"Highlander" opened in Los Angeles on March 7, 1986. The film had a 116-minute running time in the United Kingdom and a 111-minute running time in the United States. Roughly eight minutes of footage was cut from the film for its U.S. theatrical release. Most of the cuts were sequences involving a specifically European brand of humor which the distributors thought American audiences would not find funny, such as Connor being repeatedly head-butted by one of his clansmen, the duelist shooting his assistant, and the Kurgan licking the priest's hand. The cut Mulcahy found most objectionable was the deletion of the scene showing how Connor met Rachel, because he could see no reason for its removal and believed that the relationship between Connor and Rachel was incomprehensible without it.