You remind of the babe...

I recently saw several pieces of news that indicate David Bowie will have a new album coming out soon, and I immediately thought of one thing: LABYRINTH!

"But what about his decades of classic work and stage performances, iconic songs, and so on?" you might ask. Well, if there's always been one weak link in my pop culture knowledge and study (other than sports because, seriously, sports? I've been hit the face by too many pieces of athletic equipment in my life to deal with sports), it's music. I tend to just like what I like, without the same level of knowledge or research that I apply to all my movie/TV watching.

So before you complain that I'm focusing on his work for a children's movie, remember: This ain't a music blog.

Back to LABYRINTH!

It's a classic, and I don't mean that in the ironic hipster sense. Yes there are 80s clothes, yes the music is tinged with 80s, yes there are goofy puppets, and yes David Bowie is wearing leggings that leave NOTHING to the imagination. But I genuinely love this movie and watched it all the time as a kid.

They used to play it on the Disney Channel along with a couple of other obscure favorites, The Worst Witch and Return to Oz. I feel like no one remembers the time when Disney was a wee more experimental in its programming and less focused on the tween demographic and their original movies and TV series. Disney, I wish you had stayed just a little bit weird.

Labyrinth is a Jim Henson production, with a screenplay by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame (not Terry Gilliam, the other one). There's no Miss Piggy or Kermit. There are fun, funky, and weird puppets, a very young and charming Jennifer Connelly in the lead, and of course, The Thin White Duke himself as Jareth, The Goblin King.

And the triceratops.....

The story centers on Sarah, a teenage girl still obsessed with fairy tales and fantasy (she LARPs in the opening scene!) with a bit of bratty streak.

What a neeeeeeeerrrrrrrddddd!

One night she's stuck babysitting her younger half-brother and semi-intentionally calls for the Goblin King to steal the kid because she feels put upon by her dad and step-mom. When The Goblin King actually shows up and snatches him away, she immediately regrets her decision and tries to talk Bowie out of it, but he offers her a challenge instead: navigate his labyrinth and get to the center in 13 hours, or the kid becomes a goblin forever. So she enters the labyrinth, makes some friends, learns some lessons, and rescues her brother. And jams to some sweet Bowie tunes in the process!

This is stuck in your head now and there's nothing you can do about it!

Again, I know Bowie's got some amazing classics, but damn if I don't love the songs on this soundtrack. I've always really liked "As the World Falls Down" from the dream sequence in the movie. He's got such a cool voice and it's a great stand alone song. Think hard, if you heard this before now, would you have assumed it was in a movie with puppets? Probably not.

I also love her costume and overall look. It's 80s fantasy, without being too much.

Speaking of puppets, I love the look of the goblins and they are funny to boot.  This is pretty much my favorite scene in the whole movie:

'Ello!

Word play! Weird little worm guy offering tea! Just the best.  It's got a British sense of humor to it that suits children stories, mixing dry humor with silly. Witness:

There are some silly edits, but I couldn't find any other decent clips. But you get the idea: Fart noises! A puppet riding a dog!

One of the things that people seem to remember most is this scene, with the world's most befuddling riddle:

WHICH DAMN DOOR IS IT????

I'm fairly confident she's right, and that she loses anyway because David Bowie is messing with her, but I've met people and read things that say she's wrong. Which door is which?

With puppets, riddles, and fun songs, it's just a good children's story. It doesn't over explain anything, no needless backstory about why David Bowie is human looking and all the other goblins are puppety-looking, no revelation that Sarah has known the Goblin King since she was a child and has to go back and defeat him as an adult (I'm looking it you Tim Burton version of Alice In Wonderland).  They set up some key story elements in the first few minutes of the movie, with Sarah's reading of a book called Labyrinth and a pan through of her room showing all sorts of knick knacks and stuffed animals that appear as goblins or set pieces later in the movie. With those bits of backstory established quickly and efficiently, we're off to wacky goblin land for fun and adventure while we learn to be a little more mature.

The movie ends with her stating that she's in control and defeating The Goblin King, thus saving her brother. She tucks him into bed and then goes to her room, where she gets one last visit from her goblin friends. She admits that she has to grow up, but every now and then, she'll think of them because she does need them, she needs the fantasy sometimes (don't we all?). Then they have one last party in her room and it looks like oodles of fun. (Of all the videos posted online, I'm sad this is one people seemed to skip.)

Everyone has to grow up eventually. But that doesn't mean you can't party with goblins in your room every once in a while.

If it's good enough for Bowie, it's good enough for me. 

(This is not the scene I was talking about, but it's all I could find. Why don't people like that scene as much as me?)

I find it unique in another way, specifically that there's no romance for Sarah. It's a story about finding the balance between growing up and accepting responsibility, while at the same time not losing your imagination and sense of fun in the world. It's a fairy tale and a fantasy, but there's no prince for Sarah to marry or meet at the end.

For crying out loud, this is her male lead for THE WHOLE MOVIE:

Although, if you were maybe really drunk.....

