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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 1: Today we are taking you back to an episode that

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Speaker 1: originally published eight nineteen twenty twenty two. This is going

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Speaker 1: to be nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz. Oh, it's

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Speaker 1: a magically dark time. Let's dive right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb

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Speaker 1: and this is Joe McCormick. And this week we've got

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Speaker 1: a fun family picture for everybody. It is an OZ film,

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Speaker 1: but you don't have to endure any songs. It's also

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Speaker 1: that special variety of nineteen eighty's big budget fantasy film

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Speaker 1: that leans more than a little into what some of

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Speaker 1: you might describe as dark fantasy. We are going to

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Speaker 1: be telling talking about nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz.

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Speaker 3: People have been telling me for years that I needed

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Speaker 3: to watch this movie. They'd figure out what like my

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Speaker 3: weird taste was, and they were like, you've ever seen

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Speaker 3: Return to Oz. That movie messed me up when I

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Speaker 3: was a kid. You should watch it And I never

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Speaker 3: did until last night, and I am absolutely blown away.

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Speaker 3: I in fact, I'm a little bit sad, truly, like,

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Speaker 3: not just to joking around. I am a little bit

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Speaker 3: sad that I did not actually see this as a child,

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Speaker 3: because I know this is this is precisely the kind

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Speaker 3: of movie that if I'd seen it when I was

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Speaker 3: seven or whatever, I would have been thinking about it

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Speaker 3: for months, Like it has just the right mix of

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Speaker 3: you know, bizarre original imagery and character types that are

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Speaker 3: not just like, you know, the characters you'd find in

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Speaker 3: any other fantasy thing. Is you know, it's truly original,

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Speaker 3: but a strange combinations of ideas that still nevertheless tap

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Speaker 3: into something very deep and archetypal. I think this is

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Speaker 3: a wonderful, scary children's movie.

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Speaker 1: I think it's great. I never watched it growing up either,

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Speaker 1: and I think part of it was just because the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine adaptation of the Wizard of Oz is

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Speaker 1: just such a monolith and such an you know, such

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Speaker 1: an influential film, but also one that so many people

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Speaker 1: held close to their hearts that when this film came out,

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Speaker 1: there were plenty of people who are like, oh, we

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Speaker 1: don't we don't want that new Oz. We've got that

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Speaker 1: old Oz. It comes on television all the time and

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Speaker 1: or we have it on VHS. Why do we need

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Speaker 1: to dip into this thing that that summer even saying

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Speaker 1: is a little frightening. But here's the thing. Yes, we've

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Speaker 1: been hearing from people say, oh this is you know,

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Speaker 1: this is a weird film you need to watch. This

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Speaker 1: is a scary one where this messed me up as

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Speaker 1: a child. I really don't think this one is any

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Speaker 1: darker or scarier than any of the other big eighties

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Speaker 1: fantasy film like Labyrinth or the never Ending story stuff

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Speaker 1: of that caliber.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I agree. In fact, I don't think it's

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Speaker 3: actually even scarier than the thirty nine Wizard of Oz,

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Speaker 3: which if you go back and watch the original Wizard

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Speaker 3: of Oz, this movie gave me a new appreciation for

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Speaker 3: how weird and how scary the original is. I'm serious, Like,

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Speaker 3: if you you kind of accept it because it's part

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Speaker 3: of the air we breathe, The Wizard of Oz is.

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Speaker 3: You know, you grow up with that. It's just part

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Speaker 3: of American culture, so it doesn't seem that strange. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: it also has very unusual characters and imagery and and

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Speaker 3: there is real tense, frightening, magical peril in it. Do

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Speaker 3: you remember how heart stopping that scene is when you're

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Speaker 3: a kid and the witch turns the hourglass over and

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Speaker 3: says Dorothy's gonna die, and the and the you know,

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Speaker 3: the monkey soldiers are everywhere, and the tin man's with

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Speaker 3: the axe trying to chop down the door, like it

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Speaker 3: the original one is scary.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thought that the forest was pretty terrifying.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, there's plenty of plenty of weird and scary

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Speaker 1: stuff in that that thirty nine adaptation as well. And

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Speaker 1: it's funny. We were conversing before we went in here.

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Speaker 1: You noted that I had a couple of sort of

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Speaker 1: jabs at the thirty nine Wizard of Oz, and so

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Speaker 1: you asked me if I hated the original Wizard of

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Speaker 1: Oz film, and I said, no, no, And truly I

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Speaker 1: think it's kind of impossible to hate the thirty nine film.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's such, like I said, it's a cinematic monolith.

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Speaker 1: It's so influential, Like even if you're not crazy about it,

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Speaker 1: it probably influenced some creators or some works that came

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Speaker 1: in its wake, you know, like more directly, if you

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Speaker 1: didn't have the Wizard of Oz from nineteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have The Whiz, and of course you wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have this film either, but its tentacles run far and

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Speaker 1: long through fiction and dream weaving that came to follow.

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Speaker 3: But more to your point about I guess how you

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Speaker 3: might have heard about this movie when you were a kid,

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Speaker 3: if people were saying, oh, you know, it doesn't live

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Speaker 3: up to the original, it's not worth seeing, or something.

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Speaker 3: I in a way, I think it's kind of silly

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Speaker 3: to try to compare them, because it's I think it's

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Speaker 3: called an unofficial sequel. It is clearly a sequel to

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Speaker 3: The Wizard of Oz, like the events followed directly from

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Speaker 3: the first one, but it's also not not like an official,

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Speaker 3: sanctioned one. And it came decades later. The original was

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Speaker 3: what thirty nine, and this is eighty five, so what

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Speaker 3: like forty six years in between. It was a long time,

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Speaker 3: and and that makes a big difference in terms of

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Speaker 3: tone and you know, the textures that are expected in

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Speaker 3: a movie like this, Like the original one has a

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Speaker 3: kind of a kind of gilded grandeur of old Hollywood

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Speaker 3: about it, whereas this one feels much more. I mean,

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Speaker 3: it feels like an eighties movie, but a lovely, scrappy,

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Speaker 3: imaginative one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it's a it is. It is a

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Speaker 1: world in which the Emerald City is literally in ruins.

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Speaker 1: So there's probably a lot to say there about like

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Speaker 1: the state of of of the eighties mindset compared to

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Speaker 1: the late thirties mindset. I don't know, at least in

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Speaker 1: terms of like cinematic portrayals. But yeah, it is impossible though,

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Speaker 1: to go into this and not think of the thirty

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Speaker 1: nine film sometimes unfairly so. I actually watched this with

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Speaker 1: my whole family. We sat down and watched it, and

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Speaker 1: my son he really enjoyed this one. He enjoyed the

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Speaker 1: old one, but he was bringing up some things. He's like, well,

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Speaker 1: why is Dorothy younger now? And also why didn't Toto

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Speaker 1: talk in the last film. This film clearly established that

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Speaker 1: animals that come to Oz can talk. Wow, come Toto

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Speaker 1: never talked? That's some bs.

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Speaker 3: Brilliant observation by your son. I did not notice this myself,

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Speaker 3: but yeah, So the premise of this movie is that

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Speaker 3: all the animals in Oz talk, and this includes animals

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Speaker 3: that are brought to Oz, such as one of the

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Speaker 3: main characters in this movie, which is a chicken that's

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Speaker 3: like a cool gnarly grandma. And the chicken talks. It

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Speaker 3: didn't talk when it was in Kansas, but it comes

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Speaker 3: to Oz with Dorothy talks now, so yes, you are

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Speaker 3: your son is absolutely correct. Toto should have to in

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Speaker 3: the original. This is a major oversight.

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Speaker 1: Now, speaking of the chicken, whose name is Billina, I

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Speaker 1: have to mention the other reason I really love Returned

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Speaker 1: to Oz is I think it has better companions because, yes,

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Speaker 1: we encounter in this film, we do see ten Man again, Scarecrow,

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Speaker 1: cowardly lyon, but Dorothy has basically all new companions that

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Speaker 1: she goes on the adventure with here and it's I'm

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Speaker 1: going to list him here for it for us so

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Speaker 1: we can get a taste of what's to come. We

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Speaker 1: have Billina, the talking chicken, and this is wonderfully accomplished

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Speaker 1: via live action chicken actors and an incredible chicken puppet

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Speaker 1: that is just light years ahead of what we saw

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Speaker 1: in Thrilling Bloody Sword last week. Though I do love

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Speaker 1: both chickens.

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Speaker 3: They are both great robotic chickens, but this one is

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Speaker 3: much more convincing as a chicken.

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Speaker 1: Yes, then we have TikTok, who is a rotund, wind up,

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Speaker 1: mustachioed soldier made out of like bronze or brass.

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Speaker 3: I was thinking copper, but yeah, it's one of those.

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Speaker 3: He's a metal wind up war machine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a steampunk soldier and he's fighting on behalf

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Speaker 1: of the Emerald City and Dorothy. Oh, and then the

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Speaker 1: next one we have we have the Gump, and the

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Speaker 1: Gump is basically a junk gollum. It's like junk is

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Speaker 1: put together a moose's head on a couch with some

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Speaker 1: ferns and whatever else they could scare. They are able

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Speaker 1: to assemble together and then it's given life. And you

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Speaker 1: gotta love the Gump.

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Speaker 3: They like shake some borax powder on it and that

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Speaker 3: makes it come to life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, and then we have Jack Pumpkinhead, who is

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Speaker 1: kind of a superior Halloween themed scarecrow sort of guy.

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Speaker 1: Would you say that's fair? Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Jack Pumpkinhead is interesting because he has the scariest form

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Speaker 3: of all of Dorothy's companions, but his nature is to

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Speaker 3: be incredibly innocent and sweet.

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Speaker 1: So that's the crew. That's the adventuring party for this film.

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Speaker 3: But one has to wonder, Okay, wait a minute, what

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Speaker 3: more adventures are there to have in Oz because the

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Speaker 3: last time Dorothy was in Oz, didn't they defeat the

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Speaker 3: way Could Witch? And then everything was cool in Emerald City,

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Speaker 3: like they had a big ceremony. Was basically to celebrate

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Speaker 3: the fact that now everything's good and nothing bad. Every

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Speaker 3: is gonna happen again.

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Speaker 1: I was trying to think back to exactly how The

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Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz ended. Did it end with the Scarecrow

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Speaker 1: becoming king of the Emerald City?

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Speaker 3: I don't remember if it did or not. So that's

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Speaker 3: the premise of this movie, is that at the end

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Speaker 3: of the last one, the Scarecrow was king. That's a

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Speaker 3: detail that I could see being in the original that

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Speaker 3: I forgot about, but I didn't check to make sure.

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Speaker 3: But either way, things are good in Oz. When Dorothy leaves,

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Speaker 3: remember she's gonna leave on the balloon. But then the

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Speaker 3: professor or not the Professor, I think it's the guy,

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Speaker 3: the guy from like the Carnival Barker Charlatan guy, and

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Speaker 3: he's like, oh, he floats away on the balloon. He

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Speaker 3: doesn't know how to bring it back. And then she

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Speaker 3: thinks she stranded in Oz. But then she clicks her

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Speaker 3: heels together with the ruby slippers and says there's no

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Speaker 3: place like home, and then she wakes up back in

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Speaker 3: her bed and you were there, and you were there

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Speaker 3: and it was great.

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Speaker 1: But basically the the pitch here is that in the

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Speaker 1: previous movie, the Previous Adventure anyway, Dorothy greatly destabilized Oz.

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Speaker 1: She ends up installing her own ruler, the Scarecrow, and

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Speaker 1: I get the impression of the Scarecrow's rule of Oz

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Speaker 1: last like maybe an afternoon before he is then conquered

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Speaker 1: by an entity known as the Nome King, and now

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Speaker 1: it's time for Dorothy to come back to Oz and

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Speaker 1: fix everything once more.

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Speaker 3: The villains in this movie are Sue perb just excellent,

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Speaker 3: some of my new favorite movie villains of all time,

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Speaker 3: Gene Marsh as Momby, and Nicol Williamson is the Nome King.

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Speaker 3: They should go in the Hall of Fame of Children's

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Speaker 3: movie fantasy movie Villains.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they absolutely should, And it makes sense because we

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Speaker 1: often forget again just because how well known the thirty

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Speaker 1: nine Wizard of Oz film is. But Margaret Hamilton is

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Speaker 1: a terrific villain in that film, playing Miss gulch And

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Speaker 1: and of course the Wicked Witch of the East. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's just a great cackling performance that you don't even

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Speaker 1: think of as a performance after a while, Like that

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Speaker 1: is just the wicked witch on the screen there.

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Speaker 3: Wait, is she the east or the West? I thought

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Speaker 3: she was the west?

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Speaker 1: Is she the west? We have a good No, Wait,

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Speaker 1: the East is the eastern witch? Is the one who

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Speaker 1: had the house dropped on her? Is that correct?

