The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: Labyrinth (1986), directed by Jim Henson

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Magic Dance" by David Bowie

       As a cult movie blog owner, I’ve gone on and on about how good the 1980s was, at least in that small, incredibly niche field. I mean I’ve covered plenty of 80s movies over the years, I haven’t counted in a while but I’d say they cover a significant portion of my total reviews, and I still haven’t even scratched the surface. Even discounting those films that I’ve seen but are so ubiquitous that covering them seems unnecessary, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, there’s still enough there to cover a Marathon on its own. Like shit dude, what about The Neverending Story? What about Wargames? Romancing the Stone? The Breakfast Club? That’s a lot of nonexistent money being left on the table.

       So why not cross one of those 80s also-rans off the list already, before I change my mind and pick some random bullshit instead? Released in 1986, Labyrinth was directed by Muppets master Jim Henson, written by Monty Python member Terry Jones (with assistance by Henson, Laura Phillips, Elaine May and George Lucas), story by Henson and Dennis Lee and produced by Eric Rattray through Henson Associates Inc. and Lucasfilm. Jennifer Connelly plays Sara, a young girl whose dreams of the theater are consistently thwarted by her stepmother and her infant brother Toby. One night, after being saddled with babysitting duty yet again, Sara recalls a line from her favorite story, “The Labyrinth”, and unwittingly wishes for goblins to show up and take Toby away. She immediately regrets that decision when said goblins do show up to take her brother away, and she stands face to face with Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). Jareth offers Sara gifts in exchange for her brother’s life, but when she refuses he transports her into the mystical world of Labyrinth. If she can reach the Goblin King’s castle at the center of the maze in 12 hours then Toby shall be saved, Jareth says, but if she doesn’t then Toby shall be changed into a goblin and be lost forever. Labyrinth is a bizarre place where tricks and traps lie around every corner, so Sara is going to have to rely on her wits and the help of the friends she makes along the way. Yet Jareth is behind every corner, watching and scheming...

While Jim Henson was and still is firmly connected with the concept of children’s entertainment, the man himself considered his work more universal and so capable of handling something darker in tone. We saw it in The Dark Crystal but Labyrinth is arguably a better example of that idea. Labyrinth is not your typical fairy tale world. It is a decaying mess caught between the medieval and the modern, made up of crumbling ruins, stinking bogs and trash-covered landfills and full of creatures that run the gamut from ugly to sleep paralysis demons. Yet in spite of this nightmarish setting Labyrinth is still in the fairy tale mold; There is danger but not necessarily death, there is risk but it is principally in how Sara goes about overcoming these challenges. Not unlike the novel Alice in Wonderland really, which I believe is a direct influence on this film (and right up Terry Jones’ alley), a story which was literally written for a child but which has gained a significant older following since its publication.

I mentioned The Dark Crystal earlier, and I must say it’s wild how the films apparently had around the same budget and yet Labyrinth looks so much better. The cinematography and set design builds Labyrinth into this distorted, almost German Expressionist dreamland so well, it really feels like Henson and his crew were pushing themselves to try new things, and the amount and variety of  puppetry and practical effects are incredible. Which isn’t to knock Dark Crystal, but one of my contensions with that film was that some of the puppets were simple or non-expressive, particularly in regards to the protagonist. In Labyrinth each creature Sara comes across feels like a unique, living thing. Even the goblins, who are the most generic given their numbers still have a degree of variety to them that makes them stand out. Labyrinth is certainly more Muppets-esque than Dark Crystal, so you might give the latter the point for originality, but I believe Labyrinth accomplishes what it’s trying to do much easier than Dark Crystal. That wall of hands alone might have put it over the top.

        Of course you can’t talk about Labyrinth without talking about David Bowie, there’s a good chance that many people if they know anything about Labyrinth at all it’s because of Bowie’s role as Jareth the Goblin King. That Bowie’s appearance as Jareth has improved the film’s longevity doesn’t make it a good performance. As it was with The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie playing some kind of glam rock trickster god who plays with glass balls and turns into an owl seems like a natural fit, but he never seems all that comfortable around a camera and it leads to a rather wooden performance. Something which Jennifer Connelly suffers from a tad in the beginning, but I think she manages to mellow out as the film goes on. Jareth is more entertaining  to watch than Bowie’s character in The Man Who Fell to Earth certainly, as you’d expect from the living answer to the question ‘what if Snow White’s wicked stepmother dressed like Khan from Star Trek II?’, but in a one-dimensional type of way. When they do attempt depth, like with the Sara/Jareth romance angle, it just doesn’t take. Not because it’s creepy, which it is, but because Bowie doesn’t sell it at all. He’s stoic or haughty, and that's about it. To say Labyrinth is Bowie’s best film work would be technically accurate, but that’s about all you could say.

