Labyrinth (1986 film)

Labyrinth
File:Labyrinth movie.jpg
Directed by	Jim Henson
Written by	Dennis Lee Jim Henson Terry Jones Elaine May
Produced by	Eric Rattray George Lucas
Starring	David Bowie Jennifer Connelly Toby Froud
Music by	David Bowie Trevor Jones
Distributed by	Columbia TriStar
Release date	June 27 1986 (USA)
Running time	102 min.
Language	English
Budget	$25 Million

Labyrinth is a 1986 fantasy film directed by Jim Henson, produced by George Lucas, and designed through the art of Brian Froud. Henson collaborated on the screenwriting with children's author Dennis Lee and Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones. The human leads are David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, and a teenage Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Williams. The plot revolves around Sarah's quest to rescue her little brother from the Goblin King, while trapped in a world that is an enormous fantasy maze. Most of the other significant roles are played by puppets or by a combination of puppetry and human performance. It was shot on location in New York and at Elstree Studios in the UK. It was the last feature film directed by Henson before his death in 1990.

Synopsis

Sarah Williams is a dreamer, a young girl obsessed with fantasy and playing dress-up who is stuck babysitting her half-brother after a fight with her step-mother. Even worse, he has her treasured stuffed bear, Lancelot. Sarah tries to quiet his screaming by telling him the story from her favorite book, a play (also called Labyrinth), of a young woman granted special powers by the king of the goblins. It tells of how the girl could no longer stand her life and wishes for goblins to take away her screaming baby brother. As she ends the story and turns out the light, she says, "I wish the goblins would come and take you away...right now." Toby's crying suddenly stops. Worried, Sarah enters his room to find he has vanished.

A barn owl flutters through the opened window and transforms into the goblin king Jareth (David Bowie) and tells her he has taken the baby as a gift to her. Appalled at the realization of what she had done, she begs for the return of her brother. He gives her 13 hours to find Toby or Jareth will keep him forever. Now she must find her way to the center of a fantastic labyrinth and bring him back.

It turns out the Labyrinth is not a simple maze as much as its own world, riddled with logic puzzles and tests. She first meets Hoggle, a small dwarf-like man spraying fairies with pesticide outside the entrance. She pays him with plastic jewelry to lead her through the maze. He later turns out to be a half-hearted spy for Jareth, though he eventually sides with Sarah. Her other companions are Sir Didymus (a chivalrous Fox Knight who rides a sheepdog called Ambrosius, lives in The Bog of Eternal Stench and guards a bridge to uphold a meaningless sacred oath) and Ludo (a gentle beast she rescues from some of the King's men). After a variety of adventures, including an encounter with detachable-limbed revelers (known as "The Fire Gang") who try to steal Sarah's head, a detour through the Bog of Eternal Stench, a stop at the Four Guards, where she must solve a Knights and Knaves logic puzzle to avoid certain death, a junkyard recreation of her own bedroom (where she realizes that all of her childish toys are "junk"), and a strange, dream-like masquerade engineered by Jareth, Sarah makes her way into the castle at the center of its squalid city.

The film climaxes in Jareth's multi-dimensional M. C. Escher-inspired castle where he tries to confuse and frighten Sarah, making a final appeal for her to abandon her quest and stay with him as his queen. She instead rejects him at the last moment, echoing the very lines she originally couldn't remember when trying to rehearse for the play Labyrinth: "You have no power over me". The room crumbles away and Sarah finds herself in her front hall at home with the clock striking midnight and an owl flying away; presumably Jareth.

In her room, she collects some of her toys, returning to Toby's room to give him back Lancelot. While clearing her dresser off and clearly confused on whether this is the turning point in her life between being a grown-up or remaining a young girl, Hoggle appears along with Ludo and Sir Didymus, as images in the mirror. They seem to be bidding her good-bye as she leaves behind the fantasies of childhood, but remind her that they will still be available "should you need us." Sarah, however, insists that even as she grows up, she will still need them, and the film closes as the Labyrinth creatures celebrate Sarah's refusal to give up her imagination. Outside, the Jareth owl watches the party for a while, then flies away into the night.

