3. The Helping Hands (Labyrinth, 1986)
I wont lie. As a child Labyrinth both amazed and terrified me. I was always scared that my elder sister would make a wish to the Goblin King and have me whisked away in the dead of night. So scared was I that I made a conscious effort to always go to bed on good terms with her no matter what argument we'd had before bedtime. Looking back now it's still apparent why the film was actually pretty scary. There's Goblins and furry things that can take their heads off and all manner of nasty creatures who try their damnedest to prevent Jennifer Connelly from solving the Labyrinth and finding her incredibly ugly baby brother. One of the strangest set of characters she encounters are the so-called Helping Hands. After falling down a hole Connelly finds herself held in place by a group of seemingly disembodied hands who communicate to her by creating mouths and faces out of themselves. Although they are described as helpful they in fact talk in riddles and don't really help the young heroine at all. In fact they grope her as she falls further into the depths of the Labyrinth - adding to the already creepy tone of the film considering the age of Connelly's character in the film. A better name for these unhelpful hands would be 'The Gropey Gloves' or something similar. Describing the office's resident sex pest as Mr Helpful Hands is unlikely to ever hold up in a workplace grievance case. The same is true in the movies.