Jareth

While its predecessor, the 1982 film The Dark Crystal, took its fantasy world creation incredibly seriously, Labyrinth leans more into pure musical fun and Python-esque absurdity.

Now, there's a lot of this flavor to discuss in Labyrinth, but I wanted to talk specifically about the four guards that Sarah encounters as she makes her way across the Goblin King's Labyrinth.

They are dog-like humanoid creatures that guard a pair of doors.

They are either conjoined beings, and therefore two guards, or they are affixed behind their signature shields in a way that allow for two beings per shield.

I know you remember these guys.

Once more, we return to the rich, magical world of Jim Henson's 1986 classic Labyrinth, having previously covered two other of its creatures here on The Monster Fact and the film itself on Weird House Cinema.

Today, I want to talk about the most terrifying denizens of the Goblin King's labyrinth, creatures that have unsettled children for almost four decades now, the Firies of the Fire Gang.

You remember them.

And they explain beginning to end how they did basically everything in that.

You have them explaining how they got so many puppeteers in the Jareth's lair type thing.

All those moments, which I didn't notice upon really first watch where you have David Bowie's face hidden in different scenes.

So the camera will sort of be static.

yeah good luck getting through to 10pm

have fun also Uber left you a two and a half star because you shat yourself in the passenger seat Terry Jones basically wanted Jareth off screen for the entire movie.

Oh, okay.

To reveal him as a fraud at the very end.

magic.

new hand

it just gets me every time that's the most whimsical part of the movie for me I'm just sort of like I love that shit and then at the end they're all friends it's great casting Jareth this this is a fun one right Jim didn't want just any actor he wanted a musician right someone in his words who could change the film's whole musical style So who was on the list? Sting? Right, yeah.

Prince? Yeah.

There were still memorable moments, though.

He appeared at Live Aid, played Jareth the Goblin King in the immortal cult classic movie Labyrinth, and became familiar to a younger audience who had never seen him in the 1970s.

But for the first time, Bowie risked becoming exactly what he'd always feared, a famous man repeating a safer version of himself.

That same decade, however, also brought a profound family loss.

I hope she names that baby Plantain or just something with- No ... or, or, uh, or- No, it needs to be- ... or like, you know- ...

it needs to be something, like, really, like, what, what's the name of, um, like, what's the name of, uh, David Bowie's character in Labyrinth? Like Jareth or something like- Needs to be something like that.

Ah, maybe, yeah.

You know.

It needs to be something gothic and, yeah.

If your name is Jareth, your parents were f- I'm gonna wanna fuck you.

[laughs] Well, hey, you're gonna want...

Well, but also, well, they might be too young for you because sh- that was...

That's what, apparently.

If someone tried to take Jareth off me, I would impale them as well.

Oh, after Dracula's, you know, slaughtered all these Turks, one of these, like, aides, these peers, is like, they'll punish all of Transylvania for this.

You can't protect us.

in me flat about a week ago, but it was weird.

It was like all white and it was like, it looked quite pretty to be fair, but it was in a, like had noticed it on a morning and it was like sort of sitting like on the edge of a shelf.

And then I sort of went about like getting ready, taking Jareth out and I forgot about it.

And then all of a sudden I came back and I was like, Oh my God, it's not there anymore.

It fucking just made me think of David Bowie.

The Goblin King.

No, it's not that type of goblins, to be

honest.

It's giving me equal parts like a rejected like Riddler costume from Batman Forever or maybe a rejected Poison Ivy from Batman and Robin.

mixed with, like, David Bowie's Goblin King from Labyrinth.

Like, that's the only thing.

It's all over the place here.