Cast

• David Bowie as Jareth, the Goblin king: He is the king of The Labyrinth, a vast kingdom within a realm known as The Underground though not literally under the ground. His powers include the ability to form crystal orbs in his hands which can create illusions of all types or to view things from a distance. He can transform into a barn owl at will. According to the Return to Labyrinth Manga Jareth has ruled the Labyrinth for 1,300 years. Though ruler of The Goblins, it's not very likely that Jareth actually is a goblin. He appears human but he has quite a few magical abilities and he does not age between the film Labyrinth and the Return to Labyrinth manga. It's very likely Jareth is a type of faery, a Sidhe or Unseelie. The likelihood of Jareth being a faery is the result of character traits given to Jareth by conceptual artist, Brian Froud, well known for his art involving faeries and faery creatures. If this is true than Jareth has a vulnerability to iron as a weapon or restraint.

• Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Williams: The character of Sarah is the protagonist of Labyrinth. She is seventeen years old and loves fantasy stories. Her journey through The Labyrinth becomes one of spiritual, moral and psychological evolution for her. In the music video for As the World falls down a slightly older Sarah pines for her adventures within the Labyrinth as Jareth pines for her. The two never seem quite willing to go to each other. In the Return to Labyrinth Manga Sarah is a more subdued character living as a school teacher though when Jareth had first met her she had dreams of becoming an actress like her biological mother, Linda Williams.

• Toby Froud as Toby Williams: Toby is the baby Jareth kidnapped when Sarah wished for her baby brother to be wished away. Through the course of his time in Jareth's care it appeared that Jareth actually became attached to Toby and made comments to the extent of 'He's a lively little chap, I think I'll call him Jareth. He's got my eyes.' Though for a long time it appeared that Jareth had wanted to turn Toby into a Goblin the line he had said was 'Before your baby brother becomes one of us forever.' The Return to Labyrinth Manga revealed that Toby was actually to be Jareth's heir. Toby is the half-brother of Sarah Williams (they share the same father). His mother is Irene Williams while Sarah's mother was Linda Willaims (Sarah's father's first wife).

• Linda Williams: Only seen in the photographs in Sarah's bed room and mentioned in the novelization Linda Williams is Sarah's biological mother. Sarah's biological mother showed signs of being bipolar and was a passionate actress. She had an affair with a co-star, Jeremy who may or may not have been Jareth in disguise and left Sarah and her father. Sarah's father re-married, to woman named Irene and together they had Sarah's half-brother, Toby.

• Irene Williams: Irene was never mentioned by name in the film Labyrinth and many fans dubbed her 'Karen' though in 2006 she was officially named Irene by the Henson Company. Irene is very prudish and believes things should be normal, proper and acceptable, though not really a terrible person Sarah resents her. She was a relatively decent character in portrayal until the Return to Labyrinth Manga where she was revealed as being slightly abusive in a flash back of her punishing Toby by hitting him hard and repeatedly.

• Mr. Williams: A somewhat wooden character he only appeared briefly in the film Labyrinth as Tob and Sarah's father.

• Shelley Thompson as Stepmother.

• Christopher Malcolm as Father.

• Shari Weiser and Brian Henson (voice) as Hoggle: Hoggle is a cowardly dwarf-goblin that works for Jareth but becomes loyal to the sweet natured Sarah. Hoggle gets irritated when Jareth gets his name wrong, repeatedly, which appears to deliberately be done on purpose to annoy him. Jareth threatened Hoggle that if Sarah ever kissed him he would become The Prince of the Land of Stench. In the Return to Labyrinth manga this threat was proved true.

• Ron Mueck (voice) as Ludo: Ludo is a yeti who was being tormented by goblins until Sarah rescued him.

• David Shaughnessy (voice) as Sir Didymus: Sir Didymous is a small dog-fox goblin whom guards The Bog of Eternal Stench however he joins Sarah in her quest to rescue Toby. He has a loyal 'steed' named Ambrosious (actually a sheep dog identical to Sarah's own dog, Merlin).

• Percy Edwards (voice) as Ambrosius.

• Timothy Bateson (voice) as William the worm: He is a small blue, sentient worm goblin who wears a red scarf and lives in the brick wall of the first passage of The Labyrinth. When Sarah asks him 'How do I get through this Labyrinth.' He mistakenly thinks she means 'How do I get out of this Labyrinth?' unaware that she wants to get to the castle. He sent her one way and told her to never to go the other way. One she was gone he said 'If she had kept on going down that way she would have gone straight to that castle. Many mistakenly think he was deliberately misleading her. The novelization was a bit more clear with his line being 'If she had kept on going down that way she'd have gone straight to that awful castle.' William was never officially named but many Labyrinth fan fiction writers call him William. When we see him again in Return to Labyrinth he's quite elderly.

