Here's a review I wrote some time ago, way back in The House if I remember right. Enjoy:
So, a friend of mine innocently gave me a DVD copy of ‘Return to Oz’.
What he didn’t know, and what I was quick to inform him, was that this film freaked me out something chronic when I was small.
Was it the terrifying Wheelers? The emotionless, creepy Jack Pumpkinhead ? The strange, self-defeating Infantrybot? The hideous, doomed to life in about 6 separated parts, furniture creature? The cross-dressing giant rock king? The giant world-eating turd with a deadly reaction to eggs? Or the strange, nearly-insane, emotionless reactions of our main protagonist?
Who knows if there really is one key cause, there is so much creepy going on in this film it is difficult to separate it out, so let me just simplify by saying: THIS FILM IS FUCKING FUCKED!
So, for the first time in many years I watch this dreadful bugbear from my childhood, and see if it will still terrify and disturb me.
Watch along with me if you can...
First off I put it in my DVD player and the language selection screen is already making me uneasy as the dead, frozen creepy visage of pumpkin head looms at me next to the language menu
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]*Shiver*
Then I get reminded that this exercise in mental trauma is a Disney production. There’s loads of Disney apologists on my film course, you know who you are, who have some explaingin to do with regards to this film.
I select ‘Play Movie’ and descend into hell itself.
Eerie green text illuminates the words Walt Disney, before providing me with the film’s title. All to the accompaniment of a Hitchcock flavoured spooky soundtrack.
We enter, backwards, through the window of a wooden house, like some form of arse-first stalker.
A young girl with hypoglycaemic eyes stares forlornly out the window. I get the impression the girl is locked in the attic.
The window is framed by an empty mirror frame, this is done to completely fuck up your idea of perception and reality. This film will do that to you a lot.
A woman looking disturbingly like Carrie’s mom glares evilly into the room, spying on the girl. The girl sees her and a conversation occurs that seems to inform us that Dorothy is suffering from some form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder following the whole incident with the tornado. So much for the magical mythical fantasy land, turns out Dorothy became brain damaged at the start of the first film, while we followed along through her trauma-induced hallucination.
What quickly becomes apparent here is that this film is only flimsily connected to the first film. It states that it bases itself off the book, which I haven’t read, but which a friend informs me did not include Electro-Shock Therapy. We’ll get to that later. I wonder if Disney actually set out to bury MGM’s flagship film by tainting it with a sequel no one wants to talk about.
In the original, Dorothy’s fantastic adventures leave her unsure to whether she experienced a dream or not. Interestingly, a scene covering Dorothy’s ‘disappearance’ after the tornado was cut from Return, planting its interpretation firmly in the ‘it was a dream’ camp. Especially as we learn that Aunt Em is now considering radical psychotherapy to help Dorothy get over her ‘daydreams’.
Is this insinuating that Dorothy is mentally ill right from the outset of the original? Indeed, she is portrayed as a difficult child with her head in the clouds, while her ‘hallucinations’ have the habit of including her friends and aids as good guys, while those who threaten her suddenly become witches and monsters.
Dorothy escapes her attic confinement, spends a great deal of time winging at a chicken before finding some material ‘proof’ of her paranoid fantasy. Naturally, her aunt tries to discourage the fantasy for Dorothy’s own mental health. Evidently, dirt farming moms in the middle of nowhere have an instinctive grasp of psychology.
The film then gets us to go all “Awwww! Lokitdawiddledwaggie!”, before removing the beloved Toto entirely from the film, condemning him into nonexistence right up until the end. Toto, as it turns out, is replaced in this film by a sardonic talking chicken. This is not an adequate tradeoff! OK, Toto spent the largest part of the first film inside Dorothy’s handbasket, but hell, we still loved him when he did poke his little fuzzy head out!
We sit in on Dorothy’s therapy session. Things get more and more worrying.
- Quote :
- Dorothy (On a couch in the psychologist’s office): “The Tin Man used to be flesh, like everybody else, but then he cut off his leg.”
WHAT? WHY?
And when? I don’t remember that being in the first film! When the fuck did Judy Garland sing about that?
No wonder the poor girl is kept in the attic.