Her journey is all about her, and discovering herself without being validated by a male character. Pretty significantly, the way she saves her brother and herself from The Goblin King is by declaring, "You have no power over me."

Obviously, I noticed all this as an adult, but the fact that it's there for kids, especially little girls, to absorb is encouraging. The only other recent movie I can think of that sends a similar message was last year's Brave, where the princess refuses to marry anyone because she's enjoys her freedom to do un-princessy things too much, and it focuses on the mother-daughter relationship instead.

Now of course, there's a lot of people who point out a certain amount of romantic and/or sexual tension between Sarah and The Goblin King. But to me it's on par with people who are like, "Hey what if The Mad Hatter and Alice hooked up?" To which I say, "That's not the point. And also, EWWWWWWWW. She's supposed to be a little girl in that story!"

This shot does nothing to undermine all the "shippers" rooting for these two crazy kids to get together. Oh, wait. Only ONE of them is a kid. He's old enough to be her dad, people.

Yes, that is a way to read it. In that final scene, he asks to her to love him and be ruled by him, and in exchange he will be her slave. People seem to be enticed by the idea that he, as he says, does everything she asks, and all he wants back is for her to love him. There are MOUNTAINS of fanfiction, tribute videos and artwork that show them as king and queen or at least deep in forbidden love. But she says no. Because offering to rule over someone and be their slave is, while not only contradictory, not really love, romantic or otherwise. And it stands in the way of her journey to growing up and moving on from a fantasy that's holding her back.

I've always had an issue with adults finding romance or reading something too cynically in stories aimed at kids or younger adults. As I mentioned, a lot of people see some kind of romantic and ultimately sexual relationship between The Mad Hatter and Alice, particularly after the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland came out, which featured (thankfully) an older Alice. People have whole weddings and engagement photo sessions dedicated to this idea. 

On the flip side, I know a lot of people think Gene Wilder's portrayal of Willy Wonka comes off like a he's a pedophile. I can kind of understand it, because there is a certain unsettling air about his interactions with the kids, but if anything, it's comes off more as a callous disregard for safety than sexual assault. To me, that's overly cynical and needlessly dark reading of the movie. And people apply the pedophile/pervert criticism to Labyrinth a lot too, because David Bowie is much older than Jennifer Connelly and wears really tight pants that show off his business. But, seriously, do you really think they would make a movie about a pervert goblin king out to seduce and menace a teenager and let little kids watch it?

Sometimes a crazy person who used to make hats is just crazy person who used to make hats.

Sometimes a guy who runs a chocolate factory and wants to give it away to a non-terrible child is just a guy who runs a chocolate factory and wants to give it away to a non-terrible child.

And, sometimes a Goblin King who steals children to turn them into goblins and make your life hell is just a Goblin King who steals children to turn them into goblins and make your life hell.

Labyrinth is ultimately, at least in my not so humble opinion, a story about a child growing up, not a fantasy romance novel with heaving bosoms and tight pants.

Well, okay, there are tight pants.

So. Damn. Tight.

And For My Next Trick!

Welcome back, hope everyone had a good winter break and rang in the new year with style.

I spent my vacation catching up on movies and finishing off last entry's cliff hanger by watching Death Defying Acts. And, well, I didn't die watching it, but I wouldn't say I thrived.

I think the biggest misstep the movie made was trying to have its story both ways. It starts off with Benji (Saorsie Ronan), the daughter of Catherine Zeta-Jones' Scottish medium, Mary, describing that she has a gift to see things other people don't. But, she says, as she's grown up, she's lost the gift just as her mother said she would. So they set it up straight from there that they are not magically psychic, but maybe they kinda are? It's confused from the start.

Then they show that mother and daughter are con artists, with Mary doing literally everything from pick pocketing and music hall performance, to letting randy librarians peek up her skirt. Benji is her accomplice in most of this, especially the music hall performance, where they perform a standard issue psychic show. They present a man with a watch from his dead wife "on the other side" (which is of course a watch they had earlier fished out of his pocket).

Is your name Mark, by any chance?

Houdini arrives in Edinburgh and presents the big challenge: He will award $10,000 to any medium who can tell him the last words his mother spoke to him on her death bed, proving his skepticism wrong and the Spiritualists right.

Cue hilarious montage of people applying for the test while a bored Houdini watches. Then Mary shows up, and spouts off some generic details about his mother that Houdini's manager, Sugarman, calls shenanigans on immediately. And though he agrees, Houdini is instantly like "HER! I WANT HER TO DO THE TEST! AND IT'S CERTAINLY NOT BECAUSE SHE'S SMOKIN' HOT."

Schwing! She's the hottest medium ever.

This comes off as a huge issue to me. Mary is routinely called out by the manager for being a scam artist, yet Houdini would have been the loudest decrier of everything she did. But in the movie, he's so smitten with her that he's taking her to dinner, dancing with her, frolicking with her and Benji, and all around utterly forgetting his carefully cultivated image that he falls for a major deception that I don't think he would have ever fallen for. But more on that later.

