie went, \u2018Come on dear, come downstairs, I\u2019m making you breakfast.\u2019 I\u2019m in his kitchen, just him and me, he\u2019s making me eggs and bacon.<\/p>\n

Russell Mulcahy<\/p>\n

What was Freddie Mercury really like? Did you get to see a different side of him ?<\/p>\n

He was the most wonderful man. Actually, I was just living round the corner from his house in Earl\u2019s Court at that point, so I\u2019d go and see him for lunch and just sit and chat and laugh. We became good friends. Same with Roger and Brian,.<\/p>\n

Did you stay in touch with them?<\/p>\n

Yes, especially with Freddie. We became really close friends. We\u2019d go out and see opera and ballet \u2013 he loved that stuff. He also became friends with John Taylor from Duran Duran. Me and Freddie and John would go out with Roger Taylor from Queen. Or they\u2019d turn up at my place and we\u2019d play cards until 4am.<\/p>\n

HIGHLANDER | Official Trailer Restored in 4K | Starring Christopher Lambert & Sean Connery – YouTube
\n\"HIGHLANDER<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Were you happy with the finished movie?<\/p>\n

The studio didn\u2019t meddle with me too much. The American version is different \u2013 they cut out a few scenes, like the French scene, where he keeps getting stabbed by thee guy. They also cut the World War 2 scene where he [McLeod] saves the girl who becomes his secretary later in the. Cutting it out was ridiculous \u2013 you didn\u2019t understand why Lambert was so passionate about here. He viewed this woman like his daughter.<\/p>\n

How do you look back on Highlander these days?<\/p>\n

It was a complete delight, because I loved the genre. I loved the romance of it, the scope of it, I loved the music, the costumes. And when we filmed in Scotland, the Scots themselves were magnificent. I\u2019m delighted that people are still talking about it.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: Queen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forty years after its original release, and with a TV reboot in the pipeline, Highlander stands as one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-218507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}