Weirdhouse Cinema: Return to Oz

People have been telling me for years that I needed to watch this movie. Yeah, they'd figure out what like my weird taste was, and they were like, have you ever seen Return to Oz? That movie messed me up when I was a kid. You should watch it. And I never did until last night, and I am absolutely blown away. I am I in fact, I'm a little

bit sad, truly, and like not just joking around. I am a little bit sad that I did not actually see this as a child, because I know this is this is precisely the kind of movie that if I'd seen it when I was seven or whatever, I would have been thinking about it for months like it has just the right mix of of uh, you know, bizarre original imagery and character types that are not just like you know, the characters you'd find in any other fantasy

thing is you know, it's truly original, but strange combinations of ideas that still nevertheless tap into something very deep and archetypal. I think this is a wonderful, scary children's movie.

I think it's great. I never watched it growing up either, and I think part of it was just because the nineteen thirty nine adaptation of the Wizard of Oz is just such a monolith, and it's such an you know, such an influential film, but also one that so many people held close to their hearts that when this film came out, there were plenty of people are like, oh, we don't we don't want that new ODZ. We've we've got that old ODZ. It comes on television all the time,

and or we have it on VHS. Why do we need to dip into this thing that that that that some are even saying is is a little frightening. But but here's the thing. Yes, we've been hearing from people say, oh this is you know, this is a weird film. You need to watch this is this is a scary one, or this messed me up as a child. I really don't think this one is any darker or scarier than than any of the other big eighties fantasy films like Labyrinth or the never ending story stuff of that caliber.

Oh yeah, I agree. In fact, I don't think it's actually even scarier than the thirty nine Wizard of Oz, which, if you go back and watch the original Wizard of Oz, this movie gave me a new appreciation for how weird and how scary the original is. I'm serious, Like, if you, uh, you kind of accept it because it's part of the air were the Wizard of Oz is. You know, you grow up with that. It's just part of American culture,

so it doesn't seem that strange. But yeah, it also has very unusual characters and imagery and uh and there is real tense, frightening, magical peril in it. Do you remember how heart stopping that scene is when you're a kid in the witch turns the hourglass over and says Dorothy's gonna die, and the uh and the you know, the monkey soldiers are everywhere, and the tin Man's with the axe trying to chop down the door like it the original one is scary. Yeah, I always thought that

the forest was pretty terrifying. So there's plenty of plenty of weird and scary stuff, and that that thirty nine adaptation as well. And it's funny. We we were conversing before we went in here. You you've noted that I had a couple of sort of jabs at the thirty nine Wizard of Oz. And so you asked me if I if I hated the the original Wizard of Oz film, and uh, and I said no, no, And and truly I think it's it's kind of impossible to hate the thirty nine film. I mean, it's such, like I said,

it's a sin matic monolith. It's it's so influential, Like even if you're not crazy about it, it probably influenced some creators or some works that that that came in its wake, you know, like and more directly, if you didn't have the Wizard of Oz from you wouldn't have The Whiz, and of course you wouldn't have this film either.

But it's it's it's tentacles run far and long through through fiction and dream weaving that it came to follow but more to your point about h I guess how you might have heard about this movie when you were a kid. If people are saying, oh, you know, it does it doesn't live up to the original, it's not worth seeing or something. I mean, in a way, I think it's kind of silly to try to compare them,

because it's I think it's called an unofficial sequel. It is clearly a sequel to The Wizard of Oz, like the events followed directly from the first one, but it's also not not like an official, sanctioned one. And it came decades later. The original was what thirty nine and this is eight five, so what like forty six years

in between. It was a long time. And and that makes a big difference in terms of tone and uh, you know, the textures that are expected in a movie like this, Like the the original one has a kind of a kind of gilded grandeur of of old Hollywood about it, whereas this one feels much more. I mean, it feels like an eighties movie, but a lovely, scrappy, imaginative one. Yeah. Yeah, And it's a it is it is a world in which the Emerald City is literally

in ruins, so there's probably a lot to say. They're about, like the state of of of of the the eighties mindset compared to the late thirties mindset. I don't know, at least in terms of like cinematic portrayals, but um yeah. It is impossible though, to go into this and not think of the thirty nine film sometimes unfairly. So's why I actually watched this with my my whole family. We sat down and watched it, and my son he really enjoyed this one. He he enjoyed the old one, but

he was bringing up some things. He's like, well, why is Dorothy younger now? And all? So, why didn't Toto talk in the last film? This film clearly established that animals that come to Oz can talk. Ww come Toto never talked? Uh. That's some bs brilliant observation by your son. I did not notice this myself, but yees. So the premise of this movie is that all the animals in

Oz talk uh. And this includes animals that are brought to Oz, such as one of the main characters in this movie, which is a chicken that's like a cool gnarly grandma, and the chicken talks. It didn't talk when it was in Kansas, but it comes to Oz with Dorothy talks now, so yes, you are your son is absolutely correct. Toto should have talked in the original. This is a major oversight. Now, speaking of the chicken whose

name is Billina, I have to mention the other. The other reason I really love Returned to Oz is I think it has better companions because, yes, we encounter in this film we do see tin Man again, Scarecrow, cowardly Lion, but Dorothy has basically all new companions that she goes on the advent true with here and it's and I'm going to list them here for it for us so

we can get a taste of what's to come. We have Billina, the talking chicken, and this is wonderfully accomplished via live action chicken actors and an incredible chicken puppet that is just lie years ahead of what we saw in Thrilling Bloody Sword last week. Though I do love both chickens, they are both great robotic chickens, but this one is much more convincing as a chicken. Yes, then we have TikTok, who is a rotund, wind up, mustachioed soldier made out of like bronze or brass. I was

thinking copper, but yeah, it's one of those. He's he's a metal wind up war machine. Yeah, he's a he's a steampunk soldier and he's fighting on behalf of the Emerald City and Dorothy. Oh, and then the next one we have we have the Gump, and the Gump is basically a junk gollum. It's like junk is put together a moose's head on a couch with some ferns and and whatever else they could scare. They are able to to assemble together, and then it's given life. Uh. And

you gotta love the Gump. They like shake some borax powder on it and that makes it come to life. Yeah. Oh, and then we have Jack Pumpkinhead, who is kind of a superior Halloween theme scarecrow sort of guy. Would you say that's fair? Yeah. Jack Pumpkinhead is interesting because he has the scariest form of all of Dorothy's companions, but his nature is to be incredibly innocent and sweet. So that's the crew. That's the adventuring party for this film.

But one has to wonder, Okay, wait a minute, what more adventures are there to have in oz because the last time Dorothy was an Osuh, didn't they defeat the Wicked Witch and then uh and then everything was cool and Emerald City like they had a big ceremony. Was basically to celebrate the fact that now everything's good, nothing bad. Every is going to happen again. I was trying to think back to exactly how The Wizard of Oz ended. Did it end with the Scarecrow becoming king of the

Emerald City? I don't remember if it did or not. So that's the premise of this movie, is that at the end of the last one, Scarecrow was king. That's a detail that I could see being in the original that I forgot about, but I didn't check to make sure. But either way, things are good in Oz. When when

Dorothy leaves, remember she's gonna leave on the balloon. But then the professor or another professor, I think it's the guy, the guy from like the Carnival Barker, Charlatan guy uh, and he's like, oh, he floats away on the balloon. He doesn't know how to bring it back. And then she thinks she's stranded in Oz. But then she clicks her heels together with the ruby slippers and says there's no place like home, and then she wakes up back in her bed and you were there, and you were

there and it was great. But basically the pitch here is that in the previous movie, the Previous Adventure anyway, Dorothy greatly destabilized Oz. She ends up installing her own ruler, the Scarecrow, and I get the impression the Scarecrow's rule of Oz last like maybe an afternoon before. He has then conquered by an entity known as the Nome King, and now it's time for Dorothy to come back to

Oz and fix everything once more. The villains in this movie are Sue perb just excellent, some of my new favorite movie villains of all time, Jean marsh as Mombi and Nicole Williamson as the Nome King. That they should go in the Hall of Fame of of children's movie fantasy movie villains. Yeah, they absolutely should, and it's and it makes sense because we often forget again just because how well known the thirty nine Wizard of Oz film

it was. But Margaret Hamilton's is a terrific villain in that film, playing uh miss Gulch and uh and of course the Wicked Witch of of the East. I mean, it's just a great cackling performance that you don't even think of as a performance after a while, like that's that is just the wicked witch on the screen there. Wait? Is she the East or the West? I thought she was the West? Is she the West? Who we have a good No? Wait, the East is the Eastern? Which is the one who had the house dropped on her?