• Frank Oz as Wiseman: The wise man is an old goblin who is a literal bird brain in that he has a talking bird head for a hat. He's not really very wise at all and he's pretty much there to delay Sarah.

• Dave Goelz (voice) as Wiseman's Bird Hat.

• Karen Prell (voice) as Junk Lady.

• Warwick Davis as Goblin Corps

• Steve Whitmire, Kevin Clash, Anthony Asbury, & Dave Goelz (voices) as The Four Guards.

• Robert Beatty and Dave Goelz (voices) as Right and Left Door Knockers (respectively): The door knockers are two goblin door knockers. One has a knocker ring in his ears. The other in his mouth. One cannot speak and the other cannot hear.

• Kevin Clash, Charles Augins, Danny John-Jules, Richard Bodkin (voices) as Firey 1-5: The firies AKA The Fire Gang are a group of wild fox fire goblins that lurk within The Labyrinthine forest. They have detachable body parts and can't grasp that other creatures aren't so 'lucky.'

• Michael Moschen as David Bowie's arms when manipulating crystal balls.

• Agnus is actually a species of goblin Sarah ones into a particular Agnus on her journey. Agnuses are junk lady goblins who are extremely sentimental and carry the weight of all thier junk on their backs. They're very selfish and posessive and would like to make Sarah like themselves. In the earlier versions of the script the Agnus Sarah meets was actually Jareth in a robotic disguise.

• Humungus is a large robotic goblin that guards the entrace to Jareth's castle. He is piloted by the clever little goblin who invented him.

• The Missus is William the worm's wife. She is never seen in the film Labyrinth but she is seen briefly in Return to Labyrinth as an elderly female worm goblin.

• The Lychin: A yellowish fungus that grows in the Labyrinth walls that has eyeballs and shutters and mutters amongst itself when it feels something interesting is happening.

• The false alarms are rock formation faces that cover the walls of the under ground passages of Jareth's Labyrinth. They falsely tell you that you are heading in the wrong direction when you are not.

• The truth and lying doors are two goblin guards in front of two doors One tells the truth and one always lies. One door leads to death and the other leads to safety. The trick is not to know which one is telling the truth but rather how to get the same answer from both of them. To do this You must ask one door 'Would he (meaning the opposite guard) tell me this door leads to safety?' Either you'll be told by the truthful guard what the liar would say (and therefor get told the lie) or you are talking to the liar and would get the lie by default. So if you ask one door what the other door would say you automatically get the opposite of the truth. Sarah got this riddle right but many mistakenly think she got it wrong. It's explained in the children's book version of Labyrinth. Sarah went through the right door but mistakenly said 'It's a piece of cake.' right after that. To say that within The Labyrinth causes automatically misfortune. It happens three times in the film. She fell down into a shaft of helping hands. And from there it was her choice to go up or down. If she went up she would have been fine but she chose down and fell into an oubliette.

• Helping Hands are gnarled hand shaped goblins that protrude through the walls of the shaft of one of The Labyrinth's many oubliette's. They talk to you by making their hands into face formations and they act as a group though they sometimes argue amongst themselves.

• The biting fairies are pixies that exist outside The Labyrith. They bite you if you touch them, much like the common fly or mosquito. When we first see them Hoggle is exterminating them like they are bugs. They are not human sized faery like Jareth.

• The captain of the guard is a goblin with a long white mustashe who serves Jareth. He is a somewhat dim coward.

• Other Goblins: Every single Goblin within Jareth's Labyrinth has his own name and back story which are compiled in the book Goblins of Labyrinth as well as the now out of print The Goblin Companion: A field guide to goblins. Some of these goblins are Quiver, Luerk, Bakobobs Kamabissca, Bubi, Squeek, Pug, Pitch, Fodder, Pongo, Skoat, Boing, Sneek, Skuell, Candlewic, Zitzi, Gibbergiest, Amam Pherruginius, Trysop, Frolo, Bec, Caull, Faustius, Hortenz, Target goblins (Multiple goblins), Nipper Sticks (Multiple goblins), Twark (A goblin bird), Eled the worm tamer, Spue, Hywr, Lowr, Roem Babba, gurdy, Quilk, Maelicious, Groeg, Dogsthorpe, Bregg the poet, Kluttons (multiple goblins), and Bonius Eventius.