Despite the doctor pointing out, and trying to make light of, the creepy fucking face on the EST machine, he fails to take the attention away from the fact that he is about to administer electric shocks to little Dorothy, while Aunt Em looks on with little more than morbid curiosity.
- Quote :
- Doctor (Pointing to a ‘mouth-like’ dial on the front of the EST machine) : “And what is this, Dorothy? Why! It’s... His tongue! Hahaha!”
Dorothy (With a look of sheer terror on her face): “Will it hurt?”
Dorothy is placed in a mental institute. One with sticky fingers, apparently, they stole a ‘Kansas’ county sign and have it displayed in their lobby.
A creepy child that makes me think of every child ever in a Stephen King film, (That combination of believably realistic and worryingly terrifying.) arrives and presents Dorothy with a creepy pumpkin head.
Whether it’s the colours, the music or the distorted walls and overlenghty corridors, just about everything in this film is just overly horrific in just about every aspect. Right now Dorothy sits alone in her stark room, furnished with only a chair, desk, broken vanity mirror and a bed. The only adornment to the room, and the only source of colour is the freaky jack-o-lantern. Dorothy stares at it while attempting to endure a terrifying thunderstorm.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Look at that picture, and tell me that this isn't child abuse!
The film seems to turn into the Shining for a few moments.
The social hierarchy in the house is ascertained with a thunderclap as the world’s most evil woman tempts Dorothy with a lie about a ride outside before strapping her to a bed, wheeling her into a room and attempting to fucking electrocute her!
Thankfully God himself steps in and saves Dorothy ( and us) from enduring it. Instead, Dorothy is left in a dark room, strapped to a bed while patients all over the nuthouse scream in pain, fear and rage.
I think this is the point where Dorothy goes irredeemably mad.
The ghost girl rescues her and they run outside. It all goes to shit and Dorothy gets washed out to sea in a chicken basket.
The chicken is pissed off at this and lets Dorothy know by trying to lay an egg in her face.
- Quote :
- Dorothy: “Billina!”
Billina (The talking chicken!) “Who Else?”
Dorothy: “What are you doing here?”
Why is her first question “What are you doing here?” and not something along the lines of: “Holy shit, you can talk! You’re a talking chicken!”.
There is a discussion on pond dynamics before our location is revealed. Apparently Oz has migrated to a particularly cheap old Star Trek episode. I was seriously expecting a Gorn. It would have been a welcome alternate to what does become.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Dorothy’s paranoia deepens as she begins to arbitrarily make up rules that her fantasy world then obeys. It’s as good as any reason for a game of ‘Jump the rocks’.
One rock has a face. It disappears. ‘Faces in places’ seems to be a theme. No doubt a reference to the mental trauma inflicted by the horrific EST machine.
Dorothy picks some red painted tin buckets off a polystyrene tree before removing a paper-wrapped ham sandwich. I DON’T KNOW! I wonder why they didn’t just leave the angry trees in from the first film in. Those were scary!
Rock face reports to his master.
- Quote :
- Face: “But she has... A chicken.”
Devil-Voice off screen monster: “A CHICKEN?!?”
Dorothy’s psychological trauma seems to be causing her to re-live past traumatic events. Seems like Oz has all gone to crap. Perhaps her psychological counselling is having an effect, and the Oz delirium is slowly disintegrating around her. Perhaps Dorothy can escape from insanity after all!
The Emerald City looks shit. I mean, it’s all broken up and all that, but it looks shit too. In it Dorothy discovers the petrified stone corpses of her one-time travelling companions.
Dorothy is told to ‘Beware the Wheelers’. So should we, as the horrific representations into Dorothy’s insane world of the hospital stretchers soon ambush our heroine in a horrifically gang-rapeish situation.
Oz has Panic Rooms, however, into which Dorothy escapes. We learn that Dorothy is, in fact, guilty of the crimes of stealing bucket fruit and owning a chicken without a licence. Turns out the very punk-like gangers were just representatives of the law after all. Take that character alignment assumptions!
