I have to confess something. I don’t have rose colored glasses when it comes to the 1980s. It was the age of Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, and Herself the Elf. Also, don’t get me started on Cabbage Patch Kids. I found them disgusting then. I find them disgusting now. I didn’t like cute things. I liked monsters. Fortunately, tonight’s movie has plenty of those.

Tonight’s movie is 1986’s Labyrinth from director Jim Henson. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert didn’t like it in case you were curious, but, more importantly, do I like it? Somehow this movie had escaped me during the 1980s and I didn’t catch it until I was an adult, wondering as my eyes were transfixed to the TV screen as to which drugs was Jim Henson taking during this production and can I have some of them. 

The movie begins with a teenager named Sarah (Jennifer Connolly) acting like a theater kid in the middle of a local park before a summer shower ruins her reenactment of a scene from her favorite novel, Labyrinth. She comes home drenched and late for her babysitting duties. Sarah can’t stand her stepmother and baby half-brother, Toby,  and gets even angrier when her prized teddy bear, Lancelot, is missing from her shelf. When she discovers the plush in Toby’s crib, she calls out requesting the Goblin King take her brother away. And he does.

Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie), offers Sarah a crystal that will show her dreams, but Sarah refuses, just wanting her baby brother back. Jareth brings her to the magical world of the Labyrinth. Her brother is being held in the castle at the center of the labyrinth and Sarah has thirteen hours to get him back or he’ll turn into a goblin. Hey, I’d like to be a goblin. Those guys know how to party.

Sarah runs into a Dwarfen (Dwarven?) creature named Hoggle who’s urinating into a filthy lake. He apologizes, zips up, and proceeds to spray pesticide on some fairies. Sarah admonishes him, picking up one of the fairies only for it to bite her. Things in the labyrinth aren’t what they seem. Cute fairies will bite you and cute worms will send you in the wrong direction. Jareth serenades the toddler while goblins sing back up and one has to give David Bowie props for giving his all to the performance. 

I guess I find Labyrinth less weird than The Dark Crystal as we have a human lead and there’s a general acknowledgement that this world is just plain weird. We have pink monkeys that remove their heads on a whim, a furry beast named Ludo who can command rocks by roaring, and an anthropomorphic fox named Sir Didymus who rides a sheepdog named Ambrosius. 

The final confrontation with Jareth takes place in an M. C. Escher painting come to life. Sarah gets her brother back and sees all the friends she made saying goodbye to her in her mirror. But she doesn’t want to let them go so they just party with her in her bedroom.

I imagine if a sequel had been made, Sarah would have taken Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus to the local shopping mall for an Orange Julius. Alas, that movie was never made. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, episode 670, episode 686, episode 687,  688, and 689) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.