Is that correct? I think that is right? Yes, I was correct, Mark Hamilton's is the West. We never see the East. You just see your socks. Both of those witches though out of the picture. Though. At one point Momby, who will get into here in a bit, is described as a witch. So I guess she's keeping the witching tradition going. Yeah. I like how she's first described I think as a princess and then later as a witch. But I guess we'll get into more detail later. Momby

is just wonderful. Um well, I guess you already sort of gave the elevator pitch, right. It's like, so Dorothy came in. She did she did a foreign intervention. She installed a puppet ruler in the form of the Scarecrow. Scarecrow has been deposed. Now Dorothy is back to Oz and it's up against the Nome King. That's right, let's go ahead and hear some trailer audio for Return to Oz this summer won't Disney Pictures presents a motion picture

fantasy adventure beyond your parished imagination. You'll be transported miraculously back to the enchanted land of Ours, that magical kingdom beloved by young and old for generations. It's just a

yellow back, no, Willina, you don't understand. This was the yellow Wick world you share with Dorothy Gale, the shock of finding everything mysteriously changed to everybody, and you'll delight with her discovery of four wonderful new friends who bend together against a wicked queen and the dreaded Nome King. This is the Ours you haven't seen before, and this is the Ours you want to visit again again. From Walt Disney Pictures becomes a whole new world of entertainment.

I don't just fly back to Kansas returned, all right? Now, Before we go any any further here, I do want to mention where you can watch this, Where you can watch it just about anywhere. It was a this is a big release. It may not have performed especially well at the box office, I understand, but yeah, you can find it in multiple different forms these days. If you subscribe to Disney Plus, at least in the United States, you can watch it there. That's where we watched it. Yeah,

I watched on Disney Plus two. All right, Well, let's get into some of the people behind this. I'm let's start at the top, and that is with director who also has a screenplay credit on this. It is Walter merch born three, highly influential Hollywood sound and film editor who worked on such pictures as th h X eight, American Graffiti, The Godfather Part two, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and I think, uh, I think those are some of

the ones where he did sound. But he also was a film editor on such films as Apocalypse Now, Ghost, Romeo Is Bleeding, The Godfather Part three, and much more. The Lucas connection is also interesting because when you look at Walter Merchants directorial credits, there are only two titles there. There's Returned Oz, which of course is what we're discussing

here today. This is only film directing credit, and and then he doesn't direct anything else, but he does pop up as a director on a two thousand and eleven episode of Star Wars the Clone Wars uh, the animated series, and I was I was immediately curious, okay, which which episode was this, because I've seen them all with my son, And it is an episode titled The General and it's a pretty great episode. It's one of the episodes in a multi episode story arc concerning the Republic's campaign on

a planet called Umbara. So it's this shadowy kind of world. They're not fighting the droids of the Separatists, they're fighting another separatist faction, and the Clones are under the ruthless leadership of one General Palm Krell, who is this forearmed basil esk Uh creature. But he's like a really just ruthless general who is ready to just sacrifice as mini Clone lives as necessary to win the day. So it was it's ultimately, I think one of the one of

the best story arcs you see in that series. And so they brought in Walter Merch to direct this one episode, so I thought that was pretty cool. Well for a mostly one and done director's filmography, this is a strong entry. Uh. I much respect to Walter Merch. I wish he had

directed more movies. Yeah. Now the screenplay credit. The main screenplay credit on this goes to Gil Dennis, who lived through writer and actor, best known for his work on the screenplays for This Without Evidence and two thousand Fives Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic. As an actor, he played Man with Cigar in nineteen seventy seven's a Racer Head. Oh yeah, I think I read somewhere that he may have been a classmate of uh David Lynch, which would make sense that if he showed up in

a razor head. All right, But of course the screenplay is based on the work of L. Frank Baum, whose novels I think in particular, this screenplays based on two novels, Ozma of Oz and The Land of Oz. Bomb lived eighteen fifty six through nineteen nineteen. Bomb was an American author best known for his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in nineteen hundred, as well as its many sequels.

And this is This was fascinating for me because I really didn't know much about the cinematic history of the Wizard of Oz pre nineteen thirty nine, but even ahead of the nineteen thirty nine film adaptation. This was already a highly successful property. It was a Broadway musical in nineteen o two. The thirty nine film, though momentous, wasn't

even the first adaptation. The first attempt was apparently in nineteen o eight with the Fairy log and radio plays, followed by at least a good half dozen silent film adapting the World of Oz. Oh Man, I've got to see the silent films and what they do with with TikTok and stuff. Yeah, they look that. I didn't get a chance to really watching them, but they look interesting. We might have to come back to some of those

in the future now. Of course, following the nineteen thirty nine classic, there's still plenty of other dips into the world of Oz. Uh. There was an ultra low budget adaptation titled The Wonderful Land of Oz in nineteen sixty nine. There were a few different animated adaptations, including a ninety

two to Hope produced Japanese adaptation. Uh. There's there's really quite a lot of Oz related media out there, including such works as the nineteen seventy five musical and subsequent film that film adaptation, The whiz U the book in Broadway musical Wicked, and then there are all sorts of literary treatments, spinoff solusions and more. Like I had to think back on it because again, thirty nine Wizard of Oz especially such a monolith, you don't even think about

the references to it. But like even Stephen King includes more than a little OZ sprinkled throughout his Dark Tower series, and yeah, they're they're. Honestly, just seems no end in sight to our fascination with Oz. Bomb wrote seventeen OZ books during his lifetime, numerous other children's and adventures books as well, But we keep making OZ related media, and

it seems like it's just gonna keep going. I've never actually read any of the OZ books, but I'm kind of tempted to check them out, because, at least with the two movies, there's so much unexpected original texture to the fantasy world created here when compared to most fantasy. Because you know, after after you've consumed a decent amount of fantasy, you see a lot of recycled elements. There's sort of, you know, the standard tropes of high fantasy that show up again and again. But but the ODZ

world is full of bizarre, unfamiliar things and beings. Yeah. And one of the things that I've always hit with when I when I have looked at you know, often just cover art and illustrations from these books, is that I feel like there's this there's certainly this familiar sense to it, all due to the cultural impact of the Wizard of Oz, but also this weird sense that you get from popular fiction that is very much, uh centered

in a particular past. You know, like I'm I'm not the intended recipient of these tales, and they're not even though they're in English and in there, you know, they're American stories. I don't feel like I am uh like, like I have all of the the gear lined up in which to receive the message that is being sent to me through it. Like your operating system no longer supports this software. Yeah, Like I've never lived on a farm in the middle of a prairie. How am I

supposed to to take some of this stuff? You know, I's see what you're saying. Yeah, all right, well, let's get into the cast here. Let's let's talk about Dorothy. Uh. This film's Doro The was played by Usa Bach, who was born in nineteen seventy four. Still active American actor who might might be better known to some of you for her roles as an adult, but she started out

very young and this was her first motion picture. Subsequent films included Valmont in nine Things to Do in Denver when You're Dead in that's an allusion to Warren Zevon song by the way, And of course the big one is The Craft in nine oh Man. Several years back, Rachel and I around Halloween decided to watch The Craft. And I don't know if i'd say it's a good movie, but that was a fun time. I don't think i've ever seen it, but you know, of course I'm familiar

with I remember the trailers and all. But but this is a big film. And after this she was in a string of big films, including uh, the Cursed nine adaptation of the Island of Dr Moreau always that Oh yeah, this is the one. If you're asking, is that the Island of Dr Moreau in which yes, it is that. Okay, it is the Marlon Brando one, yes, yes, the one where he allegedly had to be fed his lines through an earpiece because he wouldn't learn them. Yeah, just a mean.