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Speaker 3: I think that is right? Yes, I was correct. Margaret

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Speaker 3: Hamilton is the West. We never see the East. You

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Speaker 3: just see her socks.

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Speaker 1: Both of those witches though out of the picture. Though.

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Speaker 1: At one point Mamby, who will get into here in

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Speaker 1: a bit, is described as a witch. So I guess

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Speaker 1: she's keeping the witching tradition going.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I like how she's first described I think as

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Speaker 3: a princess and then later as a witch. But I

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Speaker 3: guess we'll get into more detail later. Mamby is just wonderful. Well,

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Speaker 3: I guess you already sort of gave the elevator pitch right.

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Speaker 3: It's like, so Dorothy came in, she did a foreign intervention.

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Speaker 3: She installed a puppet ruler in the form of the Scarecrow.

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Speaker 3: Scarecrow has been deposed. Now Dorothy is back to Oz

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Speaker 3: and it's up against the Nome King.

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Speaker 1: That's right, Let's go ahead and hear some trailer audio.

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Speaker 1: Four Returned to Oz.

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Speaker 4: This summer, Walt Disney Pictures presents a motion picture fantasy

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Speaker 4: adventure beyond your fondest imagination. You'll be transported miraculously back

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Speaker 4: to the enchanted land of Oz, that magical kingdom beloved

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Speaker 4: by young and old for generations. It's just a.

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Speaker 1: Yellow bick, no bollina, you don't understand. This was the

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Speaker 1: yellow Wick road.

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Speaker 4: You'll share with Dorothy Gale, the shock of finding everything

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Speaker 4: mysteriously changed everybody, and you'll delight with her discovery of

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Speaker 4: four wonderful new friends who band together against a wicked

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Speaker 4: queen of the dreaded Long King. This is the Ours

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Speaker 4: you have seen before, and this is the Ours you'll

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Speaker 4: want to visit again and again. More Disney Pictures comes

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Speaker 4: a whole of entertainments. I don't just fly back to

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Speaker 4: Kansas too. Wow.

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Speaker 1: All right, now, before we go any further here, I

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Speaker 1: do want to mention where you can watch this. Where

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Speaker 1: you can watch it just about anywhere. This is a

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Speaker 1: big release. It may not have performed especially well at

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Speaker 1: the box office, I understand, but Yeah, you can find

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Speaker 1: it in multiple different forms these days. If you subscribe

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Speaker 1: to Disney Plus, at least in the United States, you

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Speaker 1: can watch it there. That's where we watched it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I watched Disney Plus two.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into some of the people

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Speaker 1: behind this. I'm going to start at the top, and

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Speaker 1: that is with a director who also has a screenplay

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Speaker 1: credit on this. It is Walter Merch born nineteen forty three,

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Speaker 1: highly influential Hollywood sound and film editor who worked on

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Speaker 1: such pictures as THHX eleven, thirty eight, American Graffiti, The

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Speaker 1: Godfather Part two, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and I

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Speaker 1: think I think those are some of the ones where

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Speaker 1: he did sound. But he also was a film editor

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Speaker 1: on such films as Apocalypse Now, Ghost, Romeo Is Bleeding,

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Speaker 1: The Godfather Part three, and much more. The Lucas connection

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Speaker 1: is also interesting because when you look at Walter Murch's

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Speaker 1: directorial credits, there are only two titles there. There's Return

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Speaker 1: to Oz, which of course is what we're discussing here today.

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Speaker 1: This is only film directing credit, and then he doesn't

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Speaker 1: direct anything else. But he does pop up as a

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Speaker 1: director on a twenty eleven episode of Star Wars, the

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Speaker 1: Clone Wars, the animated series, and I was immediately curious, Okay,

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Speaker 1: which which episode was this, because I've seen them all

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Speaker 1: with my son, And it is an episode titled The General,

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Speaker 1: and it's a pretty great episode. It's one of the

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Speaker 1: episodes in a multi episode story arc concerning the Republic's

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Speaker 1: campaign on a planet called Umbara. So it's this shadowy

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Speaker 1: kind of world. They're not fighting the droids of the Separatists,

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Speaker 1: they're fighting another separatist faction, and the Clones are under

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Speaker 1: the ruthless leadership of one General Palm Krell, who is

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Speaker 1: this forearmed basilisque creature. But he's like a really just

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Speaker 1: ruthless general who is ready to just sacrifice as many

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Speaker 1: Clone lives as necessary to win the day. So it's ultimately,

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Speaker 1: I think one of the one of the best story

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Speaker 1: arcs you see in that series. And so they brought

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Speaker 1: in Walter Merch to direct this one episode, so I

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Speaker 1: thought that was pretty cool.

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Speaker 3: Well for a mostly one and done director's filmography, this

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Speaker 3: is a strong entry. I much respect to Walter Merch.

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Speaker 3: I wish he had directed more movies.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, the screenplay credit the mainscreenplay credit, and this

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Speaker 1: goes to Gil Dennis, who lived nineteen forty one twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 1: writer and actor, best known for his work on the

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Speaker 1: screenplays for This nineteen ninety fives Without Evidence in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and fives Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopick.

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Speaker 1: As an actor, he played Man with Cigar in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy seven's Eraserhead.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think I read somewhere that he may

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Speaker 3: have been a classmate of David Lynch, which would make

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Speaker 3: sense that if he showed up an Eraserhead.

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Speaker 1: All right, But of course the screenplay is based on

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Speaker 1: the work of L. Frank Baum, whose novels I think

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Speaker 1: in particular, this screenplay is based on two novels, Ozma

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Speaker 1: of Oz and The Land of Oz. Bomb lived eighteen

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Speaker 1: fifty six through nineteen nineteen. Bomb was an American author

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Speaker 1: best known for his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,

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Speaker 1: published in nineteen hundred, as well as its many sequels.

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Speaker 1: And this was fascinating for me because I really didn't

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Speaker 1: know much about the cinematic history of The Wizard of

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Speaker 1: Oz pre nineteen thirty nine, but even ahead of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine film adaptation, this was already a highly

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Speaker 1: successful property. It was a Broadway musical in nineteen oh two.

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Speaker 1: The thirty nine film, though momentous, wasn't even the first adaptation.

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Speaker 1: The first attempt was apparently in nineteen oh eight with

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Speaker 1: the Fairy log and radio plays, followed by at least

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Speaker 1: a good half dozen silent films adapting the world of Oz.

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Speaker 3: Oh man, I've got to see the silent films and

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Speaker 3: what they do with TikTok and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they looked that. I didn't get a chance to

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Speaker 1: really watching them, but they look interesting. We might have

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Speaker 1: to come back to some of those in the future now.

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Speaker 1: Of course, following the nineteen thirty nine classic, there's still

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Speaker 1: plenty of other dips into the world of Oz. There

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Speaker 1: was an ultra low budget adaptation titled The Wonderful Land

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Speaker 1: of Oz in nineteen sixty nine. There were a few

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Speaker 1: different animated adaptations, including a nineteen eighty two Toho produced

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Speaker 1: Japanese adaptation. There's there's really quite a lot of Oz

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Speaker 1: related media out there, including such works as the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five musical and subsequent film, a film adaptation The Whiz,

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Speaker 1: the book in Broadway musical Wicked, and then there are

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Speaker 1: all sorts of literary treatments, spinoff illusions and more. Like

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Speaker 1: I had to think back on it because again, thirty

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Speaker 1: nine Wizard, especially as such a monolith that you don't

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Speaker 1: even think about the references to it. But like even

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Speaker 1: Stephen King includes more than a little OZ sprinkled throughout

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Speaker 1: his Dark Tower series, and yeah, they're honestly just seems

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Speaker 1: no end in sight to our fascination with Oz. Baum

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Speaker 1: wrote seventeen OZ books during his lifetime, numerous other children's

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Speaker 1: and adventures books as well. But we keep making OZ

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Speaker 1: related media, and it seems like it's just going to

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Speaker 1: keep going.

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Speaker 3: I've never actually read any of the OZ books, but

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Speaker 3: I'm kind of tempted to check them out, because, at

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Speaker 3: least with the two movies, there's so much unexpected original

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Speaker 3: texture to the fantasy world created here when compared to

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Speaker 3: most fantasy. Because you know, after you consumed a decent

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Speaker 3: amount of fantasy, you see a lot of recycled elements.

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Speaker 3: There's sort of, you know, the standard tropes of high

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Speaker 3: fantasy that show up again and again. But but the

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Speaker 3: OZ world is full of bizarre, unfamiliar things and beings.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the things that I'm always hit

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Speaker 1: with when I when I have looked at you know,

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Speaker 1: often just cover art and illustrations from these books. Is

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Speaker 1: that I feel like there's this there's certainly this familiar

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Speaker 1: sense to it, all due to the cultural impact of

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Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz, but also this weird sense that

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Speaker 1: you get from popular fiction that is very much centered

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Speaker 1: in a particular past. You know, like I'm I'm not

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Speaker 1: the intended recipient of these tales, and they're not even

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Speaker 1: though they're in English in their you know, their American stories.

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Speaker 1: I don't feel like I am like I have all

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Speaker 1: of the gear lined up in which to receive the

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Speaker 1: message that is being sent to me through it.

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Speaker 3: Like your operating system no longer supports this software.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I've never lived on a farm in the

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Speaker 1: middle of a prairie. How am I supposed to take

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Speaker 1: some of this stuff?

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Speaker 3: You know, I see what you're saying.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, let's get into the cast here.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about Dorothy. This film's Dorothy was played by

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Speaker 1: Feruza Bauk, who was born in nineteen seventy four, still

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Speaker 1: active American actor, who might be better known to some

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Speaker 1: of you for her roles as an adult, but she

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Speaker 1: started out very young and this was her first motion picture.

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Speaker 1: Subsequent films included Valmont in nineteen eighty nine, Things to

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Speaker 1: Do in Denver when You're Dead in nineteen ninety five.

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Speaker 1: That's an allusion to a Warren Zevon song, by the way,

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Speaker 1: and of course the big one is The Craft in

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six.

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Speaker 3: Oh man, several years back, Rachel and I around Halloween

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Speaker 3: decided to watch The Craft. And I don't know if

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Speaker 3: i'd say it's a good movie, but that was a

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Speaker 3: fun time.

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Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen it, but you know,

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Speaker 1: of course I'm familiar with I remember the trailer, isn't all.

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Speaker 1: But this was a big film, and after this she

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Speaker 1: was in a string of big films, including The Cursed

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six adaptation of the Island of Doctor Moreau.

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Speaker 1: Oh is that? Oh yeah, this is the one. If

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Speaker 1: you're asking, is that the Island of Doctor Moreau, in

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Speaker 1: which yes it is. Okay, it is the Marlon Brando.

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Speaker 3: One, yes, yes, the one where he allegedly had to

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Speaker 3: be fed his lines through an earpiece because he wouldn't

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Speaker 3: learn them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, just a I mean, their documentary is about this

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Speaker 1: is just a ridiculous production. That still is it has

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Speaker 1: things going for it. I mean it's it's it's oddly

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Speaker 1: hypnotizing if you catch it on TV and all. I

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Speaker 1: don't think I've ever given it a dedicated viewing. It

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Speaker 1: just it was on a lot for a certain amount

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Speaker 1: of time, I guess back in the late nineties, and

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Speaker 1: so you would catch bits of it and it's it's

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Speaker 1: thoroughly weird and just thoroughly a mess.

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Speaker 3: Okay, sorry to interrupt.

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Speaker 1: American History Acts in nineteen ninety eight is another big one,

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Speaker 1: almost famous in two thousand and she was also in

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Speaker 1: Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, which also featured Nick cage Val Kilmer. Again,

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Speaker 1: he was in the Doctor Moreau movie Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dorof,

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Speaker 1: and Michael Shannon.

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Speaker 3: I've not seen Port of Call, New Orleans since it

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Speaker 3: came out, but I've been meaning to revisit it because

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Speaker 3: that one I remember being a jaw dropping experience.

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Speaker 1: Another interesting fact for Usa, Bauk's father, Solomon Felthaus, was

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Speaker 1: one of the founding members of the psychedelic band Kaleidoscope

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Speaker 1: and Balk herself is also a musician.

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Speaker 3: You know, I feel like we tend to if a

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Speaker 3: child performance in a movie is bad, we tend not

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Speaker 3: to dwell on it as much as we might on

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Speaker 3: a notably bad adult performance, because I don't know, you

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Speaker 3: don't want to be mean about a child actor. But

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Speaker 3: I would say not just being nice. She's genuinely great

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Speaker 3: in this great great performances Dorothy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, she has this great, big eyed engagement. She's always

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Speaker 1: seems very much a part of the action going on.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes with kid actors, this kind of just you can

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Speaker 1: kind of just at times just see a child standing

432
00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:08,199
Speaker 1: on a set. You know, there's this less of a

433
00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:11,840
Speaker 1: sense that they're connected to their surroundings and the scene

434
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 1: and the characters. But she's totally in there. She helps

435
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:18,720
Speaker 1: make these scenes which often feature no other human characters.

