Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 6 (Return To Oz)

Friends =)

This one has been literal years in the making. A friend of the blog who likes this movie has really wanted it covered in the Halloween marathon. Well, here you go. This is going to be an interesting one, considering this isn't a traditional bit of spooky media... but we'll get to that. First, a confession. Until last evening, when I saw it as research for going into this? I had never seen the original 1939 Wizard Of Oz. Yes, I know. It wasn't available to rent in my little town, it never came on TV when I was a child, it just sort of passed me by. Watching it finally, it's fine. I can see how it's a cultural touchstone and a beloved nostalgic movie for many. I'm coming to it decades too late to really really vibe with it, but it's a good movie. The nearest I can come to understanding its appeal is that it reminded me of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory, a movie that has the same childlike wondrous visuals and musical nature that I did see when I was a child and vibe with nostalgically. So, you know, to people who love it, I can get where you're coming from.

Which brings us nicely to today's subject, the 45 years-later sequel which shows Oz in ruin with all sorts of nightmare creatures running around. Whoa. So, just as I imagine I would have vibed with Wizard Of Oz if I'd seen it 30 years ago, I can see myself being scared shitless of Return To Oz 30 years ago. It seems weird and wild! What if we took a beloved wholesome musical and made it a gloomy decayed ruin with lots of fucked-up creatures? Here's where I tip my hat to the friend of the blog and Oz expert, who told me last night the original Oz books were tinged with the darker side, the fucked-up, the weird and wild, and that the movie was this safe sanitized thing the Baum estate hated. Shades of Kubrick's The Shining at work. See, I can find my way in to understand these things. I have to ask, what nightmare goblin juice were Disney drinking in 1985? Between this and The Black Cauldron, just how much were they trying to push against the family-friendly envelope?

The vibe the movie gave me, and I know this movie came later but bear with my temporal fuckery, is a more messed-up version of Labryinth. A girl goes to a weird and wild world and makes friends with a bunch of Muppets. Whereas Labyrinth has worms and goblins and David Bowie, Return To Oz has the ruined iconography of Oz, a spooky witch, and those fucking Wheelers. Jesus Christ almighty the fucking Wheelers. Seeing one pop up with the helmet face at first reached back in time and scared me shitless. Even the world itself is this hostile place; the worst Oz had in the old movie were the poppies that make you sleepy. Now there's a desert that turns you into sand if you touch the sand. Jesus. Then you've got Mombi, the spooky witch who changes heads on a whim and just has a cabinet full of severed heads to wear. To say nothing of the Nome King and the creepy-ass spying rocks. I thought they were stop-motion at first but they were actually Will Vinton claymation! Either way, it's some spooky shit. Even the friendly characters have more weird and wild designs. Jack Pumpkinhead feels like a decade-early sketch of Jack Skellington, but he is the goodest boy and I love him. You got a talking moose head (okay, gump head, but functionally identical to a moose) and a big clank clank boy. They're good friends and I love them all.

In the end, it feels like a story about healing. Not healing through fucking shock therapy, but Dorothy working out her fears and anxieties through her own special place, a special place corrupted by metaphorical aspects and allegories of her own fears and anxieties. That eventual healing takes place as Dorothy finds the friend who helped her earlier in the movie, Ozma of Oz, and sets that part of herself free by... pulling her out of a mirror. Yes. Yes! YYYYESSS! COME TO FREZNO, YOU SWEET BEAUTIFUL MIRRORING IMAGERY! We even practically end the movie on Ozma in a mirror in the real world, a Dorothy who's feeling much better and able to navigate her real world and her special place. I mean, I guess that's the read. I'm just tickled pink it added in some mirrors. Anyway, this is a good movie. Would have fucked me up if I were a kid, but watching it now? It's pretty neat. I don't know what I'm doing next, so we'll leave it at that and see what's up next time.