       You get somebody like David Bowie in your film and you expect to get some songs, and so it is here, but my feelings on Bowie’s musical contributions to Labyrinth aren’t that much different than his acting ones: the idea of it is cooler than the reality. As someone who prefers Hunky Dory and Young Americans over 90 percent of the rest of Bowie’s catalog I’m biased, but I didn't get anything out of his overwrought 80s ballads on this soundtrack. ‘Dance Magic’ was the only one that stood out to me, a jaunty pop number with a touch of world music to give it some character, which was likely the opinion of the filmmakers as well considering they used it three times. The ‘voodoo’ call and response part of the song is lame as hell though, even when Bowie is singing it with a Muppet it’s still lame as hell. Thumbs up to Trevor  Jones conversely, who composed the score for this film as well as the score for The Dark Crystal, Dark City and Time Bandits. The man puts in solid work. 

       These are the things one must keep in mind when watching Labyrinth, that’s it’s not really about pathos and it’s not really looking to explain how The Labyrinth exists in the real world or anything like that. The darker tone may lead you to believe that it would be, but no, this is a fairy tale where dogs ride other dogs like horses and rather than being killed, folks are dipped into a swamp that smells really bad. It’s absurd, you’d expect nothing less from Terry Jones working with Muppets, but it doesn't go beyond that.Your ability to accept this will determine whether or not you’ll enjoy this movie.

       Labyrinth was not a commercial success upon its release, only making back around half its budget at the box office, which ironically is the exact opposite of what happened 4 years previously with The Dark Crystal. Still it has persisted, and in spite of all the 80s cheeze and pop stars trying to act there’s a fun movie there. You’re also not likely to see a Hollywood movie with this much puppetry ever again in this age of CGI, which is a point in its favor. Labyrinth gets the recommendation. Whether you’re a parent looking for something to watch with their kids this Halloween or some 20-something looking for something to riff on with friends over discord because parties are extinct in this post-covid world, Labyrinth makes a solid addition to the watchlist. As The World Falls Down, why not turn to cinema?

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: Dark City (1998), directed by Alex Proyas

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "The Night Has A Thousand Eyes", by Bobby Vee

       This might be the biggest blast from the past that we’ve had on this blog, and that’s saying something from the guy who never stops making call backs to shit he’s already done. I mean the last time we saw Alex Proyas in the post title was about 6 damn years ago, when his 1994 comic book film The Crow held the ‘distinct honor’ of being the second film that I ever reviewed on here. A bit of a gamble in retrospect; this was the man behind the Will Smith-infused bastardization of Isaac Asimov’s classic I, Robot after all, and whose attempt at a major Hollywood blockbuster with Gods of Egypt sank like a golden turd at the box office (probably should have gotten folks who look like they could be Egyptian gods there bud). Not exactly what you might call a sterling reputation, and the critical and commercial failure of GoE means he’s probably not going to have many opportunities to flesh out that relatively small filmography in the future. Lest you write him off entirely as the Jan Brady of the Australian film world however, Alex Proyas has one more major film that’s probably worth talking about. In fact you could go so far as to say this is his magnum opus, the last glimpse of light before he was pulled into darkness. 

Yes, that was meant to be ironic.

Released in 1998 through New Line, Dark City is one of those films that sprints right out the gate if you’re not paying attention. Rufus Sewell plays a man who wakes to find himself in a bathtub in a fleabag hotel, with only a suitcase, a postcard of someplace called Shell Beach, and a dead woman with spirals cut into her flesh to his name. That name as it turns out is John Murdoch, but everything else is a mystery: His past, his relationship with the woman named Emma who claims to be his wife (played by Phenomena actress and Marathon alum Jennifer Connelly), that whole murder thing, and perhaps most pressingly, the strange men who are after him. Men with sharp knives and pale white faces, who seem to possess the same bizarre supernatural abilities that Murdoch is also developing. In reality however, everything seems rather...off. Gaps in memories that no one can explain, the way that night seems to drag on without end, even the city itself seems to shift and move under its own power. Who is John Murdoch, really? Who are these mysterious men? What is the true nature of the city? Well I normally don’t break the plot down beat by beat on these reviews so I wouldn’t answer these questions, but in this case I think it’s justified. You kinda just have to see it to believe it.