Their documentaries about about this just a ridiculous production. That still is it has things going for it. I mean it's it's it's oddly hypnotizing if you catch it on TV and all. I don't think I've ever given it a dedicated viewing. I just it was on a lot for a certain amount of time, I guess back in the late nineties, and so you would catch bits of it and it's it's thoroughly weird and just thoroughly a mess. Okay,

sorry to interrupt. American history Acts is another big one, almost famous in two thousand and She was also in Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans in two thousand nine, which also featured Nick cage Val Kilmer. Again, he was in the Dr Maroe movie Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dorroff, and Michael Shannon. I've not seen Port of Call New Orleans since it came out, but but I've been meaning to revisit it because that one I remember being a

a jaw dropping experience. Another interesting fact for rusa box father Solomon felt Faus was one of the founding members of the psychedelic band Kaleidoscope, and Ball herself is also a musician you know, I feel like we tend to if a if a child performance in a movie is bad, we tend not to dwell on it as much as we might on a notably bad adult performance, because I don't know, you don't want to be mean about a child actor. But I would say not just being nice.

She's genuinely great in this great, great performance as Dorothy. Yeah, she has this great, big eyed engagement. She's seen always seems very much a part of the action going on. Sometimes with kid actors this kind of you can kind of just at times just see a child standing on a set. You know, there's this less of a sense that they're connected to their surroundings and the scene and the characters. But she's totally in there. She helps make

these scenes which often feature no other human characters. It's all puppets and seats and so forth. I mean, they're humans inside the suits obviously, but but no other visible human in the scene. And she's able to be that human center for everything. And also I would say that she has a confidence, like she's a confident character. It's a confident performance then maybe makes some of the otherwise

scary elements a little less scary. You know what I'm saying. Yes, I so I agree with that, And at the same time, she also ROUSI ball also has the natural energy of kind of a government created scanner child who might make people's heads explode if she doesn't get her string cheese. You know, which is I think the appropriate energy for a child who is able to uh to journey through the myths to another dimension ruled by scary individuals scary entities,

and then moved back again. Yes, so really notably good kid performance. But we've got to talk about Nicole Williamson. He left me floored in this movie. Yeah, Nicole Williamson plays to do it's a double role. He plays Dr Worley, the electricity obsessed physician, and uh it's he's a psychologist or what order his credentials exactly? Well, it takes place in nineteen hundreds. I don't know if they add all the same categories here. I guess he's a psychiatrist, a

you know, a physical psychiatrist. This this movie, I will say, um takes a firm stance against mental health. We can explain. You can explain more about that when we get into the plot. But yes, he plays a kind of uh, his psychiatrist character I think is supposed to be taken in a very negative way, though it is not as explicitly evil as the Nome King. But he's great in both roles, right, Yeah, because he had the the alter ego in the Land of Oz is the Nome King.

That's spelled n O n E no G. But yeah. Williamson lived nineteen thirty six or two thousand and eleven, and he's I think he's always a treat, at least for the viewer. As discussed in our episode on the snake movie Venom, Williamson had a reputation apparently for being difficult to work with, which again, sometimes you don't know

exactly what to make of these supposed reputations. Um making movies is obviously complicated and there are a lot of personalities involved, So I imagine there's some cases out there where repute these reputations are well deserved. Other times there maybe it's a little more complicated than this person was difficult. But at any rate, however difficult he was or wasn't to work with, definitely a great actor. He played Merlin in movie ex Caliber, which is a really shiny, very

just glistening king Arthur movie. He also was in the Spawn movie. Who was in The Exorcist three and he played Sherlock Holmes in these seven percent solution. This is the one that was made by Nicholas Meyer, who did Time after Time. Yeah. Yeah, and and although he was in tons of other stuff as well, but yeah, in in this movie. And the thing about the Nome King is, I guess the Nome King is is largely a v O care Arcter except for the very end of the film.

And even then he's under a lot of makeup, and I think there's still some voice distortion going on. But it's still a great role. Oh yeah, yeah, I think he is hypnotizing. I just wish there were more movies where he plays a magical big bad of some kind. What what just occurred to me? When you were talking about like great but difficult actors. I was thinking, wouldn't it have been great if you could get a Blade sequel that was Wesley Snipes versus Nicole Williamson. Oh yeah,

he would have been good. Um have you seen ex caliber now as she plays Merlin? Oh, it's a great performance he gives. He gives a great Merlin all right, But that's just our our main villain, but we also have a secondary villain and that and there is also a dual role we have. It's Mombi, the Witch the princess, but also her earthly counterpart is Nurse Wilson. This these

characters are played by Gene Marsh. Geane Marsh is also just off the charts on this so good yeah born awesome British actor who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent nine thriller Frenzy, and many viewers I think will probably best remember her for her portrayal of the evil witch queen about Morda in Willow. Joe, Have you seen Willow? It's been I haven't seen it since I was a kid, basically, so I don't really remember it except for little images

here and there I remember. Does that Val Kilmer like hanging in a cage? Yes? Yeah, Val Kilmer is all over the place in this one as well. But yeah, Jeane Marsh plays this evil witch queen and it's just just a wonderful, snarling and cold role. This movie has I think that the greatest witch versus which battle ever ever committed on film. Right at the right at the end of the picture, It's just a real like eye gouging,

spell slinging kind of encounter. Highly recommended. Anyway, Marsh Diddle a lot of TV during her career, and I I believe she's retired now, but those TV credits include on an award winning role on the British drama series Upstairs Downstairs. She was also on Doctor Who, an episode of Tales from the Dark Side the Saint, and even a nine episode of the original Twilight Zone one called The Lonely Uh.

This is one I've I've seen before. This is the one where a convict living alone on an asteroid which just looks like the desert, like the California desert or something. Um, he receives a female robot from his captors to help keep him company on the asteroid for some reason. And anyway, Marsh plays the robot woman opposite Jack Warden and Ted Knight is in that episode two in an uncredited kind

of background role. So something that's interesting about marsh and Nicole Williamson in this movie is that they both get to play these dual roles in which in the mundane world in the world of Kansas, they are are presented as villains, but in a very subtle way, uh, you know, sort of blending in with society and doing something that from Dorothy's perspective in the movie we see as wicked. But but you know, they're not chewing the scenery, they're

not overt. In fact, they they they're their outward appearances is sort of friendly, or at least Nicol Williamson says Gene marsh is kind of cold as the lady in the clinic. Um. But then you get to flip the script and go to Oz, where the characters reappear once again, but as just like frothing monstrous versions of their mundane world characters. Yes, yes, characters that just demand over the top performances. Uh just you use every muscle in your face.

Go ahead and crank your eye intensity up to uh to to eleven or twelve. That's that's the sort of villains that populate the world of Oz, all right. Now. A few more performers of note in this um Anti m anti um in this is played by Piper Laurie bo.