436
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:22,000
Speaker 1: It's all puppets and suits and so forth. I mean,

437
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:25,960
Speaker 1: they're humans inside the suits obviously, but no other visible

438
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:28,679
Speaker 1: human in the scene. And she's able to be that

439
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:31,760
Speaker 1: human center for everything. And also I would say that

440
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: she has a confidence, like she's a confident character. It's

441
00:23:35,520 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 1: a confident performance that maybe make some of the otherwise

442
00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:41,160
Speaker 1: scary elements a little less scary, you know what I'm saying.

443
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 3: Yes, so I agree with that. And at the same time,

444
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:48,159
Speaker 3: she also, firs of all, also has the natural energy

445
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:51,800
Speaker 3: of kind of a government created scanner child who might

446
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 3: make people's heads explode if she doesn't get her string cheese.

447
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: You know, which is I think the appropriate energy for

448
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:01,199
Speaker 1: a child who is able to to journey through the

449
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:05,600
Speaker 1: mists to another dimension ruled by scary individuals scary entities,

450
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 1: and then move back again.

451
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:11,199
Speaker 3: Yes, so really notably good kid performance. But we've got

452
00:24:11,240 --> 00:24:16,320
Speaker 3: to talk about Nicol Williamson. He left me floored in

453
00:24:16,400 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 3: this movie.

454
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nichol Williamson plays it's a double role. He plays

455
00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:27,800
Speaker 1: doctor Warley, the electricity obsessed physician. And let's say is

456
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 1: a psychologist or his credentials exactly?

457
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,120
Speaker 3: Well, it takes place in nineteen hundred, so I don't

458
00:24:34,119 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 3: know if they add all the same categories. I guess

459
00:24:36,080 --> 00:24:40,399
Speaker 3: he's a psychiatrist, a you know, a physico psychiatrist. This movie,

460
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,960
Speaker 3: I will say, takes a firm stance against mental health.

461
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:47,560
Speaker 3: We can explain. We can explain more about that when

462
00:24:47,560 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 3: we get into the plot. But yes, he plays a

463
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 3: kind of his psychiatrist's character I think is supposed to

464
00:24:54,600 --> 00:24:56,879
Speaker 3: be taken in a very negative way, though it's not

465
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,680
Speaker 3: as explicitly evil as the Nome King. But he's great

466
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 3: in bo roles.

467
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, because he had the alter ego in the

468
00:25:03,240 --> 00:25:07,359
Speaker 1: Land of Oz is the Nome King that's spelled nog.

469
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 1: But yeah. Williamson lived nineteen thirty six through twenty eleven,

470
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,880
Speaker 1: and he's I think he's always a treat, at least

471
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,720
Speaker 1: for the viewer. Has discussed in our episode on the

472
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one snake movie Venom. Williamson had a reputation

473
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 1: apparently for being difficult to work with, which again, sometimes

474
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly what to make of those supposed reputations.

475
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:34,400
Speaker 1: Making movies is obviously complicated, and there are a lot

476
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,920
Speaker 1: of personalities involved, So I imagine there's some cases out

477
00:25:37,960 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: there where these reputations are well deserved. Other times there

478
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:45,200
Speaker 1: maybe it's a little more complicated than this person was difficult,

479
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 1: But at any rate, however difficult he was or wasn't

480
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: to work with, definitely a great actor. He played Merlin

481
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:54,879
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty one movie ex Caliber, which is

482
00:25:54,880 --> 00:26:00,080
Speaker 1: a really shiny, very just glistening King Arthur movie. He

483
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,680
Speaker 1: also was in the nineteen ninety seven Spawn movie. He

484
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 1: was in The Exorcist three, and he played Sherlock Holmes

485
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:07,640
Speaker 1: in The Seven Percent Solution.

486
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 3: This is the one that was made by Nicholas Meyer,

487
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:11,879
Speaker 3: who did Time after Time.

488
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and he was in tons of other stuff

489
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, in this movie. The thing about

490
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: the Nome King is, I guess the Nome King is

491
00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:25,320
Speaker 1: largely a vo character except for the very end of

492
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 1: the film, and even then he's under a lot of makeup,

493
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:29,719
Speaker 1: and I think there's still some voice distortion going on.

494
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:31,000
Speaker 1: But it's still a great role.

495
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I think he is hypnotizing. I just

496
00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 3: wish there were more movies where he plays a magical

497
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 3: big bad of some kind. What just occurred to me

498
00:26:39,920 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 3: when you were talking about like great but difficult actors,

499
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 3: I was thinking, wouldn't it have been great if you

500
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 3: could get a Blade sequel that was Wesley Snipes versus

501
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 3: Nicol Williamson.

502
00:26:49,720 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, it would have been good. Have you seen

503
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,480
Speaker 1: ex Caliber No, she plays Merlin. Oh it's a great performance.

504
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: He gives a great Merlin. All right, but our main villain,

505
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:04,800
Speaker 1: but we also have a secondary villain and that and

506
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: is also a dual role we have. It's Mombi, the

507
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:12,920
Speaker 1: Witch the princess, but also her earthly counterpart is Nurse Wilson.

508
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 1: These characters are played by Jean Marsh.

509
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,639
Speaker 3: Jean Marsh is also just off the charts on this

510
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:20,439
Speaker 3: So good.

511
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Born nineteen thirty four, an awesome British actor who

512
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:29,200
Speaker 1: appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent nineteen seventy two thriller Frenzy,

513
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:33,360
Speaker 1: and many viewers I think will probably best remember her

514
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: for her portrayal of the evil witch Queen bav Morda

515
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight's Willow Joe. Have you seen Willow's Been?

516
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it since I was a kid, basically,

517
00:27:44,320 --> 00:27:46,960
Speaker 3: so I don't really remember it except for little little

518
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 3: images here and there I remember. Does that Val Kilmer

519
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:51,720
Speaker 3: like hanging in a cage?

520
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, Val Kilmer is all over the place in

521
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: this one as well. But yeah, Jean Marsh plays this

522
00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:02,600
Speaker 1: evil witch queen and it's just a wonderful, snarling and

523
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,720
Speaker 1: cold role. This movie has I think the greatest witch

524
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:12,119
Speaker 1: versus witch battle ever ever committed on film. Right right

525
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:13,800
Speaker 1: at the end of the picture, It's just a real

526
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 1: like eye gouging, spell slinging kind of encounter. I highly

527
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: recommend it. Anyway, Marsh did a lot of TV during

528
00:28:21,920 --> 00:28:25,359
Speaker 1: her career, and I believe she's retired now, but those

529
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,879
Speaker 1: TV credits include an award winning role on the British

530
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:32,920
Speaker 1: drama series Upstairs Downstairs. She was also on Doctor Who,

531
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:36,439
Speaker 1: an episode of Tales from the Dark Side the Saint,

532
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 1: and even a nineteen to fifty nine episode of the

533
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,719
Speaker 1: original Twilight Zone one called The Lonely This is one

534
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 1: I've seen before. This is the one where a convict

535
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: living alone on an asteroid which just looks like the desert,

536
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:54,640
Speaker 1: the California desert or something. He receives a female robot

537
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: from his captors to help keep him company on the

538
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: asteroid for some reason. And anyway, Marsh plays the robot

539
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: woman opposite Jack Warden, and Ted Knight is in that

540
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: episode too, in an uncredited kind of background role.

541
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 3: So something that's interesting about Marsh and Nicol Williamson in

542
00:29:12,920 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 3: this movie is that they both get to play these

543
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:18,600
Speaker 3: dual roles in which in the mundane world in the

544
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:23,800
Speaker 3: world of Kansas, they are presented as villains, but in

545
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,400
Speaker 3: a very subtle way, you know, sort of blending in

546
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 3: with society and doing something that from Dorothy's perspective in

547
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 3: the movie we see as wicked. But you know they're

548
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 3: not chewing the scenery, they're not overt. In fact, they

549
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 3: their outward appearances is sort of friendly, or at least

550
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 3: Nicol Williamson's is Jane marsh is kind of cold as

551
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 3: the lady in the clinic. But then you get to

552
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 3: flip the script and go to Oz, where the characters

553
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 3: reappear once again, but as just like frothing monstrous versions

554
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 3: of their mundane world characters.

555
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, characters that demand over the top performances. Just

556
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:05,920
Speaker 1: you use every muscle in your face. Go ahead and

557
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: crank your eye intensity up to to to eleven or twelve.

558
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: That's that's the sort of villains that populate the world

559
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: of Oz, all right. Now. A few more performers have

560
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: note in this. Auntie m aunt Em in This is

561
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: played by Piper Laurie born nineteen thirty two. I don't

562
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: know about you, Joe, but I thought this was this

563
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 1: was rather hilarious, given yes, that she plays Carrie's mom.

564
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: Margaret White in seventy six is Carrie both movies about

565
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 1: special girls with special powers, and this is the and

566
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,840
Speaker 1: Piper Laurie plays the moms sort of trying to understand

567
00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: these these these young women.

568
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,480
Speaker 3: No, I would say, auntim is a is a is

569
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 3: a good caregiver, like she's you know, she she's trying

570
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 3: to be loving. And she does end up taking Dorothy

571
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:57,080
Speaker 3: to a bad place, but she doesn't mean bad. She's

572
00:30:57,080 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 3: trying to help. And her her benevolence in this movie

573
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 3: is yes, almost hilariously contrasted with the other main roles.

574
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,360
Speaker 1: I can think of her in Yeah, she's aside from Carrie.

575
00:31:10,440 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 1: She was also in nineteen sixty one's The Hustler, she

576
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: was in Twin Peaks and Children of a Lesser God.

577
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 3: So another funny thing Rachel and I always talk about

578
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 3: whenever Piper Laurie comes up is the the just the

579
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 3: absurdity of the machinations about the mill in Twin Peaks.

580
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 3: Remember that's like one of her main motivations is fighting

581
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 3: about the mill.

582
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I don't remember that, all right. So

583
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:37,320
Speaker 1: those are some of the really those are the main

584
00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: human characters. A lot of the other characters were Gonna

585
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: or a lot of the other actors and individuals involved

586
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: here are. They're kind of a mix of actual like

587
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: physical performers or puppeteers or special effects manipulators. So and

588
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: I'm not going to list all of them here, but

589
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: some of them stand out because of other work that

590
00:31:55,400 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: they did.

591
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:57,880
Speaker 3: I like that in the credits at the end of

592
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 3: this movie, when the not human characters appear, they will

593
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:05,440
Speaker 3: be given multiple credits for multiple people playing the role,

594
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 3: like they put the often the puppeteer and the voice

595
00:32:08,320 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 3: actor side by side. I think that's cool.

596
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So one name that does stand out is

597
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:17,600
Speaker 1: the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead. It's Brian Henson born nineteen

598
00:32:17,640 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 1: sixty three. This is, of course the son of the

599
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 1: late Jim Henson, producer, director, actor, and writer. He's of

600
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: course been involved in tons of Hinson projects over the decades,

601
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: but I think his most treasured place in my cinematic

602
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: memories is as the voice of Hoggle in nineteen eighty

603
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: six Labyrinth. He was also the voice of the dog

604
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:38,520
Speaker 1: on Jim Henson's Storyteller.

605
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and.

606
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I think he also did

607
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: some manipulation on Jack Pumpkinhead's head in this film as well.

608
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell was Jack pumpkinhead a puppet or was

609
00:32:50,880 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 3: there like a really skinny actor inside a costume.

610
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: Oh that's a tough call, right without really diving back

611
00:32:57,160 --> 00:33:00,040
Speaker 1: into the credits, because he is supposed to look like

612
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: a thing that is essentially a magical puppet made out

613
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: of parts. But there may well have been a human

614
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: actor in there at least for some of the scenes,

615
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,400
Speaker 1: along with some sort of puppetry manipulation of the head.

616
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: And also sometimes the chicken ballina is inside the Jack o'

617
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: lantern head. So there's a lot going on here. Oh, now,

618
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 1: this one was fun. I wasn't prepared for this, but

619
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: I mentioned we have the Gump here, which is this

620
00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: junk gollum that has a like a stuffed moose's head,

621
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:36,560
Speaker 1: and the individual that's credited for effects and manipulation on

622
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: the Gump's head is Stephen Norrington born nineteen sixty four,

623
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: the man who would go on to direct nineteen ninety

624
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: nine's Blade and did monster effects on nineteen ninety two.

625
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:47,360
Speaker 1: Split second.

626
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:48,320
Speaker 3: Wow.

627
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: So yeah, he keeps coming up on the show, and

628
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:51,719
Speaker 1: he's going to keep coming up.

