Return to Oz (1985)

Somewhere over the rainbow, children cryyyy~ 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is a tough act to follow. But Disney sure did try. Is it a good film or a bad film? Well, one thing’s for sure. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.

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People often clutch their pearls at the concept of a sequel or a remake of a beloved film. MGM’s 1939 masterpiece The Wizard of Oz feels like a particularly sacred cow. Yet the original L. Frank Baum book has not one, but thirteen sequels, plus dozens of unofficial material that’s been annexed into the Oz universe. There’s not really any good reason not to adapt them to the screen, aside from the fact that they’re really freaking weird. Like, weirder than tin men and flying monkeys.

Walt Disney wanted to adapt The Wonderful Wizard of Oz shortly after his success with Snow White. But MGM had already purchased the rights to the first book and… well, I don’t have to tell you how that ended. Not to be deterred, Walt immediately snapped up the rights to the rest of the series. They sat on the shelf until 1954 when work began on a project called The Rainbow Road to Oz. This was initially intended to be a serialized TV movie for The Mickey Mouse Club, starring many of the Mouseketeers including Annette Funicello as Princess Ozma. As budgets ballooned, they decided to shift it to a full theatrical release, still starring the Mouseketeers. But things didn’t work out quite the way Walt wanted to, and the project never materialized. Probably because it looked like this:

Enter Walter Murch. He’d earned his stripes in Hollywood as an award-winning sound designer and editor on acclaimed films like The Godfather, American Graffiti, and Apocalypse Now. In the early 80s, he decided to try his hand at writing and directing a film for the struggling Walt Disney Company. They asked what kind of film he wanted to make, and he pitched his vision for a combination of the second and third Oz books, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. As it happened, Disney was about to lose the rights to the books to that pesky public domain, and they might as well do something with them. So, the project was greenlit.

As with so many productions of the 1980s, things did not go smoothly. The elaborate special effects and limitations of its young star, who could only legally film about three hours a day, put the film way behind schedule and drastically over budget. The Disney studio execs were not pleased and fired Murch. But his work in sound and editing gave Murch some friends in high places. Other directors he’d worked with pressured Disney to give him the job back, including Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. You don’t say no to 1980s George Lucas, so Murch got the job back. He even promised to take over the production if Murch got himself into trouble again.

Contrary to popular belief, Murch and co-writer Gill Dennis (Walk the Line) never intended this to be a sequel to the 1939 film. It’s pretty explicitly a sequel to the darker, often terrifying book series. In fact, it’s a pretty accurate adaptation of the third book with some characters and names from the second one, with only a few references to the film. However, audiences didn’t quite get that. Disney didn’t help by putting out an atrocious marketing campaign that played up the fun and adventure over what we actually got. So when the movie turned out to be a dark, twisted, and often terrifying nightmare instead of a technicolor musical, audiences were not happy. The movie only hit a few theatres for a handful of weeks and got terrible reviews, making back only $11 million of a $28 million budget. But it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects and has experienced a resurgence as a beloved cult classic… albeit one with a reputation for traumatizing a generation.

Despite my well-documented adoration of 80s glitter fantasies, I’ve only actually seen this movie once. I was maybe six or seven and my grandma was babysitting at her house. She rented a movie to keep me and my sister occupied, as you do. It’s a sequel to The Wizard of Oz, how bad can it be, right? …. yeah, my parents had to come home early. Fast forward to my teenage years when I started getting really into this particular subgenre. I devoured every 80s fantasy I could get my hands on in the pre-Netflix days- Willow, Dark Crystal, Legend, and especially Labyrinth. But for some reason, no one had Return to Oz. By that point, Blockbuster had met its end and I had to give up on seeing the movie again. I was really tempted to finally watch it with braver eyes when Disney+ dropped, but by that point, this blog was mid-way through the 1950s so I decided I might as well wait until I got there and give you guys a fresh reaction. Well, we’re here at last! Let’s go!

STORY

This is the first film to open with the iconic blue logo with the white castle! For millions of 90s kids, that logo represents a childhood of joy and whimsy. Not today, though. Mournful violins screech as we enter a Kansas farmhouse through the bedroom window. Toto sleeps soundly on the foot of the bed, but little Dorothy lies awake. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry check on her, worried. Dorothy’s suffered from insomnia and what they deem delusions ever since the tornado six months ago, and they’re starting to worry. They leave the room to consider a newspaper article advertising a doctor who specializes in healing such ailments with electricity. Money’s tight, but what choice do they have? Dorothy can’t keep hallucinating about scarecrows and wicked witches. As the grown-ups fret, Dorothy spots a shooting star outside her window. Could it be a message from Oz?

The next morning, an exhausted Dorothy does her best to help around the farm. She scolds her favorite chicken, Billina, for not laying eggs. She digs through the straw to see if any of the other hens have had better luck and finds a key marked with the letters OZ. It looks more like a no-smoking sign to me, and Aunt Em doesn’t buy it as proof either. She scolds Dorothy to stop talking about Oz because they’re going to laugh at her, they’re all going to laugh at her. Also, she needs her to focus on the very real work around the farm, especially with Uncle Henry milking a broken leg. But that doesn’t let me get mileage out of the baffling choice to cast Carrie’s crazy mom as sweet old Auntie Em. Seriously, who chose Piper Laurie as the parental figure for a troubled young girl?

No scary prayer closet here, but Aunt Em does make up her mind to take Dorothy to the doctor. She piles her niece into a wagon and off they go. Poor Toto does his best to follow but his little legs can’t keep up so he sits back and howls pathetically. And sadly that’s the last we see of him until the finale. Dorothy arrives at a turn-of-the-century psychiatric hospital, which only ever means good things, right? Dr. Worley interviews her and comes to the conclusion that this little girl is in dire need of his help. It’s probably because she chooses to tell the book-accurate but extremely gruesome story of how the Tin Woodsman came to be made of tin. For those of you who haven’t read Baum, he fell in love with a girl and the Wicked Witch of the East got really mad about it so she cursed his axe to cut him into pieces until his entire body was prosthetics. You know, for kids.