I don't know about you, Joe, but I thought this was this is rather hilarious given that she plays Carrie's mom, Margaret White in seventies six is Carrie, both movies about special girls with special powers, uh and and This is the And And Piper Laurie plays the moms, sort of trying to understand these these these young women. No, I would say Antam is A is A is a good caregiver, like she's you know, she she's trying to be loving and and she does end up taking uh Dorothy to

a bad place, but she doesn't mean bad. She's trying to help um and her her benevolence in this movie is yes, I almost hilariously contrasted with the other main roles I can think of her in Yeah She's Aside from Carrie, she was also in nineteen sixes The Hustler, She was in Twin Peaks and Children of a Lesser God. Another funny thing Rachel and I always talk about whenever Piper Laurie comes up is the the just the absurdity

of the machinations about the mill in Twin Peaks. Remember that's like one of her main motivations is fighting about the mill. Oh no, no, I don't remember the Alright, So those are some of the really those are the main human characters. A lot of the other characters are gonna a lot of the other actors and individuals involved here. They're kind of a mix of actual like physical performers

or or puppeteers or special effects manipulators. Uh so, And I'm not going to list all of them here, but some of them stand out because of other work that they did. I like that in the credits at the end of this movie, when the when the non human characters appear, they will be given multiple credits for multiple people playing the role, like they put the often the puppeteer in the voice actors side by side. I think that's cool. Yeah, yeah, So one name that does stand

out is the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead. It's Brian Henson for three. This is, of course the son of the late Jim Henson, producer, director, actor writer. He's of course been involved in tons of Henson projects over the decades, but I think his most treasured place in my cinematic memories is as the voice of Hoggle in six Labyrinth. He was also the voice of the dog on Jim Henson's Storyteller. Oh okay, and I could be wrong, but I think he also did some some manipulation on Jack

Pumpkinhead's head in this film as well. I couldn't tell was Jack pumpkinhead a puppet or was there like a really skinny actor inside a costume. Oh that's a tough call, right, without really diving back into the credits, because he is supposed to look like a thing that is essentially a magical puppet made out of parts. But there may well have been a human actor in there at least for some of the scenes, along with some sort of puppetry manipulation of the head. And also sometimes the chicken uh

billina is inside the Jack O'Lantern head. So there's a lot going on here. Oh now this one was and I wasn't prepared for this, but I mentioned we have the Gump here, which is this junk gollum that has a like a stuffed moose's head. And uh, the individual that's accredited for effects and manipulation on the Gump's head is Stephen Norrington born four the man who would go on to direct Blade and did monster effects. Split second. Wow, So yeah, we've he keeps coming up in the show,

and he's gonna keep coming up. The connections never stop. Yeah, Okay, Now this next one is more of a physical performance, and that is the lead wheeler. The Wheelers are kind of the flying monkeys of this film, only instead of flying monkeys, instead of some sort of a simian creature with with feathered wings. They are um like half human half old timey bicycle people. Or they are a like a tribe of post apocalyptic maniacs who have taken up um,

you know, vehicular locomotion instead of walking. Uh, They're they're really odd. They're they're difficult to describe. Anyway. There's a whole group of these Wheelers and the lead wheeler is played by this actor by the name of Ponds Mar. And I'm glad we finally get to mention ponds Mar because he's a He's a Florida born artist, effects artist, puppeteer, and a monster suit guy. He's one of He's just

one of the creepy Wheelers in this movie. But he is also memorable for playing the reptile man sor Odd in seven Masters of the Universe and the character Fu in nine six is the Golden Child. He also did some dino suit work, both on TVs Dinosaurs the Hinson Affected sitcom, but also the movie Theodore Rex, in which he plays a cool talking t Rex opposite Whoopie Goldberg. To clarify, Theodore Rex is a buddy cop move and the buddy cops are Whoopie Goldberg and a dinosaur. Wo

have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it. I just know the premise and and apparently he's like a rad dinosaur. He looks frat he looks pretty rad at any rate. Oh Man Ponds mars the lead Wheeler his performance and this is just cranked up to about a thousand. I was thinking, it's kind of like, what have you took one of Bill Irwin's mind performances like he would do on Sesame Street and so forth? What if you had that level of intensity? But it was also definitely

loud at the same time. Yes, yes, he he is manic oh and Rob I noticed something. I put this together about the Wheelers only after I watched the movie, not while I was watching it. Okay, So throughout the movie you've got these characters who appear in OZ, but then there's some sort of counterpart in the in the mundane world back in Kansas. So of course Mombi is the is the nurse at the clinic um the nome

King is the doctor at the clinic. But I think the Wheelers are the sallow, uh moist looking orderlies at the clinic who are like wheeling the gurneys around and they look up, haven't slept in a month? Yeah, I believe you're right on that, because I think looking back on it now, I'm not positive about this, but I think Pondsmr. Is also one of those orderlies. Yeah, I think he is. He has a very distinctive look that that shines through even when he's not made up like

some sort of reptile man. Now, speaking of monster suits, Oh, I have to mention this guy, even though the Cowardly Lion is not much of a character in this The Cowardly Lion is basically turned to stone and only becomes un unfrozen at the very end of the film. But when he does move again, it's it's this cool monster suit and the monsters. The man in the monster suit is John Alexander, who is a guerrilla guy. Gotta love a good guerrilla guy. Oh, he does gorillas quite often. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Alexander was a former circus performer, cabaret actor, and the interactor who first climbed into a guerrilla costume on screen for N four's Gray Stoke The Legend of tarzan Um. This was the one that starred Christopher Lambert. Of course this was his uh. This was his follow up performance in Return to Oz. But he also played

a gorilla on the TV show Jeeves and Wooster. Uh. He was in who played a gorilla on Baby's Day Out, Fierce Creatures, Mighty Joe Young two thousand and elevens Planet of the Apes, and he, along with a few others I found this kind of interesting, are credited as quote unquote mime artists in n Guerrillas in the Midst um. And the thing about Gorillas in the Midst is Gorillas in the midst definitely has guerrilla costumes. It has great

gorilla costumes designed by the great Rick Baker. But the credits don't say don't list humans as guerrillas or or say guerrilla suit. They say these are mime artists, which I thought was interesting. Oh, Gorillas in the missed is the one that has Sigourney Weaver playing Diane Fosse. Yeah, good movie, I guess it. Thought it was a little over like it was above guerrilla suits for some reason. But at any rate, John would be above guerrilla suits.

I don't know they like maybe they just they were like, it's it would be we shouldn't list people as guerrillas, or maybe they thought they would. They wanted to keep this suspension of disbelief alive that he's a real guerrillas. I don't know, but John Alexander also did Monster Suit, Creature Suit Work, and Men in Black, One, Into the Country Bears, Asa Thora and hell Boy too. Now, as we mentioned, the the original companions from the First Wizard of Oz are only sort of in this movie. Well,

Scarecrow is in it more. But I felt bad for the tin Man at the end of this movie because Dorothy when she's like, you know, saying goodbye to of course she has she has a pretty extended scene with the Scarecrow. She has a real good hug on the cowardly Lion. It's like, hey, world, budd easy as good to see you again. But then she just this is the tin Man. Basically, I don't think she everyone says anything to him. Yeah, he's barely in this as well.