629
00:33:51,800 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 3: The connections never stop.

630
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:56,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, now this next one is more of a

631
00:33:56,440 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 1: physical performance, and that is the Lee Wheeler. The Wheelers

632
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: are kind of the flying monkeys of this film, only

633
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:06,959
Speaker 1: instead of flying monkeys, instead of some sort of a

634
00:34:07,000 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 1: simian creature with feathered wings. They are like half human

635
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 1: half old timey bicycle people. Or they are a like

636
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 1: a tribe of post apocalyptic maniacs who have taken up,

637
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:29,840
Speaker 1: you know, vehicular locomotion instead of walking. They're really odd.

638
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: They're difficult to describe. Anyway. There's a whole group of

639
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:36,600
Speaker 1: these Wheelers and the lead Wheeler is played by this

640
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: actor by the name of ponds Mar, and I'm glad

641
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: we finally get to mention pons Mar because he's a

642
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:48,040
Speaker 1: Florida born artist, affects artists, puppeteer, and a monster suit guy.

643
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: He's one of He's just one of the creepy Wheelers

644
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: in this movie. But he is also memorable for playing

645
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 1: the reptile man Saarrodd in nineteen eighty seven's Masters of

646
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: the Universe and the character Fu in nineteen eighty six

647
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: is the Golden Child. He also did some Dino sued work,

648
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: both on TV's Dinosaurs the Hintson Effected sitcom, but also

649
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,600
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety five movie Theodore Rex, in which he

650
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:19,280
Speaker 1: plays a cool talking t Rex opposite Whoopi Goldberg.

651
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 3: To clarify, Theodore Rex is a buddy cop movie, and

652
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 3: the buddy cops are Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur.

653
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: Wow. Have you seen it?

654
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 2: No?

655
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it. I just know the premise, and

656
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:33,319
Speaker 3: apparently he's like a rad dinosaur.

657
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 1: He looks rat. He looks pretty rat at any rate.

658
00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: Oh Man Ponsmar is the lead Wheeler. His performance in

659
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 1: this is just cranked up to about a thousand. I

660
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: was thinking, it's kind of like, what if you took

661
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:48,400
Speaker 1: one of Bill Irwin's mind performances, like he would do

662
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 1: on Sesame Street and so forth. What if you had

663
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: that level of intensity but it was also deafeningly loud

664
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: at the same time.

665
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, he is manic oh and Rob. I noticed

666
00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 3: something I put together about the Wheelers only after I

667
00:36:03,280 --> 00:36:05,240
Speaker 3: watched the movie, not while I was watching it. Okay,

668
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 3: So throughout the movie, you've got these characters who appear

669
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:12,200
Speaker 3: in OZ, but then there's some sort of counterpart in

670
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 3: the mundane world back in Kansas. So of course Mamby

671
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 3: is the nurse at the clinic. The nome King is

672
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 3: the doctor at the clinic, but I think the Wheelers

673
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 3: are the sallow, moist looking orderlies at the clinic who

674
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 3: are like wheeling the gurneyes around and they look haven't

675
00:36:33,360 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 3: slept in a month.

676
00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe you're right on that because I.

677
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 3: Think looking back on it now, I'm not positive about this,

678
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 3: but I think Ponsmar is also one of those orderlies.

679
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 1: M hmm, Yeah, I think he is. He has a

680
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: very distinctive look that shines through even when he's not

681
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 1: made up like some sort of reptile man. Now, speaking

682
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: of monster suits, Oh, I have to mention this guy,

683
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 1: even though the Cowardly Lion is not much of a

684
00:36:56,920 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: character in this The Cowardly Lion is basically turned a

685
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 1: stone and only becomes unfrozen at the very end of

686
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: the film. But when he does move again, it's this

687
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 1: cool monster suit. And the man in the monster suit

688
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:13,920
Speaker 1: is John Alexander, who is a gorilla guy. Gotta love

689
00:37:13,920 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: a good gorilla guy.

690
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:16,879
Speaker 3: Oh, he does gorillas quite often.

691
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Alexander was a former circus performer,

692
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:25,040
Speaker 1: cabaret actor, and theater actor who first climbed into a

693
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: gorilla costume on screen for nineteen eighty four's Gray Stoke

694
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 1: The Legend of Tarzan. This was the one that starred

695
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:37,000
Speaker 1: Christopher Lambert. Of course this was his This was his

696
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: follow up performance and return to OZ, but he also

697
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: played a gorilla on the TV show Jeeves and Wooster.

698
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,280
Speaker 1: He was in who played a gorilla on Baby's Day Out,

699
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:52,320
Speaker 1: Fierce Creatures, nineteen ninety eight's Mighty Joe Young, twenty eleven's

700
00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, and he, along with a few

701
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,319
Speaker 1: others I found this kind of interesting, are credited as

702
00:37:58,640 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 1: quote unquote mime AARs in nineteen eighty eights Gorillas in

703
00:38:02,520 --> 00:38:06,160
Speaker 1: the Mist. And the thing about Gorillas in the Mist

704
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: is Gorillas in the Mist definitely has gorilla costumes. It

705
00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:12,840
Speaker 1: has great gorilla costumes designed by the great Rick Baker,

706
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: But the credits don't say don't list humans as gorillas

707
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: or say gorilla suit. They say these are mime artists,

708
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting.

709
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 3: Oh, Gorillas in the Mist is the one that has

710
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 3: Sigourney Weaver playing Diane Fosse.

711
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, good movie, I guess it. Thought it was a

712
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: little over like it was above gorilla suits for some reason,

713
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 1: but at any rate.

714
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 3: Above gorilla suits.

715
00:38:35,360 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe they just they were like, it's

716
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:40,759
Speaker 1: it would be we shouldn't list people as gorillas, or

717
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,520
Speaker 1: maybe they thought they would They wanted to keep this

718
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief alive that these are real gorillas. I

719
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: don't know, but John Alexander also did monster suit, creature

720
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: suit work, and Men in Black one and two, The

721
00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: Country Bears Zathura and hell Boy two.

722
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:01,040
Speaker 3: Now, as we mentioned, the original opinions from the First

723
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz are only sort of in this movie. Well,

724
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 3: Scarecrow is in it more. But I felt bad for

725
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 3: the tin Man at the end of this movie because

726
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:12,399
Speaker 3: Dorothy when she's like, you know, saying goodbye. Of course,

727
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 3: she has a pretty extended scene with the Scarecrow. She

728
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,560
Speaker 3: has a real good hug on the cowardly Lion. It's like, hey, world, buddies,

729
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 3: he has good to see you again. But then she

730
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:23,719
Speaker 3: just disses the tin Man. Basically, I don't think she

731
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:25,080
Speaker 3: ever even says anything to him.

732
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's barely in this as well. But it is

733
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:32,439
Speaker 1: noteworthy that the tin Man is played by Deep Roy

734
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty seven, the Kenyan British actor who, at

735
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,080
Speaker 1: four foot four has been a go to actor for

736
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. So Roy

737
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,600
Speaker 1: has popped up in Star Wars, The Dark, Crystal Flash,

738
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: Gordon Gray Stroke, The Never Ending Story, The X Files,

739
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, in which he plays a gorilla kid.

740
00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: That is what is he's credited as. He's in Charlie

741
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 1: and the Chocolate Factory. He's been in I think, various

742
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: Star Trek shows and much more. All right, and so

743
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: just a few behind the scenes credits to go through

744
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,040
Speaker 1: real quick. Norman Reynolds was the production designer on this

745
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty four British production designer who worked on

746
00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 1: the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Arc,

747
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:18,200
Speaker 1: The Exorsis three, Alien three, and more.

748
00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:20,720
Speaker 3: The sets in this movie are tremendous.

749
00:40:20,880 --> 00:40:23,799
Speaker 1: They are amazing. Yeah, so I just had to call

750
00:40:23,840 --> 00:40:27,480
Speaker 1: that out. Also, this film has some great claymation, some

751
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: stop motion animation using clay in it. Really if you're

752
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: a fan of that genre of effects like this is

753
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:37,000
Speaker 1: definitely an eighties film to check out.

754
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 3: Like when the Rocks are delivering reports to the Nome

755
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 3: King before you ever see him, you just see the

756
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:47,400
Speaker 3: face in the stone sort of scrunching up and getting

757
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 3: worried about giving the Nome King bad news.

758
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:54,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's tremendous. So I'm not even gonna list

759
00:40:54,160 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: all the Claymation team members that worked on this, but

760
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:00,799
Speaker 1: the team included such artists as Will Vinton who lived

761
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 1: forty seven through twenty eighteen, Joanne rad Milovich, who you

762
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:08,880
Speaker 1: can find images of. I included an image for you here, Joe,

763
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,240
Speaker 1: where you can see the artist working on some of

764
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 1: the Nome King's minions. Here, Bruce McKean, who lived nineteen

765
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 1: fifty one through nineteen ninety three. Oh, and this is

766
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: an interesting one. Mark Gustafson, who is co director on

767
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: the upcoming guiermel del Toro Pinocchio movie. And then there

768
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,399
Speaker 1: it's also Craig Bartlett born nineteen fifty six, who worked

769
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: on Dinosaur Train, which was is. I'm not sure if

770
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 1: it's still going, but at any rate, Is was a

771
00:41:37,760 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 1: long running Jim Henson animated series that I believe also

772
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:46,600
Speaker 1: used poppetry to create the movements for the animated dinosaurs.

773
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: And finally, the music. The music credit here goes to

774
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: David Schier born nineteen thirty seven, American composer who scored

775
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 1: a ton of films over the years, including All the

776
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 1: President's Men, Oh Godjo Devil, Short Circuit, Monkey Shines, and

777
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: David Fincher's Zodiac.

778
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:05,240
Speaker 3: Trying to remember the music in Zodiac. But I can't

779
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 3: recall the orchestration. All I recall is the hurdy gurdy man.

780
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:10,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent use of the hurdy gurdy man. But I

781
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:13,839
Speaker 1: too don't remember the score offhand. Likewise, I don't really

782
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: remember the score from this movie. I watched it the

783
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 1: other day. It's one of those scores that does its job,

784
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: does its job well, but you don't necessarily think back

785
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:24,240
Speaker 1: on it. It's just not that type of score.

786
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:24,719
Speaker 4: Yeah.

787
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:26,919
Speaker 3: I mean, a movie like this depends on the music

788
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 3: being good, so it must have been good, but it

789
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 3: didn't stand. I don't recall what it was.

790
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also not a musical, so there's not a

791
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,920
Speaker 1: scene where Dorothy says something and then the TikTok is like,

792
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:39,920
Speaker 1: well that sounds good, Dorothy, But could you sing a

793
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 1: song about it so I can remember it. No, it

794
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:43,319
Speaker 1: doesn't work like that.

795
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 3: Oh, we are the Wheelers, we will everywhere.

796
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:50,400
Speaker 1: Oh man, what I can't I don't even like to

797
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: think what sort of musical genre the Wheelers would use.

798
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 1: It would just have to be some sort of like

799
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,880
Speaker 1: screaming punk song or something. Yeah, some sort of screeching

800
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: avant garde industrial punk. That would be my guess what.

801
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 3: Would Mom be saying, I want all your heads?

802
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 1: Oh, maybe it would be a different genre. It would

803
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: certainly be a different voice depending on which head she chooses. Right.

804
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:14,120
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good point.

805
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: And when it comes to the Nome King, it would

806
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: just it would be hard rock because that's what he's

807
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:19,400
Speaker 1: made of.

808
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 3: That's that's good. Okay. I guess we've already teased the

809
00:43:31,160 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 3: plot a good bit. But I think this is one

810
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:35,120
Speaker 3: of those ones where we're not going to try to

811
00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:38,280
Speaker 3: go scene by scene and describe the whole movie. Because

812
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 3: this is this one. It's good to let some surprises remain.

813
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 3: But maybe we should talk about some broad broad sections

814
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 3: of the plot and some of our favorite details. So

815
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:49,840
Speaker 3: do you want to start with life in Kansas?

816
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So.

817
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:54,320
Speaker 3: The film seems to take place a little while after

818
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 3: the events of the original Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale

819
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:00,120
Speaker 3: is back on the farm with Aunt em and Uncle Henry.

820
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 3: They are rebuilding the house because of course it was

821
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 3: you know, carried away by the Kansas cyclone in the

822
00:44:06,080 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 3: previous movie. But Dorothy is you know, she not just

823
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:13,360
Speaker 3: totally back to normal. She is obsessed with her memories

824
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:15,879
Speaker 3: of adventurous in the Land of Oz, to the point

825
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:17,959
Speaker 3: where she can't sleep at night. Like you see Piper

826
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 3: Laurie come into the room and it's like, Dorothy, you know,

827
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 3: you got to go to sleep. But she's you know,

828
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 3: she's looking at the stars because she's thinking about monsters

829
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 3: and thinking about trees that trees that attack.