Dorothy then decides that it’s a good idea to activate a thousand-year-old fully automated military weapon. Lesson one when Dealing with Artificial Intelligence: don’t wind the crank labelled ‘Think’ before asking yourself:
- Quote :
- “I wonder what he’s thinking?”.
The robot, Tic-Toc, relates a tale of mechanical/emotional woe worthy of a Harlan Ellison tale.
- Quote :
- “I called for help until my voice ran down. Then I paced back and forth until my action ran down. Then I stood and thought until my thought ran down.”
And it’s all Dorothy’s fault for not coming back/indulging her paranoid fantasies! It’s trying to guilt trip her back into madness! No! Dorothy! Don’t give in!
Dorothy is escorted by the Clockwork WMD, she has a right to be scared.
The robot remains immobile while all the bad guys run blindly at him. Because of this small blunder in the wheelers otherwise flawless attack plan Tic-Tok is able to take them all out by spinning... and being metal.
Soon we arrive in the set I remember from the wedding scene in Flash Gordon.
Women are not to be trusted. So far, Dorothy has been taken to a pretty radical doctor by her Aunt Em and lied to by the nurse. It may be a little early for applying pattern analysis, but when the next woman we meet is a woman who can take her freaking head off the odds don’t look good that’s she’ll buck the system.
Sure enough, woman turns out to be psychotic; Dorothy’s thrown back into another attic, and immediately begins imagining the next place she’s going to escape into.
Oh dear God, here it comes. The Uncanny Valley releases one of its most horrific inhabitants:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] - Quote :
- Jack Pumkinhead: “Mom?”
That hollow soulless voice calling out that word would haunt both my dreams and waking hours for years.
Even Dorothy looks at it in pure terror on occasion. With it’s black eyes, freakish grin, disconcerting stance, uncanny gait, abyssal voice and clawed skeleton hands Jack Pumkinhead is one of the most horrific and terrifying creatures ever on screen. The fact that it relentlessly refers to Dorothy as ‘Mom’ does nothing to assuage its inherent creepiness.
For those watching, by pure chance, the same DVD copy as me, pause on Chapter 5 at about 00:49:26 for one of the most evil grins ever filmed.
And then pure terror envelops us all as Dorothy creeps down a corridor lined with dismembered head, while a decapitated body sleeps in a bed.
Oh, look at that! Mombi keeps her trash-hooker-head in the medicine cabernet.
... and oh Jesus! The headless body got up and is running down the hall and all the heads are screaming and Jesus, God above the music! Agh!
Dorothy then brings into creation a horrific creature assembled by pushing furniture together and cursing it with self awareness. The poor thing is remarkably psychologically stable, or else utterly broken, as he immediately accepts both his horrific creation and situation, and morbidly confirms that he may not last that long. That’s fine, Dorothy only needs him to escape.
Is this a reason to curse a collection of inanimate objects with sentience? Couldn’t she have made a rope out of bedsheets or something? Instead, she brings into being a monster who’s psychology and outlook on the world must be completely broken and irrevocably insane.
While sitting next to a particularly diligent fog machine, Dorothy and her hideous crew of three artificially intelligent, self aware automatons and one snarky Rhode Island Red pretend to be flying through the air.
I choose to believe that the poor, horrifically created flying couch creature was sabotaged by the soulless, evil Jack Pumpkinhead. Because in the ensuing clusterfuck, he seems doggedly determined to throw himself over, along with as many others as possible.
Not to mention Dorothy’s morbid acceptance of her face, as Jack attempts to apologise for his suicidal and homicidal actions, Dorothy, approaching terminal velocity, calls back:
- Quote :
- “It’s OK! It can’t be helped!”
Sympathy for the poor disembodied head creature kept me awake for months. In keeping with his rather gallows outlook on life, however, he seems to accept his fate as subservient to Dorothy and her crew.
They have a conversation with a mountain. The whole thing seems to bring to my mind the conversation with the Architect in the Matrix.
The whole world opens up and Dorothy is swallowed by the earth. Her psychosis gains a stronger and stronger grip as eerie lights and an echoing gravelly god-voice attempts to imprint new philosophies in Dorothy’s fragile brain.
And then we get... OH DEAR GOD THE SCARECROW!