But it isn't noteworthy that the ten Man is played by Deep Roy born nineteen fifty seven, the Kenyan British actor who at four ft four has been a go to actor for creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. So uh Roy has popped up in Star Wars, The Dark, Crystal Flash, Gordon Gray Stroke, The Never Ending Story, The X Files, Planet of the Apes, in which he plays Guerrilla Kid. That is what is he's credited as, He's in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's been in I

think various Star Trek shows and much more. All right, and so just a few behind the scenes credits to go through real quick. Norman Reynolds was the production designer on this born British production designer who worked on the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Arc, The Exorcist three, Alien three, and more. The sets in this movie are tremendous. They are amazing. Yeah, so I just had to call that out. Also, this film has some

great claymation, some stop motion animation. He's in clay in it. That that really if you're a fan of of that genre of effects like this is definitely an eighties film to check out. Like when the Rocks are delivering reports to the Nome King before you ever see him, you just see the face and the stone, uh, sort of scrunching up and getting worried about giving the Nome King

bad news. Yeah, yeah, tremendous. So I'm not even gonna list all the like the Claymation team members that worked on this, but the team included such artists as Will Vinton who lived forty seven through two thousand and eighteen, Joanne Radmilovich, who you can find images of. I included an image for you here, Joe, where you can see the artist working on some of the The Nome King's minions. Here, Bruce McKean, who lived nineteen fifty one. Three. Oh, and

this is an interesting one. Mark Gustafsson, who is co director on the upcoming Gamma del Toro Pinocchio movie. And then there's also Craig Bartlett born nifty six who worked on Dinosaur Train, which was was is. I'm not sure if it's still going, but at any rate, Is was a long running Jim Hinson animated series that I believe also used poppetry to create the movements for the animated dinosaurs.

And finally, the music. The music credit here goes to David Shire born ninety seven, American composer who scored a ton of films over the years, including All the President's Men, Oh God, You Devil, Short Circuit, Monkey Shines, and David Fincher's Zodiac. Trying to remember the music in Zodiac, But I can't recall the orchestration. All I recall is the hurdy gurdy man. Yeah, excellent use of the hurdy gurdy man.

But I too don't remember the score offhand. Likewise, I don't really remember the score from this movie, even though I watched the other day. It's it's one of those scores that does its job, does its job well, but you don't necessarily think back on it. It's just not that type of score. Yeah. I mean, a movie like this depends on the music being good, so it must have been good, but it didn't stand. I don't recall

what it was. Yeah. It's also not a musical, so uh, there's not a scene where Dorothy says something and then the TikTok is like, well that sounds good, Dorothy, But could you sing a song about it so I can remember it. No, it doesn't doesn't work like that. Oh, we are the Wheelers, we will everywhere. Oh man, what I I can't I don't even like to think what sort of musical genre the Wheelers would use. It would just have to be some sort of like screaming punk

song or something. Yeah, some sort of screeching avant garde industrial punk. That would be my guess what would Mom be saying? It would be I want all your heads. Oh, maybe it would be a different genre. It would certainly be a different voice depending on which head she chooses. Right, Oh, that's a good point. And when it comes to the Nome King, it would just it would be hard rock because that's what he's made of. That's that's good. Okay. I guess we've already teased the plot a good bit.

But I think this is one of those ones where we're not going to try to go scene by scene and describe the whole movie. Because this is this one. It's good to to let some surprises remain. But maybe we should talk about some broad broad sections of the plot and some of our favorite details. Um So, do you want to start with life in Kansas? Let's do it. So. The film seems to take place a little while after

the events of the original Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale is back on the farm with Aunt em and Uncle Henry. They are rebuilding the house because of course it was it was you know, carried away by the Kansas cyclone in the previous movie. But Dorothy is, you know, she's not just totally back to normal. She is obsessed with her memories of adventurious in the Land of Oz, to the point where she can't sleep at night. Like you see Piper Laurie come into the room and it's like, Dorothy,

you know, you gotta go to sleep. But she's, you know, she's looking at the stars because she's thinking about monsters and thinking about trees that trees that attack. That's what they get for living on the middle of nowhere. The stars are so bright out there, they basically keep you up at night. It's true. I can report from brief experiences. If you go to a place with truly dark skies, uh and and you look up at the stars at night,

it is a borderline hallucinatory experience. Yeah, But okay. Ant Em and Uncle Henry are troubled by what's happened to Dorothy. They think she is suffering from persistent delusions because of her belief that Oz is real. So and m gets the idea that they've got to send her to a doctor in town who has a machine that can cure her brain with electricity. Uh So, there are a few things that are established in this early section on the farm. We we see you know that that an M and

Uncle Henry are are are loving parents. You know that they care about Dorothy and they're trying to do good, but also that they're they're disturbed by her seeming to believe that Oz is a real ace and she actually went there, and you see them trying to discourage these apparent delusions. And meanwhile, Dorothy is just thinking about Oz

all the time. Like she finds a key on the farm and she's like, see this key is from OZ because it's got like the handle on it is around like an O, and then it's got to slash through the middle of it that sort of makes like the crossbar in a Z. So, yeah, this is obviously an artifact from OZ. And then I think it literally is. Later um, but we also we meet a chicken who

can't talk. But this chicken who cannot talk is Dorothy's friend, and the chicken is threatened by Aunt M because n M's like, hey, if you don't lay an egg soon, I'm gonna turn you into soup. Yeah, yeah, this is Balina. Blina is going to be a major character that Helena is not just there for comic relief. Now, shortly into the movie, Dorothy is taken by Aunt m to town and Toto tries to follow them. They have a very cute dog to play, Toto, but Toto is not does

not accompany Dorothy on her adventures in this movie. Photo stays behind and so she's taken to the to the to town to go to the offices of Dr. J. B. Warley played by Nicole Williamson. And again this is going to be for the electrical cure. Now, as I said earlier, Nicole will Williamson and Jean marsh are both fabulous in their roles because, like in the original Wizard of Oz, they play these characters on both sides of of the fantasy divide, right, they have real, mundane characters and fantasy

counterparts in Oz. Nicole Williamson's Earth character Dr. Warley is I think wonderfully realized as as the kind of man who presents a soft, friendly, reassuring exterior while preparing the machinery that will steal your soul. Yeah, this is this is a wonderful performance. And you know, you don't see a lot of him here. We're not in Kansas for too long. But yeah, yeah, he seems he's a he's

he doesn't come off as a suspicious adult. He seems like a trusting adult who is in who's rightfully in a position of authority and is going to help you. Like there's a part where he's showing Dorothy. He says, look, this machine has a face. Here its eyes, and here is its nose. Uh. And of course the machine is the machine they're going to use to administer electro convulsive

therapy to Dorothy. Now, a brief note on psychiatry in this film, I would say this movie depicts psychiatry in general and electro convulsive therapy in particular as cruel and evil, which I would say I have twofold thoughts about number one. It really works in the context of the plot. But of course, if you're going to be literal about it,

I think this is very misguided. Like I think if you get your ideas about E. C. T. From the movie, especially like I don't know, movies made in the seventies and eighties, such as scenes from One flo Over the Cuckoo's Nest and stuff. You would basically think that it is like a pseudo scientific involuntary torture mechanism used to

inflict pain and terror. But I think actually, uh, you know a lot of psychiatrists think that there's very good evidence that it's helpful and that you'll beat people who have experienced severe major depression that did not respond to other treatments, and they would say e c T made

a major positive difference in their lives. Uh. Though, obviously, if it were actually administered in the way it is depicted in this movie, which is like an unexplained, non consensual punishment inflicted on children for the crime of having an imagination, that would be pretty awful. So while you should obviously not get your real real world ideas about ECT from from the Odds universe, it does make a really great plot device, scary plot device within the fantasy

context of the movie. Yeah, absolutely so. Anyway, Dorothy has left at this clinic to uh, to be subjected to the electrical cure for her brain, and there's this great scene where you know, Dorothy is kind of thinking about other things while you hear the doctor talking to aunt Em in the background. Saying, you know, the mind is simply a machine. Sometimes the machine has too much electricity in it. Uh, And and you get a similar foreboding

elements from other things at the clinic. So Gene Marsh plays a what would you call her, she's like an assistant sort of a warden at this clinic, and she's wearing a dress that looks like it might as well be Darth Vaders suit. Yeah. It is like such a gothy number. I don't know how else to describe it. It's just like multiple shades of black and and has all of these like crenulations and sort of fabric spikes on it. It's like if you combine like a Little

House on the Prairie Dress and the Road Warrior. But also here at the clinic, Dorothy meets a mysterious blonde girl who like appears in her room and warns her about Dr Worley's machines. I think, is this the scene where they're like hearing people screaming and she says like those are the people who have been subjected to the machine. Yeah, yeah, and that's this is probably the darkest moment in the film.