First off, credit where credit is due, Dark City is an amazing looking film for the time. Where The Crow felt like a very obvious attempt at aping the German Expressionist-inspired aesthetic of Tim Burton, specifically Batman, Dark City feels like a mastery of form. Hell, in some ways the titular feels more like Gotham than Burton’s take, a perpetually gloomy art deco hellhole of nothing but dark alleys and filthy rooms,  like the movie was marinated in film noir before it made it to the screen. With just a hint of Hellraiser style leather fetish gear, which hits just about every one of my art design buttons. 

       It also helps to mask much of the CGI used in the film, but that never feels like much of a hindrance to the enjoyment of the film. On the contrary, while obviously of its time the special effects never ended up feeling dated, unlike its peer and Marathon alum The Matrix, which ironically enough took place in large part during the day. Shifting rooftops are more tolerable than slo-mo dodging and bullet trails, I suppose.

       The problem then, as it seems there always must be a problem, is that Alex Proyas doesn’t seem to have patience or confidence in his own concept. The first couple minutes of the film are a mad rush to establish everything we need, setting up a very intriguing Memento-style mystery that ultimately ends up being irrelevant to the plot not even half way in. We get a glimpse that things are not what they seem in the city and then we immediately after jump into hardcore science fiction territory. Then, when we finally get to learn what’s really going on, apparently we need to be told it multiple times, because apparently this movie works on Beetlejuice rules and you need to say the plot multiple times before it becomes real. That’s almost entirely what Kiefer Sutherland’s character, Dr.Schreber, does for the last part of the film, just tell Murdoch/the audience shit, and let me tell you does Schreber’s stilted way of speaking get very annoying after awhile. If the story is complex/convoluted enough to need that much exposition, you could make it easier to listen to at the very least.

       Speaking of ol’ Kief, I’m not the biggest fan of the acting in Dark.City. Rufus Sewell is fine as our lead, and it’s fun to see Richard ‘Riff Raff’ O’Brien as the villainous Mr. Hand even if it’s not a particularly deep role, but Kiefer Sutherland quickly goes from interesting to grating and both Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt (playing Inspector Frank Bumstead) come across as rather wooden to me. I assumed at first that this was supposed to tie in with the theme of memory and how that ties into defining the self (or something like that, believe that was another thing they threw in at the last act), but considering they’re the only two that act like that it just comes off as weird, like a couple of characters from a David Lynch film wandered into the wrong movie. I mean they’ve got Connelly playing a doe-eyed nightclub singer, all they needed was a severed finger lying around somewhere.

A little bit of Memento, a dash of Inception, a touch of Batman  and a hint of Cabin in the Woods, and you’ve got the recipe for a Dark City gumbo. Although it makes a couple missteps, the amazing art direction and ambitious concept kept me engaged the whole way through, so I’m giving it the recommendation. The film’s got moxie, a vision that other films in the same genre lack, and I respect that. Give it a watch, whether you’re chilling at home this Halloween or relaxing on Shell Beach, I’m sure it’ll be a good time.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Phenomena (1985), directed by Dario Argento

And another one Bites Za Dusto. You know this blog has been around for 5 years now and every year I think that this is going to be the time when I close up shop for good, and yet I keep pressing on. I don't know if it's determination or a paralyzing fear of what I would do with my time without it, but whatever the case it does give me an excuse to try out new things, and that's a crux of the human experience, right? I dunno. Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed the list this year, I hope that I gave you an excuse to try out something new as well, and I hope you join me again next year for another 31 days of scares and spoops. See ya then!

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Flash of the Blade" by Iron Maiden

       The last time we saw a film by Dario Argento on the Marathon (Tenebrae, back in Marathon ‘14), I started off the article by dedicating entire first paragraph to insulting the country of Italy. In retrospect this was probably not the best foot to start off on, but I suppose I did it because I feel a kinship with that Mediterranean boot. Both Italy and my country of of origin are nation stitched together by bloody conflict, after all. Both have an issues between the northern and southern halves. Both are plagued by fascists. Both love cheese. When I pointed a finger at Italy I was really pointing a finger at myself, as a first student psychology major would say. So to make it up to Italians everywhere it seems only right that 4 years after the first proper Long Dark Marathon of the Soul, 4 years after Tenebrae, that we return to the works of Mr. Agento with an older, potentially wiser eye. And yeah I could have done that with everyone on the ‘14 list but I didn’t feel like it.

