Return to Oz

Now, I saw this movie in the theatre back in the day. I would’ve been nine at the time. We weren’t going to movies a lot. For some reason, I remember this as being on a double feature with D.A.R.Y.L, but I could be wrong. Obviously it was a long time ago. But unlike a lot of people my age, this movie didn’t scare me or scar me. You see, I’d already read the books. My interest in Oz has never been strongest for The Wizard of Oz, book or movie. For movies, give me this one any time.

Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) is six months home from Oz. She isn’t sleeping. She can’t stop thinking about it. She can’t stop talking about it, and no one believes it was real. Aunt Em (Piper Laurie), in despair, arranges for Dorothy to go to the clinic of Dr. Worley (Nicol Williamson). Since this is 1899, and since Dr. Worley specializes in electricity, I don’t think I have to draw you a map to tell you what’s going to happen to Dorothy. However, just before she begins her treatment, there is a storm that cuts the power. A mysterious girl (Emma Ridley) helps Dorothy escape. They fall into the river, where they clamber onto a floating chicken coop and are carried away.

Dorothy awakens in a pond at the edge of the Deadly Desert alongside a chicken from the farm, Billina (Denise Bryer). Dorothy recognizes almost immediately where she is, mostly because Billina is talking. However, Oz is now a desolate waste. The Yellow Brick Road is torn up. The population of Oz has been turned to stone. All that is left now is the horrifying Wheelers and Princess Mombi (Jean Marsh), and there are whisperings that the Scarecrow (Justin Case) is being held by the Nome King (Williamson again).

Famously, this book is a combination of The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. There are, however, also elements of Prince Caspian, which isn’t even an Oz book. Dorothy’s wandering the ruins of the Emerald City definitely has the feel of the ruins of Cair Paravel as seen by the Pevensie children. Made so much the worse by the fact that she’s alone but for Billina and then Tik-Tok (Sean Barrett), one of whom has no frame of reference and the other of whom very firmly has no emotions. Dorothy really needs a hug, frankly, and there’s no one there to give her one.

Is this a good adaptation of the books? Well, it’s a better one than the 1939. They paid MGM an exorbitant amount to license the ruby slippers, because that’s what people expect. And the doctor’s the Nome King and the head nurse is Mombi, because sure. But for one thing, Oz is real. This is, if you want to know, the thing I hate most about the 1939. (The slippers are actually second.) There is dark strangeness to it, which is perhaps darker than the books, but the books are darker than people think they are. They’re definitely stranger.

Actually, the thing that bothered me most about the movie is having really loved Ozma of Oz. Both books that this is based on deserve so much more attention; while there’s an underlying sexism in The Land of Oz, it is a book that’s populated with quite a lot of female characters, some better than others. Mombi is an interesting villain, and she deserves to be remembered for more than what was taken from Princess Langwidere of Ev from a different book entirely.

On the other hand, the Nome King is impressive. For one thing, he was created by Will Vinton. People throw around the term “Claymation” less than they used to, now that there’s more stop motion and Vinton is dead, but when I was young, the term “Claymation,” a registered trademark of Vinton, was synonymous with stop motion. This movie reminds us why; the special effects on this are exquisite. The concept that the Nome King grows more human as people who remember Oz die is unique to the movie, but it’s executed beautifully.

The production design and special effects are done very well considering how much budget-cutting was being tried by Disney. The Wheelers are very ‘80s-punk, and I understand why they terrified so many of my contemporaries. The effects of Mombi’s heads are creepier than Langwidere’s in the book, but the special effects of her actually changing heads are impressive. Its only Oscar nomination, for Visual Effects, lost to Cocoon, but I really have to call out the fully accurate turn of the last century horror that is the sanitarium. I believe the category we’re looking at would be Art Direction, and while I won’t say it should’ve beaten nominee Ran, I do think it’s better than winner Out of Africa.

I am, as it happens, one of those for whom the real horror of a movie like this is a turn of the last century sanitarium. There’s actual screaming in the basement at one point, and it’s said that it’s broken people for whom the treatment failed. Modern electroconvulsive therapy can bring positive results. What’s happening here is not that. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with Dorothy. In the world of this movie, Oz is real. Dorothy might as well be getting her brain zapped for describing a trip to Venice or something. It’s far away, and it’s out of reach for the people around her, but it’s absolutely real. Though I’ll admit the insomnia’s a problem.