Worse than the time you first see the shark in Jaws, I swear. The Scarecrow looks like an unholy amalgamation of The Burger King and Leatherface.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]+=Dorothy shoves her face in the bearded, old-man looking Nome King’s lap, and the Nome King lets Dorothy look at his shinies. He’ll give her a special present, but only if she plays his game.
The sofa creature has to play the game first.
At what point did Dorothy figure out that the Nome King was trying to kill her? Was it when he offered her freedom only when she successfully completed a game which was only slightly less fair than ‘Find the needle in the haystack, you’ve got 30 seconds.’ Or the bit when he tried to get her to eat limestone and drink hot melted silver?
The Pumpkinhead thing has to go next, and through a goatsie-door no less.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, the Nome King’s ‘Game’ requires it’s player, or ‘chump’, to walk into a room, filled to the freaking rafters with ornaments. One of them represents the nightmarish scarecrow. Each person has three guesses. They have to touch the correct ornament, say “Oz.” And if they choose right, the scarecrow is inflicted back on the world. If they choose wrong, they turn into an ornament, and marginally improve the odds of the next person to enter.
When the Nome King and Dorothy are alone together, the Nome King shows off his Fabulous shoes. I guess, in this fashion the Nome King is female, which explains his evil betrayal. Women are evil in Oz, don’t forget.
The Nome King attempts to give Dorothy release from her psychosis, unfortunately, she chooses the red pill. Dumbass.
When the evil headswapping Mombi arrives at the gravelly pedo’s house, the fact that the Nome king is only part woman means ‘he’ can have dominance over the other women. So her gets her to crawl on the floor like the worm she is.
Dorothy cracks the Nome King’s Code. Nome King gets angry at Mombi, and demonstrates that the scriptwriter may just have been a D&D Fan. After having the Nome King roar out “Petrified Polymorphs!” , he drops a Forcecage on Mombi before using Meld into Stone. Hell, with a big beard, wizarding robes, creepy demeanour around young girls and eversmoking pipe, the Nome King looks more than a little Elminsterish.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Elminster, Archmage of Shadowdale.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] The Nome King.
Everything goes to hell and soon a giant turd is threatening to engulf the world. The Turd delivers a short Hannibal Lecture, very much in the style of Pinhead if you ask me, before going the classic Freudian vore-istic route.
The giant turd threatens to eat everyone.
And, like a weird, philosophical point. The chickens life-giving egg serves as antithesis to the Nome king’s metaphorical unbirthing consumption.
Dorothy uses the shoes to Unlimited Wish everyone into a field while restoring Oz to its former glory. Thus re-solidifying her psychosis, and dooming her to the rest of her life trapped in a fantasy world.
Tic-Tok gets blinged up, C3P0-Style. The less said about Tin Man and Cowardly Lion the Better...
Then a Deus Ex Machina from the back row ensures that all is right and everything has been sufficiently retconned.
Dorothy appears to battle with her mind, however, as she tries to break out once more, rejecting the imposed fantasy. She develops Chronic Dissociative Disorder. Splitting her personality in two, and allowing herself to coexist in both worlds.
Dorothy lies though her teeth as she proclaims her love for the horror show before her.
Then, we wake up back in the real world. Hurrah! It was all due to a head injury! But Dorothy is still plagued by hallucinations. Poor girl will be institutionalised for life.
However, it’ll have to be a different institution! Thank goodness! The nuthouse was struck by lightning and burned to the ground while Dorothy was 'out'. The electronically enthusiastic doctor burned to death and his assistant was arrested. For what, we don’t know. So far as we know nothing has been done without proper procedure, the film would have made us aware if something shady was going on, right?
Dorothy sees her alternate self in the mirror, confirming that she’ll have to live with the trauma and hallucinations for the rest of her life. The end.
Dear God above, I just can’t take it. Granted I was’nt as mortally terrified this time around, but still the overall hideousnessness, allusions to mental illness, creepy metaphorical analogies, unrelenting depressing colourscheme and vile Todd McFarlane style creatures are still as vile as ever.
I said it before and I’ll say it again: THIS FILM IS FUCKING FUCKED.
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