830
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 1: Well, this is what they get for living in the

831
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:30,839
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. The stars are so bride out there,

832
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:32,640
Speaker 1: they basically keep you up at night.

833
00:44:32,920 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 3: It's true. I can report from brief experiences. If you

834
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 3: go to a place with truly dark skies and you

835
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:41,359
Speaker 3: look up at the stars at night, it is a

836
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:46,479
Speaker 3: borderline hallucinatory experience. Yeah, but okay, aunt Em and Uncle

837
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 3: Henry are troubled by what's happened to Dorothy. They think

838
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 3: she is suffering from persistent delusions because of her belief

839
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 3: that Oz is real. So ann Em gets the idea

840
00:44:57,560 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 3: that they've got to send her to a doctor in

841
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 3: town who has a machine that can cure her brain

842
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 3: with electricity. So there are a few things that are

843
00:45:06,840 --> 00:45:10,400
Speaker 3: established in this early section. On the farm, we see,

844
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 3: you know that ann M and Uncle Henry are our

845
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 3: loving parents. You know, they care about Dorothy and they're

846
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 3: trying to do good, but also that they're disturbed by

847
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 3: her seeming to believe that Oz is a real place

848
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 3: and she actually went there, and you see them trying

849
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 3: to discourage these apparent delusions. And meanwhile, Dorothy's just thinking

850
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 3: about Oz all the time. Like she finds a key

851
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 3: on the farm and she's like, see this key is

852
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 3: from OZ because it's got like the handle on it

853
00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:39,880
Speaker 3: is round like an O, and then it's got to

854
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:41,839
Speaker 3: slash through the middle of it that sort of makes

855
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:44,960
Speaker 3: like a crossbar on a Z. So yeah, this is

856
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 3: obviously an artifact from OZ. And then I think it

857
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:51,800
Speaker 3: literally is. Later but we also we meet a chicken

858
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:55,480
Speaker 3: who can't talk. But this chicken who cannot talk is

859
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:58,839
Speaker 3: Dorothy's friend, and the chicken is threatened by Aunt Em

860
00:45:58,920 --> 00:46:01,439
Speaker 3: because An M's like, if you don't lay an egg soon,

861
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:02,800
Speaker 3: I'm gonna turn you into soup.

862
00:46:03,239 --> 00:46:06,160
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, this is Billina. Billina is going to be

863
00:46:06,200 --> 00:46:09,840
Speaker 1: a major character. Delena is not just there for comic relief.

864
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 3: Now, shortly into the movie, Dorothy is taken by aunt

865
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:16,839
Speaker 3: Em to town and Toto tries to follow them. They

866
00:46:16,880 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 3: have a very cute dog to play, Toto, but Toto

867
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,880
Speaker 3: does not accompany Dorothy on her adventures in this movie.

868
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 3: Toto stays behind and so she's taken to town to

869
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,120
Speaker 3: go to the offices of doctor JB. Worley played by

870
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:33,040
Speaker 3: Nicole Williamson. And again this is going to be for

871
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:37,279
Speaker 3: the electrical cure. Now. As I said earlier, Williamson and

872
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 3: Jean marsh are both fabulous in their roles because, like

873
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:43,160
Speaker 3: in the original Wizard of Oz, they play these characters

874
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 3: on both sides of the fantasy divide, right, they have

875
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:51,960
Speaker 3: real mundane characters and fantasy counterparts in Oz. Nicole Williamson's

876
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 3: Earth character, doctor Warley, is I think wonderfully realized as

877
00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:59,720
Speaker 3: as the kind of man who presents a soft, friendly,

878
00:47:00,120 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 3: reassuring exterior while preparing the machinery that will steal your soul.

879
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is a wonderful performance. And you

880
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: know you don't see a lot of him here. We're

881
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 1: not in Kansas for too long. But yeah. Yeah, he

882
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: seems he is a He doesn't come off as a

883
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:19,160
Speaker 1: suspicious adult. He seems like a trusting adult who is

884
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,200
Speaker 1: in who's rightfully in a position of authority and is

885
00:47:22,239 --> 00:47:23,280
Speaker 1: going to help you.

886
00:47:23,320 --> 00:47:25,760
Speaker 3: Like there's a part where he's showing Dorothy. He says, look,

887
00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 3: this machine has a face. Here are its eyes, and

888
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,560
Speaker 3: here is its nose. And of course the machine is

889
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:37,200
Speaker 3: the machine they're going to use to administer electroconvulsive therapy

890
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:41,359
Speaker 3: to Dorothy. Now, a brief note on psychiatry in this film.

891
00:47:41,640 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 3: I would say this movie depicts psychiatry in general and

892
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 3: electroconvulsive therapy in particular as cruel and evil, which I

893
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,000
Speaker 3: would say I have twofold thoughts about number one. It

894
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 3: really works in the context of the plot. But of course,

895
00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:58,959
Speaker 3: if you're going to be literal about it, I think

896
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 3: this is very mis guided. Like I think if you

897
00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 3: get your ideas about ECT from the movies, especially like

898
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 3: I don't know, movies made in the seventies and eighties,

899
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:08,879
Speaker 3: such as scenes from One Flow of the Cuckoo's Nest

900
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 3: and stuff, you would basically think that it is like

901
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:17,320
Speaker 3: a pseudoscientific involuntary torture mechanism. Used to inflict pain and terror.

902
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 3: But I think actually, you know, a lot of psychiatrists

903
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 3: think that there's very good evidence that it's helpful and

904
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 3: that you'll meet people who have experienced severe, major depression

905
00:48:26,640 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 3: that did not respond to other treatments, and they would

906
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 3: say ECT made a major positive difference in their lives. Though, obviously,

907
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 3: if it were actually administered in the way it is

908
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:40,239
Speaker 3: depicted in this movie, which is like an unexplained, non

909
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:44,000
Speaker 3: consensual punishment inflicted on children for the crime of having

910
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,360
Speaker 3: an imagination, that would be pretty awful. So while you

911
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 3: should obviously not get your real, real world ideas about

912
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:55,120
Speaker 3: ECT from the OZ universe, it does make a really

913
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:59,279
Speaker 3: great plot device, scary plot device within the fantasy context

914
00:48:59,280 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 3: of the movie.

915
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:01,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so.

916
00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 3: Anyway, Dorothy is left at this clinic to be subjected

917
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 3: to the electrical cure for her brain, and there's this

918
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 3: great scene where you know, Dorothy's kind of thinking about

919
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 3: other things while you hear the doctor talking to aunt

920
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:16,440
Speaker 3: Em in the background saying, you know, the mind is

921
00:49:16,440 --> 00:49:20,760
Speaker 3: simply a machine. Sometimes the machine has too much electricity

922
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:26,359
Speaker 3: in it, and you get a similar foreboding elements from

923
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 3: other things at the clinic so Gene Marsh plays a

924
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:32,480
Speaker 3: what would you call her, She's like an assistance sort

925
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 3: of a warden at this clinic, and she's wearing a

926
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 3: dress that looks like it might as well be Darth

927
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:38,240
Speaker 3: Vader's suit.

928
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 1: Yeah. It is like such a gothy number. I don't

929
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:46,120
Speaker 1: know how else to describe it. It's just like multiple

930
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 1: shades of black, and how's all of these like cremulations

931
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 1: and sort of fabric spikes on it.

932
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:55,719
Speaker 3: It's like if you combine like a Little House on

933
00:49:55,800 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 3: the Prairie dress and the Road Warrior. Yeah. But also

934
00:50:00,680 --> 00:50:03,800
Speaker 3: here at the clinic, Dorothy meets a mysterious blonde girl

935
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 3: who like appears in her room and warns her about

936
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:08,919
Speaker 3: doctor Worley's machines. I think, is this the scene where

937
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 3: they're like hearing people screaming and she says like those

938
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 3: are the people who have been subjected to the machine.

939
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's this is probably the darkest moment

940
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:21,879
Speaker 1: in the film. I thought for me anyway, like this

941
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: is this This is the moment where I was sitting

942
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: there watching it, you know, next to my son, and

943
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:30,000
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is maybe a little too dark, But

944
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 1: he didn't seem to mind. And you're through it pretty quickly.

945
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:35,719
Speaker 3: And there's a scene where they're like taking Dorothy to

946
00:50:36,120 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 3: be hooked up to the electrical machine, the one that

947
00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:40,719
Speaker 3: had eyes and a nose and a mouth, and they're

948
00:50:40,760 --> 00:50:43,200
Speaker 3: hooking the electrodes up to her head, and just when

949
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:46,160
Speaker 3: they're getting ready to send the charge the there is

950
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 3: a storm and lightning strikes and power is lost, and

951
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,960
Speaker 3: Dorothy actually escapes during this lightning storm, along with that

952
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 3: strange blonde girl who she keeps seeing in the mirror,

953
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 3: and they they get swept up in a flood, being

954
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 3: chased by Jeane marsh in that crazy black dress, and

955
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 3: they end up floating away down a torrent in a

956
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:06,960
Speaker 3: chicken coop.

957
00:51:07,360 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: By the way, I couldn't help it be reminded of

958
00:51:10,719 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: the movie Brazil, which I guess came out the same year,

959
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:17,359
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. But that film has a scene where

960
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,839
Speaker 1: an individual's strapped to a contraption and in that case

961
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:24,000
Speaker 1: is about to be tortured when something miraculous happens that

962
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 1: seems to save him. And then at the end of

963
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:28,640
Speaker 1: the film, all depending on the cut, you find out

964
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 1: that this was all just what an occurrence at what

965
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: is at Awl Creek Bridge situation where everything was happening

966
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:38,280
Speaker 1: in his head and he really died on the interrogation table.

967
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to say that that is not the

968
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 1: case in Return to oz there's not a scene later

969
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 1: where you realize, oh, this was all just electricity going

970
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 1: through Dorothy's brain.

971
00:51:48,040 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 3: Right. No, no, no, there is like a waking up later scene,

972
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:51,680
Speaker 3: but it's not that.

973
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, she did.

974
00:51:53,760 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 3: Really go out and get in the mud.

975
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:57,800
Speaker 1: And into the river and then seemingly into the ocean.

976
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:00,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's a good thing she did

977
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 3: run out into the floodwaters because apparently if she had

978
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 3: remained behind at the clinic, she may be she may

979
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:10,360
Speaker 3: have been incinerated. Yes, But so from here we're gonna

980
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:13,719
Speaker 3: go to Ozta. We gotta talk oz First thing is

981
00:52:13,960 --> 00:52:17,239
Speaker 3: she wakes up in that chicken coop being wrecked in

982
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,320
Speaker 3: what's called the Deadly Desert, which is a plot device

983
00:52:20,360 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 3: that I love. The idea of the Deadly desert is

984
00:52:23,680 --> 00:52:26,319
Speaker 3: if you touch the sand, you turn to sand, and

985
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:30,080
Speaker 3: it's very simple, but it's great. We see a wheeler

986
00:52:30,120 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 3: turned to sand at some point and it's brutal.

987
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was one of my son's favorite moments, and

988
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: in part because we hated the Wheelers. All we could

989
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: tell the Wheelers were bad news, So any bad things

990
00:52:40,160 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: that happened to the Wheelers are somewhat justified.

991
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 3: But as soon as Dorothy wakes up in the deadly desert,

992
00:52:45,200 --> 00:52:48,320
Speaker 3: her chicken friend Billina is there with her, and Billina

993
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:50,960
Speaker 3: can talk. Now, remember by the mechanism we discussed earlier,

994
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:52,920
Speaker 3: you know, you're an animal, you're in Oz. Now you're

995
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 3: a talking animal. And it turns out all along, if

996
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 3: Billina could talk, we would have noticed that she has

997
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 3: like a sassy, old prairie grandma tude.

998
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was full of fun one liners as well,

999
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,200
Speaker 1: and occasionally has information and advice.

1000
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 3: So they're going around, they're checking out Oz. They're like,

1001
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 3: what's up in Oz? And uh oh, everything is wrecked.

1002
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 3: Nothing's good anymore. The yellow brick road is all torn up,

1003
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:20,719
Speaker 3: Munchkin Village is gone. I think Emerald City is in ruins.

1004
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 3: We see it in the distance and it looks like

1005
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:27,239
Speaker 3: it has been shelled. Yeah, and we gather that when

1006
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:30,719
Speaker 3: Dorothy last left, the Scarecrow had been crowned King of

1007
00:53:30,719 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 3: Oz in the Emerald City. And I think there's an

1008
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 3: understanding that Scarecrow is going to be a good and

1009
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 3: just ruler. Scarecrow is kind, Scarecrow is thoughtful. You know,

1010
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:41,719
Speaker 3: he wouldn't do he wouldn't be a bad king. But

1011
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:45,680
Speaker 3: in the meantime, something has gone terribly wrong, and I

1012
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 3: was immediately tempted to think how different the story would

1013
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 3: be if it had been like George R. R. Martin's

1014
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,600
Speaker 3: Return to Oz, where the friendly Scarecrow has a heel turn.

