THE FANZINE FOR CLAN: THE RENEGADE HIGHLANDER APPRECIATION SOCIETY ISSUE 10

CENTURYboyAs Highlander hits its quarter century, we go back to the start and discover why one

film sparked such an enduring franchise

News, Reviews and Interviews by fans, for fans

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

Director Russell Mulcahy and late Producer Bill Panzer “No one really knew what they had”

Remake! All the latest

gossip!

WIN!The Four

Horsemen Audio Plays!

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For centuries, they battled the forces of light, murdering, pillaging and terrorising their way across the globe. Then, through the betrayal of one of their number, the Four

Horsemen rode no longer. But before their ultimate end, each was the target of a very personal vendetta striking to the core of the Horsemen’s seemingly unbreakable bond. Now

the secret history of Kronos, Silas, Caspian and Methos can finally be revealed...

Starring Valentine Pelka, Richard Ridings, Marcus Testory and Peter Wingfield,

with Toby Longworth, Tracy-Ann Oberman and John Banks.

DownloadNOW!£25

FROM

& © Big Finish Productions 2011

T h e F o u r H o r s e m e n

contributor advert

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GREETINGSHeadlinesAll the latest Highlander news from around the world 4

Highlander: The RemakeOur update on the upcomingre-boot 6

MerchandisingA nostalgic look back at the first movie’s tie-ins 10

Russell Mulcahy InterviewThe director of Highlander givesus an exclusive interview 12

ReviewsWe check out Big Finish’s Four Horsemen audio plays 18

Bill Panzer InterviewThe late producer on why Highlander will live forever 20

The GatheringYour letters and comments 24

Next IssueA little preview of what’s comingyour way next time 25

Editor Grant KempsterContributing Editor Robert McGregorContributing Writer John Mosby Special Thanks to Paul Spragg

Highlander © Davis Panzer Inc. All Rights Reserved

As I sit here writing this (having just added the final proofing changes to this magazine) I can’t believe it’s been 15 years since I first wrote one of these introductions.

For those of you who are new to this magazine, here’s a brief catch up: Back in 1996 I stumbled across an advert in Starburst magazine for a Highlander fan club called ‘The Clan’. After a few exchanges with the guy who ran the club (Joe O’Callahan) I discovered that the club was going to close. I wasted no time in taking over the reigns, putting my design abilities to good use and creating a quarterly fanzine called Highlander Heart. After a year or so, I wound up getting a job at Starburst (among other titles) and had to, unfortunately, let the club go.

Over the last 15 years I wound up following my dreams to some extent, becoming a film journalist and editing ‘real’ magazines. It was a career which lead to a fulfilling trip to Romania in 2000, where I was lucky enough to visit the set of Highlander Endgame where I met and interviewed the cast and crew. Suffice to say, not even the intense cold could stop my ear-to-ear grin!

A wedding in Scotland and two kids later and here I am again, having just returned from a road trip around Scotland during which I re-visited Eilean Donan Castle and met up with my Highlander partner in crime, Mr Robert Alexander McGregor. Having seen the way digital publishing is going (and with the arrival of the original film’s 25th anniversary) it seemed obvious that now was the time to bring Highlander Heart back!

So, here we are. Hopefully, you’ll have as much fun reading this as we did putting it together. This issue we have two interviews, one with original director Russell Mulcahy and a second with late producer Bill Panzer, as well as an update on where the upcoming remake is at.

So, crack open the Glenmorangie (I’m just about ready to toast with mine), kick back and reminisce. And, as I always used to say, hold fast... and don’t lose your head!

Grant

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LINES

Reboot Ramps UpHighlander gets resurrected for

a second shot at immortality...

Rumours of a Highlander remake have been doing the rounds for the past five years (for more of that, check out our feature on page 8). Yet it wasn’t until last month that confirmation came that the project was still a going concern and that all the pieces were in place to give Highlander a second chance.

Having taken control of the rights to a remake some time ago, Summit Entertainment finally found their financial partner in RCR Media.

“Highlander is a property that is known around the world,” said RCR Chairman Rui Costa Reis. “And Summit’s re imagination is sure to appeal to both existing and new fans of Highlander lore.”

The financial team of Summit and RCR will now enable the script (most recently attributed to Iron Man’s Art Marcum and Matt Holloway

and Twilight’s Melissa Rosenberg) to finally go before the lens of Fast Five’s Justin Lin.