Anyway, Dr. Worley’s electrical machines are just the thing to fix Dorothy’s mind. He introduces Aunt Em and Dorothy to his marvelous machine that will make the nightmares go away by controlling her excess brain currents. To repeat: this movie opens with a small child about to undergo electroshock therapy. To make the idea of having her brain electrocuted a little more palatable, he personifies it into a goofy, silly little character. It doesn’t work. It’s creepy for us and for Dorothy. Suddenly, she spots a blonde girl reflected in the machine’s glass. It’s the Watcher in the Woods all over again! Without really hearing him, Dorothy agrees to the treatment. Dr. Worley’s stern assistant, Nurse Wilson, appears out of nowhere and yanks her away from Aunt Em. Aunt Em suddenly has some reservations but promises to come back tomorrow. And she leaves.

With Dorothy’s only sense of safety gone, Nurse Wilson leads Dorothy through a grimy, gray hall. She locks her in her cell, inviting her to take a nap while they get things ready. Just as it sinks in that Dorothy is alone, the blonde girl appears behind her. She hands her a small jack-o-lantern to foreshadow a character we’ll meet later and disappears without another word. Dorothy sits quietly on her bed as a storm kicks up. And she sits there for a while as the music crescendos and the thunder rolls. Gurney wheels squeak menacingly outside. This movie is amazing at building tension. Maybe too good in places. That tension breaks as the door swings open. Nurse Wilson orders Dorothy to come with her. It’s time.

The orderlies lift Dorothy onto a squeaky gurney. Nurse Wilson orders her to lie down. She resists at first but her aunt told her to be good so she lays still as the orderlies strap her in. Nope nope nope nope. Dorothy asks why she can hear screaming through the walls. Nurse Wilson lies to her face and says there’s no screaming. Dr. Worley meets them in the operating room and fires up his machine. Nurse Wilson slips electrodes over Dorothy’s head. Lights blink. Electricity zaps. Dorothy’s eyes dart around the room. And Dr. Worley flips the switch. And this is only like the third most upsetting thing in this movie.

Suddenly, lightning strikes the hospital! The power goes out. The adults scurry out to get things back up and running. Dorothy is alone again, with nothing but the screams in the walls for company. She wriggles in her bindings. Suddenly, the electrodes lift from her head, and the leather straps slip away. It’s the blonde girl again! She urges Dorothy to get out of there, explaining that the screams are lobotomized victims of electroshock therapy. Did I mention that none of this is from the books? Holy crap, Disney. Dorothy follows the girl through the empty halls but Nurse Wilson quickly catches them. And the chase is on.

The girls bolt out of the hospital and through the driving rain with Nurse Wilson and the orderlies in hot pursuit. Blondie slips in the mud and tumbles into the swollen river. Nurse Wilson snatches for Dorothy who screams and falls in the water with her friend. They cling to a branch for dear life, but the flash flood sweeps them away. Still better than electroshock therapy. Determined not to lose her latest victims, Nurse Wilson jumps in after them, held back by her voluminous dress. The blonde girl tries to grab some floating debris but misses and disappears under the water. She doesn’t come back up. Dorothy clings to a crate as the floodwaters sweep her out to sea, which should be the first clue that we’ve left Kansas.

Distressed clucking wakes her the next morning. Somehow, Billina the chicken is with her. And she can talk now! That must mean they’re in Oz! Because all the animals can talk in Oz, except screw Toto I guess. The floodwaters have receded, leaving the crate stranded in a puddle in the middle of a desert. Billina starts to hop out of the crate, but Dorothy stops her. Anyone who touches the Deadly Desert turns into sand themselves. Through the world’s scariest game of The Floor is Lava, Dorothy makes it across some fallen stones to the green fields beyond the desert. She doesn’t see the rock faces. No, I mean literal faces in the rocks, malicious creatures called Nomes. The Nome slinks down to the underground lair of the Nome King to report that Dorothy has done the title of the movie. And the King is livid to hear that she brought a chicken.

Dorothy and Billina know none of this. Now that they’re safe, they’re more occupied with finding something to eat before they search for Dorothy’s old friends. Luckily enough, they find a lunch pail tree full of ripe boxes of sandwiches. Even luckier, it can’t talk or throw things at her like the apple trees. That would hurt. Once their bellies are full, Dorothy takes another pail with her to have for later and they go on their way. But the Merry Old Land of Oz is eerily quiet, and, weirdly, we haven’t seen anyone. Dorothy does her best to keep her chin up. And then they come across a decrepit old house in the woods. But not just any decrepit old house – her old house. The one that took her here the first time and killed a woman.

But wait! Didn’t the house land in the middle of Munchkin Land? Why are we in the middle of the woods? Where’s the Lollipop Guild? Where’s the pretty lady in the bubble orchestrating the deaths of her political enemies? Dorothy asks herself the same questions except maybe the last one and starts to run through the trees. And it gets worse. She turns around and finds the shattered, overgrown wreckage of the Yellow Brick Road. Suddenly, she realizes something is very wrong. And can I just say that her line delivery when she finds the shattered bricks sounds exactly like Judy Garland?

She follow, follow, follow, follow, follows the Yellow Broke Road to the Emerald City. A journey that once took her half the story now takes a matter of minutes. Must have been all the times they had to stop for musical numbers. It’s not a pretty sight. All of the emeralds have been stripped away, leaving behind dull brown foundation to crumble to ruins. Worst of all, everyone in the city has been turned to stone. There’s a circle of stone dancing girls with their heads gone, a stone student with their nose stuck in a book, and a stone gardener in the middle of pruning the bushes. And to Dorothy’s horror, she finds the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion frozen in the middle of fighting off whatever did that. And there’s no sign of the Scarecrow. The only sign of life is graffiti scribbled on a wall: “Beware the Wheelers”. And that’s where we meet…

That screencap has been burned into my brain since I was little, and I’m not the only one. The Wheelers often top lists of things in “kids'” movies that scared the crap out of us, and I don’t blame them. The spidery way they move on all fours, with limbs ending in wheels, the maniacal laughter, and the sudden jumpscare snarl of “C’MERE…. CHICKEN!” is not okay. And I think this is the second scariest thing in this movie. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Speaking of heads, the mask in the photo is in fact part of their helmets because even horrifying monstrosities care about bike safety. Their real faces are horrifying amalgamations of Pee Wee Herman, Ziggy Stardust, and a bad acid trip which is only slightly less creepy. And then the lead Wheeler twitches his head and yeah nope that might be worse than the mask actually.

