Weirdhouse Cinema: Labyrinth

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe enter the magical world of Jim Henson’s 1986 fantasy musical “Labyrinth,” starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
talking about a childhood classic, I think for many people
roughly our age or between our ages, the nineteen eighty
six musical fantasy film Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie,
directed by Jim Henson. I was thinking, this is actually

(00:38):
our second David Bowie film, since we did previously cover
Nicholas Rogues. The Man Who Fell to Earth, a very interesting,
very good, but mood withering film about an alien who
comes to our planet on a mission to save his
own from catastrophic drought, but gets derailed by our culture's
infinite and infinitely absorbing distractions like television, alcohol, and table tennis.

(01:02):
You remember all the ping pong and The Man Who
Fell to Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I had kind of forgotten about the ping pong until
you mentioned it, but that's a solid point.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah. So, while it also stars David Bowie, Labyrinth I
think is about as different a movie from the Man
Who Fell to Earth as one could possibly imagine. Bowie's
film career did have a lot of range. But thinking
about this actually raised a kind of humorous question for me.
Are there any similarities between the two movies? And the

(01:32):
more I thought about it, I thought, actually, there kind
of are, especially in the overall plot structure and the
journey of the hero. Both are stories in which the
hero or heroine is transported to an alien world on
an originally selfless quest to save their family or a
family member from a terrible fate, but faces obstacles along

(01:53):
the way, primarily in the form of temptations to go
off the path into narcissistic, self indulgent pursuits. So in
the case of Labyrinth, the heroine is played by a
young Jennifer Connolly, whose quest is to rescue her baby
brother from a goblin related predicament of her own making.
And Connolly's character is I like the character because she

(02:17):
is smart and brave, but begins the story as a
very believable teenager, so self pitying and self absorbed, infuriated
by the inconvenience of having to look after her screeching
baby brother for an evening and wanting simultaneously to be
free of her family and to achieve adult independence, but
also at the same time to regress into childhood and

(02:40):
avoid all responsibilities, like you know, hiding in her bedroom
with her dolls and costumes. And thus her challenges in
the movie reflect these very common and relatable teenage character issues,
like she's tempted along the way to give into defeatism
and selfishness in the forms of both self pity and
self indulgence. In the end, she emerges much more successfully

(03:02):
than Bowie's character and the Man Who Fell to Earth, though,
as we were discussing off Mike before recording, the exact
mechanics of her victory over the goblin King Jarith are
somewhat difficult to schematize.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
That's right. This is a movie that I've seen so
many times over the years as a child, as an adult,
you know, as a parent, and so forth, And no
matter what phase of my life I am in, I
never completely get the details on how she defeats Jarreth,
but I never doubt the victory, like it's the emotional

(03:36):
accuracy of it feels one hundred percent there. This is
a film that will come back to this, I think
over and over again, but I think it speaks more
on an emotional level than it does on a logical level,
and I can't help but assume that that is one
of the factors playing into the disconnect between the way
the adult world reacted to this film when it came

(03:58):
out in eighty six and the way scores and scores
of children reacted to it over the years as they
grew up with the film.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah, I think we'll have a lot to say about
this as we go on, But oh, we haven't yet
gotten to one of the main things you would need
to know to understand Labyrinth if you've never seen it
and have no idea of what's going on here, and
it's a movie full of muppets. This is a Jim
Hinson production, so the fantasy elements and characters are achieved
through the use of some of the best puppetry ever

(04:27):
committed to film. Labyrinth came out a few years after
Hinson's previous fantasy movie, The Dark Crystal from nineteen eighty two,
which I would say personally is probably the high watermark
for puppetry driven movies, Like I don't know what could
really be said to surpass it, And it's interesting to
compare the two films. We might also discuss that more

(04:50):
as we go on. But coming back to what you
were saying, Rob, about the way children reacted to Labyrinth
versus the way a lot of adults did. I also, Yeah,
I get the impression that for a lot of people
who were kids in the eighties, Labyrinth was just part
of the common texture of childhood, as uncritically accepted and

(05:12):
culturally canonical as Star Wars or Et or the mainline
muppets like Kermit and Miss Piggy.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Was that your experience, Rob, Yeah, I mean, I don't
remember how exactly Labyrinth was initially introduced into our lives.
I think maybe we rented it from the video store
on VHS, but we liked it so much that we
purchased a VHS copy of Labyrinth. We watched it so
many times that we broke the VHS tape and we

(05:40):
actually had to go take it to be repaired. I
don't even know I repaired. Yeah, we had it repaired.
I don't know who did that kind of thing. What
the price point was, I assumed cheaper than buying a
new VHS tape. So it was repaired and returned to us.
But after that, the audio and the tape was warped

(06:00):
from there on out. So part of me still sort
of pines for a certain like electronic warping sound to
be present in the film even when it's not.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
What does the fire Gang song sound like? When it's
even more.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Discombobulated, it sounds weirder and more threatening? Okay, I know,
as if that were possible. How about you, do you
remember how Labyrinth came into your life? Show?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well? Actually, I'm this is weird because I feel like
I should know for sure one way or another about this,
but I can only say what I think is the case.
I think I actually never saw this movie in full
when I was a kid, and yet I had full
awareness of it as like a movie that was part
of the common culture and that everybody liked. And I

(06:45):
think I really never sat down and saw the whole
thing until I was an adult.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of movies like that where
they're just I mean, it's really a film like this
becomes a part of the atmosphere. You can't help but
breathe it in, and you have no idea how it
originally came into your house, you know, I just seep
through the.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Walls but I will have some more things to say
about it when when we get back to I don't know,
maybe when we talk about the critical reception. I do
remember being surprised by some things about it when I
saw it, either for the first time ever in my
life or for the first time as an adult, whichever
that was. You know, when I saw it in my

(07:21):
in my thirties, it wasn't exactly what I expected, And
maybe we can talk about some reasons for that when
we get into some stuff about the critical reception. Yeah,
but don't misinterpret me. I love Labyrinth. I mean, it's
just it's a trip. There's not there's not really anything
like it. The closest I could compare it to, I
guess is The Dark Crystal. But actually that's a totally

(07:43):
different kind of story, totally different kind of world and movie. There.
There really just is nothing like Labyrinth I can think of.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it is. It's in many ways,
as we'll discuss, it's it was the logical next step
after Dark Crystal, but it and it is as ambitious
a film in some respect in its use of groundbreaking puppetry,
you know, pushing the boundaries of what puppetry can do
while also looking to puppetry's past and finding things to uh,
you know, to to to utilize and reinvent. But it

(08:15):
is a very different story. It's a very different like
entertainment product in its own way. Yeah, So we'll get
into some of those differences and similarities as we go here.
All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear just a
little trailer audio for Jim Henson's Labyrinth.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Tri Star Pictures announces the collaboration of three extraordinary talents,
Jim Henson, creator of The Muppets and Dark Crystal.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Where you want what I hay like that?

Speaker 4 (08:46):
George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars Saga, and one
of the most innovative forces in modern entertainment, David Bowie.

(09:09):
Together they will take you into a dazzling world of
fantasy and adventure.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
There's nothing to be afraid of, a world.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
Where anything seems possible and nothing is what it seems.

Speaker 5 (09:25):
Everything I've done, I've done for I move the stars
of novels.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
The world of Labyrinth.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
All right, if you want to go watch Labyrinth or
rewatch Labyrinth before proceeding with the rest of this podcast episode,
well more power to you. This one is widely available
in all formats and the special this is one of
those releases where I feel like the special editions just
keep rolling out. The limited edition steal book from shout
Factory looks really good. I was just getting some some

(10:16):
like social media ads about this the other day, and
I I feel like it's one of these things where
I don't own labyrinth ons and like a special edition
physical media release, but I'm always tempted to get one,
and each time they roll out a new one, I'm like, oh,
this is the one, this is the one.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
I should get.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
That they keep upping the ante. But yeah, there are
a number of been a number of releases, and again
that shout Factory product looks really nice.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
You know. I wonder if to people out in the
disc publishing world, is it especially movies that have nostalgic
tie ins to people's childhood that are most likely to
get bought up with these like big elaborate special edition
blu rays and boxes that you know, the special cases
and the posters and all the accessories that come with them.
I would have to think that nostalgia is a big

(11:02):
driver in selling these kind of things.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, I would guess so. But then again, I look
at my own experience and I think the most money
I've ever paid for a Blu ray was for a
special edition of Fool Cheese Conquest that came with a
special slipcase. And I can't quite explain why, because this
is not a movie I watched as a child. I
don't have that kind of deep nostalgia for it. But
I have a certain depth of nostalgia for the film,

(11:27):
and for some reason, it's like I had to have it.
You know, maybe it's like the fomo of a special
release slipcase and you're just like, somehow I've missed this.
I must have it. Yes, I will pay extra for
it on eBay.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
There is something really perversely enjoyable about getting an elaborate, lavish,
lovingly produced edition of a movie that is grimy and
gauzy and is just really concerned with pus.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Yeah. Yeah, it has a prize place in the drawer
where I keep the discs. All right, well, let's get
into the folks involved in the creation of this picture,
starting at the time, of course, with Jim Henson. This
is the first time we've really talked about Jim Henson
on the show before, you know, in depth. You know,
work comes up time and time again, and I'm blanking
on to what extent we've ever discussed something that the

(12:13):
Creature Shop was involved in. It's possible the Creature Shop
has come up directly in an episode or two, but
at any rate, Jim Henson is the director, he has
a story credit. He is also an uncredited Goblin performer.
There were a lot of Goblin performances in this puppetry wise,
he lived nineteen thirty six through nineteen ninety easily one of,
if not the most important puppeteers of the twentieth century.