I couldn't get a screen cap or find the image, but the musicians in this scene are blindfolded for no good reason, other than to add mystery to Houdini. But really, it just makes it look like he's going to kill her later because he's a complete lunatic.

Houdini and Mary fall in love, bond over being poor (or formerly poor in Houdini's case) and get to know each other well, which Mary warns against since it could be considered "cheating" when it comes to the test. And all the while, she's uncertain about if she should go through with it. Benji and Sugarman urge her on, and Sugarman even sneaks her the key to the mysterious trunk in Houdini's room that holds the secrets to Houdini's personality and the secret to guessing his mother's final words.

The trunk contains Houdini's mother's wedding dress, photos and other mementos. Then they go down the weird path that a lot of Houdini stories want to go and point out, "Hey, his mom looked a lot like you Catherine Zeta-Jones!" They even say "He doesn't want me, he wants his mother!" and other things to basically imply that Houdini was obsessed with his mom, in the extreme Freudian sense (think cigars and tunnels). To get rid of the meddlesome Scots and get his client back on the road, Sugarman tells them the secret to Houdini's mother's final words: Harry was touring when his mother passed away, and so there were no final words that he would have personally heard. That is very true, and was in fact one of the biggest regrets of his life.

To really drive home the ick factor, the day of the test, Mary wears Harry's mom's wedding gown, to "channel the energy." Like Houdini would have EVER believed that!

You want me to WHAT at the test?

Mary starts the test by entering like she's walking down the aisle, like some kind of sick wedding ceremony. I understand their point, but I think this was a little much. Mary sits in a chair, and starts referring to Harry as Ehric (his real first name) and acting very possessed. Abruptly, she decides she can't do it, and hops out of the chair. Everyone is shocked, and that's when Benji drops to the ground and starts speaking in German-accented English. "Ehric, where are you? I need you Ehric, Why are you not come to me?" she asks. Harry gets on his knees in tears and apologizes in German and English to his mother. Then Benji sits up and cryptically warns him to beware of the angel with fire red hair, the sun will go black and to be careful.

The test ends and reveals to the press that Houdini was never at his mother's side when she died. And Houdini seems to buy ever moment of Benji's demonstration, and it's fairly convincing, since to Houdini's knowledge, Benji's never claimed to be a medium. But having read everything I read and having seen some of his correspondence in museums, it's hard to believe that he would have ever been taken like that. I feel like he would have found out that Sugarman leaked the information. Also, Harry's mother spoke NO English. None at all. And Benji's performance featured a lot of English from the ghost of dead woman who only spoke German.

Anyway, they win the money and Houdini and Mary have sex. Then he leaves in the morning for Montreal. Benji and Mary watch him go, and Benji mentions that she did the little poem about the angel just like her mother told her to, indicating that it was all a fake and they successfully duped Houdini. Mary walks away sadly, lamenting the great love lost.

THEN they go another step and have Benji narrate that the psychic ability she claimed to have lost in the beginning, she never really lost. Dun dun duuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhh!

The movie is still not over at this point by the way, and they begin the sad montage Houdini in Montreal, greeted by spectators. Meanwhile, Mary and Benji are presenting themselves as psychics in Edinburgh. The clock strikes noon. Mary faints. As she faints, a red headed man in Montreal (hey! angel with fire red hair coming full circle audience!) comes through the crowd and delivers the fatal blow to Houdini. He dies on the steps of the theater in Montreal (not true). Sometime later, Benji and Mary are watching a newsreel on Houdini's death, crying silently in the movie theater.

You've been a fantastic audience!

So, Benji was faking being psychic by being actually psychic and successfully fooling Houdini with her mother's help. WHAT?

I understand that the filmmakers were aiming to get past the man, the myth, the legend, but the myth and the legend were heavily cultivated by the man himself. He was his own greatest hype man. If he were a rapper, he would somehow magically be the guy on his own song shouting, "YEAH!" and "WHAT!" at every opportunity. The manager shuttles him around and seems to be very controlling of Houdini, when I've never had that impression. As the manager points out, Houdini was spreading the message that he had been there and heard the final words, so the movie is aware that he's his own hype man, but it seems to downplay how incredibly skilled he was at it. They made it seem almost more like he was just a pathological liar instead of a savvy showman.

It also committed the same sin that every magic movie ever makes.

Mary: How did you do that?
Houdini: Magic!

You've gotta be kidding me. To quote a superior magic movie, "A real magician tries to invent something that's new!" (The Presitge will be an entry unto itself, believe me.)

So concludes part two of the Houdini two-parter on Oh My God Rewind That! It was worth checking out since it's the only modern Houdini movie I'm aware of, and didn't receive much attention in America. Which is odd, considering how American Houdini and his persona were.

Abracadabra.

Up next, I'll look at the joys of horror movies, Disney, the mafia, and the saddest movie ever.

And look for more regular posting, I promise this time!