Just as any of us would, Dorothy runs for her life. The Wheelers give chase, laughing maniacally and screaming and making really freaky noises. One of these freaky noises is the same wheel squeaking we heard back in the psychiatric hospital, and the lead Wheeler is the same actor as the orderly. They corner Dorothy against a wall. It doesn’t look good. But she spots a hole in the stone just big enough for the Oz key she found. It’s the only hope she’s got so she tries it, and sure enough, the wall swings open to reveal a secret vault. She’s escaped for now, but it’s only a temporary reprieve. The lead Wheeler threatens to tear her apart when she comes out because the Nome King has banned all chickens from Oz. Just go with it. None of this makes any sense to Dorothy, but they’re not about to tell her anything when they can cackle maniacally instead.

The Wheelers slink off to stand watch, giving Dorothy some much-needed breathing room. Time to figure out a plan. With a gasp, she spots a metal man rusted in a corner. No, it’s not the Tin Woodsman, we saw him already. This metal man has a convenient user guide etched onto his back, telling her to wind up three keys on his back so he can think, speak, and move, respectively. It can’t hurt (probably), so Dorothy winds up all three keys. Sure enough, the mechanical man comes to life and introduces himself as Tik-Tok, purveyor of stupid dances and destroyer of attention spans. This is a very original joke. I am very clever. Actually, he’s the one-man Royal Army of Oz, sent here by the Scarecrow to wait for Dorothy to help save them from this turning-to-stone business. After all, he’s not a living thing.

A one-bot army sounds like just the thing to help get them out of here, so they venture outside. Sure enough, Tik-Tok lays an epic smackdown on the Wheelers and hoo boy vengeance is sweet. All but the leader scurry away, and the lead Wheeler isn’t so brave without his buddies. He snivells and cries and begs for his life, and it’s at this point that you realize a guy with wheels for hands and feet probably can’t hurt you all that much. Just hide on the stairs like Dorothy’s doing. With the leader Wheeler as Tik-Tok’s prisoner, Dorothy takes the opportunity to demand some answers. Not only is this Nome King behind everyone turning to stone but he’s kidnapped the Scarecrow. And only someone named Princess Mombi knows what happened to Oz’s new ruler after that. So Tik-Tok forces the sobbing Wheeler to take them to what used to be the Wizard’s palace. Only then does he let him go, and he zooms off, cackling as maniacally as ever.

They enter one of the most gorgeous, opulent sets I have ever seen to find Princess Mombi herself lying on a divan wearing one of the most gorgeous, opulent gowns I have ever seen. Seriously, I want to cosplay this so bad but I would almost definitely lose an eye on that shoulder piece. No one does costuming like 80s fantasy villains, man. The princess yawns and holds out her hand for help off the couch, speaking in a whispery soprano. She didn’t expect company so she invites Dorothy to her wardrobe to help her change. Not her dress. That would make sense. No, Mombi pops her head off to switch it with one of the many staring heads behind a glass case. It’s really upsetting and it gets so much worse.

Dorothy gasps but does her best to be polite. The new head, a brunette with a terse alto voice, recognizes the name Dorothy Gale with a sinister arch of her eyebrow. She reveals that the Nome King kidnapped the Scarecrow king and took him back to his palace in the mountains, and all the emeralds with them. But lest we think the scary lady with the room full of decapitated women is helpful, she calmly decides that Dorothy’s head might make a worthy addition to her collection someday. This monologue is almost word for word from the books and her counterpart wasn’t even evil (no, really), so kudos, writers. Dorothy nopes out of there in a hurry, screaming for her friends and fighting back as Mombi drags her through the hall. Tik-Tok tries to help but his action runs down at the worst possible time. A chicken and a little girl are no match for a grown woman with swords for shoulder pads and Mombi tosses both into the tower to await their demise.

Well. Now what? Dorothy gazes out the window at the Nome King’s mountain in the distance. She only allows herself a second of despair before she starts to search the tower for a means of escape. Along the way, she stumbles upon a painting of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion portrayed as the heroes they are. As her little heart breaks, a small, sad voice calls for his mother from the piles of junk. When she investigates, she finds a pile of broken sticks in the shape of a man with a pumpkin for a head. He introduces himself as Jack Pumpkinhead and asks if she can make sure his head isn’t rotting which, to his great relief, it isn’t. And guys, I can’t with how cute Jack is. He’s a sweet little baby in the body of a pumpkin monster and if that’s not the way to my heart I don’t know what is.

Now that he knows he’s not actively dying, Jack offers Dorothy some valuable backstory while she mends the sticks that make up his body. He’s a sculpture his “mom” built to scare Mombi, but she didn’t get scared. She got mad. As punishment, she made his creator disappear and used him as a test subject for her newest spell, the Powder of Life. With his purpose fulfilled, she locked him in the tower and left him to rot. Oh, yeah, and the stone dancing girls Dorothy found became her heads. Yikes.

The thought of magically bringing inanimate objects to life gives Dorothy an idea. Under her instructions, Jack sticks a skinny hand through the tower bars to unlock the doors. Apparently he could have done this at any time but didn’t think of it because he was literally born yesterday. Baby. As they creep through the darkened throne room in search of Tik-Tok, Jack softly asks if Dorothy will be his mom in the absence of his actual creator. If it makes him feel better, she’s cool with it. They find Tik-Tok and wind up his speech and action, and Dorothy sends him upstairs with Jack. They get to work assembling two couches with palm leaves for wings and the taxidermied head of a green moose-like creature called a Gump. Unfortunately, they didn’t wind up Tik-Tok’s thoughts because reasons and he starts shouting nonsense instead of giving orders. Sweet little Jack isn’t smart enough to figure out this isn’t right and chaos ensues.