All that remains now is to find a cast that can not only complement the current line-up of talent, but live up to the reputation of their predecessors. And as soon as that happens, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Summit’s re imagination is sure to appeal to both existing and new fans of Highlander lore.

The latest Highlander news from around the globe

Justin Lin

Matt Holloway

Art Marcum

Melissa Rosenberg

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Kirsch Goes to the Top of the Class!

Over the coming months we’ll be revisiting some of Highlander’s brightest stars to see what they’re up to. This issue we’re very pleased to see series alumnus Stan Kirsch in charge of his own premier acting studio in Los Angeles.

‘Stan’s no bullshit approach incorporates all acting methods, practical tools and how to utilize them,’ says the website stankirschstudios.com. ‘He trains actors to make strong choices based not simply on a role itself, but the material’s genre and writer as well’.

There’s no shortage of actors on the site happy to thank the former Highlander actor, including Smallville’s own Aquaman, Alan Ritcshon, who says: “Stan is able to instantaneously discover weaknesses an actor may be unaware of. He has an amazing gift of being able to effectively and honestly communicate with the actor, allowing for immediate growth and change. Stan has helped me hone my craft in a way no other teacher has yet. Thank you!”

Well done Stan, we’re real proud of you!

Stan is able to instantaneously discover weaknesses an actor may be unaware of.

Lambert Rides Again!Christophe Lambert will be returning to theatres next February in Nic Cage’s superhero sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Although not much is known about his character (not even so much as a name), Lambert appears to be one of the more prominent characters in the flick, which promises to be a vast improvement on the original.

MethosRetires!

Breaking News

On the fourth of July, Highlander fans learned that our very own Peter Wingfield was quitting the acting game. Having spent a large part of his career playing various doctors on screen, Wingfield has decided to return to medicine (his first love).

“He has been accepted at the University of Vermont medical school and is go-ing back to school to become a doctor,” Rene Averett related on his behalf.

“He plans to still be blogging about this new chapter in his life and he still hopes to meet with his fans and friends at conventions. He thanks everyone for their support and love over the past 15 years.”

Did you spot Duncan’s sword in Episode 13 of Nikita?

Stan Kirsch

Peter Wingfield

Christophe Lambert

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7

Robert Alexander McGregor

guides us through the

long road to Highlander’s

cinematic re birth...

Following the poor reception of the fifth Highlander movie in the series (The Source) and the tragic death of Bill Panzer in 2007, the Highlander movie series appeared to be going nowhere.

But if there’s one thing we all know, it’s that you can’t keep a good immortal franchise down, and in May of the following year it was announced that the movie rights had been sold to Summit Entertainment and that a remake was on the way. It was hardly surprising news, given the Hollywood remake convoy shifting into high gear with remakes of 80s classics like The Karate Kid, Nightmare on Elm Street and the soon to be released Red Dawn. Hot on the back of the news of Highlander’s planned resurrection, writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway – who became hot property after the global success of Iron Man – were hired to write the new script. That, and the backing of a studio that has some considerable success with the Twilight franchise and the Oscar winning film The Hurt Locker, meant that the franchise looked as if it was finally heading in the right direction.

As you might expect, the rumour train left the station almost immediately with speculation regarding who could possibly be cast in the remake of such a cult classic. But as much as fans pined for Thomas Jane (Deep Blue Sea, The Sweetest Thing and The Punisher) to take on the role due to his striking resemblance to original actor Christopher Lambert, at 42 it was clear that Jane is too old to play the young Immortal Highlander. More recently Scottish actor Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting, Dog Soldiers and HBO’s Rome series) seemed to be everyone’s favourite, but again age may be a factor in this as he turns 38 this year, making him 10 years older than Lambert was when he filmed Highlander in ’85. Adding to the casting hyperbole is none other than Vin Diesel as The Kurgan. With his size, that unmistakeable voice and his Riddick and Fast & Furious fan base, it’s easy to see why fans would like to attach a big name to the main villain of the movie.

