Fantasy Zone: The other one that could have killed Disney

 

Title: Return To Oz

Title: Return To Oz

What Year?: 1985

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m just past an arbitrary milestone for my number of reviews. With that out of the way, I’m back to this feature, which I haven’t decided whether to continue. What was decided long before was that at least one more movie would certainly be here, either the most famous or infamous and among the last in the timeframe I’m covering. It also made me realize I might have underestimated even Krull as the biggest money-loser in the ‘80s fantasy boom. I present Return To Oz, one of the first examples of a belated sequel/ reboot that is absolutely better than the original. Because I didn’t go out on a limb far enough giving Island of Dr. Moreau a good review…

Our story begins with a girl named Dorothy regaling her family with her adventures in a land called Oz, until they send her to an insane asylum. With a little help from a mysterious friend, she escapes and finds herself back in Oz, along with Toto and a suddenly talkative chicken named Billina. All is not well, however, as the Emerald City has been conquered by the Nome King, with the aid of a witch named Mombi and her minions the Wheelers. When the witch tries to collect Dorothy’s head, she escapes with the aide of the windup man Tik Tok, an animated effigy named Jack Pumpkinhead and a flying chimera of animal remains and furniture dubbed the Gump. Their escape takes them to the realm of the Nome King, who reveals that he has collected the rightful king Scarecrow as an ornament. To free him, the group must guess which ornament is their friend, or become ornaments themselves- and the Nome King still has  chip on his shoulder and tricks up his sleeve!

Return To Oz was a 1985 live-action fantasy film by Disney, loosely based on the second and third books of the series by L. Frank Baum. The project was reportedly conceived by Walter Murch in 1980 as an adaptation independent of the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. Murch was ultimately brought on as director, as well as credited cowriter of the script. The film starred Fairuza Balk (ironically in Dr. Moreau) in her debut as Dorothy, with Nicol Williamson as the Nome King and Pons Maar as the chief Wheeler. Extensive practical and stop-motion effects were provided by Jim Henson Productions (see The Dark Crystal) and Will Vinton Studios. Bryan Henson performed as both puppeteer and voice actor for Jack Pumpkinhead. The film was possibly Disney’s greatest commercial failure of the era, earning $11.1 million against a budget estimated as up to $28M, a proportionately if not absolutely greater loss than The Black Cauldron. It went on to much greater popularity on TV and home video. It is currently available for streaming on Disney Plus and other platforms.

For my experiences, I can just barely remember seeing Wizard Of Oz sometime in early childhood, and I definitely recall seeing the very end of this one sometime in the early 1990s. The trail really starts for me when I tried reading the original books in college. From that experience, I quickly concluded that Baum didn’t hit his stride until Ozma of Oz and probably didn’t improve much after that. It was still quite a while before I got to this movie, enough that I’m not quite sure how much I had heard about it before I saw it. What I immediately concluded and have never wavered from is that this is the most faithful, definitive and flat-out best Oz movie that there has ever been and ever will be. I was further impressed by just how often I have met people who were absolutely freaked out by it, to the point that I have literally heard it mentioned spontaneously more often than Night of the Living Dead. To get a reputation like this obviously doesn’t mean doing everything right, but at least hitting the right combination of wrong to entrance and/ or terrify generations of kids who might have been too young for any incarnation of the franchise.

Moving forward, this is one where it’s easy to be either at a loss for words or get lost trying to describe everything. I find it easiest to look at the most striking characters. The obvious one is the Nome King, portrayed with a combination of animatronics, Claymation and suitwork, seemingly an animistic spirit or demon more than a corporeal entity despite his very imposing final form. I find Tik Tok, portrayed by a crew led by actor Sean Barrett and gruelingly put-upon gymnast Michael Sundin, just as impressive in his own way. He’s taciturn behind his surface charm, with a deceptive non-anthropomorphic streak; if it comes to that, he’s convincingly formidable as a literal one-man army. But to me, the most intriguing are the Wheelers. They are vastly more menacing than their counterparts, yet they are never entirely out of place in Oz. This balance owes a great deal to the good effects and costumes, which allow seamlessly convincing movement with a design that could easily have gone horribly wrong (and may well have given this production’s luck). Better still is the truly deranged performance from Maar (apparently in The Blob and one or two more I mean to get to), literally giggling with menace that doesn’t take away from his unnervingly childlike personality.

On the other side, if there is one, even I can’t avoid the feeling that the story is the weak point here. While it manages to cover the story arc of the strongest of the books, there’s still a lot that’s left out or watered down, notably a much longer and darker tale of a royal family snared in the Nome King’s collection. I find further dissatisfaction with the amalgamation that is Mombi, even with the infamous gallery of heads that usually gets hailed as the darkest moment straight from the books; among other things, the original character is quite different from the witch, vain where the other is calculating, and it makes a big difference in the impact. Even aside from such liberties, this gets unaccountably thin, all the more so as it is in many ways longer than it needs to be. The final act could be counted as a bust if not for the fine performances and mindboggling effects put into the Nome King. He’s a true agent of chaos, by turns charming, angry and coldly malicious, ultimately no less frightening in his final transformation than he can be simply musing and smoking his pipe, There’s an extra surreal moment when he reveals the ruby slippers, which even I forgot aren’t really in the books.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with one that’s a favorite of mine right in the book. During the escape from Mombi, Tik Tok and Jack (whom I had in mind specifically when reviewing A Quiet Place) are assembling the Gump. Tik Tok says with his usual solemnity, “Gump the head in the front and tie Jack’s feet together.” To me, what’s most amusing is that the first part sounds like it makes sense, but really doesn’t. Jack, as trusting here as he is in the books, merely repeats, “Tie my feet together.” While Jack fares as badly as could be expected, Tik Tok begins lurching about and babbling randomly. When Dorothy enters, she immediately diagnoses that his brain has wound down while his voice is still running. When Jack is confused, she muses matter-of-factly, “People do it all the time!”

In closing, all I have to add is that, because of some other unexpected developments, I’m finishing this review far enough ahead of time that I might have another done by the time it gets posted. If so, it will be a fitting close to this little feature, for the time being. It’s the essential example of everything weird, terrifying and great in 1980s fantasy. In my own assessment, it is the kind of movie that would usually by above my radar, despite its disastrous history, which I suppose is the main reason I didn’t get to it long before now. As I’ve been reminding people lately, I do watch and review good movies, and this was a true pleasure. And with that, I am done.