Meanwhile, Dorothy heads down to find the Powder of Life. And oooh lordy this scene. She sneaks past Mombi’s sleeping, headless body to carefully untie a ruby key from around her wrist. The body snores (?), shifts, but doesn’t wake, and Dorothy gets the key with little trouble. So far so good. With a gulp, she steps into the hall of heads. And she finds the Powder of Life in Cabinet 31 with Mombi’s own, real head… which looks horribly like Nurse Wilson. And she was locked in Room 31 in the hospital. Dorothy reaches for the Powder of Life. And to say Mombi’s head wakes up is completely underselling this moment. Mombi’s head BELLOWS Dorothy’s name in a guttural roar that doesn’t even sound human while the other heads shriek. The headless body rises to chase Dorothy down the hall of screaming heads and all of that with the music and the dark shadows and the screaming make this by far the scariest scene in this movie. I don’t actually remember anything past this point so I’m pretty sure my grandma had the good sense to turn it off here. Now I think it’s cool but as a kid? Nope nope nope nope nope.

Brr. Dorothy bolts faster than little me bolted behind the couch and finds the corridor of heads locked behind her. It doesn’t look good. Then something green glimmers inside one of Mombi’s many mirrors, even though everything in this room is gold, black, or red. It almost looks like the figure of a girl. Dorothy follows her through a secret passage as Mombi, now wearing the Nurse Wilson head, storms through the halls shrieking for her Powder of Life. Dorothy makes it to the tower and breathlessly warns her friends of the danger. In a nice moment of levity to balance out all of that, Dorothy winds up Tik-Tok’s brain while calling back to the 1939 film’s quip that some people without brains do an awful lot of talking. Walt always said for every laugh there should be a tear, and I think this scene pulls that off nicely.

With a revived Tik-Tok to stand guard, Dorothy sprinkles the Powder of Life all over the sofa-leaf-Gump hybrid and the floor. Nothing happens. Jack suggests that there might be an incantation, and sure enough, there it is written on the bottom. Dorothy tries her best and sure enough, the Gump’s eyes snap open. He takes being a disembodied head tired to two sofas really well, and the gang jumps aboard just as Mombi storms into the tower. Before she can figure out what she’s looking at, the Gumpmobile soars out the window and into the night. All that tension finally releases and we finally get the joy and whimsy you might expect from a sequel to the 1939 classic. Which, again, this isn’t, but that’s what audiences wanted. The Gump introduces himself, bemusedly telling them he heard a loud bang and now his head is tied to the couch. He’s remarkably chill about it. The stress of the day catches up to Dorothy, who snuggles up on the couch cushions and falls asleep at last. Jack covers her with his jacket with a soft, “Goodnight, Mom.”

Livid at being thwarted, Mombi kicks her army of Wheelers awake. As they scramble to do her bidding, she retreats to her throne room to take solace in her mandolin. The green flicker reappears in the mirror, and Mombi smiles. She still has one prisoner left: Princess Ozma, trapped and forgotten by nearly everyone. This is a much bigger reveal if you’ve read the books, and I think Murch was counting a little too heavily on people having done that. Oh well. The Wheelers catch up to the flying sofa, but the Gump’s flight path takes them over the Deadly Desert. One of them chances it and rolls out into the sand, only to disintegrate on the spot. His friends taunt Team Good Guys but are powerless to stop them from escaping.

It’s a short-lived victory. By morning, the flight gets bumpy enough to fray the ropes holding the sofas together. Jack tries to tighten the remaining rope, but his pumpkin head topples over the side. The Gump doesn’t think he can turn sharply enough to save him but they have to try. As Dorothy reaches for the pumpkin, the whole configuration crashes apart. Everyone tumbles to the ground on a snowy mountain crag. But no one’s hurt and Dorothy quickly realizes exactly where they are: they’ve arrived at the Nome King’s mountain.

Despite his protestations, Dorothy ties the Gump’s head back to one of the sofas so he can walk. Billina hides in Jack’s head for safekeeping. After all, the Wheelers and Mombi have some kind of beef with chickens, so it’s best to be careful. One of the Nomes tells the Nome King they have guests, and the King himself emerges in the rock face in front of them. He looks kind of like the Rockbiter from Neverending Story. Or the False Alarms from Labyrinth. Or Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Giant Rock Faces were a thing in the 80s, apparently. He’s perfectly polite, but he flatly refuses to return the Scarecrow. Dorothy gathers her immense courage and declares that she and her army of three are going to take him back by force. The Nome King bursts out laughing so hard it causes a rockslide, sending Dorothy falling down a chasm into the Nome King’s kingdom.

Dorothy falls down, down, down the rabbit hole oh wait wrong story. She passes thousands of priceless gems as the Nome King explains that all of Oz’s jewels are cultivated here. The ruler of Oz stole emeralds to build his city, and all the Nome King did was take back his stolen property and arrest the perpetrator. Are we getting an anti-colonialism narrative from our villain? That’s… a choice. Dorothy slides to a stop in the Nome King’s throne room, right into the Scarecrow’s waiting arms. But their happy reunion lasts only seconds before the Scarecrow suddenly vanishes in a bolt of light. The Nome King’s face smiles patronizingly and explains that he turned him into an ornament as punishment. This iron-willed Dorothy finally breaks down, collapsing under the blank wall and sobbing that the Wizard stole the emeralds and the Scarecrow just moved into the big chair.