I thought for me anyway, like this is this This is the moment it where I was sitting there watching it, you know, next to my son, and I'm like, this is maybe a little too dark, but he didn't seem to mind, and and you're you're through it pretty quickly.

And there's a scene where they're like taking Dorothy to to be hooked up to the electrical machine, the one that had eyes and a nose in a mouth, and they're hooking the electrodes up to her head, and just when they're getting ready to send the charge the there is a storm and lightning strikes and power is lost, and Dorothy actually escapes during this lightning storm, along with that strange blonde girl who she keeps seeing in the mirror,

and they get swept up in a flood. They're being chased by Jean marsh and that that crazy black dress and they end up floating away down a torrent in a chicken coop. By the way, I couldn't help but be reminded of the movie Brazil, which I guess came

out the same year. But that film has a scene where an individuals strapped to a contraption, and in that case is about to be tortured when something miraculous happens that seems to save him, and then at the end of the film, all depending on the cut, you find out that this was all just what an occurrence at what is at al Creek Bridge situation where everything was happening in his head and he really died on the interrogation table. So I'm I'm happy to say that that

is not the case in Return to Oz. There's not a scene later where you realize, oh, this was all just electricity going through Dorothy's brain. Right, No, No, there is like a waking up later scene, but it's not that. Yeah, she did really go out and get in the mud and into the river and then seemingly into the ocean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's and it's a good thing she did run out into the floodwaters because apparently if she had remained behind

at the clinic, she maybe she may have been incinerated. Yes, But so from here we're gonna go to Oz. We we gotta we gotta talk Oz. First thing is she wakes up in that chicken coop being wrecked in what's called the Deadly Desert, which is a plot device that that I love. The idea of the deadly desert is if you touch the sand, you turn to sand. And it's very simple, but it's great. We see a wheeler turned to sand at some point and and it's brutal. Yeah,

that was one of my son's favorite moments. U and in part because we hated the wheelers. Like you could tell the wheelers were bad news. So any bad things that happened to the wheelers are somewhat justified. But as soon as Dorothy wakes up in the deadly desert, her chicken friend Billina is there with her, and Billina can talk. Now, remember by the mechanism we discussed earlier, you know, you're an animal, you're an OZ. Now you're a talking animal.

And it turns out all along if Billina could talk, we would have noticed that she has like a sassy old prairie grandma twode. Yeah. Yeah, it's full of of fun one liners as well, and occasionally has information and advice. So they're going around, they're checking out Oz. They're like, what's up in OZ? And oh, everything is wrecked. Nothing's good anymore. The yellow brick road is all torn up, Munchkin Village is gone. I think Emerald City is in ruins. That we see it in the distance, and it looks

like it has and shelled. And we gather that when Dorothy last left, the Scarecrow had been crowned King of Oz in the Emerald City. And I think there's an understanding that Scarecrow was going to be a good and just ruler. Scarecrow is kind, Scarecrow is thoughtful, you know. He he wouldn't do he wouldn't be a bad king.

But in the meantime, something has gone terribly wrong. And I was immediately tempted to think how different the story would be if it had been like George R. R. Martin's returned to Oz or the friendly Scarecrow has a heel turn as soon as Dorothy leaves. He's corrupted by power. He immediately institutes, you know, draconian repression, purges of his perceived enemies. He sends tin Man to prison. Uh, he's got dungeons in the Emerald City. That would have been

a way to go. But no, it's not that the Scarecrow had a heel turn. Instead, what happened is that the Scarecrow has been deposed and someone else has taken over someone bad. But I don't know, wouldn't that have been a good twist. What if the Scarecrow was the villain of the movie? Yeah, yeah, it would have been. It would have been nice and twisty. It seems like the kind of thing they would do today if they were to make return to Oz, though this film does

have some neat twists concerning what exactly happened. So anyway, Dorothy and Billina investigate everywhere there are statues of human forms, and in the ruins of the Emerald City they find a creepy graffito on a wall that says beware the Wheelers. Yes, written in red um. I don't think it's written in blood, but but who can say for certain. It looks like it's written in red colored pencil. Yeah, or they didn't have a lot of blood. It's not drippy blood, but

it's like we do. We know we're not not going to really just the layer it on. We only have so much blood to work with here. I'm just saying it could be blood. It could be blood. I think blood is a scarce resource in Oz now because most human bodies have been turned into stone from what we can see. And in the ruins of the city, Dorothy and Billina get attacked by these horrible creatures called wheelers. We've already talked about. They got wheels instead of hands

and feet. Uh and uh Dorothy uses her special key. I think this is the osky that she found on the farm in Kansas, Is that right? He uses that to open a door inside a secret room. There she finds this bulbous mechanical man. And this is one of our heroes, TikTok. I loved TikTok. He is like a wind up copper ronan. He is a mechanical warrior whose master has been deposed and now he's in the service

of Dorothy. Great design, great effects with this uh, this being the uh like a lot of it is puppetry, but also it's clearly a person in a suit, and it's they're able to pull off this wonderful gait, this wonderful walking style of of TikTok. It's it's, it's, it's absolutely wonderful. He was one of my favorite parts of

the whole film. He's sort of a little bit teddy roosevelt ish, but other elements too, like he's blustery and headstrong and as a big walrus mustache a metal one of course, but I thought a really interesting recurring theme is that we are equally reminded throughout the movie that TikTok is not alive. Like when Dorothy first finds him, there are instructions on his back for how to wind

him up and make him work. But uh and and one of the things the instruction says is like the you know, the TikTok, the mechanical man, does everything but live. But what does that mean? So TikTok clearly has a mind, he has a personality, and he even has preferences in

the ability to take offense. Like there's a scene later when Jack Pumpkinhead suggests throwing TikTok out of the gump aircraft because he's the heaviest of them, and TikTok clearly takes a front like he is annoyed by this suggestion. And yet there are other times where TikTok seems to reference the fact that he is not alive as a reason for not being concerned about something. It's like, you know, I don't really worry about getting turned into an inanimate

object because I'm not alive anyway. Well, in oz being a non living entity, I think you have a lot of company. It's not one of these story ways where oh I am the lonely being that is a machine and not a human but has feelings. In Oz, everywhere you look there's some sort of reanimated form. There's some their machine people all over the place of just different varieties. I think Returned to Oz explores some of the same thematic territories Terminator to can this machine be a good parent?