(12:37):
I recently watched the excellent twenty twenty four documentary Jim
Henson Idea Man. This was directed by Ron Howard, and
I believe it's currently streaming on Disney in most places.
And this documentary does a really, really great, really entertaining
job of discussing Hinson, largely from the standpoint of his

(12:57):
ambition and his dreams, also getting the you know, litle
bit into his personal life, his family life, and of
course his professional life being like the main focus because
it's about, you know how all these ideas he had
ultimately the limited amount of time he had to pull
them off and yeah, like he was a guy that's
just constantly coming up with concepts that so many things

(13:18):
that didn't even come to fruition, Like he really had
all these plans for a nightclub at one point. Well yeah, yeah,
and I'd seen these some illustrations, some concept art that
he'd put together for this at the Center for Puppetry
Arts in a museum display years ago. But they get
into this in the documentary as well.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
New York's Hottest Club is muppet essentially.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Like even one of the things that they drive home
in that documentary is that even you know, early on,
he was drawn more to the power of television than
he was to puppetry itself, though of course puppetry became
his core performance medium. And yeah, he continued to push
the boundaries of what was possible with puppets, the sorts
of audiences they could be reached through puppets, sometimes like

(14:01):
initially like rebelling against you know, a box that he
helped draw for himself, like going from becoming you know,
the the creator of Sesame Street in this you know,
huge property for children, and then breaking out and doing
something like The Muppet Show and beyond and again, you know,
incorporating diverse traditions of puppetry along the way related performance styles,

(14:23):
and pushing into new frontiers of things like animatronics, which
we see in this film, and even you know, late
in his career got a little bit into into CGI
and looking at what computer generated imagery could do, though
often through sort of the guise of puppetry, like you know,
some sort of like computer animated face that is controlled
by like live action puppeteering.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Is the owl at the beginning of Labyrinth and the
credit sequence is that CGI?

Speaker 2 (14:52):
I believe it is. Yeah, I believe that's like early
I would argue largely effective CGI. It maybe doesn't look
as cool now as it did when I was a kid,
but it still looks pretty good. It's not you know,
I feel like it mostly it's yeah for eighty six
especially Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
So.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Of course, Hinson is famous for his Muppet based shows, again,
particularly Sesame Street and all the various series and films
to spin off of the Muppet Show, but of course
his creative output also includes the excellent Storyteller series we've
referenced on the show before, both the first season and
then the Greek season. I still hold those up as
excellent nineteen eighty two's Dark Crystal, and of course eighty

(15:31):
six is Labyrinth. This would prove to be his last
full length feature film directorial effort before his untimely death
in nineteen ninety at the age of fifty three.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yeah. So I guess this brings us back to the
comparison between The Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. I love
them both, though I think the Dark Crystal is a
little more impressive to me just because of the format
of its storytelling and its ambitions in that regard, in
that The Dark Crystal has no human characters in it.
You know, the Dark Crystal is not a like a

(16:02):
fairy tale integrated with our world as a kind of
you know, bridge fantasy from regular life like Labyrinth is.
The Dark Crystal is like a mythology that has nothing
to do with Earth, and there are no humans and
no Earth history and no Earth technology. It's just this
totally different world and everything in it is pure imagination.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah, I mean, it's otherworldly, and and in fact that
the initial cut was maybe a little too otherworldly for
some test audiences because they had all these constructed languages,
so the sketchies are speaking a strange tongue and so forth,
and they had to do like subsequent cuts where they
added actual like English language dialogue to the picture. So,

(16:47):
you know, the Dark Crystal was certainly like aiming for
something epic and strange and wonderful and achieve that. And
so Labyrinth seems to be an attempt to make something
that has the same vision and the same you know,
like level of detail going into every nook and cranny
of the picture, but also calibrating all of that more

(17:07):
towards like pure popular entertainment, you know, music, humor, whimsy,
and build everything around relatable human actors, one a youth
and the other a very popular musician.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah, Labyrinth to me seems like it's taking a lot
of the same creativity and creative energy behind The Dark Crystal,
but lightening the tone a bit and connecting it to
the human world with a human protagonist, and also orienting
the story a little. I mean, you could say in
both cases that probably the primary marketing was directed towards kids.

(17:43):
But the Dark Crystal is pretty as the title would
imply dark and Labyrinth I think is probably you would
argue a little bit more kid friendly.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, I mean, you still I certainly know people in
real life who are like, yeah, I never liked Dark Crystal.
It was too scary for me. It's too scary for
me now. And and that will come into play here
in a second, because when Labyrinth came out in eighty six,
it was famously a commercial and critical failure. It was
it was one of a certified bomb, you know, and

(18:14):
one that, apparently, according to that documentary, hit Hintson really hard.
You know, he ultimately was able to, you know, to
roll with the punches and you know, move on to
the next thing. But I think, you know, everybody put
a lot of love into Labyrinth and were really bummed
out when critics didn't like it and when audiences didn't
come out to see it. But of course, as is
sometimes the case with films like this, the children did

(18:38):
end up seeing it. They might not have seen it
at the theater, their parents might not have taken them,
but they ended up renting it or seeing it on television.
They told each other about it, they watched it and
rewatched it. They grew up with it, and as such
it has it has built up this cult following over
the years, and it has become this much beloved film
that is, you know, not this not in any way

(18:59):
tarnish the careers of those involved, but is sometimes like
one of the most iconic things they ever did.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Yeah, as I was saying earlier, it's one of those
movies where, again to sort of interpret my perception of
its place and culture, it was a movie where you wouldn't,
even if you were a child, question whether it was
good or not, or whether there could be anything wrong
with it. It's just like it's the canon. It is
the canon of storytelling.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and yeah, And like I said, you
grow up with them and sometimes you do reevaluate these things,
but maybe they do have an advantage because they've been
with you so long. And if it's a film like Labyrinth,
I feel like it's, you know, its flaws are not
enough to defeat that fire that was implanted in you
early on with the film. But again, the grown up

(19:49):
world of film critics did not feel the same way.
I was reviewing some of these, and it's interesting. So
Leonard Malton, a mere four years before he was killed
by Grimlins and Grimy too, he gave one of the
very few favorable like mainstream reviews for Labyrinth. Ebert gave
one that I think he gave it two out of
two stars total, and you know, like a generally like

(20:13):
an Ebert review, it's you know, it's not unkind it
it points out things he really likes, but ultimately it
doesn't see the logic in the picture. And then Gene
Siskel his review, if you want to dig that one up,
is one of the most brutal film reviews I've ever seen.
I'm mad he is mad. Not only does he not
like Labyrinth, he seems to have hated everything about it

(20:35):
and everyone in it.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
Yeah. Actually, so we were reading this off mic and
this brought up a kind of funny difference between Ebert
and Siskel. You know, it's not across the board this way,
but I feel like more often when Roger Ebert didn't
like a movie, he had a kind of sense of
humor about it, whereas Gene Siskel was more likely to
come off as like really offended by the fact that

(20:58):
a movie was bad like him.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, yeah, well that definitely holds true when you look
at Cisco's review of Elabyrinth. Yeah, he called it quite
awful and visually ugly, which I mean, you know, say
what you will about Jim Henson Pictures and you know,
you don't have to like them. But I mean, generally
most people acknowledge that there's a lot of you know,
great visual design that goes into these things. But you know,

(21:23):
I don't know, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
I guess you might have different levels of personal tolerance,
and this might be a very learned thing. Personal tolerance
for ugly beautiful, like to see the beauty in designs
that are meant to be ugly but capture ugliness in
an exquisite way, which a lot of a lot of
this movie does. It has monsters in it that are

(21:47):
not supposed to be like, you know, Hoggle is not
supposed to look super attractive, but Hoggle looks wonderful, and
the goblins are not supposed to look like attractive people.
They look like goblins, but they are beautiful goblins. I
feel like Ciskel is just not approaching the movie with
a tolerance for that kind of ambition at all.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Yeah. So again, critics hated it, and people who listened
to critics, you know, probably decided, well, maybe we'll skip
this one since everyone seems to hate it so much
or dislike it or find it lacking, and I was
reading an article or a chapter rather in the Wider
Worlds of Jim Henson. It's a book that came out
years back. There's a part in it by the author

(22:30):
Tom Holst, and it's titled finding your Way through the Labyrinth,
and he points out that some parents are also thought
to have kept their kids away due to negative experiences
bringing them to see the Dark Crystal. Earlier, folks had
heard oh the Dark Crystal is going to be you know,
from the maker of the Muppets in the Sesame Street,
and it was maybe a little too scary, and so
that might have kept them from going out to see

(22:52):
Labyrinth when it came out, for fear that there would
be a similar experience. Finally, this is another thing that
Holst points out. We also look at Labyrinth in the
way it connects, though to various other themes explored in
other Hintson projects, including some of his short film works.
That some of those did have buppets and some of
them didn't. But these different themes include a fractured view

(23:15):
of time, the theme of being trapped a film as
a metatext, and the trappings of superficiality. So those are
all worth keeping in mind as we continue to discuss
the movie here.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, Rewatching Labyrinth with this knowledge of its reception history
is odd and interesting because you have this contrast, like
the as we've been talking about the Chili reception it
got from critics and people pointing out all of these
things that are arguably flaws with it, flaws in the storytelling,

(23:49):
flaws in the design, flows in the acting, and so forth.
And at the same time you contrast that with what
I've been saying about I'm pretty sure I'm right about this,
the way that so many kids just totally accepted this
movie as part of the very fabric of childhood. And
I was trying to think what accounts for that difference.

