Return to Oz

A friend and I were discussing Piper Laurie (there is a new biography out) and admittedly I have not seen any of her early performances. What later films and works I have seen and know about, are often in the vein of something off-center--Carrie, Twin Peaks--and that includes Return to Oz, although she plays the dramatic character of Aunt Em.

A sort of sequel to The Wizard of Oz and equally as scary, Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) is now having emotional problems and unable to sleep. She claims she visited Oz but no one believes her wild tale. Her aunt (Piper Laurie) is at her wit's end and decides to send her for some newfangled electric shock therapy to hopefully help her sleep again. The doctor (Nicol Williamson) and dour nurse (Jean Marsh) take her for the night. There is a thunderstorm, and Dorothy runs away, fearing the treatment. She is lost in the night and wakes up back in Oz.

Oz is now falling apart, having been ravaged by the Nome King (also Williamson) as well as the witch Mombi (also Marsh). Dorothy is joined by some new characters: Tik Tok the windup robot soldier; Jack, the lanky scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head; the Gump, a moose head cobbled together with a sofa and sprinkled with magical Powder of Life which animates it; and Bellina, a chicken that tagged along with Dorothy and now has become sentient and talkative. They have to save the original Scarecrow, imprisoned by the Nome King for stealing all his emeralds for the Emerald City, and to unenchant everyone else who have been turned to stone by Mombi. Instead of flying monkeys, there are roller skating Wheelers who pursue and taunt Dorothy and her new team.


Balk gives a reading in some earlier scenes that sounds a LOT like the Judy Garland of old. She was a good actress at nine years old although I don't think she's done anything substantial lately; she got into a wild child/bad girl spurt of roles during the middle of her career that took advantage of her exotic look. From what I could tell she even did some of her own stunts in Return to Oz.

The special effects are kind of old school (now) but pretty inventive in an old fashioned way. The Nome King was made using different techniques, both early computer animation and Williamson in costume. Mombi changes heads with her hall of beautiful heads constantly and although it's easy to deduce that each actress just has her lower body covered, the effect looks good. Since this was viewed on DVD you could see some effects were not as seamlessly done, if you slowed down the movie.

The storyline itself is not the movie's strongest point (the strongest aspect is probably the special effects), and it's a seedier vision of Oz than the original film. It is similar to the first in that Dorothy meets new characters, then journeys to find and complete some tasks, and at the end she is given a hero's welcome and returns home magically. There's not much that is bright and beautiful in this rendering, though, as it seems to reflect Dorothy's fears.  Main characters from the first (Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion) hardly get any screen time, and it seems like a waste to make the costumes for these characters when they really don't have emotional value vested in this sequel. A scene near the end had theme music that sounded like it could have come from Scott Joplin and I wondered what the film would be like if it was scored entirely like that, instead of a typical lush movie score. I thought a Joplinesque soundtrack would fit the time this story takes place.

It may be a bit scary for little kids, but I thought was still fresh to audiences who have already seen The Wizard of Oz a zillion times.  It is based on several of the Oz books so the continuity of characters and emotional attachment Dorothy has to her friends is still there.