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The next solid mark of progress was the Marcum/Holloway script. It’s no secret that the script dated 01-21-09 managed to find its way to the internet, leaving fans clamouring to get a look and pass judgement. Having read the script in late 2009, it would appear that the basic Highlander story is there but with some notable changes to the characters. Russell Nash becomes somewhat of an Indiana Jones-style history professor, Heather is Connor’s wife before he becomes Immortal and the Kurgan is rather fond of kaftans, which seems rather impractical in a duel to the death. Also, some amendments have been made to the rules of engagement. Some Immortals seem to prefer using guns to slow opponents down before taking their heads, which goes against the original’s sense of ‘honour among enemies’. Still, the script was a fairly solid first draft and there were some interesting ideas in there (such as different weapons being used against various Immortals and the idea of our hero having to adapt to different fights in different ways).

With all of the puzzles starting to fit into place, all that was needed now was a director. It wasn’t long before we got just that as Justin Lin and his Fast Five producer Neil Moritz signed up to be involved with the movie. But with Justin Lin being attached to a new Terminator movie and a sixth entry in the Fast and Furious franchise, he may just be too busy to focus on a Highlander remake. That said, Lin was asked about the status of Highlander recently and was adamant that things are moving forward and looking good.

“I have different projects at different stages,” Lin told MTV. “You work on so many projects all at once, and at some point, you have to make the call. I feel like right now, Highlander is in pretty good shape, but I still have to see all the other things come together for us to go make it. When I get back [from promoting Fast Five internationally], we’ll keep working on it.”

While Lin has stated that Marcum and Holloway are still the predominant writers on the movie, rumours abound of additional scripting from the likes of husband and wife writing team Cormac Wibberly and

Marianne Sellek Wibberly (Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and National Treasure: Book of Secrets). And they’re not the only ones. Melissa Rosenberg, screenwriter of the Twilight franchise, has also been linked with the project which, given Summit’s success with that particular immortal franchise, makes you wonder whether Connor might well turn out to be a teenager in this incarnation.

The final piece of the puzzle finally arrived this month as RCR Media Group have agreed to co-finance the film, meaning that the project, which has moved slowly over the last three years, can finally begin gathering pace. Will Lin’s involvement mean Diesel gets that shot at playing the Kurgan? Will Rosenberg’s influence turn MacLeod et al into moping emo kids? Or will the film surpass the potential of the original? Who knows? But if we’ve learned anything, it’s that things could change in a heartbeat.

Robert Alexander McGregor

Highlander is in pretty good shape, but I still have to see all the other things come together for us to go make it.

Justin Lin - Director

Justin Lin

Vin Diesel as The Kurgan?

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WIN!Highlander: Season Two

The Four Horsemen

Thanks to our friends at Big Finish, we can offer you all the chance to win your own copy of the excellent Highlander audio drama, The Four Horsemen, featuring Valentine Pelka, Richard Ridings, Marcus Testory and Peter Wingfield!

For your chance to win, just go to the Highlander Heart group on Facebook and answer this question:

Which of the Four Horsemen actors also enjoys jumping in muddy puddles as a cartoon pig?

Closing date is October 1st, 2011.

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Poster ChildHow do you sell a film that deals with fantasy, action and romance? It seemed like everyone had a different idea! Here’s a selection of the posters for Highlander that showed up around the globe in 1986.

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Game On!

Merchandise for the film’s release was

fairly limited. But there was a game for the C64 from Ocean!

In 1986, video game publisher Ocean released a film tie-in game for Highlander to be played on the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The game was met with almost as much interest as the movie it was based on and it’s easy to see why!

The game itself was fairly basic, the game-play was awful and the graphics were terrible (even for the time). It’s no surprise, then, that the reviews generally reflected this and the game was therefore not very successful. With only four characters to play, all you had to do was repeat a few simple moves and decapitate your opponent to progress to the next level. Purely aimed at the easily en-tertained gamer, this lazy entry soon vanished into obscurity.

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Fox didn’t understand it maybe, and sort of threw it away.

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To celebrate Highlander’s 25th anniversary,

we talk to the director, Russell Mulcahy, about

the fall and rise of the film that started it all...

or the immortals that exist within the seemingly eternal world of Highlander, a quarter of a century is little more than a few beats of the heart. Yet, for us mere mortals, 25 years is a huge chunk of change.

It’s in the time it’s taken for most of us to grow into adults (or mature into older ones), that Highlander has metamorphosed from a box-office failure to a worldwide brand worth millions of dollars. But we’re not here to go over the facts and figures, we’re here to discover how this evolution began, and who better to elucidate on this unparalleled change of fortune than the man who helped cement the foundations on which the franchise now stands.