(24:09):
And I think Labyrinth is a movie where you could
easily nitpick a lot of things about it if you're
not along for the ride. But if you're along for
the ride, it's just perfect and you don't question anything.
And so the real question is are you along for
this ride or not? And what determines if someone will

(24:33):
be or will not be along for the ride, Like
clearly Gene Siskel was, he did not agree to be
along for the ride. It's almost in this regard. I
was thinking the inverse of a movie we talked about
a few weeks ago, Ridley Scott's Legend. Legend is a
movie made of amazing parts, but somehow it is less
than the some of those parts. Something about it just

(24:53):
doesn't quite click as a story overall. Labyrinth, on the
other hand, I think has I mean, of course it
it also has amazing parts, and you know, great character
designs and puppetry and all that, but it has a
lot of specific stuff you could criticize if you were
so inclined, But if you just take the movie as
an indivisible whole, the way you a lot of times

(25:16):
kids take movies as just a totally absorbing experience that
you don't really think about critically. It would never even
occur to you that any part of it could be
less than perfect. It's just the ride you're on, and
it's it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
I was thinking about something along these lines when I
was swimming lapse this morning that like, for me, a
movie is often like a Frankenstein's Monster. You know, yeah,
you know, sometimes it's made from the most beautiful pieces
imaginable and that you can't even see the stitch work
and then other times it's ghastly. The stitches are raw

(25:51):
and apparent, you know, and there are other like design problems.
But at the end of the experiment, if the creature
can rise up and it has something like, you know,
cohesive life to it, then like then you buy it.
Like that, that's the thing. It has to be able
to walk out of the laboratory. Yeah, and if it does,

(26:12):
then yeah, the movie like works at least on some
sort of level that I can get behind. And it's
it's interesting because you have sometimes you do have a
beautiful monster that's there on the slab, But if the
spark doesn't happen, if it doesn't rise up, then you know,
what can you do?

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Yeah, but Labyrinth is getting up and walking, It's it's
running around, it's dancing, it's taking its head off and
tossing it to the monster next door.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yep, absolutely, all right, let's see other folks involved here.
A story credit goes to Dennis Lee born nineteen thirty nine.
He'd previously worked as a composer on Fraggle Rock and
We Could would continue to work in the music department

(26:55):
and as a composer on subsequent Hints and projects. He
is also an author and poet for children. Some of
his poems were adapted into the nineteen ninety two TV
movie Alligator Pie. And then, of course we have a
screenplay credit to Terry Jones, who have nineteen forty two
through twenty twenty the legendary Monty Python, writer, director, performer,

(27:16):
and medieval historian. Jones worked on an early draft of
the screenplay, and he retains the credit here, though I'm
to understand only some of his original ideas remain. But
I've always felt that you still get a very strong
Pythhonian vibe off of the film.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yes, I couldn't tell you exactly what those elements are
off the top of my head, but I can feel
the ghost of Monty Python in this beast.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
I feel like the specific things that feel like Terry Jones.
And I could be wrong on this, you know, this
is often the case the most authentic thing and a
work is actually the most fake and so forth. But
I always get a strong Terry Jones vibe from the
part where where Hoggle is spraying the fairies because we
find out it's because fairies bite. Yes, that feels very

(28:03):
Terry Jones. And then the logic puzzle of the door
Guardians that we hear we encounter later on. That also
feels very Terry Jones, and I again could be wrong
in both of those cases.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
No, I agree with you there So.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
Jones apparently worked off a novella by Dennis Lee, as
well as the drawings of artists Brian Froud who will
come back to But the shooting script apparently had a
number of different fingerprints on it. You had like Jim Henson,
of course, producer George Lucas Fraggle, writer Laura Phillips, and
also writer Elaine May. Anyway, Terry Jones is best known
for his work with Money Python. He co directed Holy

(28:38):
Grail in seventy five, Monty Python and The Holy Grail,
and directed both Life of Brian and seventy nine and
The Meaning of Life in eighty three, followed by various
works including nineteen eighty nine's Eric the Viking. He wrote
numerous fiction and nonfiction books, including nineteen eighty's Chaucer's Knight,
The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. All right, of course,
as we've been saying, this is a David Bowie film.

(29:01):
David Bowie, who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty sixteen
plays Jareth the Goblin King Again. We previously talked about
David Bowie in our episode on The Man Who Fell
to Earth, and here we return once more to what
would become one of his most iconic film roles, and
rather than revisit everything we said before, I thought we
might instead just sort of position Labyrinth within his filmography

(29:23):
and his discography, So in the case of the latter,
it falls between his nineteen eighty four album Tonight and
nineteen eighty seven's Never Let Me Down Now.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
I love David Bowie, but I don't know either of
these albums. I don't think I've ever listened to them.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
I had never listened to them before. I had listened
to them both at least a couple of times through
each bill while researching and doing notes for this episode, because,
like the former was long considered and I think maybe
it is still considered one of his lesser albums and
was poorly received, though it was apparently re released with
new instrumentation and the deletion of a track titled Too Dizzy.

(30:03):
But again, I didn't listen to the original version of
the album. All I have is this, I believe the
new version that's on the streaming platforms to listen to,
and you know, I can't compare, but you know, I
didn't hate it. The reggae elements are interesting. The title
track is a duet with Tina Turner, and he collaborated
with Iggy Pop on some of the tracks as well.

(30:25):
And then Never Let Me Down was an attempt apparently
to sort of course correct, but was also poorly received.
Even though you have a track. There's one track, Shining Star,
which features a rap by Mickey Rourke. You I would
think that would be successful, but I don't know. But again,
I listened to this all the way through and I
didn't hate anything. I really liked the track Bang Bang,

(30:46):
which is an Iggy Pop cover. Oh and then Time
Will Crawl is also one that I thought was pretty good.
But Bowie himself would end up distancing himself from both
of these albums later on, so you could sort of
see this as like, from his standpoint, you know, this
was kind of like a low point in his creative output.
Now on the film front, this one occurs after John

(31:09):
Landis's nineteen eighty five thriller Into the Night and Julian
Temple's Absolute Beginners. The same year, and he'd follow it
up with nineteen eighty nine's The Last Temptation of Christ.
So it's interesting that while the mid eighties are not
considered the high point of his musical output, in Labyrinth,
at least he busts out one of what would become
his most iconic roles ever, and also a soundtrack album's

(31:32):
worth a material I think, with five tracks in total
that I think have stood the test of time, like
these are beloved songs today, even though at the time,
again the movie was not a critical or financial success,
and it's I don't think he ever performed a single
one of these songs live, you know. I think he,
like a lot of people, just kind of like rolled

(31:52):
with the punches and just moved on from Labyrinth, even
though it would go on to generate this kind of
love and this kind of an audience.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
I think Bowie's presence in this movie is very interesting
to analyze. On one hand, he is, you know, he's
David Bowie, so he's captivating whenever he's on screen. On
the other hand, he seems a little checked out. Did
you feel the same way, Like it seems like he's
his engagement with the material and in his scenes is

(32:23):
often it seems quite muted and like he's he's a
little bit hazy.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, I mean, this is one of those things where
and we kind of got into this a little bit
with in the episode of The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Like these tendencies might also ultimately benefit the character, because
what is Jareth Jareth is he is a tyrant. He
is like a manchild who has apparently grown perhaps from

(32:49):
infancy into this position of great power without any checks
and balances in place. And so yeah, maybe he does
kind of check out at times because he can. He
can do so, he's he's a little bit aloof you know,
he's vain, but he's also vulnerable. He's charismatic and can
also be quite cruel. Like there are a number of

(33:10):
sort of paradoxes with this guy.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, he's villainous, he can be cruel, but he's also
a little bit dreamy at a i don't know, a
slightly reduced state of consciousness.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, ultimately he's of the fairy folk
in his own way. Now, one thing that I was
thinking about is that the character of Jared is never
fully explained here, not in the final cut of the film,
you know, And I've read that like Hinson and Lucas
kind of like went back and forth on the final edit,
where Hinson would have more dialogue and Lucas would cut

(33:44):
dialogue and then they'd kind of like find the balance.
So maybe an earlier cut it went into this, but
you don't really know like what he is or why
he's there, Like he's the King of the Goblins, but
he's obviously or presumably not a Goblin himself. And apparently
at some time, at some points in pre production, they
intended for Jareth to be a more darkly satanic, more