The tears appear to move the Nome King. He reaches out a rocky hand to pat her on the back and offers her a chance to save her friend… at some risk to her. He summons Jack, Tik-Tok, and the Gump into the cavern. Dorothy sniffles and agrees without following up on the risk part, and the Nome King explains the rules of his game. Each of them will enter his collection and get three chances to guess which ornament is the Scarecrow. To make their guesses, they touch an ornament and say Oz. No one asks about that pesky little risk detail, and the Helping Hands from Labyrinth open up the passageway. The Gump grumbles but goes inside to take his turn. The Nome King offers them all snacks and they have a little tea party… until light flashes and he reveals that the Gump is now an ornament. Dorothy accuses him of trickery but really it’s on her for not asking what they were risking. And if she argues, the Nome King will literally throw them into Hell. No really.

With no other choice, Jack steps forward to take his turn. Dorothy hugs him goodbye and Tik-Tok points out that he’s not really smart enough to pull this off. Sure enough, light flashes. No more Jack. Tik-Tok waddles off to take his turn, leaving Dorothy alone with the King. Somehow, strangely, he’s no longer a face in the stone, but a man made of clay dressed in robes, who looks just like Dr. Worley. The transformation happens so subtly that I barely noticed it the first time around, which is really neat. This movie is so rewatchable. He knows there’s more to her return than just the Scarecrow. In fact, the behemoth lifts the hem of his robes to reveal a familiar pair of child-size sparkly high heels with little bows on them. And he looks fabulous in them, darling. This scene alone probably drove up the budget, because Disney had to pay MGM an enormous royalty fee to use them instead of the book’s silver shoes or the Nome King’s magic belt.

With a gasp, Dorothy reaches for her ruby slippers but the Nome King declares finders keepers. After all, it was the slippers that gave him the power to take over Oz. He’s not about to give them up that easily. Before Dorothy can protest, a Nome arrives to tell them Tik-Tok has suddenly stopped moving. The Nome King allows her to go inside to wind him up since it’ll be her turn shortly anyway. Just before she disappears through the Helping Hands, he stops her. He generously offers her the chance to go home with the slippers, just like that… on the condition that she forget about Oz forever. It’s the doctor’s exact words with one brutal twist of the knife: the immortal line “there’s no place like home”, thrown back in her face. Dorothy doesn’t even dignify that with a response. She just storms through the archway to help the friends she will not forget about.

To Dorothy’s surprise, she finds that Tik-Tok’s action is just fine. He’s only pretending to be wound down so he can give Dorothy her best chance. If she sees him transform, she can make her guest based on what he turns into. It’s a brilliant idea, if only it didn’t involve his sacrifice. But they don’t have a choice so Dorothy hugs her dear friend goodbye. And the proudly lifeless robot cries a single tear of green oil. Aww. When they pull apart, Tik-Tok touches an ornament. Dorothy waits with bated breath to see what happens. But he vanishes completely. The Nome King was a step ahead of them and transported him elsewhere in the cavern.

Meanwhile, Mombi arrives in a wagon drawn by screaming Wheelers. The Nome King forces her to prostrate herself at his feet as she tells him Dorothy escaped her castle. He knows that, of course. Mombi can’t understand why he’s giving them a chance but obviously, it’s for the Evulz. Besides, they’ll never guess, and when the last person who remembers Ozma is gone, he’ll become completely human. This isn’t really explained in the final film but a novelization goes into more detail that I really enjoy. The Nome King is bound to the mountain. Either the ruby slippers turned everyone to stone or Mombi borrowed his power to do his bidding, one of the two. But he’s trapped here. Once he’s human, he’ll be able to wreak havoc on the world above that stole his jewels. Maybe don’t leave your villain’s motivation on the cutting room floor next time?

Time is running out for Team Good Guys. Dorothy closes her eyes and spins a few times to decide which table to check. When she opens them, she spots a huge, glittering emerald, brighter and shiner than anything else in the room so you know it’s important. Sure enough, when she touches it, the gem transforms back into the Scarecrow! She did it! Dorothy embraces her old friend and declares what she’s figured out. People from Oz must turn into green ornaments! Which begs the question, who turned into all this other crap? Well, it doesn’t matter and we’re not going to save those losers. The Scarecrow helps Dorothy search the room for more green ornaments, but they only find the Gump.

When he realizes he’s been thwarted, the Nome King flies into a rage so fearsome even Mombi cowers. Obviously, this is all Mombi’s fault and not the guy who decided to play with his food before he ate it, so he zaps her into an iron cage. The Wheelers scatter. The whole mountain shakes with the Nome King’s fury, smashing the ornament room to pieces as lava pours from the cracked floor. The Nome King goes full One Winged Angel and takes on his most monstrous form yet, growing to enormous size and grotesquery as fantasy villains are wont to do. Scarecrow saves a green vase from falling into the lava floe which turns out to be Jack and Billina, and Dorothy reminds the King that the game’s not over. Well, the King’s losing so it is now and he decides to just eat everyone. Which is also what I do when I lose at Mario Kart.

Things look pretty bad. He snatches the Gump and devours his sofa body, though the head’s safe because even this movie has limits. He reaches for Jack next, and both the order and the Nome King’s dialogue is a direct quote from when he sent them into the ornament room. The rest of our heroes run for their lives, but the Nomes block them in, now in their true forms of horrifying goopy rock things. Jack screams for his mom as the Nome King slowly tips him towards his mouth. Billina, still inside his head, slides backward toward the pumpkin’s eye socket and lays an egg straight down his throat out of sheer terror. Suddenly, the Nome King freezes. Chokes. His eyes crust over. The Nomes wither and die. With his last breath, the Nome King gasps that eggs are poison to Nomes. And with one last dose of nightmare fuel, he collapses into a pile of goop, looking like piles of rotting skeletons as he goes. It sounds like an absurd way to defeat an intimidating villain, but Nomes represent death. They killed the Emerald City and they live under the ground. Eggs represent life and fertility – their opposite. Also, blame Baum.