Songs

All these songs are sung by the character Jareth except for Chilly Down which is sung by The firies AKA The Fire Gang.

Songs that appeared in Labyrinth by David Bowie are:

• Underground (Opening)
• Dance Magic (Otherwise known as Magic Dance)
• Chilly Down
• As the World falls Down
• Within You
• Underground

Box-office

The film turned out to be a box office flop, grossing a mere $12 million at ticket sales (The budget for the film had been $25 million).

Cult Classic

Labyrinth grew popularity over the years as a cult classic and is now considered fashionable among teenagers, generation xers, David Bowie fans and Goths. The title song (Underground) became the inspiration for Madonna's pop hit, Like a Prayer. Labyrinth has gained so much popularity over the years that there was even a recent acton figure of Jareth, The Goblin King that came to stores in May of 2007 is is selling very well in America.

Labyrinth in other media

File:Labmanga1.jpg

The cover to Return to Labyrinth vol. 1

The film was novelized by A.C.H. Smith.

The soundtrack album Labyrinth includes much of Trevor Jones's strictly instrumental music including "Into the Labyrinth," "Sarah," "Hallucination," "The Goblin Battle," "Thirteen O'Clock" and "Home at Last," and David Bowie's five songs, "Magic Dance" (also credited as "Dance Magic"), "Chilly Down," "As the World Falls Down," "Within You," and the single released for the film, "Underground." There is also an instrumental and dance remix version of Underground that were only released as a single in 1986.

A video game based on the movie was released in Japan for the Nintendo Famicom, but never saw release in America. However, a Commodore 64 version was released in 1986.

Tokyopop in partnership with The Jim Henson Company published a manga-style three volume comic called Return to Labyrinth. The first volume was released August 8, 2006. It was written by Jake T. Forbes and illustrated by Chris Lie with cover art by Kouyu Shurei. It is a sequel to the film and is about Toby, the baby brother in the movie, when he has grown to be 15 years old. Two sequels to the manga are currently in the works, with the first, 'Goblin Prince of the Labyrinth,' due to be released October 2007.

Trivia

• The filmmakers acknowledged several influences, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the works of Maurice Sendak (the plot mirrors that of his story 'Outside Over There') and M. C. Escher.
• Many of the settings and creatures in the film were based on designs by Brian Froud, who had previously collaborated with Jim Henson on The Dark Crystal. Froud and screenwriter Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) later collaborated on the book The Goblins of Labyrinth which depicted some of the incidental creatures from the film.
• Some of the puzzles and riddles are inspired by the logician Raymond Smullyan.
• Artist Brian Froud's infant son Toby played Sarah's brother (also called Toby), in the movie.
• David Bowie admits in the documentary about Labyrinth that he did baby Toby's sounds in the song "Magic Dance" because the baby wouldn't gurgle.
• David Bowie's character is seen to contact juggle throughout the film. These manipulations were actually performed by renowned juggler Michael Moschen, who stood behind Bowie during filming.
• While Monty Python star Terry Jones is credited with the script, he claims that little of the movie following the part in which Sarah eats the enchanted peach is his own work.
• The original Hoggle suit is currently on display in Scottsboro AL, in a store named "Unclaimed Baggage" that sells baggage unclaimed from airlines.

Credits

• Director: Jim Henson
• Screenplay: Terry Jones, from a story by Jim Henson and Dennis Lee
• Original Music: Trevor Jones
• Original Music (songs): David Bowie
• Choreography: Cheryl McFadden

The film received a PG rating in the US and a U in the UK (equivalent to a US G). It runs for 101 minutes.

External links

• Labyrinth at IMDb
• N.Y. Times review by Nina Darntun, June 26, 1986.
• Roger Ebert review, June 27, 1986.
• The LoJ Fantasy Masquerade—An annual masquerade ball inspired by the movie Labyrinth.
• Labyrinth for C64—The video game based on the movie (via GameSpot).
• Labyrinth at The Muppets Wiki