1015
00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 3: As soon as Dorothy leaves, he's corrupted by power. He

1016
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:03,280
Speaker 3: immediately institutes, you know, Tonyan repression, purges of his perceived enemies.

1017
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 3: He sends ten man to prison, He's got dungeons in

1018
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:09,160
Speaker 3: the Emerald City. That would have been a way to go.

1019
00:54:09,200 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 3: But no, it's not that the Scarecrow had a heel turned. Instead,

1020
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,400
Speaker 3: what happened is that the Scarecrow has been deposed and

1021
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 3: someone else has taken over someone bad.

1022
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:18,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't know.

1023
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:20,560
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that have been a good twist. What if the

1024
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:22,120
Speaker 3: Scarecrow was the villain of the movie.

1025
00:54:22,520 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it would have been. It would have been

1026
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:26,080
Speaker 1: nice and twisty. It seems like the kind of thing

1027
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: they would do today if they were to make return

1028
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:30,360
Speaker 1: to Oz, though this film does have some neat twists

1029
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:31,880
Speaker 1: concerning what exactly happened.

1030
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 3: So anyway, Dorothy and Billina investigate everywhere there are statues

1031
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:38,360
Speaker 3: of human forms, and in the ruins of the Emerald

1032
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 3: City they find a creepy graffito on a wall that says,

1033
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:44,440
Speaker 3: beware the Wheelers.

1034
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:48,400
Speaker 1: Yes, written in red. I don't think it's written in blood,

1035
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:50,800
Speaker 1: but who can say for certain.

1036
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:53,520
Speaker 3: It looks like it's written in red colored pencil.

1037
00:54:53,800 --> 00:54:56,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they didn't have a lot of blood. It's

1038
00:54:56,280 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: not drippy blood, but it's like, we're not not going

1039
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: to really just layer it on. We only have so

1040
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:04,160
Speaker 1: much blood to work with here. I'm just saying it

1041
00:55:04,160 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 1: could be blood. It could be blood.

1042
00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:08,319
Speaker 3: I think blood is a scarce resource in Oz now

1043
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 3: because most human bodies have been turned into stone from

1044
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 3: what we can see. And in the ruins of the city,

1045
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,960
Speaker 3: Dorothy and Billina get attacked by these horrible creatures called

1046
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 3: wheelers we've already talked about. They got wheels instead of

1047
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:23,920
Speaker 3: hands and feet, and Dorothy uses her special key. I

1048
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:25,960
Speaker 3: think this is the oz key that she found on

1049
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:27,560
Speaker 3: the farm in Kansas. Is that right?

1050
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: Yep?

1051
00:55:28,360 --> 00:55:31,279
Speaker 3: He uses that to open a door inside a secret room.

1052
00:55:31,320 --> 00:55:35,160
Speaker 3: There she finds this bulbous mechanical man and this is

1053
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 3: one of our heroes, TikTok. I loved TikTok. He is

1054
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 3: like a wind up copper Ronan. He is a mechanical

1055
00:55:43,520 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 3: warrior whose master has been deposed and now he's in

1056
00:55:47,600 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 3: the service of Dorothy.

1057
00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:55,600
Speaker 1: Great design, great effects with this being the like a

1058
00:55:55,600 --> 00:55:57,480
Speaker 1: lot of it is puppetry, but also it's clearly a

1059
00:55:57,480 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 1: person in a suit, and it's they're able to pull

1060
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:03,719
Speaker 1: off this wonderful gait, this wonderful walking style of of

1061
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:06,719
Speaker 1: of TikTok. It's it's, it's it's absolutely wonderful. He was

1062
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the whole film.

1063
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 3: He's sort of a little bit teddy roosevelt Ish, but

1064
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:15,239
Speaker 3: other elements too, like he's blustery and headstrong and has

1065
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:18,520
Speaker 3: a big walrus mustache, a metal one, of course. But

1066
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 3: I thought a really interesting recurring theme is that we

1067
00:56:22,719 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 3: are frequently reminded throughout the movie that TikTok is not alive,

1068
00:56:27,040 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 3: Like when Dorothy first finds him, there are instructions on

1069
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:31,560
Speaker 3: his back for how to wind him up and make

1070
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:34,440
Speaker 3: him work. But U and one of the things the

1071
00:56:34,440 --> 00:56:36,719
Speaker 3: instruction says is like that, you know, the TikTok, the

1072
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 3: mechanical man, does everything but live. Yes, but what does

1073
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 3: that mean? So TikTok clearly has a mind, he has

1074
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 3: a personality, and he even has preferences in the ability

1075
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:52,359
Speaker 3: to take a fence like. There's a scene later when

1076
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 3: Jack Pumpkinhead suggests throwing TikTok out of the gump aircraft

1077
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 3: because he's the heaviest of them, and TikTok clearly takes

1078
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 3: a front like he is annoyed by this suggestion. Yes,

1079
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 3: and yet there are other times where TikTok seems to

1080
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 3: reference the fact that he is not alive as a

1081
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 3: reason for not being concerned about something. It's like, you know,

1082
00:57:11,960 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 3: I don't really worry about getting turned into an inanimate

1083
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:16,760
Speaker 3: object because I'm not alive anyway.

1084
00:57:17,080 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 1: Well, in Oz, being a non living entity, I think

1085
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:22,640
Speaker 1: you have a lot of company. It's not one of

1086
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:25,320
Speaker 1: these stories where oh, I am the lonely being that

1087
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: is a machine and not a human but has feelings.

1088
00:57:27,800 --> 00:57:31,600
Speaker 1: In Oz, everywhere you look there's some sort of reanimated form.

1089
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:34,680
Speaker 1: There's there a machine people all over the place.

1090
00:57:34,680 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 3: They just different varieties I think Return to Oz explores

1091
00:57:37,920 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 3: some of the same thematic territory as Terminator too. Can

1092
00:57:41,640 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 3: this machine be a good parent? Does this machine know?

1093
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:47,560
Speaker 3: Does it understand why we cry? Even if it's something

1094
00:57:47,560 --> 00:57:49,880
Speaker 3: it can never do? Yeah, so anyway, I thought that

1095
00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:52,640
Speaker 3: might This is like a kind of a thoughtful movie

1096
00:57:52,640 --> 00:57:56,120
Speaker 3: for kids. It planned some interesting philosophical ideas in their mind.

1097
00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:58,720
Speaker 3: But what does it mean to be alive? But also

1098
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 3: I like the wind up and wind down dynamic with TikTok.

1099
00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 3: So TikTok has winding keys for three different things, thought, speech,

1100
00:58:08,200 --> 00:58:11,720
Speaker 3: and action, and at various times throughout the movie, one

1101
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 3: of the three but not the other two, will wind down,

1102
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:17,840
Speaker 3: including a very funny scene where they're trying where all

1103
00:58:17,880 --> 00:58:20,000
Speaker 3: the good characters are trying to like work on a

1104
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 3: project together, but TikTok's thought runs down while his speech

1105
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 3: and action are still active.

1106
00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love this as well, the three wind up

1107
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:32,640
Speaker 1: wind down dynamics, because on one level, I think it's

1108
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 1: it's a good way to get kids potentially thinking about

1109
00:58:35,880 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: like what what what the human experience is, you know,

1110
00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 1: like thinking of our of our own mental facult faculties,

1111
00:58:41,880 --> 00:58:43,840
Speaker 1: not as a single entity, but this thing that sort

1112
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 1: of emerges out of out of out of different things

1113
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:53,280
Speaker 1: and different stimuli and different processes. So, uh, it's it's

1114
00:58:53,320 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 1: an interesting way to look at a in this case

1115
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,600
Speaker 1: of fantastic being, but also to sort of turn that

1116
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: reflection back on yourself at times.

1117
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 3: But so we said the TikTok he's a soldier, right,

1118
00:59:05,000 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 3: he's a warrior for the Scarecrow, and he's been left

1119
00:59:07,800 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 3: behind by the Scarecrow. I think to wait for Dorothy.

1120
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 3: So here's Dorothy and now they're teaming up. So right

1121
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:18,280
Speaker 3: from the outset, TikTok is ready to beat up some wheelers.

1122
00:59:18,280 --> 00:59:23,560
Speaker 3: He like walks out. Oh there's a fight scene that

1123
00:59:23,720 --> 00:59:27,080
Speaker 3: you could regard as underwhelming because TikTok is just basically

1124
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:31,800
Speaker 3: spinning around in a circle whacking wheelers, But I don't.

1125
00:59:31,960 --> 00:59:33,320
Speaker 3: Something about it is really good.

1126
00:59:33,600 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's intensely satisfying, in part because the wheelers have

1127
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 1: established themselves as a total menace and their acting is

1128
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:45,360
Speaker 1: over the top. Here comes TikTok. He absolutely wails on them,

1129
00:59:45,400 --> 00:59:48,959
Speaker 1: and then he captures the lead wheeler, who is again

1130
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: the most animated and annoying of the wheelers, and begins

1131
00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:55,240
Speaker 1: to roughly interrogate him, and we were just cheering for

1132
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: TikTok during this scene. We're like, yeah, get him TikTok.

1133
00:59:58,920 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 3: It's great and of course under torture essentially no under threat.

1134
01:00:04,800 --> 01:00:07,960
Speaker 3: The lead Wheeler reveals that the Scarecrow has been overthrown

1135
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:11,720
Speaker 3: and taken prisoner by the Gnome King, and to learn

1136
01:00:11,760 --> 01:00:13,360
Speaker 3: more about what's going on, they have to go and

1137
01:00:13,480 --> 01:00:26,040
Speaker 3: visit the castle of Princess Mamby. Yeah, so that's what

1138
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 3: happens next. The whole section in Momby's castle in the

1139
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,720
Speaker 3: middle of the movie is just awesome. Where do you

1140
01:00:32,720 --> 01:00:35,960
Speaker 3: want to start here? So Mamby's palace is like in

1141
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:38,600
Speaker 3: many ways it's made of mirrors, or at least sort of.

1142
01:00:38,600 --> 01:00:42,240
Speaker 3: The throne room is, which is very creepy, especially in

1143
01:00:42,280 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 3: scenes where like Dorothy's trying to find a door or

1144
01:00:44,720 --> 01:00:45,680
Speaker 3: figure out what to do.

1145
01:00:46,160 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, her whole palace is just, oh my goodness. The

1146
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:53,400
Speaker 1: sets are amazing. Even sets, even parts of the palace

1147
01:00:53,400 --> 01:00:56,280
Speaker 1: that you don't really spend much time in just look incredible.

1148
01:00:56,320 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 1: Like they walk through a bedroom and nothing ever happens

1149
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:01,320
Speaker 1: with the bedroom. You see it in the background as

1150
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: just stupendous. It's like this weird evil Princess Cathedral, and

1151
01:01:07,480 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 1: then you venture into this hall of heads. This is

1152
01:01:11,400 --> 01:01:16,760
Speaker 1: where Momby stores these various stolen female heads that she has,

1153
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:21,120
Speaker 1: stores them alive, and we'll use them. We've mentioned this

1154
01:01:21,120 --> 01:01:23,760
Speaker 1: on the show before because somebody wrote in on listener

1155
01:01:23,760 --> 01:01:26,760
Speaker 1: mail about this. How curious it is that Momby is

1156
01:01:26,840 --> 01:01:30,400
Speaker 1: always the same Mamby. But Momby takes off her original

1157
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:33,400
Speaker 1: head and puts on these other heads, and while she

1158
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:36,600
Speaker 1: has these other heads on, she again is still Momby.

1159
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:40,440
Speaker 1: But it also is stated in the film where it's

1160
01:01:40,480 --> 01:01:44,240
Speaker 1: sort of suggested in the film where it's hypothesized by

1161
01:01:44,240 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 1: one of the characters that if she does something with

1162
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:49,680
Speaker 1: one head on and she switches to another head, she

1163
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:55,200
Speaker 1: might not remember something she did previously, which just sends

1164
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: my head reeling trying to figure out how all of

1165
01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: that works.

1166
01:01:58,040 --> 01:02:00,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, her personality always seems to be the same, but

1167
01:02:00,920 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 3: I think it's Jack Pumpkinhead says that because Dorothy's about

1168
01:02:04,160 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 3: to meet him. He says that Momby locked him up

1169
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 3: in the tower, but then forgot he was in there

1170
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:12,440
Speaker 3: because she switched heads and that Memby was in a

1171
01:02:12,440 --> 01:02:14,760
Speaker 3: different head. And when we first meet her, it's not

1172
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:17,440
Speaker 3: Jean Marsh's head. So we don't you know, our guard

1173
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:20,080
Speaker 3: is down. We're not seeing like, oh, that's the scary lady,

1174
01:02:20,120 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 3: remember her from the clinic. It's just some other lady.