“I’d done one film before, a film called Razorback,” explains Australian-born film director Russell Mulcahy. “And when they brought me on to do Highlander, I don’t think they really had a visual concept.”

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that Mulcahy was hired. While at that time he may only have had one

film under his belt, he did have a very strong resumé of ground-breaking music videos behind him. In the lead-up to the director’s feature film career, Russell had crafted some of the most memorable music videos of the time, including classics such as Duran Duran’s Wild Boys, Rio and Save A Prayer, not to mention Elton John’s I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues, Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart and Spandau Ballet’s True.

“They didn’t hold any reins on me,” Mulcahy says of his producers. “They sort of just let me do what I wanted. I just went out there and had fun and broke some rules.”

Many would argue that it was that very visual approach to the story that made Highlander stand out from the crowd.

“Doing videos, I was alerted to how a story is shot,” Mulcahy elaborates. “So with Highlander – a lot of the time – I just tried to convey emotions and excitement in a clearly visual and visceral way.”

14 Mulcahy and crew on set with Sean Connery

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I just tried to convey emotions and excitement in a clearly

visual and visceral way.Looking back now, it’s clear that Mulcahy succeeded. While the mid-80s were littered with fantasy action films, Highlander broke new ground, something that its director acknowledges modestly, (“I was just doing my shit”) although it clearly wasn’t apparent at the time.

“When it was released in America it was not a hit,” Russell clarifies. “[Twentieth Century] Fox didn’t understand it maybe and sort of threw it away. They came out with this dreadful black and white poster and it lasted about four days and that was it.”

Costing around $16 million to make, the film only brought in around $6 million while on release. In breaking the mould, it was beginning to appear that Highlander had isolated itself from the mainstream US studio movie.

“Fox agreed!” laughs Mulcahy. “They went, ‘What the fuck?!’ God bless them, but I think, like me, nobody really knew what they had.”

While the US had all but turned their back on the movie once it was released, the European premieres – Paris’s in particular – provided an entirely different, and somewhat surprising, experience.

“Queen turned up,” Mulcahy marvels. “There were crowds of fans outside and giant cut out billboard things of Sean [Connery] and Chris [Lambert] and it was just like, ‘Woah!’ It was this whole totally different experience. Years later, it came out on video and caught on and it became internationally successful. The Paris premiere was really a shocking surprise though. It was like going to a rock concert. It was quite emotional.”

So why did Highlander strike such a chord with European audiences?

“Maybe the fact that I was working, for many years, in England and Europe,” Russell reflects. “Maybe there was kind of a European feeling about it, I don’t know.”

Highlander’s visually stunning climax

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Or maybe it was the film’s enigmatic star, Christophe Lambert. Fresh from Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke and the French hit Subway, Lambert was the man of the moment in France, something which became very clear during the Parisian premiere screening.

“[In] the sequence where he goes into [Brenda’s] apartment with a bottle of wine,” Mulcahy discloses, “she walks up to the door, she opens the door and there’s this beautiful close up of him and the audience erupted. Like, [he was] their hero.”

Clearly, Lambert’s casting was no mistake. It’s been well documented that, even at the point where Lambert accepted the role of Connor MacLeod, his English was minimal. But something as small as language wasn’t going to get in the way of such perfect casting.

“I was sitting there when we hadn’t cast the part yet,” Russell says of the moment his eyes locked on the French actor. “And I saw this picture from Greystoke and I said, ‘He’s perfect’. He came, he couldn’t speak much English but he just had that eerie, eternal quality about him.”

Thanks to its bold visual approach, unorthodox storytelling and mesmerizing star, in the years that have passed, Highlander has not only shed its reputation as a box office squib, but it has gone on to stand alone as a true classic of its genre. This in spite of the odd dodgy sequel. (“I stopped at maybe [Highlander] 3,” Mulcahy chuckles). But there is one other element that the director feels contributed to the film’s enduring success.

“It’s got action and all that, but when I was making it, I always thought it was this extraordinary love story, a sort of tragic love story,” Russell says. “So it was the passion [that] drove it. The action was all fun and crazy, but I thought of it as a big epic romance over time.”