(34:07):
in line with what Legend does with darkness, and knowing
what Legend was going to do with that character, they
kind of went in a different direction. But I've read
that in an earlier draft of the script it was
revealed that Jareth was once a mortal who solved the Labyrinth.
And then I also have a Labyrinth bestiari by St. Binde,

(34:28):
and she writes that Jareth himself was a changeling, so
he was brought into the Goblin realm as an infant
to serve as the heir to the previous Goblin ruler.
I guess it's because goblins need a ruler, and none
of them want to do it themselves, Like can't we
steal a baby to do this? Can't we train a
baby to do this? And the answer is yes, that's

(34:49):
how they live their lives.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
I have a question, which is is it fun to
be the Goblin King? I see the goblins having fun,
They're you know, horsing around the getting into all kinds
of mischief, But David Bowie seems to be just kind
of languidly presiding over all the mischief. Is he having
fun being Goblin King?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
I think he gets bored and I think he gets
I think there's a lot of anxiety there. You know,
we see like his boredom often turns into cruelty. And yeah,
he is also deeply invested in the theft of this baby,
in the acquisition of Sarah. I think because he feels
like like there's incompleteness in his life and in the

(35:33):
stability of his reign, Like he needs fresh blood, he
needs an air, He needs someone who loves him as
opposed to just the goblins, who certainly serve him. But
I think love would be a strong word. And that's
where Sarah comes in. Sarah is, of course, played by
Jennifer Connelly born nineteen seventy Academy Award winning actress whose
credits as a child actress date back to a nineteen

(35:55):
eighty two episode of Rhaldahl's anthology series Tales of the Unexpected.
It's one. I don't think I've seen this one, but
it's titled Stranger in Town. It stars Derek Jacoby, and
I included it's still from it. Here you can see
a very young Jennifer Connolly standing there next to a
Derek Jacoby in a ridiculous, I don't know, some sort
of a jester or magician costume. Yeah, a cross between

(36:18):
the two, okay. She also pops up in the music
video for Duran Durand's Union of the Snake from nineteen
eighty three. I think she's supposed to be like a
cult member or something cool. And she followed this up
with a small role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a
Time in America that's an eighty four l and then
Dario Argento's Phenomena in nineteen eighty five opposite Donald pleasants Joe.

(36:41):
I still haven't seen this one, so you'll have to summarize.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
It's impossible to summarize the plot of Phenomena. It involves.
It involves like, I think, a super intelligent chimpanze and
swarms of insects that are controlled by a psychic and
I don't know, because it's it's Jallo film, so he
has like murders at a Swiss boarding school, of course,

(37:05):
and I don't know. I can't describe it all. But
it does involve Donald pleasance and a chimpanzee and insects
and murder mysteries, and Jennifer Connolly is the main character.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
All right. So these are essentially the credits that led
into her playing Sarah in Labyrinth at the age of fourteen,
at least in the early stages of the production, and
her subsequent credits would include the likes of nineteen ninety
one's The Rocketeer, ninety eight's Dark City, two thousands, Requiem
for a Dream two thousand and one, is a Beautiful
Mind two thousand and threes, Hulk, twenty fourteen's Noah, and

(37:37):
the TV series Snow Piercer.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
I think she's great in all those later movies, By
the way, some of the ones I remember really standing
out to me were like Dark City, and all that.
But you know, I remember liking her even in movies
that I liked less overall, Like I remember thinking A
Beautiful Mind is just kind of some some oscar bait.
But you know, Jennifer Connolly is always great.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, yeah, I really enjoy on snow Piercer Now. Sarah's
parents are only briefly in the film, but as the
only other two adult humans present, they deserve mention. Shelley
Thompson born nineteen fifty nine plays Sarah's stepmother, a Canadian
actor and director whose credits also include eighty five episodes
of Trailer Park Boys.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Really Yeah Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
And then Sarah's father is played by Christopher Malcolm who
lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen. A Scottish born
actor of stage and screen who actually originated the role
of Brad in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Show,
which become The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and he appears
in Richard O'Brien's nineteen eighty one follow up to Rocky Horror,
Shock Treatment, and he also had small roles in nineteen

(38:40):
eighties Superman two and The Empire Strikes Back, and he
has a role in Highlander, a role that I think
I always forget that this features into the plot, even
the slightest. But there's like a vigilante character running the
streets in Highlander, and Christopher Malcolm plays that digilante. I
think he's killed by the Kurgan. It's a very forgettable

(39:02):
part of the film. Yeah, this one is one that
felt like an insert from another dimension, Like really that
was part of this film that I've seen multiple times.
But I guess so if you say Internet okay, And
of course there's a long list of Muppet performers and
voice actors and other creatives. They include the likes of
Warwick Davis, Kenny Baker, Kevin Klash, Stephen Whitmeyer, Frank Oz,

(39:26):
Karen Prell, Dave Goles, Jim Hinson himself, of course, and
his son Brian Hinson born nineteen sixty three, who voices Hoggle,
who of course is Sarah's. The word friend is thrown
around a lot, and I guess we'd get there eventually,
but mostly he just betrays her over and over again.

(39:46):
But yes, Brian Hinson provides the voice there, but he.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Helps her too, and yeah, it's a you know, your
friendship is something you grow into.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, he's I just love the parts where he's like,
He's like, she's my friend, I won't betray her. And
then Jared is like, Holdtle, I need you to poison her,
and he's like, all right, I'll do it. So anyway,
we'll come back to some of these individuals as we
proceed here, but I will point out that among the
voice actors, Michael Horden, who lived in nineteen eleven through

(40:19):
nineteen ninety five, provides the voice of the wise Man,
the one with the bird on his hat. He's also
known for his performance as the voice of Frith, the
sun god in nineteen seventy eight's Watershipped Down, and his
other credits include sixty three's Cleopatra, sixty Eights Where Eagles Dare,
seventy threes Theater of Blood, seventy five's Barry Lindon. In
nineteen eighty two is Gandhi.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
Theater of bloods eventsent Price movie, Yeah, with almost the
same plot as Doctor Fibes, except with a more overtly
comedic Hammi theater orientation Shakespearean theater.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
All right, we mentioned Brian Froud earlier conceptual designer and
costume designer born nineteen forty seven English fantasy illustrator who
had worked with Alan Lee on the nineteen seventy eight
book Fairies. His work often calls back to nineteenth century
and early twentieth century fantasy illustration, particularly like fairytale inspiration.
And I've heard from friends who have seen him speak

(41:15):
in the past that he's something of like a true
believer in fairy folk like he doesn't just draw the fairies,
he knows that they are real. He of course served
as a conceptual as the conceptual designer on The Dark
Crystal previously, he also later worked on The Storyteller. His
other conceptual artist credits include two thousand and three's Peter
Penn in twenty sixteen's Pete's Dragon Interesting as well. He

(41:37):
met his wife, Wendy on the set of The Dark Crystal.
She worked in the creature workshop on that film and
also on this film as well, and they had a son,
Toby famously born eighty four, who of course plays baby Toby,
Sarah's brother in this picture. So real life. Toby has
gone onto work in special effects and animation on such

(41:59):
films as two thousand and fourteen's The Box Trolls and
the twenty nineteen series The Dark Crystal, The Age of Resistance.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Oh nice, but yeah, you actually do get to see
a real baby crying in this movie though. I was
watching close when the Goblin King Jarrett starts like throwing
him really high up in the air. That is a doll.
That's not the real baby.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
That's good. I mean his parents were on set. They
weren't going to allow that to happen. Okay. Alex Thompson
was cinematographer on this. I only mentioned it because we
brought We mentioned him briefly in Legend, same cinematographer as Legend,
so that's that's interesting. And then you know, music is
a big part of this film. Trevor Jones did the score.
Born nineteen forty nine, South African composer with some very

(42:41):
impressive credentials going back to the late seventies. The other
scores include ex Caliber from eighty one, eighty two's The Cinder,
The Dark Crystal, eighty five's Runaway Train, eighty seven's Angel Heart,
eighty eights, Mississippi Burning, ninety two is Free Jack, as
well as the Last of the Mohicans Dark City, and
two thousand and one is from Hell and He's Still
still active.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
I wonder if he's still getting residuals on free Jack.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Well, one would hope. Now I'm not current enough on
all of his scores, or even most of his scores.
I've never seen The Cinder, but it's it's on my list.
But I think his score for The Dark Crystal is
really really good, and I love the glistening electronic splendor
of his work in Labyrinth here fused, of course, with
the musical stylings of David Bowie. And again, yes, David

(43:28):
Bowie's music is key here as well. It is a
full fledged musical featuring five original tracks from David Bowie.
We'll come back to these as we go, but they
are Underground, Magic Dance, Chili Down, as the World Falls Down,
and within You.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
I say, possibly the opening track Underground is the most
memorable for me, like as a good song. But what's
the most memorable just as an experience. I think it
might be Chili Down? Which is that? I don't know,
is this song terrifying, horrible, wonderful? What is going on?