1175
01:02:22,720 --> 01:02:25,360
Speaker 3: She looks nice and you know, she's sitting there playing

1176
01:02:25,360 --> 01:02:27,840
Speaker 3: a harp. And then she and Dorothy start talking. But

1177
01:02:27,880 --> 01:02:30,480
Speaker 3: then she's like, Dorothy, I'm gonna need to cut your

1178
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:32,480
Speaker 3: head off and keep it in my keep it in

1179
01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:34,760
Speaker 3: my collection. But you're not old enough yet, So I

1180
01:02:34,760 --> 01:02:36,880
Speaker 3: got to lock you in a tower for a few years.

1181
01:02:37,080 --> 01:02:38,919
Speaker 3: Then your head will get bigger and then I'll cut

1182
01:02:38,920 --> 01:02:39,960
Speaker 3: it off and then I'll keep it.

1183
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:42,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, she realized is an investment. We're gonna wait for

1184
01:02:42,760 --> 01:02:45,479
Speaker 1: you to mature a bit. She didn't want to wear

1185
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:48,680
Speaker 1: Little Girl for USA balk Head. She wants to wear

1186
01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: the Craft for USA balk Head, and she doesn't have

1187
01:02:51,240 --> 01:02:52,800
Speaker 1: to wait a few years for that to happen. So

1188
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 1: off to the dungeon chamber with you, up to the

1189
01:02:57,400 --> 01:03:01,120
Speaker 1: locked room, and so she's thrown in there with Jack Pumpkinhead,

1190
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:04,920
Speaker 1: who she meets. But also there are all these pieces

1191
01:03:04,960 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 1: that will eventually become the Gump because at this point

1192
01:03:08,280 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 1: we're dealing with an escape plan they find out about this.

1193
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:15,400
Speaker 1: What is it the Is it the powder of animation

1194
01:03:15,600 --> 01:03:16,640
Speaker 1: or the powder of life?

1195
01:03:16,840 --> 01:03:19,800
Speaker 3: Powder of life? Yeah, it's a magical powder that Momby

1196
01:03:19,880 --> 01:03:23,520
Speaker 3: has that she sprinkles over inanimate objects to wake them up.

1197
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 3: And this is originally, I think where Jack pumpkinhead comes from.

1198
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:32,240
Speaker 3: That's like he's made of sticks and a pumpkin. Though wait,

1199
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:35,160
Speaker 3: I think he was originally a real boy. Maybe I'm

1200
01:03:35,160 --> 01:03:35,600
Speaker 3: not sure.

1201
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:39,160
Speaker 1: He asks if he can call Dorothy mom and she

1202
01:03:39,240 --> 01:03:40,400
Speaker 1: allows it, which.

1203
01:03:40,200 --> 01:03:42,680
Speaker 3: Is a little creepy, but it's also kind of sweet

1204
01:03:42,720 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 3: at the same time. I don't know.

1205
01:03:44,560 --> 01:03:47,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, but any rate, they realize we got to get

1206
01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:49,720
Speaker 1: out of here. Well, we could fly out of here

1207
01:03:49,720 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 1: if only we had a winged mount. Well, we could

1208
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: make one out of this moose's head or Gump's head

1209
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:58,880
Speaker 1: on the wall and this couch and we could use

1210
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 1: these pieces of this to make wings and this will

1211
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: somehow work. But we need that powder in order to

1212
01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 1: bring all this to life and fly out the window.

1213
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:10,720
Speaker 1: Where's the powder? Well, we find out it's stored with

1214
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:14,120
Speaker 1: Momby's original head. So Dorothy is going to have to

1215
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 1: sneak out and make her way through that museum of

1216
01:04:18,120 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: heads and try and find the original head and steal

1217
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:24,760
Speaker 1: the powder from that headlocker.

1218
01:04:25,200 --> 01:04:27,200
Speaker 3: It's a heist at the head repository.

1219
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is an amazing sequence and also just

1220
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:35,560
Speaker 1: a wonderfully magical dark fantasy sequence because you know, it's

1221
01:04:35,560 --> 01:04:38,240
Speaker 1: the scene where Dorothy's creeping down the hallway. All these

1222
01:04:38,280 --> 01:04:41,520
Speaker 1: silent heads are in the are in their chambers, and

1223
01:04:41,560 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 1: then when she gets there she opens it up. There's

1224
01:04:44,240 --> 01:04:47,320
Speaker 1: Jeane Marsh's head and they're the original Mamby head. And

1225
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 1: of course it's not going to go without it without

1226
01:04:49,760 --> 01:04:53,040
Speaker 1: at least a single hiccup, because she ends up waking

1227
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:55,720
Speaker 1: up the Momby head. All of the heads wake up,

1228
01:04:55,800 --> 01:04:58,720
Speaker 1: all of the heads are screaming, and then she takes

1229
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 1: off with the powder while Mombi's body is waking up

1230
01:05:02,040 --> 01:05:04,040
Speaker 1: from the bed. We do see something with the bedroom

1231
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,240
Speaker 1: and that's right, and it's like walking around like a

1232
01:05:07,320 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 1: zombie with no head coming after. It's a wonderful nightmare.

1233
01:05:11,520 --> 01:05:14,600
Speaker 3: So with the gump aircraft they've put together again, it's

1234
01:05:14,640 --> 01:05:17,800
Speaker 3: like a moose type thing, a gump head that's mounted

1235
01:05:17,840 --> 01:05:20,240
Speaker 3: and then it goes with some couches and wings made

1236
01:05:20,280 --> 01:05:23,680
Speaker 3: out of plant leaves like I think palm leaves or something.

1237
01:05:24,400 --> 01:05:27,120
Speaker 3: They make this aircraft and they fly out to escape,

1238
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:29,720
Speaker 3: and they're gonna fly to the Nome King's mountain. Though

1239
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 3: it's very funny because the Gump is like, I don't

1240
01:05:31,680 --> 01:05:34,840
Speaker 3: know how to fly. I'm just ahead. I never flew

1241
01:05:34,880 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 3: in life, so I don't know what I'm doing.

1242
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:39,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Gump is wonderful and has lots of little

1243
01:05:39,600 --> 01:05:42,040
Speaker 1: snide comments about how he liked it better when he

1244
01:05:42,160 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 1: was just ahead. This current life is a little more

1245
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:48,640
Speaker 1: challenging than he likes a little more moving around, So.

1246
01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 3: They fly over the deadly desert to get to the

1247
01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:55,200
Speaker 3: Nome King's mountain. He lives in a mountain, and ooh,

1248
01:05:55,240 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 3: the nome King. When they get there, I feel like

1249
01:05:58,000 --> 01:05:59,919
Speaker 3: here maybe we should start to describe in a little

1250
01:06:00,160 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 3: or in lighter detail. But warning, if you are going

1251
01:06:03,520 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 3: to watch the movie, you don't want anything about the ending.

1252
01:06:05,520 --> 01:06:08,280
Speaker 3: It all spoiled. Maybe maybe you can tune out here

1253
01:06:08,360 --> 01:06:10,919
Speaker 3: until you've seen it, because we will discuss a few things.

1254
01:06:10,920 --> 01:06:14,080
Speaker 3: But the Nome King is so cool. He is some

1255
01:06:14,160 --> 01:06:19,560
Speaker 3: kind of humanoid elemental being of mineral origin. He's a

1256
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:24,280
Speaker 3: greedy but clever sorcerer of rocks. Yeah, and the claymation

1257
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:26,920
Speaker 3: here is just wicked. So throughout the movie we've seen

1258
01:06:26,960 --> 01:06:30,760
Speaker 3: this like rock Face doing reports of what's happening to

1259
01:06:31,000 --> 01:06:34,400
Speaker 3: the Nome King, and that's all stop motion animation. That's

1260
01:06:34,720 --> 01:06:38,560
Speaker 3: very good. But here we start seeing claymation and general

1261
01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:42,600
Speaker 3: stop motion of the king himself and the sorcery that

1262
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:45,920
Speaker 3: he casts. Like one of my favorite animations is that

1263
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:48,360
Speaker 3: there's a that like Dorothy and her friends are in

1264
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:51,200
Speaker 3: a cave with the Nome King, and occasionally the Nome

1265
01:06:51,280 --> 01:06:53,919
Speaker 3: King will open a portal to go into a into

1266
01:06:53,960 --> 01:06:56,640
Speaker 3: a palace with these halls, and the way the portal

1267
01:06:56,680 --> 01:07:00,320
Speaker 3: opens is the rock turns into many hands that starting

1268
01:07:00,440 --> 01:07:03,840
Speaker 3: the like pulling a hole open in the rock itself.

1269
01:07:04,360 --> 01:07:06,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of these effects, all of the effects they

1270
01:07:06,800 --> 01:07:08,840
Speaker 1: used to bring the Nome King to live, are amazing,

1271
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: and most of them are these kind of stop motion effects. Though,

1272
01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:15,520
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, something is happening that makes the Nome

1273
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 1: King increasingly more human in form. So we eventually get

1274
01:07:22,600 --> 01:07:26,200
Speaker 1: Williamson himself there as the Nome King, but covered under

1275
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:29,200
Speaker 1: a lot of rock makeup and like a rocky beard

1276
01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:30,240
Speaker 1: and so forth.

1277
01:07:30,160 --> 01:07:33,240
Speaker 3: Right, So the Nome King has Dorothy and her friends

1278
01:07:34,040 --> 01:07:36,640
Speaker 3: play a guessing game where he says, oh, yes, I

1279
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:40,760
Speaker 3: have the scarecrow captive, and I've turned him into an

1280
01:07:40,800 --> 01:07:44,560
Speaker 3: inanimate object, into an ornament. And if you can walk

1281
01:07:44,600 --> 01:07:47,680
Speaker 3: around my palace and guess which ornament is the scarecrow,

1282
01:07:48,120 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 3: then I'll let him go. But if you guess wrong

1283
01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:52,800
Speaker 3: three times in a row, I'm going to turn you

1284
01:07:52,840 --> 01:07:55,120
Speaker 3: into an ornament. Actually he doesn't tell them that at

1285
01:07:55,160 --> 01:07:58,960
Speaker 3: the beginning. It happens first to I think the Gump

1286
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:01,000
Speaker 3: and then they're like, wait, you didn't say that was

1287
01:08:01,040 --> 01:08:03,040
Speaker 3: going to happen, and he's like, oh, you didn't ask.

1288
01:08:03,720 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's adding a lot of rules after the fact,

1289
01:08:07,800 --> 01:08:10,919
Speaker 1: though at the same time, our heroes are not really

1290
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:13,440
Speaker 1: asking for a full breakdown of the terms ahead of

1291
01:08:13,520 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 1: time either.

1292
01:08:14,360 --> 01:08:18,320
Speaker 3: Yeah. So you get the sense that he is made

1293
01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:20,880
Speaker 3: of rock, but he sort of wants to become a

1294
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:26,720
Speaker 3: human for some reason. And the more humans he absorbs

1295
01:08:26,760 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 3: and turns into inanimate objects are not necessarily humans living

1296
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:33,519
Speaker 3: things he absorbs and turns into inanimate objects, the more

1297
01:08:33,640 --> 01:08:36,639
Speaker 3: he becomes a fleshly creature instead of a rock.

1298
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:41,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not explained in the film why this is,

1299
01:08:41,560 --> 01:08:44,559
Speaker 1: and I kind of like that. I like anytime there's

1300
01:08:44,600 --> 01:08:48,800
Speaker 1: sort of grandiose evil magic going on in something, it's

1301
01:08:48,880 --> 01:08:50,760
Speaker 1: even more creepy if there's stuff going on that you

1302
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:54,680
Speaker 1: don't fully understand. We don't know why he wants this

1303
01:08:54,800 --> 01:08:58,120
Speaker 1: transformation to occur or why it is occurring, but it

1304
01:08:58,200 --> 01:09:01,160
Speaker 1: is at least a byproduct of the evil that he

1305
01:09:01,280 --> 01:09:01,719
Speaker 1: is doing.

1306
01:09:02,120 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 3: Oh, we should say. The entire time they're with the

1307
01:09:04,280 --> 01:09:08,519
Speaker 3: Nome King and playing this guessing game, Billina, the chicken

1308
01:09:08,720 --> 01:09:13,280
Speaker 3: is hiding inside of Jack Pumpkinhead's pumpkin head. He's like, right,

1309
01:09:13,560 --> 01:09:14,920
Speaker 3: she's in the jack o lantern.