With the King dead, the mountain starts to come down around them. Dorothy snatches her ruby slippers from the rubble and clicks her heels together three times. Apparently the shoes aren’t picky about the wishes they grant, because Dorothy makes several wishes all at once. They work, though. Team Good Guys plus the still-imprisoned Mombi escape the mountain, the emeralds return to their rightful place, and the Ozians transform back into themselves. The dancing girls even get their heads back, which I’m sure they appreciate. The Gump casually remarks about how weird all this is which had me dying laughing, but the joy is short-lived. They never saved Tik-Tok. But the movie has mercy on us because we’ve had enough fear, and Billina quickly spots a green medal stuck on the Gump’s antler. Sure enough, when Dorothy touches it, it transforms back into Tik-Tok. Everyone’s okay!

All that’s left to do now is celebrate! All of Oz turns out to the art deco splendor of the restored palace to watch their conquering heroes parade through the city. And I do mean all of Oz. Everyone in this crowd is a character from the books. Eagle-eyed book fans can spot Glinda the Good, the Shaggy Man, H.M Wogglebug, T.E., General Jinjur, Polychrome, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, and the Frogman, among many, many others. It’s like a Where’s Waldo of deep cuts, many of whom are in elaborate costumes and makeup that had to take hours for a second or two of screentime. It’s a love letter to Baum and it’s delightful. And everyone’s happy, even the Wheelers, now free from their servitude to the Nome King much like the Winkie Guards from the Witch of the West. The only sour face anywhere is Mombi, still in the cage being mocked by the crowd.

When Team Good Guys arrives to the stage, the whole crowd begs Dorothy to stay and be the Queen of Oz. She loves them all, but she can’t stay and rule. She has to go home to Kansas. And girl, I have to ask… why? In the 1939 one and the books, I got that she loved her family and there’s no place like home and all. But here they tried to have your brain zapped away. Oz is clearly the better option. Dorothy wishes she didn’t have to choose and the ruby slippers start to glow. Apparently you don’t even need to wish anymore. The answer to Dorothy’s dilemma appears in the mirror: the blonde girl from the hospital, now dressed in a beautiful green gown fit for a princess. She introduces herself as Ozma, but as Dorothy helps her out of the mirror, Jack recognizes her as his mom!

The young women who used to be Mombi’s heads drop a whole bunch of exposition with five minutes until the end. Ozma’s father was King of Oz before being deposed by the Wizard, leaving his daughter to be raised as Mombi’s servant. When the Nome King took over, he gave Mombi her head-swapping powers in exchange for trapping Ozma in a mirror so he could rule unopposed. But now that she’s free, Princess Ozma i the one true Queen of Oz. Ozma confronts Mombi and gives her the worst punishment of all: forgiveness. Besides, Dorothy somehow stripped her of her magic so she’s no threat to anyone anymore. Dorothy gives the slippers to their rightful owner and asks to go home. Ozma is happy to oblige on the condition that she gets to watch over Dorothy. And since that means Dorothy can visit anytime she asks, why not? She clicks her heels, and Dorothy says her goodbyes to everyone including Billina who recognizes that Kansas is a hellscape. And in a flash of white light, Oz disappears.

Murch makes a fantastic directing choice with the transition back from Kansas. According to Wikipedia, which never lies, Fairuza Balk is named after her bright green eyes (Fairuza means turquoise in Persian), and green is the color of Oz. So we fade out of Oz and into Kansas through one of those eyes. Way to use what you’ve got. Toto snuffles out of the bushes and races towards her. Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and their search party hear her calling for him and run to embrace her. Wrapping her in a shock blanket, Aunt Em fills her in on everything that’s happened. Lightning struck the hospital, and Dr. Worley was killed in the ensuing fire. As that sinks in, a paddy wagon rattles by, carrying Nurse Wilson, whose piercing eyes follow Dorothy down the road. Shouldn’t have kept lobotomized patients in the basement.

Everyone returns to the fun and excitement of a farm in Dust Bowl-era Kansas. Uncle Henry’s leg has miraculously fixed itself and he’s back to work putting the finishing touches on the new house. Dorothy gets ready for a new day in her very own bedroom. To her surprise, she sees a face in the mirror: Ozma, watching over her as promised with Billina in her arms. Excited, Dorothy calls out for Aunt Em to see once and for all that Oz is real. But Ozma puts her fingers to her lips. Oz has to be their little secret. Dorothy nods with the understanding that, if she needs her, for any reason at all, she’ll call. As she turns the mirror away, Aunt Em arrives and smiles to see Dorothy happy at last. She sends Dorothy outside to play, and we leave her there, chasing Toto in the bright sunshine. At least until her next adventure.

Holy. God. Ya’ll. Given my adoration of this particular subgenre of bizarre 80s kids’ movies full of puppets, glitter, and terror, but I loved this movie. It’s like Labyrinth on crack and if I haven’t mentioned it in the past thirty seconds, I adore Labyrinth. The plot is all over the place but no one really comes to this kind of movie for the plot, you come for the effects. And the effects are incredible. CGI just can’t do what puppets and animatronics can to make the fantastical come to life. It feels real because it is real, and that makes the story so much more impactful. Yes, that makes certain scenes absolutely terrifying, but as Don Bluth once said, kids can handle just about anything as long as there’s a happy ending. Besides, any plot weakness is more Baum than Disney. It’s a very faithful adaptation of the third Oz book with Jack and the Gump added from the second, complete with all the unsettling weirdness played completely matter-of-fact that is conspicuously absent from most Oz adaptations.

Even the elements that Murch borrowed from the 1939 film because audiences would have expected it are given a more sinister Baum twist. The best example is the way everything in Kansas has a counterpart in Oz. In the 1939 one, all of Dorothy’s farmhand friends come to aid her when she needs to be rescued from the mean neighbor recontextualized in her mind as a Wicked Witch. Here, though? The only human characters reflected in Oz are the villains. The orderlies are the Wheelers, the nurse is Mombi, and the doctor is the Nome King. And where does she find solace? The electroshock machine with the face. The deer head on the wall. The pumpkin the little girl gives her. Murch goes out of his way to make it ambiguous whether this is a dream like the 1939 movie or whether it’s real, and if this is all in Dorothy’s subconscious… yikes. Poor kid. It’s a level of darkness that gives you a lot to chew on, and ya’ll know by now I love a dark movie with substance.

