With a title like Return to Oz, one might expect it to be a sequel to the 1939 MGM musical film, which was at the time the most well-known adaptation of the L. Frank Baum book series. While Return to Oz is closer to the original source material, the film would probably end up frightening to terrifying younger viewers while boring older ones.
Young Dorothy Gale (Fairuza Balk) is still going on about the land of Oz six months after her return. Her insistence on the reality of Oz bothers her depressed Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) and slightly less depressed Auntie Em (Piper Laurie). The natural solution is to take their niece to a hospital for electroshock therapy. The seemingly kind Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson) and seemingly less kind Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh) are stopped from sending electricity up through Dorothy due to a thunderstorm. Escaping with another girl, Dorothy flows down a river where she eventually finds herself back in Oz.
Accompanied by Billina, a talking chicken who also comes from Oz, Dorothy finds a devastated, ruined Emerald City where creatures called Wheelers are flowing and terrorizing whomever comes in. They discover both the Tin Man and Lion have been turned to stone. Dorothy and Billina also encounter Tik-Tok, a metal soldier of Oz who gets literally wound up to provide protection. Now they must search for Princess Mombi, who know where the Scarecrow (who is King of Oz) is. Once they find Mombi (Marsh in a dual role), Dorothy finds that Mombi is anything but benevolent. She imprisons them and longs to add Dorothy's head to her collection of heads that she changes like they were gowns.
There, Dorothy and her friends meet a new creature, Jack Pumpkinhead, who is a large stick with a pumpkin for a head and calls Dorothy "Mom". They create a new creature to escape and cross the Deadly Desert to find the Nome King (Williamson in a dual role). The evil Nome King has imprisoned the Scarecrow and conquered Oz thanks in part to Dorothy's ruby slippers. He offers each of them a chance to find Scarecrow among the various object d'art that the Nome King has, giving each three guesses. If they fail, they are turned into objects themselves? Will Dorothy succeed in finding her friends and defeat the Nome King and his ally Princess Mombi? Will she return to Kansas? Will the rightful rule of Oz return?
Return to Oz is in a curious position. It technically is closer to L. Frank Baum's writings, particularly The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, which are the two books that follow the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Such characters like Tik-Tok, the Gump (the oddly configured flying creature they manufactured in a hurry), and Jack Pumpkinhead all are true to Baum's oeuvre. As such, Return to Oz is faithful to the source material.
However, it is almost certain that there are more people familiar with the 1939 film than with any of the Oz books, which is why the film opted, at a great cost, to include the ruby slippers versus the book's original silver slippers. As such, Return to Oz wants to tie itself to The Wizard of Oz. The end result is a very confused and confusing affair, where the characters audiences have known and loved are pretty much not there and their replacements run from the curious to the downright frightening. Yes, the Gump is as described in The Marvelous Land of Oz. That does not mean that the end result is not a bit jolting when visualized.
That is to say nothing of Princess Mombi. Again, screenwriters Gill Dennis and Walter Mursh (who directed the film) are correct that Mombi replacing her head with a variety of others is part of Baum's Oz mythos. However, the end result would frighten children, with the group of them screaming when Dorothy steals the Powder of Life being particularly terrifying.
For those defending Return to Oz as closer to the spirit of Baum's original stories, there can be no justifying the decision to start the film with Dorothy getting electroshock treatments. What child wants to see their heroine tied to a bed and about to get electrocuted? True, she ultimately was not shown to get electricity forced into her body, but that was more due to the electrical storm than anything else. Return to Oz is a wild miscalculation: attempting to be true to the source material while also trying to echo Oz's most famous adaptation. The balance does not hold and ultimately collapses.
There is no sense of joy or wonder, no charm or innocence in Return to Oz. In many ways, it is a horror film. The creatures are scary. The situations are scary. The arrival of Princess Ozma is not strictly terrifying, but a bit forced. Even here though, there is a good element, which is the Nome King. Yes, he too is frightening, though that was the intent.
Rather, it is in his creation and the work of some of his minions where Return to Oz does set high standards. The visual effects, which were Oscar nominated, are excellent and hold up remarkably well nearly forty years after its release. The makeup work on Williamson in his role as the Nome King is also quite effective to where you wonder if he actually is in there.
The performances are not terrible. Williamson and Marsh are good as the malevolent doctor and nurse as well as mad wizard and his loyal usurper. Laurie and Clark did well as Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Balk, making her film debut, did her best to make Dorothy an innocent who is forced to do what she must. It was not Balk's fault that she had to carry Billinda around to where one wondered if the chicken could move.
However, the few good qualities in Return to Oz cannot mask how in so many other ways, the film fails. There is no sense of magic in the film, but a sense of oppression bordering on misery. The sets do not bring a sense of wonder to Oz but look like large sets, though to be fair Princess Mombi's palace is quite lavish. However, in terms of enjoyment, Return to Oz is a sad disappointment. "I have always valued my lifelessness," Tik-Tok observes. I figure many feel this same way, but they don't decide to put a kid-friendly film to cure their insomnia.
The Wizard of Oz Retrospective: An Introduction
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The Wizard of Oz Retrospective: The Conclusions
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