Watching a movie on a slow Halloween Night

Last night was Halloween night. As the sun went down, my wife and I made sure to have some candy near the door just in case a child strayed over to our home. Because of the way our house is situated on the block, often times kids opt not to trudge up my walkway for a piece of candy. Instead, we mostly get the children of friends that stop for a visit.

A few minutes before the township recommended trick-or-treat time was to begin, we let Syrus out so that he could do his business and not frighten anyone later on in the evening. When my wife took Syrus outside, she saw that rain was beginning to fall.

By the time Syrus was finished and back on the porch, the rain was coming down in buckets. It was raining heavily for about a half hour before we turned our porch lights off. With the way the rain was coming down, we didn’t expect very many children to be out for very long, so to discourage them from climbing our wet walkway, we doused the light.

Fortunately, earlier in the week some of our friends had their children out for trick-or-treating, so Halloween wasn’t a total bust. I’m not sure when the rain finally let up, but things were soaked when we let Syrus out, once again, a few hours later. Because of the rain, we had a pretty quiet night overall.

Without much else to do, the wife and I decided to watch a movie together. There wasn’t anything on television worth watching and our On Demand service wasn’t turning up much of interest. I headed over to our DVD shelf and began looking through our options. I found a movie that I purchased a few months ago and never removed from the package. Since it had goblins and other assorted beasts, it seemed like a good choice for Halloween night.

I handed the movie to my wife and after looking it over, didn’t seem to mind watching it. She had never saw the movie before and the cover art didn’t spoil the fun surprise too much. My wife put on a pot of tea while I loaded the movie into our DVD player.

Before long we were both comfortable and the movie was playing. It Didn’t take long to get the reaction I was waiting for. The opening credits began to roll and she saw a credit to Jim Henson. The look of “what I am in for” washed over her face and she then asked if we were watching some kind of muppet movie. When the credit for David Bowie appeared next, the look on her face quickly changed to one that just said “oh no, not another one of these movies”.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the movie we watched was Labyrinth. It is the work of Jim Henson, George Lucas, David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. It was released back in 1986 and was a staple in my childhood movie collection.

Throughout the movie, I watched my wife laugh, smile, and simply shake her head at the many wild scenes. While she may not be a fan of the film, I think she liked it overall. I don’t see us watching it again anytime soon, but it was nice to sit down and watch it again after all of these years.

The basic storyline is that a girl (Jennifer Connelly) wishes that her crying baby brother would be stolen away by the goblin king (David Bowie). The baby is quickly stolen away by goblins hiding in her closet and she immediately begins to panic. When visited by the goblin king, she decides to try and get her brother back by working through a labyrinth to the castle at its center.

The monsters and special effects in this movie would be like comparing a a video game of today to that of the old 8 bit Nintendo Entertainment System. While they may be no match for todays children’s movies, they were a lot of fun in their day. If you are a fan of fantasy movies from the 1980’s, you should check out Labyrinth, if you haven’t already.