Speaker 2 (44:01):
There's a lot to process with Chili Down. I think
I think all of us who began watching Labyrinth as
a child are still trying to figure out how we
feel about Chili Down, and of course the sights and
traumas that accompany it. Like if you went into this
film having found the Dark Crystal uncomfortable, then the Chili

(44:23):
Down sequence is basically like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah,
but luckily the rest of Labyrinth doesn't have quite the
same flavor.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Yeah. But it is that track Underground that plays with
the opening credits, with the CGI owl, because it's got
these lines that are uh, these are quite memorable. It
says it's only for forever. It's not long at all.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, Yeah, which fits nicely into this treatment of time
in this picture. But yeah, I love the score when
it hits us, the score that transitions into Bowie's Underground,
a track that's going to play again in the closing credits. Yeah, lyrically,
I think it's a It's a song that really captures
both Sarah's emotional state and the temptations of the Goblin King.

(45:05):
You know, it just feels emotionally on point as we
enter in at first, not necessarily not really into the
world of the Labyrinths just yet, but into the real world,
into the mundane world that Sarah finds herself trapped in
like this is a film that's ultimately about her being
trapped in a fantasy world, but in the beginning she
is trapped in her mundane life.

Speaker 3 (45:34):
So yeah, the action begins in a beautiful outdoor location.
Actually the place that's almost shockingly green. It's this park
with a small river running through it, stone bridges, lush grass,
and these dark, shadowy trees. I am pretty sure this
was shot at a place called west Wycombe Park in
the UK. I looked it up to do some comparison.

(45:57):
But in the foreground of this shot we get the
animated owl from the credits, which has become a live
action owl, which settles on a granite obelisk. And then
in the background, our heroine, Sarah played by Jennifer Connelly
comes running into the scene over one of these low
stone bridges, and when we first meet her, she's dressed
in a costume, a sort of a Renaissance era gown

(46:20):
with a garland in her hair. And I think this
is meant to be a kind of fake out, like
we might assume that the movie takes place in another
time period, but no, it turns out she is I
think rob Let me know if you disagree. I think
she's supposed to be rehearsing for a play, and she's
apparently in costume for that, but either way, she's practicing

(46:42):
some kind of lines. She's trying to memorize something from
a book, and as she runs and dances through the park,
she says her lines, and the lines go like this.
They are important because they recur throughout the film. She says,
give me the child through dangers untold and hardship's unnumber.
I have fought my way here to the castle beyond

(47:03):
the Goblin City to take back the child that you
have stolen for my will is as strong as yours,
and my kingdom is as great. And then she starts
to stumble. She can't remember the next line, and she
struggles for a bit and then eventually gets the book
out of her pocket and looks at it and remembers

(47:23):
the next line is you have no power over me.
After she gets the line, thundercracks, a rainstorm is beginning,
and a nearby clock tower strikes at seven o'clock and
Sarah realizes, oh, she is late for something. So we
get to see her run back through the park through
a neighborhood through sort of downtown area of a small

(47:46):
town in the rain to get back home, and her
adorable shaggy dog Merlin is with her. By the way.
He's one of these mop like dog breeds, sort of
more fur than body. I don't know what breed that is,
but I love Merlin. Question is Merlin the same dog
as Ambrosious, the dog of Sir Didymus later in the story,
or is that a different dog?

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Oh? You know, I'm not sure if we're I mean,
in a sense, definitely, but in terms of dog actors maybe.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
Okay, So I know it's not part of the main
fantasy setting, which is the real draw of the film.
But for some reason, I also really love the real
world locations at the beginning of the movie, the park,
the town, and the storefronts, the rainy neighborhood. I think
they look wonderful and they're this interesting mix of dreary
but lovely.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, and it it really works because the more we
see of Sarah's real life, we realize that, yeah, it's
like she's she's not to discount her displeasure or her emotions,
you know, because of course these are gonna be going
to be very subjective and all, but like you know,
she is what she is in what to all appearances
would look like a very comfortable house and a very

(48:57):
comfortable life, but that is not how she feels. She
feels very set upon. She feels that she is trapped
here and deserally wants escape.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yes, so, and when we see that conflict immediately when
Sarah gets home, she's confronted on the porch by her stepmother.
Sarah is late. She was supposed to be home to
babysit her little brother Toby so her father and stepmother
could go out for the evening, and there are sort
of multiple levels of conflict. Sarah is very frustrated and

(49:29):
put upon. She resents being asked to babysit when she
should be outliving her own life. But then her stepmother says, basically, well,
if you had plans, you could have told me I'd
like for you to go out and have dates in
a social life. And it's almost like the fact that
her stepmother is not being more unreasonable further enrages Sarah,

(49:51):
and she runs upstairs, yelling, pouting that apparently she can't
do anything right. And I like this relatively complex depiction
of teen angst because it feels real to me, like
the conflict is not one dimensional or about just a
single subject. Instead, it seems that Sarah is living in
a stew of many conflicting emotions and desires, all of

(50:15):
which are thwarted at the same time, Like she wants
to be an adult and have independence and self determination,
but feels like something is preventing her. But also there
are signs that she wants to go the other way
and regress into the self centered mind space of childhood
and just be free of all responsibilities and all cares
about others. And we see this in the way that

(50:37):
she hides in a room and finds solace in her
collection of stuffed animals, and later in the way she
unfairly projects resentment onto her baby brother. And I think
that feeling of complex and even mutually exclusive, thwarted desires
is very relatable to anybody who remembers being a teenager themselves,
Like I remember what that felt like in a way

(50:59):
where it was just like everything was confusing and frustrating
and nothing felt right and there wasn't actually one single
cause of it. It's just that that's what it's like
to be fifteen or sixteen. The conflict here isn't just
about babysitting.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, and it's not that your stepmom is telling you
to go water a stump. Yeah yeah, yeah. And so
of course she goes to her room, and boy, what
a room it is. I think we've talked about kids
rooms on the show before, but this is always something
that I pay a lot of attention to when I
watch a film. How have you decorated this child's room?

(51:34):
Did you just print out some stuff from Getty Images
and you're pretending it's a poster or did you use
real posters? You know? Is it all fake franchise stuff?
Does it feel like a child actually lived in this
room or not? And I think they do just a
fabulous job with Sarah's room here, with her reality of stuff,
which is going to be vitally important to the plot,

(51:55):
of course, but it also needs to feel real.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yeah. What are her music posters? She have like staying
on the wall or something.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yeah. But also we see in the room. I think
it's in her room that there's a copy of Where
the Wild Things Are. That really caught my eye because
currently my daughter is obsessed with Where the Wild Things Are?
She calls it Max Boat you know, Max gets in
a boat goes across the ocean.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Oh that's a great one. Yeah, yeah, we read that
one a lot too.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
She likes to here where the wild things are, like
while she's eating, she's having dinner, and she wants us
to read it to her while she's having dinner, which
we indulge in sometimes.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
And what's her favorite wild thing?

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Well, honestly, I think it's Max. She likes Max. He's
the king of the wild things. He's the one who
says it's time to let the wild rump us begin.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
So all right, solid solid.

Speaker 3 (52:45):
I don't know. Maybe as we continue to read it
over time, she'll she'll find more more to love down
the character sheet. But anyway, Sarah is left to take
care of Toby while her parents go out, and so
she discovers at some point that one of her old
stuffed animals I think it's named Lancelot. It's like a
teddy bear named Lancelot has been taken from her room

(53:08):
and given to the baby, and this makes her even
more angry. And then the baby's crying and she doesn't
know how to make him stop, which again, you know,
is a relatable feeling. It does create this feeling of helplessness,
and while in the middle of all these frustrations about
to boil over, Sarah suddenly gets an idea, a terrible idea,

(53:30):
an idea that seems to be related to the book
or the play that she's been memorizing. She gets the
idea to, I think, sort of say a magic spell
from whatever the story is that makes goblins come and
take a child away. And this actually leads to one
of my favorite little stylistic choices, one of my favorite

(53:51):
editing moments in the movie. So when she's trying to
remember the words to say to summon the goblin magic
and remove Toby from her life, suddenly, with no warning
at all, we just cut to a bunch of goblin
faces waiting with baited breath for her to say the words.
They're like yelling at each other, like know listen She's

(54:13):
gonna say the words. Such an odd and surprising choice,
the way we just smash cut to goblins with no
previous introduction or even indication that they exist. Everything up
to this point has been fully realistic, no fantasy elements
at all, and so the first time we see anything
magical is an absolutely unexpected smash cut. It almost reminds

(54:37):
me of the moment in the Exorcist when Reagan is
at the doctor's office and she's staring up at the
ceiling and we smash cut to the Pazuzu face peering
out of the darkness. This isn't as as evil and
menacing as that, but it's semi evil and a little
bit scary. And I love the way that the magic
just bursts in like that with no warning at all.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, we don't and really get a clear sense of
where the goblins are. Are they in the closet, and
are in the walls? Are they just in the nether void?
You know that's easily accessible, but equally distance distant from
you know, our real life at any time. But yeah,
all this build up is wonderful. I love too how
she's self narrating her plight here, including talking about one

(55:20):
day when baby was especially cruel to her, Yes, which
of course is just such a deliciously over the top
exaggeration of her current circumstance. Yes, the baby Toby was
cruel to you today, Baby Toby definitely stole your stuffed animal.