In closing, given that Mulcahy played such a vital role in the creation of such an enduring franchise, how does he feel about the Highlander legacy?

“The really sad thing about this is when I did Highlander I wasn’t [part of] the Director’s Guild,” laughs the director. “I get no money. It’s one of the most successful films I’ve ever done and I don’t see zilch!”

Grant Kempster

[Lambert] just had that eerie, eternal quality about him.

Lambert shows off his trademark stare

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ART

Jason Caldwell

Livingston, West

Lothian, Scotland

Grant KempsterMilton Keynes, England

Any good with a pen or pencil? If so,

upload your artwork to the Facebook

group and we’ll put the most liked

ones in the next issue!

To get the ball rolling, we’ve got

an amazing illustration from Jason

Caldwell and a watercolour I did

way back.

No prizes I’m afraid, just our utmost

admiration!

Get your art on!

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VIEWSThe latest Highlander merchandise reviewed by us

Though the strength of the Highlander series was arguably in its ensemble cast and the swing and parry of their interactions, it was something of an imperative for all the stories to revolve around the title character, Duncan MacLeod. The spotlight might tilt towards Methos, Amanda or Joe in later seasons, but most stories ultimately needed the eponymous Highlander as their pivot point.

So it is an interesting situation to experience a story (indeed, several intertwining strands) where the name MacLeod is not even mentioned once and yet everything going on feels absolutely intrinsic to the franchise and mythology as we know it. There are several reasons for this but there’s no denying that fleshing out the back-stories of the series’ most memorable villains is a rich and compulsive seam to mine. The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are iconic, avatars beyond Highlander itself, but in these Big Finish stories, we get another chance to understand how they became that way.

The original actors - Peter Wingfield, Valentine Pelka, Richard Ridings and Marcus

Testory - return to their roles and all demonstrate how good they are with voice performances. That’s somewhat expected of Peter and Valentine, who are well known for their oratory skills, but in some ways it’s Richard and Marcus that are the most pleasant surprises - their story strands each revealing unseen sides of their characters. In the show Silas was almost child-like in his lumbering brutality and Caspian was the madman in the cellar, neither of the Horsemen the most eloquent you could meet. But here the stories and performances shed

new light on their (sometimes shared) histories and make their segments just as compelling as those of Kronos and Methos. To explain in advance the ingenious ways in which this is achieved would be to rob the segments of some of their twists and turns, but clearly it evens the scales on what is a distinct four-hander story. (One also needs to mention the voices of Toby Longworth in the pivotal role of Dilijan - a compelling presence throughout - and Tracy-Ann Oberman (familiar to fans of Doctor Who and EastEnders).

HIGHLANDER - ‘Season Two’AUDIO

The Four Horsemen

Richard and Marcus are the most pleasant surprises

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Big Finish Download: £25.00 / CD: £30 Available from www.bigfinish.com

The four stories - each focusing on one of the Horsemen - intertwine, brushing against and twisting through each other to form a bigger narrative, and this genuinely has the feeling of a mini-series that would prove magnetic, if unaffordable, television. We find out the events that shaped Kronos and his attitude to power, learn why Silas never achieved his potential, hear Caspian tell tales of a time of Immortals long since lost to history and find Methos the greatest love and despair of his life (yes, the guy gets around).

Not having the visual side to the adventures is a double-edged sword (see what I did there?). On one side the listener has to concentrate a little harder, sometimes having to work out whether the more intricate parts of the story are the character talking or the character relat-ing what others have said in flashbacks. But they do fire the imagination and when sword-fights occur you can easily conjure up the accompanying carnage. Indeed, these aren’t stories for the squeamish… the brutality of the main characters and their actions is not down-played and - in fact - resonates more because our mind’s eye doesn’t filter as much as pre-watershed shows demand.

The music and sound come to the fore in such a project and are expertly executed, informing and expanding the story rather than dominating it too much.. The Horsemen ‘theme’ which introduces each segment may not be Queen but seems fitting - and is that something akin to an ironic and triumphant Black Beauty feel to the music?

Are there any negatives? Well, there are moments where the saga becomes a little exposition- heavy, scenes where a touch

of the visual would preclude such pages of dialogue. The bigger picture, when it is fi-nally revealed, turns out to be rather convoluted logic-wise and some of the motivational elements in the Silas story are repeated just a little too closely in the Caspian segment as we see similar types of revenge.