CHARACTERS

Dorothy Gale has been through some stuff. This is not Judy Garland’s wide-eyed ingenue. This Dorothy has been through the Dust Bowl, been kidnapped by flying monkeys, menaced by a witch, and been manipulated into killing two people. She has a haunted look in her eye from the very start and a tactical mind that’s wise beyond her years by necessity. She’s not a creepy child, exactly, but there’s a sorrow and a determination to her that makes it all the more satisfying to see her succeed – and all the more tragic the few times she lets her guard down.

I was really excited when I realized I was about to watch Fairuza Balk’s first-ever movie. She was only eleven years old in Return to Oz, which is odd for a pseudo-sequel to a movie where the same character is played by a sixteen-year-old, but more appropriate to the ten-year-old Dorothy from the books. And she’s wonderful in this – there’s a sense of gravitas to her performance that stands up with the seasoned actors she’s acting with. And that’s when she’s acting with humans at all! Most of her screen time is spent pretending puppets and animatronics are real creatures, and she sells that beautifully. Fairuza was only allowed to work about three hours a day due to child labor laws, which contributed to the severe filming delays because she’s in about 98% of the movie. To protect her privacy, no one was allowed to use her for interviews or promotional material, which I 100% support because so many child actors in this era didn’t get the same treatment.

Sidebar, I tried so, so hard to work in a “We are the weirdos, mister” reference somewhere in this review, and it just didn’t work out. It pained me because I love The Craft. So much. Especially Fairuza’s character Nancy. We stan a goth icon in this house. And if I had a nickel for every time that Fairuza’s character was put in a mental institution in a film involving witches, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Billina might not be a perfect replacement for the iconic Toto, but I enjoyed her presence anyway. She’s got a snarky comment for every situation, which offers some much-needed levity in a very dark movie without going overboard. Forty live chickens were on set during filming, each trained for a special skill like perch, run, sit, and carry. And for anything that a real chicken couldn’t do, like talking, they used an animatronic. The animatronic was made with an elastic and wool blend covered in real chicken feathers. They often couldn’t find it among all the real chickens because it was so uncannily realistic. While this movie is not a Jim Henson production, several frequent Henson collaborators helped ensure that all of the puppets, including Billina, were absolutely realistic. This includes her puppeteer, Mark Wilson, and her voice actress Denise Bryer. And once you realize Billina is the Junk Lady from Labyrinth, all you can hear is “There’s your panda slippers!” for the whole movie. Trust me.

Tik-Tok is a triumph of practical effects. Like, I understand why they don’t make them like this anymore, because his body performer Michael Sundin twisted upside down and backwards inside his body to make him walk with his hands and that’s insane. But the effect is a marvel. The arc of a lifeless, emotionless metal man learning to connect to his emotions through his connection with Dorothy is a blatant rehash of the Tin Woodsman, but Tik-Tok is so cool and so comically straight-laced that it works. He’s voiced by Sean Barrett, another Henson collaborator who played minor roles in both Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. If you want to be mainstream about it, he also voiced Admiral Akbar in the Star Wars trilogy.

Jack Pumpkinhead is another beautiful piece of costuming/puppetry who is also an sweet adorable baby who can call me Mom any time he wants. It should be creepy because he’s a man-shaped being projecting mommy issues on a ten-year-old girl, but he’s just so innocent and well-meaning it melts my heart. I love him. He’s precious. And here’s the biggest Jim Henson collaboration of all. He’s voiced and puppeteered by none other than Brian Henson himself, Jim’s son, in his first major position in his father’s company (though he did some puppeteering in some of the earlier Muppet films). He’s more of a director and producer in the later Muppet productions, including Treasure Island and Christmas Carol, which we’ll be covering later on this very blog. And, because my head will literally explode if I don’t talk about Labyrinth, he also voiced Hoghead Higgle Hoggle. And to top it off, he inspired a young Tim Burton to design another tall skinny pumpkin-themed puppet named Jack: Jack Skellington!

The Gump probably doesn’t need to be here once they get out of Mombi’s tower, but I’d miss him if he were gone. He has a dry, nonchalant sense of humor that had me rolling more than once. He’s like Eeyore with antlers. “This life is stranger than my last one” broke me. He’s fully animatronic, which looks incredibly impressive considering how emotive this thing is. His voice actor, Lyle Conway, doesn’t have many acting credits, but he did play Reichardt in Blade. But for the most part, he’s a puppeteer and a creature designer for, you guessed it, Jim Henson. He also designed and sculpted the amazing Audrey II puppet for Little Shop of Horrors!

Princess Mombi haunts the nightmare of many a child of the 80s and early 90s, myself included. They did not have to go this hard on her but lordy, did they ever. Like I alluded to earlier, her book counterpart isn’t even a villain! Or, one of her book counterparts anyway. The witch Mombi is a recurring villain, but she’s the stereotypical old hag. The head-swapping comes from a character called Princess Langwidere, a spoiled brat who uses the heads for her own vanity but mostly comes by them through completely willing bargains on the owners’ part. The books are weird. But she’s not antagonistic unless she’s wearing one specific head. Of course, the whole idea is so unsettling that it’s hard not to go full horror with it. And they went fulllllll horror with it.

One thing I loved about this movie is that, while she’s not quite a twist villain, it takes its time revealing how monstrous she really is. This is most apparent with the voices of her different heads, like I mentioned in Story. Sophie Ward’s head (Young Sherlock Holmes) is very soft-spoken, almost sweet, and Fiona Victory’s (Dangerfield) is much sterner and harsher. Then you get to the original head, and you know you’re in trouble because she’s Queen Bavmorda from Willow. Jean Marsh just felt like an evil queen, I guess. Like with Fairuza Balk, I wanted so badly to reference “YOU’RE ALL PIGS! PIGS! PIIIIIGS!!!!” somewhere but it didn’t work out naturally. Ah well. There’s so many actors I love from other things in this there was no way I was going to make them all work. Otherwise half this review would be made up of Labyrinth references.