Speaker 3 (55:38):
So anyway, she does eventually remember the words to say,
and then the magic descends, Toby disappears, he is gone,
and instead she is now faced with David Bowie playing
the Goblin King Jerreth. He appears in Toby's room and
she quite quickly regrets that she sent Toby away. You know,

(55:59):
she wants him back, but Jared says, at first I
think he says she can't have him back, and then
finally he says, okay, she can only have him back
if she makes it to his castle at the center
of the Great Labyrinth before midnight, and if not, Toby
will become absorbed into the Goblin Horde. He will just
become goblin.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yes, yeah, I mean, there's just so many great details
in this moment and leading up to it. I mean,
I love the goblins when they start invading the room. Yes,
I love. I love Jared laying out the challenge you
have thirteen hours in which to solve the Labyrinth and
making a time go weird on her, and then the

(56:38):
first of what will be kind of a recurring element
in the film of characters really trying to shoot down
her optimism, you know, where she says, Okay, I can
do this, and he's like, it's further than you think,
you know, and we'll get something similar from Hoggle later on,
where he's like, yeah, it just gets tougher from here
on out, you know which, These lines seem to like
echo a sort of adult sensibility that has been handed

(57:00):
down to Sarah and is reflected in the fantasy world here.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Yeah. Yeah, So suddenly we're in a different place. We
have been taken to the Goblin Kingdom. We're not in
Sarah's house anymore. How would you describe the esthetics of
the Goblin Kingdom? What is this world?

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Like?

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Oh, it's beautiful for starters, but it's also a little
bit desolate and everything. So many surfaces in the Goblin realm,
and it varies depending on what section of the labyrinth
you're in. So many surfaces look like they have very
recently been crawled over by some sort of a fairy
slug that leaves just a little bit of a like
a glistening sparkle to everything.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
A glittering mucus trail overall.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Yeah, but it does, I think read rather accurately like
a fine kingdom that has been ruled too long by goblins. Like, yes,
upkeep is happening, but it's maybe not as loving as
it could be.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yes now pretty quickly. While finding her way to the
entrance of the labyrinth so she can get Toby back,
Sarah runs into someone. She meets, a character named Hoggle,
who's going to be one of the main characters in
the movie. When we first meet Hoggle, he is urinating
into a reflecting pool. Yeah yeah, but so that's I

(58:16):
guess an inauspicious beginning. But it's sort of a difficult
meeting at first. Hoggle is not inclined to be very
helpful to her. Instead, he is busy poisoning fairies, I think,
like dusting them with some like fairy insecticide.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Yep, yep, he is exterminating fairies. He is not helpful.
He is grumpy. Hoggle is interesting because Hoggle is not
maybe not objectively cute, but you do grow to love him.
He is a character that will betray Sarah over and
over again and really struggles to muster any like true

(58:54):
sustaining courage. But you know eventually he's going to get there,
but you do have to be patient with him on
that journey.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
That's right, And he does sort of disappear and reappear
repeatedly throughout the story.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah yeah, he's difficult to count on for a while.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yeah, So, when Sarah first goes into the quick question
of terminology, should we continue to call it the labyrinth
or should we call it a maze? I think I
recall from our episodes on the Minotaur that technically a
labyrinth is one in which there is only one path

(59:29):
and it does lead ineluctably to the ending. Is that
right you.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
By some definitions? Absolutely? So, Yeah, in some respects you
could think of the labyrinth here as more of a maze.
But I don't know. I mean, if the ruler of
this room calls it a labyrinth, I guess we have
to respect his goblin word choices.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Well, I guess that's true. In any case, it does
not seem that this is a place where you just
continue walking and you will eventually get to the end.
You have to make choices about where to where to go.
But when Sarah first gets into the labyrinth, it's interesting
that the first real challenge she faces is that she
can't find anywhere to turn. It just seems like one

(01:00:12):
endless corridor. And so she has a wonderful little scene
where she discusses this with a worm who tells her
he's like, ah, yeah, I can't tell you. I can't
help you. I'm just a worm. But then he does
provide some helpful advice because she discovers that there are
gaps in the walls that she can move through to
make turns and find new ways to navigate through the maze,

(01:00:34):
but they're hidden by optical illusions. And I love the
effects used here because from what I can tell, there's
no real trickery going on except that they just like,
for example, we'll have a gap in the walls of
the maze that from the perspective we're looking at it
totally blends in with the wall behind it, so you
can't even tell their two separate walls.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's just a complete practical illusion
that they depend on here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Yeah, now we don't have time to talk through the
entire plot seen by scene, but maybe maybe we should
just pick out some of our favorite moments as Sarah
is navigating the labyrinth and its challenges and and and

(01:01:24):
the people she meets along the way. One thing I
know you wanted to talk about was the riddle of
the doors. Who with the dogs guarding them?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yeah? Yeah, these guys are a lot of fun. I
covered these on the monster fact a while back. They're
they're they're delightfully weird enough on their own, of course,
two headed dog like humanoid creatures that are fixed behind shields,
kind of in the manner of double headed European playing cards.
It's already a wild design. But then the scenario gets
even wilder because we find out, of course, that one

(01:01:55):
door leads to the castle at the center of the
labyrinth and the other one leads to Bubba Bubom stain
and death. The lower heads have no idea what's going on,
which door is which the upper heads do, but Sarah
is only permitted to ask one of them. Furthermore, one
of the two guardians always tells the truth, while the
other one always lies. So Sarah faces a conundrum here.

(01:02:15):
How can she find out which door is which? How
can she risk asking the wrong guardian and being lied to?
And this is really fascinating because the scenario here, of course,
instantly invokes what is known as the liar's paradox. If
a liar tells you they are lying, then they are
telling the truth. So you can consider the statement this
sentence is a lie. If that statement is true, then

(01:02:38):
it's false. If it's false, then it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Right, hence that it's a paradox it's self contradictory.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Yeah. Now the scenario that Sarah is facing here, I
have to admit that I really have to do some
mental gymnastics to make sense of the riddle here. I
think when I was younger, at one point I did
like settle down and think about it long and hard
enough to where it clicked. But for the most part,
I just really have to trust that the film is
not lying to me when it tells me that this

(01:03:04):
is the correct answer. But I did research it a
little bit. As John Tourre points out in the paper
objective falsity is essential to lying an argument from convergent
evidence published in Philosophy Studies twenty twenty one, Sarah here
is engaging in what is called answer laundering. The truth
and the lie dependably cancel each other out in this scenario,

(01:03:26):
provided Toy stresses that lies cannot be true because the
answer laundering she engages here is, of course, she asks
one of the guards what the other guard would say
in reaction to her question, and she uses that answer
to figure out which way is which.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
But that makes sense because you know either way that
will point you to the wrong door. If you ask
the truth telling guard what the other guard would say,
they will truthfully tell you that the other guard will
lead you to the wrong door. And if you ask
the lying guard what the truth tells guard would say,
they will lie and tell you the wrong door. So

(01:04:04):
either way that indicates which door is the wrong one.
So by elimination you know which is the right one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
It's a piece of gay. So Terry points out that
the riddle here of the four guards is a variant of,
or seems to be a variant of the Knights and Knaves,
a logic puzzle from Raymond Smulliam's nineteen seventy eight publication
What is the Name of This Book? Yeah, This scenario
closely resembles what we see in Labyrinth. It involves a
knight and a nave otherwise indistinguishable. Who guard a fork

(01:04:32):
in the road? Which road are you going to take?
Dare you ask these two men given that one is
secretly a noble knight and one is secretly a vile nave.
The solution, again is via answer laundering. You ask which
path the other individual would say is the correct one,
and then you can use that to determine which is
the correct way. Sarah guesses correctly, but of course Sarah

(01:04:54):
gets cocky and she gets the trap door for her efforts.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
It almost indicates that she got it wrong, but I
think she did get it right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
I believe so. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Yeah, yeah, So she goes through the door and then
immediately falls down a trapdoor into and there's like a
so the pit she falls into. It's kind of funny
that there are all these hands poking out the walls,
you know, like they like stop her from falling, and
they say they're helping hands, and they form faces that
talk out of the gloved hands. So it's kind of

(01:05:25):
a weird creepy scene. It reminds me of something actually
that would be in Return to Oz and they feel right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, great sequence, a very inventive use of
hand puppetry. Yeah, there's nothing else like it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
But they ask her if she wants to go back
up or to go back or to go all the
way down, and for some reason she chooses down. So
that ends up dropping her into an oubliette where she eventually,
oh she here. She meets back up with Hoggle again.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Yeah. Rescued by Hoggle, they make a deal over some jewelry, right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
I think there's some addition negotiations with Jareth down here.
I think this is the sequence where they have to
run from this like nightmare device that's chasing them down
a tunnel, threatening to grind them into the wall. But
they eventually they bust through and find a ladder up
to the surface, after which they talk to like a
snoozy old wise man who I think is sort of

(01:06:19):
a dog but also is a human and then has
a bird on his head.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Yep, yep, and they gets some limited amounts of wisdom
from this character.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Somewhere around here also is where we meet another one
of the Lovable Friend characters who become a part of
Sarah's gang. This is Ludo. Ludo is initially caught in
a trap and hanging upside down and being badgered by
a bunch of goblins. Ludo is like a large sort
of sasquatch type creature with sort of curving horns on

(01:06:51):
his head, who appears very monstrous but in fact is
actually quite sweet natured.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
Yeah, or if you're Gene Siskel, this is a ripoff
of Chewbac. What a ripoff?