But, ultimately, these are largely niggles - as an epic adventure this feels as good as anything the show produced on a regular basis and is clearly a work of love, research and sheer ambition, honouring the Source material (see what I did again?) and yet bringing some new ideas to the table. Four hours of audio adventures ultimately feel more entertaining than the entire movie sequels, a good companion to the well-crafted television exploits and if Highlander never makes it back to the TV screen (and the big-screen version remains a distance away from shooting) then these will definitely suffice for the time being.

Even if there isn’t a MacLeod in sight, the Highlander legacy is intact.

John Mosby

4/5

contributor advert

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hen it comes to getting to the bottom of why Highlander has endured in our hearts and minds for 25 years, there are few who could speak with such authority as the late film producer and godfather of the franchise, Mr William N Panzer. Or rather Bill as, well, everyone knew him.

I had the good fortune to sit down for a chat with Bill in March of 2006 during the UK’s last official Highlander convention in Leeds (he would die almost exactly a year later from a fall while ice skating). It had been a long day for the seasoned film producer and Panzer seemed to accept the opportunity to sit in an empty auditorium readily.

Late producer Bill Panzer on why the Highlander

will always live on.

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“Highlander obviously became a far greater part of my life than I ever imagined it would,” Panzer related. “I knew, when I found it, that it was going to be a good movie and that was the extent of it.”

The story of Highlander’s inception has been widely documented. The story – originated by Gregory Widen and streamlined into a Hollywood action script with the assistance of Peter Bellwood and Larry Ferguson – found its way to the screen thanks to the partnership of Panzer and Peter Davis. Even then, it was by no means a by-the-numbers tale, but the duo forged ahead with conviction.

“All of us worked very hard to make it a good movie,” Bill continues. “Russell turned out to be a brilliant choice for director. The cast was wonderful and the movie turned out great. I never imagined it would be in several of the film history books, considered as being one of the 50 seminal films of the 80s. None of us imagined that. We never imagined there’d be a sequel since everybody was dead and the story was over. We weren’t smart enough to anticipate that there was going to be more or we would have done it a little

Highlander obviously became a far greater part of my life than I ever imagined it would.

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bit differently. Maybe that would have been a mistake, maybe the fact that it was so strong on its own led to the other stuff.”

Sequels, as it would transpire, turned out to be the franchise’s only Achilles heel. The succession of muddled follow-ups caused both frustration and occasionally anger amongst the fan base that had grown, in no small part, due to the surprisingly successful TV series. But despite this, there remained an incredibly loyal following that hinted heavily at why the franchise has endured.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great people,” Bill muses. “I’ve had the opportunity to make some money and I’ve had the opportunity to do something that you don’t get the chance to do unless you’ve been a part of something that is long-lasting across several types of media, which is to meet all of the fans of Highlander.

“You could make Lord of the Rings, and [Peter Jackson] doesn’t get to meet the people that I get to meet over the last 20 years,” Panzer continues. “The fan club thing started in the early 90s and

[It’s great] when you get a chance to meet people and hear what they say.

Panzer on set with director Mulcahy and Lambert

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all of the conventions and all of the get-togethers and emails… I look out at the audience today and I know the names of 20 people and I know the faces of 50 more. It’s a very special thing and that part was also unexpected. It’s a privilege.”

So it would seem that it is the fans that have fuelled Highlander’s immortality, uniting in spite of the poor theatrical efforts and encouraging those behind the scenes to keep the heart of the franchise beating.

“When you do a play, you’ve got 500 people out there laughing, crying and applauding,” Bill elaborates. “But in movies and television it’s just you and the crew. [It’s great] when you get a chance to meet people and hear what they say. Mostly good but occasionally they gotta get right to it. But you know that’s fair, that’s good too. So we’re happy to be here.”

Back in 2006 things were looking good for the continuation of the Highlander series. A new computer game was in the works and there was even talk of a new TV series being commissioned. But then the fifth entry in the cinematic series had yet to be released.

“We’re having conversations about another series with a different cast,” Panzer enthused. “It will be a new cast and despite the fact that they’re 500-1000 years old, they will appear to be 18-25. We’re just starting to go to market with it.”

