Review of Highlander II: The Quickening (1991) by David L — 19 Oct 2008

Highlander 2 is a true epic in it's badness, a Citizen Kane of awfulness that can never be truly put into words. You can't be told how bad this film is, you have to see it? But be warned it's not bad in cute way, or like an Ed Wood film, it's bad like having a root canal without the novocaine way.

Highlander 2 had appeared to come from good pedigree; the original team were in place including the director and the main cast Lambent and Connery. But when a film starts out with an alien world called Ziest you know you are in trouble.

Now for sure there are worse films out there, but these are probably student films or what Roger Corman left on the cutting room floor. What takes Highlander 2 into uncharted realms of movie badness is the sheer scale of its drop in quality from the first. It's like having a favorite old sweet frail aunt when you were a child who would give you chocolates and toys, and then all of a sudden she ingests 5 bottles of steroids takes out a chainsaw and hacks all your family and friends to death. This is the kind of shock you get from watching highlander and then moving on to highlander 2. There are no words in any language that can describe just how bad this film is.

You also have to wonder what awesome substances must have been past around the studio and cast that no one thought this film was a bad idea and that the best idea was to burn the negative on the spot.

With regards spoilers there is no way to spoil this film however this film is the mother of spoilers for the first film. It exterminates the premise of Highlander which was the mystery of the immortals. It's rare that a bad sequel can have such a negative impact on the quality of the first film, but Highlander 2 does a good job of destroying the first film. Once you know who the immortals are you can never look at the first film in the same light, such is the sheer biblical badness of this film and it's so called plot.

It will probably take another thousand years before anyone comes close to making another film as bad as this one. Roger Ebert summed this film up the best by saying " it's awesome in it's badness".