Review of Highlander: Director`s Cut 10th Anniversary

Introduction

The original Highlander film needs little introduction – A classic film fantasy of immortals battling down the ages. The casting was inspired as Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery swept through their characters. Clancy Brown played a show-stealing role as the menacing Kurgan. The Highlander occupies that now overused title of cult film. Standing by itself, and ignoring the repeated sequels which have shamed the franchise and spoiled the mythology, Highlander by itself stands as a great creation of storytelling and a masterpiece of creative cinematography.

Video

This is up there with the worst DVD transfers I`ve ever seen. The blacks are grey, and compression artefacts abound. At least the film is composed in the widescreen image preserving the directors vision for the film. This was an very early release disc, and it is showing its age. VHS copies are softer, but free of artefacts, so it`s a tough call which is more enjoyable.

The whole thing is that much more ironic, when the box states that the disc features a "new state-of-the-art digital widescreen transfer supervised by the producers" ! This transfer apparently holds the THX “seal of approval”, but if THX ever caught a sight of this disc then they can kiss any pretensions as to a mark of quality goodbye. The picture is shameful.

Audio

This one gets marked up for the fact that Queen lends their songs to the soundtrack, but the audio quality of the disc is only unremarkable. The audio claims to carry a 5.1 code, but it shows the films age and never really excels itself. Some of the battle scenes can become a bit confused, but generally the sound is okay, but does not show any of the real slam or finesse which are exhibited by the better more modern mixes. The remix of the music is, however, spectacular.

Features

There is an excellent clipshow of behind the scenes shots, publicity photos and script excerpts. This gives a good insight for fans of the film. It can be hard to navigate though, as it shoots through at only two or three frames per picture and you need a good freeze and frame advance, or slow motion feature on your player.

My Pioneer 515 struggles because I have to use the pause buttons. I have used other players with good frame-forward functions which worked fine. Some of the pages can also be difficult to read, because they are extremely small script pages or newspaper articles, and the resolution of NTSC cannot make the smaller text readable. Much of the information and pictures are very insightful though. Beyond the clipart and a trailer, there is also a fascinating commentary by director Russell Mulchay and producers Peter Davis and Bill Panzer. English and Spanish subtitles are also available. A reasonable bevy of extras then.

European readers should not let themselves get over excited over the claims that this disc holds additional footage. This relates only to the World War II scene and a couple of other brief images which were removed from the US theatrical run. They have always been in versions released in Europe.

Conclusion

Before I start, I have to admit that I am a Highlander devotee. It rates as one of my favourite films of all times. As such, I can often forgive the dodgy picture to enjoy the film and extra materials. However, casual viewers might find themselves disappointed. It`s sad when there is any suspicion that watching a VHS copy of a film might provide an equally good viewing experience. While some of this may be down to the age of the film and the quality of the original print (it was, after all, a low budget production). We can only hope that this will be a candidate for a restored special edition at some stage in the future, although there appears to be no plans currently. Probably one for the fans only then, although the extras come highly recommended.