Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

Hey let's make the original movie seem incredible stupid...retroactively!

the Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)
Directed by Russell Mulcahey
Written by Brian Clemens and William Panzer; based on characters by Gregory Widen

It’s August, 1999, and according to a cheery drive-time DJ, the ozone layer is completely gone, and millions are dead. But immortal Scotsman Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) and his chunky sidekick are about to change all that. “They’ll remember this day for a thousand years,” coos Chunky Sidekick, as he gives Christopher a hug. “The day we protected the Earth from the Sun.” Because apparently the Sun has been picking on the Earth at recess, giving it Indian burns, and stealing its lunch money.

Chris shoots a beam of light out of the Transamerica building, which throws up a shield around the planet that sunlight cannot penetrate—a sort of artificial nuclear winter. Neat, huh?

25 Years Later. Christopher has acquired gray hair, jowls, and a tendency to talk in voiceovers. Thanks to his shield, Earth is plunged in perpetual darkness. Agriculture is impossible, madness, starvation and disease are rampant, and humanity is regressing to barbarism, as illustrated by the cast of Charles in Charge doing Redi-Whip hits off an oxy-acetylene torch. Good one, Chris.

Later, this self-styled savior of the Earth is dozing at the opera when he’s suddenly awaked by a competing voiceover. It’s Sean Connery, who has apparently decided to play a practical joke on Chris by intoning, “Remember, Highlander. Remember your home. Another galaxy. You were chosen. Remember?” Having seen the previous movie, one expects Christopher to tell Sean to put down the Mr. Microphone and stop talking crap during the opera. Alas, the poor lunkhead falls for it, and abruptly decides that he’s actually an alien from the planet Zeiss (known the universe over for its quality line of precision binoculars). Suddenly, we flash back 500 years. It seems the Muumuu Men of Zest are sick of the tyrannical General Katana, and his brutal remarks about their efforts to disguise holiday weight gain with loose-fitting clothes.

Sean Connery appears before the rebel army and declares that at last they have a leader. But this announcement turns out to be yet another of Sean’s increasingly cruel practical jokes, since the guy he’s pointing at is Christopher Lambert. Once again, however, the cow-eyed nitwit falls for it, and Chris promptly leads his army into battle against General Katana (Michael Ironside, sporting Al Sharpton’s hair). Naturally, Chris’s followers are promptly massacred, while Katana exiles Sean and Chris to Earth, where they face the deadly challenge of reconciling all the continuity errors between this film and the first one.

500 Years Later: Virginia Madsen leads a team of eco-terrorists into the Shield generating station. Not far away, Christopher stops into a bar, where Bella Abzug beats him up and cuts him with a broken bottle.

Cut back to the planet Zeitgeist. Something’s been nagging at Katana for the last 500 years. What was it? Dang. It’s on the tip of his tongue...

Oh! Right. He meant to have Chris killed, but he’s been procrastinating for the past half-millennium. And don’t even get his wife started about that bathroom tile he’s been promising to re-grout!

Katana orders a couple of fey porcupine men to immediately teleport to Earth and snuff the Highlander. But Christopher proves he’s still The One by running around in a tizzy, smashing into things, and surviving the encounter through sheer dumb luck. One attacker even goes so far as to obligingly lie under a train at just the perfect angle to snip off his head. And even though this looks suspiciously like suicide, the judges award his Quickening to Christopher, who promptly redeems it for a new wig and a jar of Porcelana.

Cut to Scotland. Despite being decapitated and killed in the previous Highlander, Sean returns from the dead, thanks to some bad special effects and some even worse advice from his agents.

Meanwhile, Virginia meets the now (relatively) young Christopher who tells her that he’s an extraterrestrial Scotsman with a French accent who was banished from the planet Seuss 500 years ago. Oh, and he can never die. Rather than running away or shouting for the cops, Virginia takes this bizarre assertion as a signal to start French kissing.

Virginia is saved from further embarrassment by Sean, who distracts Chris by trying to cut his head off. When that sadly fails, they start to drink. Sensible members of the audience put the DVD on Pause and do likewise.

Realizing the movie is bogging down, they go break into a high-security prison where the government is secretly raising Spanish Moss, but almost instantly blunder into a death trap—a cylindrical chamber with a lawnmower blade descending from the ceiling. Fortunately, Sean summons his life force and uses it to repel the blade (and the audience). Unfortunately, his life force emits the annoying sound of bagpipes (because he’s Spanish). Oh, and it also opens the death trap’s sealed doors. And snapples caps off any jug, bottle, or jar.

Finally, Christopher gets into a cutlery-assisted hassle with Katana, and they stumble into the room where the Shield is generated by a huge column of blinding white light. Chris steps inside this unimaginably powerful laser beam, in the mistaken belief that it’s a tanning booth, and the whole place blows up.

The Shield instantly evaporates. Virginia gazes into the night sky, a look of wonder in her eyes as she glimpses the stars for the first time in her life. Christopher, on the other hand, gets caught in a freeze-frame with a goofy, gap-mouthed grin that makes him look like he’s just popped up out of the cornfield to deliver a punch-line on Hee Haw. The End.