Sadly that series never made it to the screen and the Eidos computer game was shelved despite some early enthusiasm from the makers and fans alike. Some of the blame for this may be levelled at the horrified reaction that The Source received upon its DVD release. But five years on this is a moot point as, once again, Highlander has risen from the ashes to forge ahead once more thanks to the plans for a re boot.

Sadly Bill will never see Highlander’s next chapter, but we know he would have loved the excitement surrounding the project. And while he might be gone, the fans will ensure that the memory of what he helped start 25 years ago will live forever.

Grant Kempster

Fun, games and merchandise at Highlander conventions

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GATHERINGYou prove that the pen is mightier than the sword

History SweepI recall seeing the commercial with Connor and the Kurgan falling through the skylight and thinking it looked like a fun movie, but I first saw it on TV years later. It was the sweep of history that hooked me. Saber Dog

Late StarterI saw the film and said, ‘Yeah, that was fun’ and shrugged. Then when the series started I looked over the shoulder of my howling refluxy infant and said, ‘Oh, that looks good’, but kept walking the floor. For years. That poor child had ulcers by the time she was four months old, and didn’t sleep through the night until she was six. So, I missed the whole party for both Connor and Duncan. When Spike picked it up, I got hooked, found my way to the online forum, and after about a week realized I was responding to conversations that were years old. But I’m still here, and if I can, I’ll go to my first con next fall. Coolwater

Highland CandyI go through phases with different actors and I’ll rent as many movies as I can find with them in it. It was during my Sean Connery period that I saw Highlander and Highlander 2. I enjoyed the first very much and the second made me laugh.

Then one night I was channel surfing and I saw this good looking guy in a show called Highlander. Since I’d seen the movie, I was vaguely aware of what was going on. I located the show, began taping it on my VCR and fell in love with the series... and Adrian Paul.

Years later, like Coolwater, I caught the reruns on Spike TV and watched again religiously. I re watched the movies (1, 2 & 3) and discovered Christopher Lambert. I was hooked on him now. Around that time, I was once again so engrossed in all things Highlander, I discovered the online board, lurked for months, then took the plunge and joined. That was seven and a half years ago.

As for reasons to watch, besides the eye candy, the show (and movies - Endgame, despite itself, and The Source doesn’t count) offered action, drama, humour, romance and a little historical fiction. What more could anyone want? LambBear

Highland Candy 2I did not see the movie originally. I was flipping through the channels one night and stopped because there was a gorgeous man. Oh my... ok, I’m gonna stop and watch for a little bit. Hubby walks in and asks what I’m watching... ummm... I don’t

Thanks to the good folks on the Official Highlander board, we’ve got some thoughts on how some of you became fans of the franchise. If you’d like to get something included in the next issue, add a post to the Facebook group...

know, it was just on... and he says he thinks it’s that new Highlander series. The movie was pretty good... do I want to watch? Heck yes I want to watch!

While it was purely looks that got me watching, it was the great storylines that kept me coming back. I loved the flash-backs, the sword-fighting, Duncan... Hubby liked the same (except substitute Amanda for Duncan). We were both disap-pointed when it stopped playing in our area... and glad when Spike picked it up.

BTW... when I finally watched Highlander (the movie), I immediately enjoyed it and wondered what took me so long to see it. And while I do like Christopher Lambert, I favour Adrian Paul because I got his autograph on my DVDs. Damn, that is a handsome man. Ragdoll

5th Grade LoveWell I first saw the movie when I was a little girl, perhaps 4th, 5th grade elementary school. I loved the Heather/Connor

love story and the sword fights. Funny how when I was younger I hated Kurgan’s character... and ended up being a fan later on. Mariasha

Movie FanWhen I was a kid, I saw Highlander, but as I got older I only remembered bits and pieces, mostly the part where Ramirez said that if the Kurgan won the prize, mankind would suffer an eternity of darkness, and I remembered the scene where the Kurgan decapitated Ramirez. I finally found out the title, Highlander, and watched the movie again. I loved it. I later found out that there were sequels, and watched them all*, but they never compared to the original, which I have probably seen over a hundred times. I’ve never really seen much of the series, but what I’ve seen has been pretty good, although I favour Connor over Duncan.

*To be fair, I only skimmed through The Source, because the quality was so bad compared to the previous sequels. Macleodhighlander

The ladies love the AP

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