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):
Because he has fur? Is that it I guess he's
big and has fur, therefore is Chewbacca.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
But yeah, Ludo's great, Ludo's a gentle giant.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
You love him, Yes, lovable. Sarah rescues Ludo from being
harassed by the goblins.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
With the nibbler sticks. Great sequence. And oh and then
this is where they're doing the hobby horse technique here
for the little guys running around.

Speaker 4 (01:07:25):
It's great.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, so they've got like these
little monsters attached to the ends of sticks that they're
using to bite Ludo with. But then she frees him.
She she like gets the goblins all fighting each other
until they run away, and then she frees him, and
after that Ludo is friend. Now in this sequence, Hoggle
runs away, but he'll show back up again later. I

(01:07:47):
think somewhere around in here is where Sarah ends up
running into the fire Gang.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Yes, the Fire Gang or the Fieries. Oh, these are
creatures that have always been pure nightmare fuel to me.
They're a band of musical bird like goblinoids with like
bright you know, orange and fire colored feathers fur somewhere
in between, and they have disturbing natural abilities in the

(01:08:16):
realms of pyrokinesis as well as dismemberment. They can rip
their bodies apart and reattach them at will willy nilly
in various positions. They can even connect their limbs together
into new monstrous shapes. It's a sequence full of body horror,
dance music, Menace Mayham. It is a lot to process,

(01:08:40):
but it is a musical number. The song here is
David Bowie's Chili Down. If you listen to the soundtrack
Slash Score album you get to hear Bowie singing on
it a little bit of belief. But in the film
it is performed by Kevin Klash born nineteen sixty. Know,
you know as the voice of Elmo, the original voice
of Elmo. He the voice of the main Fiery. Then

(01:09:02):
you have Danny John Jules born nineteen sixty a British actor,
dancer and singer who is also a member of the
Blood Pack in Blade two. He voices Fiery four, the
really dangerous looking one. Then you have Charles Oggens, a
British actor, dancer and choreographer who also choreographed this scene
as well as the excellent magic dance scene from earlier.

(01:09:24):
And then also you have the actor Richard Bodkin doing
a voice as well. So just some horrifying, freaky goblinoid
creatures here performing a very wild song. And this whole sequence,
of course, escalates into them deciding they need to dismember
Jennifer Connolly Sarah. They need to rip her head off,

(01:09:45):
because you're not supposed to throw other people's heads, even
though they throw each other's heads around earlier, Like they
don't even follow their own rules. They're just pure creatures
of chaos.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Yeah, what are the lines where they're like trying to
pull her head off? They're like, Eh, it's not coming off.
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
Pull harder?

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
Yeah. And that's one of the things that I think
always like really struck me about this scene. It's like
it's two different realities clashing. Their reality is one of
just fun dismemberment. It's easily reversible and you can play
with it. It's a good time for everybody. But Sarah
is from a world where dismemberment is permanent, is permanent

(01:10:20):
and fatal, and they just don't understand that. Why don't
you want to take your head off? What is the
matter with you? Now?

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
You mentioned that there was an earlier part of the
movie that featured a musical number called the Magic Dance.
I didn't remember exactly where this came, but this is
the one where we get to see inside the Goblin
Castle where David Bowie's hanging out. Toby is there with
all the goblins. He's sort of crying. It looks like
Toby's not having a great time, but the goblins are

(01:10:47):
all partying, and I guess this song is sort of
about how Toby's going to become one of them.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a great sequences, a great song. Bowie
seems to be having a great time as Jareth here
with throwing the bait be around and just so many
goblin shenanigans as well. This is a goblin packed musical number.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
You got a goblin doing the Barney gumbel, like laying
down with his mouth under the tap of the beer keg.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Yeah. When I was watching it here, I said to
my son he was watching with me, I was like,
why why doesn't this goblin just get a cup? Like
they're not charging by the cup here? This is just
this seems to be free for any goblins. But now
he's like, it's just so much easier if I just
lay down underneath it on the floor and just catch
straight droplets of the stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Yeah, the cup requires too much arm exercise. It's difficult.
It's goblin mode, I guess. Yeah, so at any rate, Yeah,
the fire Gang is something else, Yes, But Sarah does
eventually escape the fire Gang with the help of Hoggle.
I think Hoggle like throws down a ladder to her
from the top of a top of a wall to
help him get away, or maybe a rope. Maybe that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Yeah, yeah, And so she's able to escape and doesn't
get ripped to pieces.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
But Hoggle and Sarah end up in the Ball of
Eternal Stench. This is a place Hoggle has been threatened
with before. I think that, you know, it's like, if
he doesn't do what Jarreed, the Goblin King says, he's
going to be cast into the Bog of Eternal Stench.
The premise is that the bog smells very bad, and
if any part of your body touches the liquid in

(01:12:19):
the bog, you will stink forever.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Yeah, for the rest of your life. And I've long
puzzled over that, like how it works. How does it
permanently taint you like that? Does it change your biology?
What would it look like in like Dungeons and Dragons rules.
Is it like a permanent like disadvantage to all charisma
roles or something I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
Yeah, now here in the bog of Eternal Stench, they're
trying to get out without touching the cursed water, and
at one point they need to cross a bridge, but
their path is blocked by a feisty little character who
will later become part of our group of friends. This
is Serditimus, who I think is either supposed to be
a fire or some type of dog. Though it's sort

(01:13:02):
of confusing because he's a muppet who is an anthropomorphic
fox or dog, but he rides a dog. He's got
a dog that is a dog, and he rides the dog.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
Yeah, it's kind of the Pluto goofy paradox once more.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
Yes, Yeah, Sir Dinamus is kind of a reap, a
cheap sort of character. He's like, he's very small and
feisty and thinks himself very chivalrous and he's always itching
for a fight.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Yeah, he's a lot of fun. He's always down to joust.
But his mout, of course, frequently is not as we'll see.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
So Sarah Ludo and Hoggle are trying to trying to
get through this place, and I think they get blocked
at a bridge by Sir Dinymus. But I think Sarah
is the one who figures out that Sir Dinimus is saying,
no one may pass this bridge without my permission, so
she realizes she can just ask his permission. It seems
this has never occurred to Sir Didymus, that he can

(01:13:55):
just grant permission and still keep his vow.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Yeah, yeah, He's like, oh, yeah, sure, granted. They're like
all right, good, let's go.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
Yeah, and so they're like leaving. Now there is an
interesting thing here where we discovered that Ludo is not
only friend to Sarah, he is also friend to rocks.
Because there's one point where Sarah is sort of like,
I think a bridge collapses underneath her. She's dangling over
the bog by hanging onto a tree branch, and she
is saved when Ludo summons his rock friends to emerge

(01:14:25):
up out of the earth so that she can use
them as stepstones to cross the water.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
That's right, and of course this will come into play
in one of the climaxes of the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
Now there is up here somewhere we get one of
the Hoggle betrayals, because Hoggle gives Sarah a poisoned peach
that the Goblin King gave to him, and this turns
this sort of sends Sarah into a trance where she
experiences a magic masquerade ball where she is she is

(01:14:55):
tempted to divert from her mission to save Toby and
instead just sort of, I don't know, becomes some kind
of evil queen of magic.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's like this is one of Jared's temptations
to her, like this is what your life could be
if you just loved me and stayed with me here
in this realm. And so it's this dreamy but also
frightening sequence, you know, it is it feels like some
sort of a weird trip, you know, it's it's a

(01:15:23):
great sequence, but it's not like there are there are
a lot of uncanny elements to it. They're creepy masks,
you know, sort of typical I guess, you know, period
masks that the other dancers are wearing. They're also there's
a feeling of actually being like drugged, of reality being

(01:15:43):
slowed down because she is drugged. But we have to
remember if she ate a poisoned peach, and that's how
she's entered into this realm. And it's this feeling of like, Okay,
now the hallucination is upon her, and can she recognize
it for the hallucination it is and break free from it?
And in the midst of this, of course, we have
another musical number, we get as the World Falls Down,

(01:16:03):
which I mean, no big surprise. I love all of
these songs, so I will also say this is a
great one. But yeah, it has a nice dreamy air
to it, a nice dancing and slow motion within a
silver prison kind of a song.