The Nome King could probably have stood for more development, especially with the ‘becoming-human’ thing that the movie invented, but he’s a fun villain nonetheless. He benefits from what I’m calling the Sephiroth Effect, where you don’t see him until late in the story but enough characters talk about him that it builds up a sense of dread. I love when stories do that, it’s such an effective way of building tension. It releases a little when you properly meet him and he’s very polite to the point of almost being kind, making a convincing argument for his point of view, comforting a crying Dorothy, and feeding our heroes snacks. But it’s a ruse and when the mask falls off, the end result is terrifying enough to mitigate the rather anti-climactic death by egg allergy.

In addition to the above-mentioned Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd was considered for the role of the Nome King. Much as I love both of those men as fantasy villains, Legend and Back to the Future came out the same year and as much as I loved this movie, I’m not willing to sacrifice The Lord of Darkness or Doc Brown. So I’m glad Nicole Williamson filled in. Like most of this cast, he’s no stranger to the wild world of 80’s fantasy, having played Merlin in John Boorman’s 1981 unwatchable slog Excalibur (yeah, I said it). His incredible overacting is the only entertaining thing in that movie. Fight me in the comments below.

MUSIC

David Shire’s score for Return to Oz is a brilliant piece of work. Leitmotifs are something of a rarity since the 50s, but everyone has one here. Tik-Tok has a brassy trumpet that plods along just like his unique waddling walk. Mombi has a spooky mandolin tinged with an electronic sound that shows something’s not quite right here. The Nome King is all electro-synth techno, a man-made theme for a being who’s not quite organic. There are nine in all and they‘re all wonderful. Even Oz and Kansas get their own themes, featuring rag time piano to drive home Baum’s intention of creating an American fairytale. And of course, Shire does a lot of the heavy lifting with making the tense story beats so infamously scary. Listen to Mombi’s Awake or The Headphones and tell me your heart isn’t pounding.

ARTISTRY

This broken, ransacked Oz isn’t colorful enough to pull off the iconic moment where Judy Garland walks out of the sepia farmhouse into the colorful Munchkinland. In fact, it’s just as bleak as Kansas, and that’s entirely by design. Murch wanted to film on location in Kansas and magical locations in Algeria and Italy, but Disney nixed the idea for being too expensive. So they ended up in Elstree Studios in the UK. Salisbury Plain makes a convincing substitute for a particularly depressing Kansas, all flat, featureless and dusty. Even the skies are perpetually gray, which is just as Baum wrote it while underscoring the horrors of the psychiatric hospital. Our first glimpse of Oz is a lush forest that promises color… then rips it away almost as quickly. It’s become harsh stone, just like the Nome King wanted. You don’t actually get the riot of color you’d expect from Oz until the parade at the end. David Watkin pulled off some impressive visual storytelling, but what do you expect from the guy who won an Oscar for shooting Chariots of Fire and Out of Africa?

Have I told you lately I love puppets? Because I love puppets. I love puppets and animatronics and practical effects and this whole review from the top down could have been an ode to a bygone era of filmmaking because the puppets in this are mind-blowing. Even in my beloved Labyrinth, many of the goblins bounce like they’re hunks of foam and rubber being pulled around on strings. Not so here. Everything moves naturally, like real living creatures. And the Claymation! It’s uncanny, but it’s supposed to be. The legendary Will Vinton and Craig Bartlett worked on this at the same time as the only kids’ fantasy movie of the 80s that might actually be scarier than this, The Adventures of Mark Twain. Vinton invented the process of Claymation, a version of stop-motion that used sculpted clay instead of the usual fully-formed puppets. He went on to create his own studio, which after years of turmoil with only the one theatrical film to show for it, became known as Laika. Yes, that Laika. Coraline. ParaNorman. Box Trolls.

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

Yeah. I know. An infamous flop that only made half its budget, had its marketing buried by the Eisner era, and got ripped apart by critics actually had a presence in the Theme Parks? Well, my friends, it sure did. One of the company’s few efforts to promote the film was a float in the Main Street Electrical Parade, a large box strung with gold lights and filled with mirrors to emulate Mombi’s palace. Inside were a face character version of Dorothy holding Billina and static puppets of Tik-Tok, the Tin Man, and Jack Pumpkinhead, all of which were actual props from the film. Sadly, it wasn’t the film’s failure that resulted in the removal of the float. While in the storage barn one day, the sun caught the many mirrors just the wrong way and, like a magnifying glass on an ant, caused a blaze that destroyed the whole thing.

But that’s not all! There was actually some Return to Oz representation up until this very year (2024, at the time of writing)! Disneyland Paris’s version of the Storybook Land Canal Boats featured a diorama of the Emerald City and Mombi’s Palace, sure to bring up fond magical memories of all your favorite childhood traumas. Don’t let the waving Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man on the steps fool you – your boat should head out of there while it can. But this was sadly removed in favor of the less harrowing Paradise Falls from Up, because houses should fly by balloons, not tornados.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As far as I can tell from a look at my list, this is the last live-action dark fantasy Disney made in the 80s. I’m going to miss them, because this, Dragonslayer, and Something Wicked This Way Comes are some of the most enjoyable movies I’ve seen for the blog. Objectively flawed though they may be in the writing department, the effects work and acting more than makes up for it. I’m so glad I waited to watch this until I could share my reactions with you all and I’m so, so glad I finally watched Return to Oz. It’s practically tailor-made for my specific brand of Weird Girl Energy

Favorite scene: Stealing the Powder of Life from Mombi. That’s the kind of horror that I eat up with a spoon and ask for seconds.

Favorite scene: 9/10 We’ve established that my scale is really more 1-9 than 0-10, right? Even if at least one commenter is perpetually BIG MAD about that? Whatever. I love, love, loooooved this movie. Maybe as much as the 1939 one! They’re very different, but they’re both great films.

Now, I think this was Disney’s last live action dark fantasy of the 80s, but it’s not their last dark fantasy. Before we get to the last one, we’re going to see how things are going over at the animation studio. Wait. Why is everything on fire?