Does this machine no? Does it understand why we cry? Even if it's something it can never do? So? Anyway, I thought that this is like a kind of a thoughtful movie for kids that plants some interesting philosophical ideas in their mind. But what does it mean to be alive? But also I like the the wind up and wind

down dynamic with TikTok. So TikTok has uh winding keys for three different things, thought, speech, and action, and at various times throughout the movie, one of the three but not the other two will wind down, including a very funny scene where they're trying where all the good characters are trying to like work on a project together, but

TikTok's thoughts down while his speech and action are still active. Yeah, I love this as well the three um wind up line down dynamics, Because on one level, I think it's it's a good way to get kids potentially thinking about like what what what the human experiences, you know, like thinking of our of our own mental facult of faculty. He's not as a single entity, but this thing that sort of emerges out of, out of, out of out

of different things and different stimuli and different pro processes. So, uh, it's it's an interesting way to look at a in this case of fantastic being, but also to sort of turn that reflection back on yourself at times. But so we said the TikTok, he's a soldier, right, he's a warrior for the Scarecrow. And he's been left behind by the Scarecrow. I think to wait for Dorothy. So here's

Dorothy and and now they're they're teaming up. So right from the outset, TikTok is ready to beat up some wheelers. He like walks out, Oh he there's a there's a fight. Seeing that you could regard as underwhelming because TikTok is just basically spinning around in a circle whacking wheelers. Uh, but it I don't know something about it is really good. Yeah, it's it's it's intensely satisfying, in part because the Wheelers have established themselves as a total menace and they're acting

is over the top. Here comes TikTok. He absolutely whales on them, and then he captures the lead Wheeler, who is again the most animated and annoying of the Wheelers, and begins to roughly interrogate him. And we were just cheering for TikTok during this scene. We're like, yeah, get him, TikTok. It's great. And of course under under torture essentially no

under you know threat. Uh. The lead Wheeler reveals that the Scarecrow has been overthrown and taken prisoner by the Nome King, and to learn more about what's going on, they have to go and visit the castle of Princess mom By. Yeah, so that's what happens next. The whole section in Momby's Castle in the middle of the movie is just awesome. Uh, where do you want to start here? So Momby's palace is like in many ways it's made

of mirrors, or at least sort of. The throne room is, which is very creepy, especially in scenes where like Dorothy's trying to find a door, figure out what to do. Yeah, her whole palace is just oh my goodness, sets are amazing. Even sets, even parts of the palace that you don't really spend much time in just look incredible. Like they walk through a bedroom and you do nothing ever happens with the bedroom, but you see it in the background

is just just stupendous. It's like a this weird, evil princess cathedral and then you venture into this hall of heads. This is where Momby stores these various stolen female heads that she has, stores them alive and we'll use them. Uh. We've mentioned this on the show before because somebody wrote

in on listener mail about this. How curious it is that Momby is always the same Momby, but Momby takes off her original head and puts on these other heads, and while she has these other heads on, she again

is still Momby. But it also is stated in the film where it's it's sort of uh suggested in the film where it's hypothesized by one of the characters that if she does something with one head on and she switches to another head, she might not remember something she did previously, which just sends my head really trying to figure out how all of that works. Yeah, her personality always seems to be the same, but I think it's

Jack Pumpkinhead says that because Dorothy is about to meet him. Uh. He says that Momby locked him up in the tower, but then forgot he was in there because she switched heads and that movie, he was in a different head. And when we first meet her, it's not Jeane Marsh's head, so we don't, you know, our guard is down. We're not seeing like, oh, that's the scary lady, remember her from the clinic. It's just some other ladies. She looked nice, and you know, she's sitting there playing a harp, and

then she and Dorothy start talking. But then she's like, Dorothy, I'm gonna need to cut your head off and keep it in my keep it in my collection. But you're not old enough yet, so I got to lock you in a tower for a few years. Then your head will get bigger and then I'll cut it off and then I'll keep it. Yeah, she she realized, is an investment. We're gonna wait for you to mature a bit. We she didn't want to wear a little girl for Ruza

bak Head. She wants to wear the craft for Rusa balk Head and she don't have to wait a few years for that to happen. So off to the the dungeon chamber with you, up to the locked room, and so she's thrown in there with Jack Pumpkinhead, who she meets. But also there are all these pieces that will eventually become the gump because at this point we're dealing with an escape plan. Uh, they find out about this what is it the is it the power of powder of

animation or the powder of life? Powder of life? Yeah, it's a magical powder that Momby has that she sprinkles over inanimate objects to wag them up. Um. And this is originally I think where Jack Pumpkinhead comes from. That he's like he's made of sticks and a pumpkin. Though wait, I think he was originally a real boy. Maybe, I'm not sure. He he asked if he can call Dorothy mom and she allows it, which is a little creepy but it's also kind of sweet at the same time.

I don't know. Yeah, but anyway, they realized we got to get out of here. Well, we could fly out of here if only we had a winged mount. Well, we could make one out of this moose's head or Gump's head on the wall and this couch, and we could use these pieces of this this fern to make wings and this will somehow work. But we need that powder in order to bring all of this to life and fly out the window. Where's the powder? Well, we

find out it's stored with Mombi's original head. So Dorothy is going to have to sneak out and make your way through that museum of heads and try and find the original head and steal the power her from that head locker. It's a heist at the head repository. Yeah, and this is an amazing sequence and also just a wonderfully magical dark fantasy sequence because you know, it's the scene where Dorothy's creeping down the hallway all these silent heads are in the are in their chambers, and then

when she gets there she opens it up. There's Jeane Marsh's head, and there the original Mombi head. And of course it's not gonna go without without at least a single hiccup, because she ends up waking up the mombie head, All of the heads wake up all of the heads are screaming, and then she takes off with the powder. Meanwhile, Mombi's body is waking up from the bad OI do see something with the bedroom, and that's right, but it's like walking around like a zombie with no head coming after.

It's a wonderful nightmare. So with the Gump aircraft they've put together again, it's like a moose type thing, a gump head that's mounted and then it goes with some couches and wings made out of plant leaves, like I think Poem gives her something. Uh, they make this aircraft and they fly out to escape, and they're gonna fly to the Nome King's mountain. Though it's very funny because the Gump is like, I don't know how to fly. I'm just ahead. I've never I never flew in lives,

so I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, the Gump. The Gump is wonderful and has lots of little snide comments about how he liked it better when he was just ahead. This current life is a little more challenging than he likes a little more moving around. So they fly over the deadly desert to get to the Nome King's mountain. He lives in a mountain, and oh, the Nome King when they get there. I feel like here maybe we should start to describe in a little more

in lighter detail. But warning, if you're going to watch the movie, you don't want anything about the ending at all spoiled. Maybe maybe you can tune out here until you've seen it, because we will discuss a few things. But the Nome King is so cool. He is some kind of humanoid elemental being of mineral origin. He's a greedy but clever sorcerer of rocks. Yeah, and the claymation here is just wicked. So throughout the movie we've seen this like rock Face doing reports of what's happening to

the Nome King, and that's all stop motion animation. That's very good. But here we start seeing claymation in general stop motion of uh, the King himself and the sorcery

that he casts. Like one of my favorite animations is that there's a that like Dorothy and her friends are in a cave with the Nome King, and occasionally the Nome King will open a portal to go into a into a palace with these halls, and the way the portal opens is the rock turns into many hands that start pulling the like pulling a hole open in the rock itself. Yeah, all of these effects, all of the effects they used to bring the Nome King to live, are amazing, and most of them are these kind of

stop motion effects. Though, as as we'll discuss, something is happening that makes the nome King increasingly more human inform uh. And so we eventually get William send himself there as the nome King that covered under a lot of like rock makeup and like a rocky beard and so forth. Right, So the nome King has Dorothy and her friends play a guessing game where he says, oh, yes, I have the scarecrow captive, and I've turned him into an inanimate object,

into an ornament. And if you can walk around my palace and guess which ornament is the scarecrow, then I'll let him go. But if you guess wrong three times in a row, I'm gonna turn you into an ornament. Actually he doesn't tell them that at the beginning. It happens first too, uh, I think the gump And then they're like, wait, you didn't say that was gonna happen,

And he's like Oh you didn't ask. Yeah, he's he's he's adding a lot of rules after the fact, though at the same time, are heroes are not really asking for a full breakdown of the terms ahead of time either. Yeah, so you get the sense that he is made of rock, but he sort of wants to become a human for some reason. And the more humans he absorbs and turns into inanimate objects are not necessarily humans living things he absorbs and turns into inanimate objects, the more he becomes

a fleshly creature instead of a rock. Yeah, And it's not explained in the film why this is. And I kind of like that. I like, I mean, anytime there's sort of grandiose evil magic going on in something, it's even more creepy if there's stuff going on that you don't fully understand. Like, we don't know why he wants this transformation to occur or why it is occurring, but it is at least a byproduct of the evil that

he's doing. Oh, we should say the entire time there with the nome king and playing this scussing game the balina, the chicken is hiding inside of Jack Pumpkinhead's pumpkin Head He's like, right, she's in the jack o lantern. Oh, so this is another important thing. Now that we've mentioned

the chicken. It has been established a few different times that the chicken is noteworthy in Oz and that and that the Nome King will want to know about this chicken, and and it's even implied that the chicken is really the most important member of this party. He is of the most interest to the Nome King. And Momby realizes this, and Momby is rushing to the Nome King's castle. I guess to warn him of the chicken, and she does so.