Speaker 3 (01:16:26):
Now, Sarah does not fully succumb to these temptations, and
she does wake up in a different place. She wakes
up in a sort of a garbage world, a giant
junkyard that seems to lie outside of the Goblin City,
and she meets a character who is like a junk
trader woman who I think is trying to like Sarah's

(01:16:48):
memory seems only partially intact at this point, and she's
not fully aware of what she was supposed to be doing,
and this junk trader woman is like offering her up
a little like trinket and baubles and toys to I
think this is part of a different type of temptation
we were talking about earlier about her like multiple different

(01:17:09):
desires at the beginning of the movie, and this is
the temptation to just sort of regress, to go back
into childhood and just obsess over over little trinkets and
selfish toys and collecting little magic, glittering things. And the
Lady of the junk World is trying to tempt her
into that fate.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Yeah, it's a great sequence. This also perhaps a little
bit frightening, because you know, she goes into what seems
to be her childhood room and it seems like maybe
she's back, but then imburse the junk Lady, and the
junk Lady has this enormous backpack of stuff that has
just seemed to like crush and wither her. And there
is this scene where Sarah's seated in front of her

(01:17:50):
mirror in her childhood room, but the junk Lady is
bringing her all over things and at least visibly from
an invisible sense, piling up like a pile of things
behind and Sarah's back, as if constructing her own backpack
that will eventually wither and crush her, you know, like,
here are your earthly possessions, and they are meaningful in
and of themselves, and this is what you should cling to,

(01:18:13):
you know, forget what they might represent. That's not important.
Here's your stuff. Just focus on your stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
But fortunately, while being weighed down with these things that
I think, in the view of the movie, don't really matter,
all these trinkets and treasures, she is saved by the
things that do matter, which are her friendships. She starts
to kind of realize something is wrong. The place is
sort of crumbling, and she's like climbing out of this
false room prison, and she meets up with and is

(01:18:41):
rescued by her group of friends, including Hoggle and Didymus
and Ludo.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
And so from here, basically to get to the castle
at the center of the center of the Goblin City,
they're like two more obstacles. First there's like the gate,
which has a big automaton in it, and then there
is the Goblin City. The automaton battle is a sequence
that I've always found to be very visually impressive. You know,
I really like the creature design here, but it also

(01:19:10):
has always felt like kind of a natural bathroom break.
I don't know there's something about it that it shouldn't.
I'm not saying it's boring, but it is not as
exciting as it should be.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
Hoggle is actually this is one where we get to
see Hoggle. You're brave though he's the one who defeats
the Goblin mech.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
Yeah, it's actually it's absolutely essential from that standpoint, But
I don't know. I've always found something was lacking here.
But anyway, we passed that test and now the party
is united. Everyone's behind Sarah. But yet they have to
move through the Goblin City and that's where they are
met with the Goblin army and we get this enormous battle.

(01:19:46):
It is. It's a real blast, a mad cap slapstick
battle for the ages, featuring every goblin you've seen in
the film thus far. Just hordes of goblins of varying types,
all sorts of shenanigans, explode usions, sword fights, Ludo calls
the Rocks. I always enjoy watching this sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:20:07):
It's a great thing when he calls the Rocks for help,
and then we get to see boulders rolling uphill to
attack the goblins.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
So they get through that, and then it's time for
the final showdown. With Jarreth in Jared's stronghold, and we
get the scene where we see versions of this in
a lot of pictures, right, and a lot of stories.
Sarah has to go in alone, she has to confront
Jarreth alone. Her friends can't help her in this part
of the quest, and so they say goodbye to her

(01:20:35):
and she ventures into this mc escher world of you know,
mind bending paradoxical staircases.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
That's right, And it's not just a comparison. She basically
literally is in the MCEs you're drawing with the staircases
and the doorways going in every direction.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
Yeah, this was another I think there's a poster in
her room to this effect as well.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Yeah, and we get a song here, right.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Yeah, this is within You. That is is really great
because it's threatening, it's very threatening in places, but it's
also very vulnerable in places. And Bowie's vocal performance here
is great too, because you have these parts of it
where he's very firm and commanding, and then other bits
where his voice is like trailing off and growing weak,

(01:21:18):
like almost like he is dying while singing it. Because
this is all of course, Jarreff's final appeal to Sarah,
like please you know, just fall in line, you know,
be here with me, don't defy me. And but no,
Sarah is going to stick to her guns and she
is going to do what it takes to defeat Jarreff.

(01:21:40):
What exactly that is I still have questions about but
she doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Well, I checked. So what she does to defeat him
is she remembers the words, which is interesting because that's
the same thing she did to get into this trouble
in the first place. By remembering the words, the lines
from the Goblin story. That's how she got Toby kidnapped
by the goblins. Remembering the lines from the story is

(01:22:04):
also how she defeats Jarreth. She says she has the
same lines she was reciting at the very beginning of
the story when she says, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered,
I fought my way here to the castle beyond the
Goblin City, and so on and so on. It goes
on several more sentences, but it ends with her remembering
the final line that she couldn't remember at the beginning.
My kingdom is as great and you have no power

(01:22:27):
over me. She repeats this, you have no power over me,
And then I think the clock chimes midnight or one
whatever it is that the time that she had to
rescue Toby by and Jareth is defeated, and so she
gets to go back home with Toby.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Thirteen o'clock, I believe, think I don't know if it's
thirteen pm or.

Speaker 3 (01:22:46):
Am, But I like how there's an ending where she
sort of reconciles her earlier frustrations with Toby, Like she
repents of her earlier scapegoating of Toby because Toby wasn't
really the problem, you know, she was. Like she's just
struggling with herself and her role in life at this point,

(01:23:06):
and I think she has some perspective on that. But
also I like how she ends up sort of reconciling
her relationship with fantasy. She realizes she has to part
ways with her magical friends, she has to live in
this world, but she also needs to see them from
time to time.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):
Yeah. Yeah, So she defeats Jarreth again. I never doubt
this on an emotional level, you know what's happening, Like
she finds the strength to overcome him, and then she's
back in her room. She sees like the reflection of
her friends through the mirror. But realizes she can call
on them when she needs them, and then she does
and we get like a final big party sequence in

(01:23:45):
her room, which is great. Though I've always been disturbed
by the fact that the Fire Gang members are there, Yes, like,
why did you invite them? Why did you could have
maybe just let them go, Sarah, It's right, you don't
have to keep all of these strange creatures. Maybe let
the fire guys go off and live their own life
and oblivion. But no, they're there as well, but they

(01:24:06):
seem to be well behaved. They're not trying to pull
anybody apart.

Speaker 3 (01:24:09):
I invited the bog of eternal stench here it's in
my sink now.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
And we once more get the theme song underground and
we roll back. We see that the owl, the animal
form of Jared, has like been watching through the window
and then takes off and flies away into the night.
It's beautiful. It is. It's, like I say, very like
emotionally and visually beautiful, satisfying conclusion to the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
So in the end, you agree with Ciskel that it's awful,
ugly and terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
I could not disagree with ciscl more on Labyrinth. I mean,
it really was challenging to talk about Labyrinth here in
some respects because you could go on and on, or
I could go on and on about just about any
moment in the picture. There's always something interesting going on
in the set design or in the costuming, in the
particular dialogue choices that are in play lyrics to the songs.

(01:25:04):
There are some weird lyrics to these songs we didn't
even get into. There are also lines of dialogue, particularly
from David Bowie. Some of them I never fully understood,
Like I couldn't really understand what he's saying until like
this viewing of the picture where I was like, all right,
I'm going to turn on the captions for a minute,
and it's like, oh, he's saying, well laugh. And I
always thought he said well love. I don't know why

(01:25:25):
I thought that was the line, but that's what I've
been hearing for decades.

Speaker 3 (01:25:29):
Huh. Yeah, this is the kind of movie where I
feel like a lot of things, especially when you're watching
as a kid, can just go right over your head.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
But you know, there are lots of confusing things in
the world of the Labyrinth. Yeah, you know, it's a
film in a world full of paradoxes and illusions, and
it's part of its texture. There was some essay I
was looking at. Maybe it's the one I started earlier
talking about, Well, some people were confused when they saw Jared,
when they saw David Bowie's charif, and it's like, well, yeah,
you should be confused whole Jared. He is supposed to

(01:26:01):
be this alluring and kind of confusing character, Like that's
that's intentional.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
It was the confusion like why isn't he a goblin
like the others? Like why are the goblins ruled over
by a rock star who with a human form?

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Right? That? And then also some of the aspects of
Jariff being a like a sexually alluring character, but in
a way that makes sense, like he is he is
like his role is in relationship to Sarah, a young woman,
and therefore he has these kind of like pop star
elements to him, you know. Yeah, And and so there

(01:26:36):
are a lot of deliberate choices with the way that
he is presented as an object of obsession and desire, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
Would be on a poster on a bedroom wall.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Yeah, yeah, but a bedroom but a poster on the
bedroom wall that also is directly bordering the fay world
and is influenced by the strange energies of the fairy folk.

Speaker 3 (01:26:56):
Yes, why do you think Jared is an owl?

Speaker 2 (01:27:00):
Well, you know, the owl is a is a magical
bird of the night, so I guess it is a
fitting animal form.

Speaker 3 (01:27:07):
The owl is dangerous, the owl is inscrutable, the owl
is yeah, yeah, it seems like it's got secrets.

Speaker 2 (01:27:15):
Yeah, all right, Well, we're gonna gohead and close this
one out, but we would love to hear from everyone
about Labyrinth. I'm sure a lot of you have thoughts,
thoughts about things that we discussed in this episode, but
also again, many of the details in the picture that
we didn't have time to get into, so right in
we would love to hear from you. A reminded The
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast, with core episodes in Tuesdays and Thursdays, but

(01:27:37):
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to talk
about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. And
if you want to see a full list of the
movies we've done over the years on Weird House Cinema,
go to letterbox dot com. That's l E. T T
E R B O x D dot com. Our user
name there is weird House and you'll find the nice
list and if you're on Instagram, follow us at stb
ym podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:27:57):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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