If you're not already singing, "Slime and snails, or puppy dog's tails" you're dead to me. Or perhaps you just have been unlucky enough never to have seen The Labyrinth. In which case I pity you, you poor, poor soul. Here's what's your missing:http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1xAAGh-3sw0No, not David Bowie's package (although I'm pretty certain it receives its own entry in the end credits), but the film as a whole. The film turns 27 this year and still holds up bloody well. I can't wait until my boys are old enough to sit and watch it with me.But do you know the first thing my mind turns to when I think of Labyrinth? It's not the synth pop, or scary, scary monsters who can remove their own heads. It's a cat. Just a normal, everyday cat in the Goblin City towards the film's end.
To jog your memory, it's when Sarah, Hoggle et al enter the city to find it deserted. The set does a great job of looking real, but it's that one cat running across a street which makes it. It cements the city as a place where people (goblins are people too), wake up go to goblin work, eat goblin lunches and play goblin ball in the streets. Never mind we know it's a set, the cat makes it real.The devil, as they say, is in the details.Would the film have been any worse had the cat not been included? Well, no. The cat was just an example of the attention to the little things which permeate an already solid story and believe characters. But it helps. Oh, does it help.It's something I try to remember when I'm writing. 'Don't forget the cat'. Michael