Oh God, I love this sequence. She does so by getting all of her wheelers together and lashing them to a chariot and then climbing aboard the chariot and whipping them to get them to ride at top speed and take her to the Nome King's castle. It is tremendous. They're traveling through some kind of underground tunnel that cuts underneath the deadly desert. I think, yeah, it is. It's

wonderful and eyebrow raising. Uh it's it's it's tremendous. And she does get there, but I don't think she's able to really uh, to warn him sufficiently, at least not enough to to save him in the end. I don't remember what she says, but like when he gets there, he's very haughty. He's like bow bow lower, yeah, and then he locks her in a cage. I believe, so ultimately it doesn't really make a huge difference that she

made it there at all. But the nome King here is becoming more and more humanoid in appearance, and more and more of Dorothy's friends are being turned into unknown ornaments in the room, and I think this is Is this also where we find out how the nome King was able to carry out this um this attack on the Emerald City? Is this when he reveals his feet? Oh no, explain that, well, there's he reveals that it's it's mentioned earlier in the film that you know that

I think it's an m asking. Well, Dorothy, if all this odd stuff is real, then where are these ruby slippers that you speak of that gave you this power? And she said, well, they fell off when I was returning to Earth. And they're like, okay, well see there's no proof. While the nome King reveals that he is wearing the ruby slippers that they basically fell into his lap, and he used the power of the ruby slippers too

then overthrow the Scarecrow King. And so we see this the see the Nome King wearing the shiny ruby slippers. They're great twist. I think. Dorothy tries to go for them, and he's like no, no, when he tucks them back under um. And in the end, how how are they going to defeat the Nome King? I mean, the Nome King is so powerful? What what kind of power do they have that could stand up against a creature of

such such immense potency? Well, well, for starters, Dorothy is able to retrieve some of her friends from ornament transformation. But but this just makes the Nome King all the more enraged. He turns into this gigantic stone monster and he has decided he's going to eat them. He started he like picks up the gump and like eats the gump's body, uh, and like the head falls off, and then he goes to eat Jack pumpkinhead instead as well.

And but Balina the chicken is in Jack pumpkin heads head and it is finally time for Billina to lay her egg. She lays the egg inside Jack Pumpkin head's head, It rolls out of the pumpkin and goes down the Nome King's throat. And then oh, the nome King realizes that something has gone terribly wrong because the big twist is that eggs are poison to the Nome king. Right, we we didn't know this until it is finally revealed.

We knew that, we kind of got the sense that the chicken was a threat, but we didn't know why the chicken was a threat to the Nome King's rule. Now it is revealed. The egg is uh has terrible magic in it, the terrible It does terrible things to the Nome King's power, which I guess it's not I don't know. I didn't do a lot of deep thinking about this, but eggs do factor into various magical rituals and so forth. There is something about the egg that is often seen as sacred, and somehow the egg is

able to undo everything that the Nome King is doing. Yeah, the eggs symbolizes potential, symbolizes transformation. Yeah yeah, it has a lot of symbolic loading, so that makes sense. But of course, so yeah, Nome King is defeated. And then Scarecrow, who has been restored from I think he had been turned into it like a just a big green gym Uh, he's back to he's back into his form. Dorothy is able to restore everybody who got turned into an ornament, and then they all go back to the Emerald City

where the Scarecrow's back on the throne. Everybody's happy again. Mombi is in a cage and then they're like, they're like, oh, well, you know, she doesn't have powers anymore, so she'll be all right. I know. It's The Wheelers are also just hanging around at this point in the movie, and I was thinking, the Wheelers, Yeah, they just get by with the sorry like they seem to be the scourge of the of the realm there for a while. But everything's forgiving.

Everybody's happy again. How many denizens of Oz that they eat or whatever they do. But also we get another twist, which is that the blonde girl that Dorothy had seen several times already is uh her name is Ozma, and what is her role? She's like the rightful Princess of Oz or something. Yeah, she's like the Yeah, she's like she's the good She's the good witch of this movie. Basically, and she's been sort of in the background helping things

move along the whole time. But then also there's this idea that like she is also connected to Dorothy, she's going to be She is like the way that Dorothy remains in Oz and in the earth realm at the same time. She is Dorothy's counterpart, so Dorothy can be on both sides of the mirror. Dorothy can go back to Kansas and be home, but also stay in Oz in the form of this other girl and and be be the princess there. And Ozma is like basically like, hey, you can still be in Oz all the time in

your head. Just don't tell annem about it. Just be quiet about it, and everything's fine. And then we get a very sweet reunion back in Kansas where Toto finds Dorothy washed up on a washed up on a grimy river shore and and then there's Uncle Henry and they all get back together again and it's very sweet. Yeah. Yeah, though we do see um Mombi's earthly counterpart. This would

be a nurse Wilson. We see her being taken away in the back of a carriage that also kind of looks like a cage, and then and then it's revealed that Dr Warley died in the fire because he had basically the clinic facilities that had been struck by lightning, and he went back in to save his machine and died. He was he was too devoted to his machines and it killed him. Yeah, so very very Frank Herbert kind of moment there where. Oh yes, uh, this character died

off screen, so returned to OZ. Deeply strange, fantastically imaginative, totally wonderful, one of my favorite new fantasy movies or kids movies. Uh yeah, it's just a blast. I I richly enjoyed it. I mean, obviously parents will have to make their own decisions about films like this. I was researching it a little bit before we watched it. I went to the IMDb parental guidance area where the users submit stuff about films, and they did have the chicken lays and egg in the Nome King's head as an

example of violence in the picture. I didn't really think of it as violence per se um, but it's certainly weird. It is an act of inadvertent poisoning. So I guess it would be like a scene where if a character accidentally put arsenic in somebody else's sandwich. Yeah, I guess, but anyway, Yes, returned to Oz. I absolutely loved it. I think it's a lot of fun. And I'd love to hear from folks out there though, because, like it's like we've been saying, Joe and I only just watched

this movie and full as adults. We'd love to hear from folks who saw it back in the day. What was it like seeing Return to Oz on the big screen in five or seeing it on VHS once it was available on home video? How did other people in your life presented or respond to it? Did you hear people saying, well, this is not what OZ is all about? What is this gum business? It's it's supposed to be the cowardly lion? Did you have to put up with all that? Was it effective? All of this is fair

fair play. I'd love to hear from everyone. So that's it for this edition of Weird House Cinema. Just a reminder, Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We are primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. I blog about these episodes at smut music dot com and if you use letterboxed dot com, that's l E T T E R b o x D dot com. You'll find us on there.

Are user name is weird House, and we keep a Weird House Cinema episode list going there where you can see all the films that we've covered thus far. As of this episode, it is eighty two films that we've covered, and I'll often ahead and add the next film on the list so you can sort of look ahead and see what we're talking about next. Huge thanks as always

to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.