       It’s once upon a time, as these stories go, and Ms. Clocktower herself Jennifer Corvino (played by Rocketeer actress Jennifer Connelly), daughter of the actor Paul Corvino, is being shipped to the Richard Wagner International School for Girls located near Zurich. This place, colloquially known as the ‘Swiss Transylvania’ for the eerie winds that come down from the Alps, has been terrorized by a mysterious serial killer who seems to only target teenage girls. Which doesn’t really bother Jennifer all that much, until during a strange sleepwalking session she happens to stumble across a murder taking place. She’s also not sure if the murderer, whoever they are, ended up seeing her that night, which isn’t the best position you want to be in when it comes to serial killers. But what can she, a young girl in a foreign land, possibly do? And where does her bizarre affinity with insects fit into it?

       Phenomena, is a giallo film, a term which in this neck of woods (ie wikipedia) refers to a particular type of thriller (with elements of horror and eroticism to taste) film that evolved out of cheap pulp magazines popular in Italy in the post-war period, much in the same way as film noir in the U.S. has its origins in the stories of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Jumping onto the film scene as far back as 1963, giallo could be considered to be an ancestor of the slasher genre, and much like slasher movies dominated the 70s and 80s before collapsing. Much in the same way as the arc of Dario Argento’s career if we’re being brutally honest, which began in the 60s, exploded in the 70s (1970 was the year of his directorial debut, to be precise), and in modern times is commonly associated with poorly made dreck.

       By 1985 Argento was around the tail end of his Golden Age, but in Phenomena you can see the elements of what made him popular. The bizarre and grotesque imagery, clear and concise editing, the beautiful scenery, expert shots and of course all of that over-the-top violence. While not as visually impressive as his film Suspiria (from what I’ve seen of Suspiria anyway), you still see in Phenomena a film that’s a cut above many of its peers in terms of cinematography. Which may not seem all that impressive on paper, but we’ve all seen movies, especially horror movies, where much of the time is spent trying to figure out what the hell is happening on screen. Simple and clean.

       As I said Jennifer Connelly is the star, her first starring role in only her second film. She does a pretty okay job for a 15 year old, although she does seem a bit wooden at times, whether from the direction, the language barrier or her inexperience it’s hard to tell. We’ve also got Donald Pleasence to take a break from doing Halloween movies to do some stuff here. He puts on a good performance as you’d expect, although ultimately doesn’t really get to do much, which seems a bit of waste. Everyone else I can’t really speak much about, although we do have longtime Argento actress/girlfriend Daria Nicolodi as the teacher Frau Bruckner, who does so little for so long in the film that I’m almost certain you don’t actually hear her name spoken aloud until the last 25 minutes, and even then only once. When she actually gets a chance to speak she’s one of the more expressive members of the cast, and that includes the ones being stabbed by a javelin.

       The problem I arrive at, however, is the same one I faced when it came to Tenebrae: it’s too silly. Giallo, from what little I’ve been exposed to is a film style built on big emotions, but Argento here seems to have taken melodrama and pushed it into the realms of absurdity. What starts out as a relatively normal mystery-thriller with slight supernatural elements and then gets increasingly more bizarre and chaotic, to the point where the climax of the film seems feels so random that it feels like it’s from another movie. No to mention all the odd character behavior, the assistant chimpanzees, the out-of-nowhere claim that insects have ESP, it’s such an overload that a sense of drama is lost. I mean if things are just going to happen with no explanation then you can’t really invest yourself in it, you’re just kind of stuck on a haunted house ride that doesn’t quite have enough material to last the time it takes to experience. Not that I could really empathize with a 15 year old rich daughter of a movie star with psychic bug powers anyway, but you get the idea.

       The eclecticism seems to have affected the music as well. We of course have Goblin, mainstays of film soundtracks, as well as cameos by Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and despite it being good heavy stuff it also lacks nuance. That pulse-pounding, heavy prog rock is perfect during the scenes where the killer is tracking their victims, but then they also have scenes where they’ve got a blazing Iron Maiden playing over Jennifer fiddling over a doorknob. Constantly. Compare it to the soundtrack work of people like John Carpenter, subtle and yet often iconic, and Phenomena feels like the audio equivalent of a drunk bull in a china shop. Heavy, but lacks nuance.

       Generally speaking though, Phenomena does its job of keeping you more or less entertained the entire way through, so I’m going it the thumbs-up for recommendation. It’s weird and silly, but weird and silly is what 80’s horror movies were built on, and at the very least Phenomena looks good while doing it. So if you were a fan of The Believers or Sleepaway Camp that we covered previously on this list then there is probably going to be something you like here. Grab some friends, grab some snacks and the movie and have yourself a fun time.


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!