Good day boys, girls, etc.
This week we’ll talk about a film that many of you have probably known well since their childhood, but that’s completely new to me: Return to Oz.
The film poster
Technical details:
Director: Walter Murch
Writer: Walter Murch, Gill Dennis, L. Frank Baum (story)
Production: Walt Disney Pictures and a lot of other companies I don’t know
Cast: Fairuza Balk, Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh, Piper Laurie, etc.
113 mins, colour
(Return to Oz on IMDb)
IMDb rating: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes rating: 55%
Polenta’s rating: 3 boxes of crayons and a ton of clay
Plot:
Since Dorothy has come back from Oz, she can’t sleep and goes on talking about things that sound to her aunt and uncle as pure gibberish, so they send her to the psychiatric hospital for an electroshock treatment (nice, uh?).
Luckily, a mysterious girl helps her to escape and Dorothy finds herself -and Billina, one of the farm’s hens- back to Oz.
There, she’ll have to face the terrible claymation-made Nome King to make the destroyed Oz rise and shine again.
Dorothy scolds poor Billina for the drop in the eggs production.
Polenta’s comment:
I’m pretty much a fan of these 80s’ fantasy films with puppets and plenty of badly used green screen. Come on, those of us in their twenties (or more like thirties, maybe) have grown up with those movies, how couldn’t we love them!
And I have to say, watching this particular one not as a child but as an adult, I’ve found it entertaining, interesting and also pretty well done comparing to others.
Some parts are really creepy.
At the beginning, when the poor girl is about to be electroshocked, I was actually pretty nervous. And do I have to mention the princess who changes her heads more often than she changes her clothes?
By the way, her dress was astounding. It reminded me of the wonderful costumes by Eiko Ishioka.
I want that gown so bad, guys.
It’s a real mind trip, this film, I assure you.
I should read the books it was adapted from because, apparently, they decided to stick to the original story instead of doing a real proper sequel to the 1939 movie.
I wonder how the wheelers are described in the books. When they appeared at first I was pleasantly shocked. I mean, you see something like this:
A nice close-up of a wheeler.
…and you think ‘Wow, cool monster! So kitsch and scary!’ but then they turn up to be regular guys with masks on their heads, a Warriors-style street gang with Boy George’s make-up, and that’s a bit disappointing.
‘Dooorothyyy, come out to play-i-ay.’
I loved the rutty Yellow Bricks Road and the post-apocalyptic Emerald City, they were so dark! And the Deadly Desert, too.
Creepy, but in a silly way, was the poor frankenstein-moose, whose new body is made with sofas and palm leaves.
Sadly, Dorothy’s old friends appear for a short time around the end, but the new ones are equally cute and crazy, and the supercool Billina is a valid Toto substitute.
From left to right: Jack Pumpkinhead, the Scarecrow, Dorothy, the formerly dead Moose (with Billina on its head) and Tik-Tok, which is sooo British.
There are lots of fun facts about this film, so I suggest you have a peek at the Trivia section on its IMDb page.
I’m just going to quote the first one: ‘A gymnast, Michael Sundin, stood upside-down (with legs bent) and backwards inside Tik-Tok’s body to move the legs.’
What?! I actually asked myself, while watching the film, how did they manage to make a big copper ball walk, but I would’ve never imagined they put a poor guy upside-down in it!
Did you watch this movie as a child? Did you watch it as an adult?
What do you think about it?
If you want to share your opinion, feel free to leave a reply!
Thanks for reading, see you next week!
[Click here for the incredibly old-fashioned trailer]
The Paranoid Celluloid 