1310
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:17,559
Speaker 1: Oh, so this is another important thing now that we've

1311
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:20,479
Speaker 1: mentioned the chicken. It has been established a few different

1312
01:09:20,479 --> 01:09:25,120
Speaker 1: times that the chicken is noteworthy in Oz and that

1313
01:09:25,200 --> 01:09:27,599
Speaker 1: the Nome King will want to know about this chicken.

1314
01:09:27,640 --> 01:09:30,000
Speaker 1: And it's even implied that the chicken is really the

1315
01:09:30,040 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: most important member of this party. He is of the

1316
01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:36,760
Speaker 1: most interest to the Nome King. And Mamby realizes this,

1317
01:09:36,840 --> 01:09:40,400
Speaker 1: and Mamby is rushing to the Nome King's castle, I

1318
01:09:40,439 --> 01:09:44,000
Speaker 1: guess to warn him of the chicken, and she does so.

1319
01:09:44,200 --> 01:09:46,720
Speaker 1: Oh God, I love this sequence. She does so by

1320
01:09:46,720 --> 01:09:49,960
Speaker 1: getting all of her wheelers together and lashing them to

1321
01:09:50,040 --> 01:09:53,919
Speaker 1: a chariot and then climbing aboard the chariot and whipping

1322
01:09:53,960 --> 01:09:57,240
Speaker 1: them to get them to ride at top speed and

1323
01:09:57,320 --> 01:09:59,120
Speaker 1: take her to the Nome King's castle.

1324
01:09:59,400 --> 01:10:02,600
Speaker 3: It is t they're traveling through some kind of underground

1325
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:05,200
Speaker 3: tunnel that cuts underneath the deadly desert.

1326
01:10:05,240 --> 01:10:10,120
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it is. It's wonderful and eyebrow raising,

1327
01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:12,240
Speaker 1: it's it's it's tremendous.

1328
01:10:12,520 --> 01:10:15,000
Speaker 3: And she does get there, but I don't think she's

1329
01:10:15,040 --> 01:10:18,479
Speaker 3: able to really to warn him sufficiently, at least not

1330
01:10:18,680 --> 01:10:21,599
Speaker 3: enough to save him in the end. I don't remember

1331
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:24,000
Speaker 3: what she says, but like when she gets there, he's

1332
01:10:24,120 --> 01:10:26,759
Speaker 3: very haughty. He's like bow bow lower.

1333
01:10:27,240 --> 01:10:28,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he locks her in a cage.

1334
01:10:29,040 --> 01:10:29,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1335
01:10:29,439 --> 01:10:33,360
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah. Ultimately, it doesn't really make a

1336
01:10:33,400 --> 01:10:35,280
Speaker 1: huge difference that she made it there at all. But

1337
01:10:35,360 --> 01:10:37,960
Speaker 1: the Nome King here is becoming more and more humanoid

1338
01:10:37,960 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 1: in appearance, and more and more of Dorothy's friends are

1339
01:10:42,479 --> 01:10:45,840
Speaker 1: being turned into unknown ornaments in the room, and I

1340
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:48,120
Speaker 1: think this is is this also where we find out

1341
01:10:48,479 --> 01:10:52,320
Speaker 1: how the Nome King was able to carry out this

1342
01:10:52,320 --> 01:10:54,720
Speaker 1: this attack on the Emerald City. Is this when he

1343
01:10:54,800 --> 01:10:56,000
Speaker 1: reveals his feet.

1344
01:10:56,000 --> 01:10:56,960
Speaker 3: Oh, no, explain that.

1345
01:10:57,280 --> 01:11:01,559
Speaker 1: Well, there's he reveals that it's mentioned earlier in the

1346
01:11:01,560 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 1: film that you know, I think it's an m asking. Well, Dorothy,

1347
01:11:05,520 --> 01:11:07,280
Speaker 1: if all this odd stuff is realed, and where are

1348
01:11:07,280 --> 01:11:10,120
Speaker 1: these ruby slippers that you speak of that gave you

1349
01:11:10,240 --> 01:11:12,400
Speaker 1: this power? And she's like, well, they fell off when

1350
01:11:12,439 --> 01:11:14,840
Speaker 1: I was returning to Earth. And they're like, okay, we'll

1351
01:11:14,880 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 1: see there's no proof. Well, the Nome King reveals that

1352
01:11:18,120 --> 01:11:22,120
Speaker 1: he is wearing the ruby slippers, but they basically fell

1353
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 1: into his lap, and he used the power of the

1354
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:29,360
Speaker 1: ruby slippers to then overthrow the Scarecrow King. And so

1355
01:11:29,400 --> 01:11:32,800
Speaker 1: we see the see of the Nome King wearing the

1356
01:11:33,360 --> 01:11:34,599
Speaker 1: shiny ruby slippers.

1357
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,120
Speaker 3: There great twist, and I think Dorothy tries to go

1358
01:11:37,240 --> 01:11:39,000
Speaker 3: for them, but he's like no, no, when he tucks

1359
01:11:39,040 --> 01:11:43,680
Speaker 3: them back under. Yeah, and in the end, how are

1360
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:45,320
Speaker 3: they going to defeat the Nome King? I mean, the

1361
01:11:45,360 --> 01:11:48,080
Speaker 3: Nome King is so powerful? What kind of power do

1362
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:50,600
Speaker 3: they have that could stand up against a creature of

1363
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:52,400
Speaker 3: such such immense potency?

1364
01:11:53,160 --> 01:11:56,439
Speaker 1: Well, well, for starters, Dorothy is able to retrieve some

1365
01:11:56,520 --> 01:12:00,720
Speaker 1: of her friends from ornament transformation. But but This just

1366
01:12:00,720 --> 01:12:03,160
Speaker 1: makes the Nome King all the more enraged. He turns

1367
01:12:03,160 --> 01:12:08,040
Speaker 1: into this gigantic stone monster and he has decided he's

1368
01:12:08,120 --> 01:12:10,800
Speaker 1: going to eat them. He picks up the gump and

1369
01:12:10,880 --> 01:12:14,120
Speaker 1: like eats the gump's body and like the head falls off,

1370
01:12:14,560 --> 01:12:19,000
Speaker 1: and then he goes to eat Jack Pumpkinhead instead as well.

1371
01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:23,519
Speaker 1: But Billina the chicken is in Jack pumpkin Head's head

1372
01:12:24,160 --> 01:12:27,519
Speaker 1: and it is finally time for Billina to lay her egg.

1373
01:12:27,880 --> 01:12:32,360
Speaker 1: She lays the egg inside Jack Pumpkinhead's head. It rolls

1374
01:12:32,400 --> 01:12:35,599
Speaker 1: out of the pumpkin and goes down the Nome King's

1375
01:12:35,640 --> 01:12:39,840
Speaker 1: throat and then uh oh, the Nome King realizes that

1376
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:41,840
Speaker 1: something has gone terribly wrong.

1377
01:12:42,120 --> 01:12:47,280
Speaker 3: Because the big twist is that eggs are poison to

1378
01:12:47,360 --> 01:12:48,040
Speaker 3: the Nome King.

1379
01:12:48,439 --> 01:12:51,160
Speaker 1: Right, we didn't know this until it is finally revealed.

1380
01:12:51,200 --> 01:12:53,519
Speaker 1: We knew that we kind of got the sense that

1381
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:55,400
Speaker 1: the chicken was a threat, but we didn't know why

1382
01:12:55,439 --> 01:12:57,320
Speaker 1: the chicken was a threat to the Nome King's rule.

1383
01:12:57,400 --> 01:13:02,799
Speaker 1: Now it is revealed, the egg is It has terrible

1384
01:13:02,840 --> 01:13:05,160
Speaker 1: magic in it, the terri and does terrible things to

1385
01:13:05,200 --> 01:13:08,680
Speaker 1: the Nome King's power, which I guess is not I

1386
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:10,479
Speaker 1: don't know I didn't do a lot of deep thinking

1387
01:13:10,520 --> 01:13:16,000
Speaker 1: about this, but eggs do factor into various magical rituals

1388
01:13:16,040 --> 01:13:18,160
Speaker 1: and so forth. There is something about the egg that

1389
01:13:18,320 --> 01:13:21,479
Speaker 1: is often seen as sacred, and somehow the egg is

1390
01:13:21,520 --> 01:13:24,519
Speaker 1: able to undo everything that the nome King is doing.

1391
01:13:24,880 --> 01:13:30,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, the egg symbolizes potential, symbolizes transformation. Yeah yeah, it

1392
01:13:30,920 --> 01:13:34,479
Speaker 3: has a lot of symbolic loading, so that makes sense.

1393
01:13:35,080 --> 01:13:37,360
Speaker 3: But of course, so, yeah, the nome King is defeated,

1394
01:13:37,439 --> 01:13:40,639
Speaker 3: and then Scarecrow, who has been restored from I think

1395
01:13:40,680 --> 01:13:42,360
Speaker 3: he had been turned into a like a just a

1396
01:13:42,360 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 3: big green gem. He's he's back into his form. Dorothy

1397
01:13:47,400 --> 01:13:50,240
Speaker 3: is able to restore everybody who got turned into an ornament,

1398
01:13:50,680 --> 01:13:52,679
Speaker 3: and then they all go back to the Emerald City,

1399
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:55,840
Speaker 3: where the Scarecrow's back on the throne. Everybody's happy again.

1400
01:13:56,320 --> 01:14:00,360
Speaker 3: Momby is in a cage, and then they're like, they're like, oh, well,

1401
01:14:00,400 --> 01:14:02,640
Speaker 3: you know, she doesn't have powers anymore, so she'll be

1402
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:03,040
Speaker 3: all right.

1403
01:14:03,360 --> 01:14:05,879
Speaker 1: I know. It's the Wheelers are also just hanging around

1404
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:09,720
Speaker 1: at this point in the movie, and I was thinking, well, okay, cage.

1405
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:11,720
Speaker 1: The Wheelers just yeah, they just get by with the

1406
01:14:11,840 --> 01:14:15,400
Speaker 1: sorry like they seem to be the scourge of the

1407
01:14:16,400 --> 01:14:19,920
Speaker 1: of the realm there for a while, but everything's forgiven.

1408
01:14:20,000 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 1: Everybody's happy again.

1409
01:14:21,360 --> 01:14:24,080
Speaker 3: How many denizens of Oz did they eat? Or whatever

1410
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:29,160
Speaker 3: they do? But also we get another twist, which is

1411
01:14:29,200 --> 01:14:32,160
Speaker 3: that the blonde girl that Dorothy had seen several times

1412
01:14:32,200 --> 01:14:36,559
Speaker 3: already is her name is Ozma, and what is her role?

1413
01:14:36,600 --> 01:14:39,280
Speaker 3: She's like the rightful Princess of Oz or something.

1414
01:14:40,160 --> 01:14:44,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like the Yeah, she's she's the good She's

1415
01:14:44,000 --> 01:14:46,360
Speaker 1: the good Witch of this movie basically, and she's been

1416
01:14:46,600 --> 01:14:49,439
Speaker 1: sort of in the background helping things move along the

1417
01:14:49,479 --> 01:14:51,960
Speaker 1: whole time. But then also there's this idea that like

1418
01:14:52,000 --> 01:14:54,400
Speaker 1: she is also connected to Dorothy, she is going to

1419
01:14:54,479 --> 01:14:57,519
Speaker 1: be She is like the way that Dorothy remains in

1420
01:14:57,600 --> 01:15:01,400
Speaker 1: Oz and in the Earth realm at the same time.

1421
01:15:01,880 --> 01:15:05,200
Speaker 3: She is Dorothy's counterpart, so Dorothy can be on both

1422
01:15:05,240 --> 01:15:07,879
Speaker 3: sides of the mirror. Dorothy can go back to Kansas

1423
01:15:07,920 --> 01:15:10,720
Speaker 3: and be home, but also stay in Oz in the

1424
01:15:10,760 --> 01:15:14,080
Speaker 3: form of this other girl and be the princess there.

1425
01:15:14,439 --> 01:15:17,120
Speaker 1: And Ozma's like, basically like, hey, you can still be

1426
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:18,679
Speaker 1: in Oz all the time in your head. Just don't

1427
01:15:18,680 --> 01:15:20,960
Speaker 1: tell anni em about it. Just be quiet about it.

1428
01:15:21,280 --> 01:15:23,479
Speaker 1: And everything's fun, and then we.

1429
01:15:23,439 --> 01:15:26,639
Speaker 3: Get a very sweet reunion back in Kansas where Toto

1430
01:15:26,800 --> 01:15:29,320
Speaker 3: finds Dorothy washed up on a washed up on a

1431
01:15:29,360 --> 01:15:33,200
Speaker 3: grimy river shore. And then there's Uncle Henry and they

1432
01:15:33,240 --> 01:15:35,360
Speaker 3: all get back together again and it's very sweet.

1433
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:40,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, though we do see mom Be's earthly counterpart,

1434
01:15:40,840 --> 01:15:44,000
Speaker 1: this would be Nurse Wilson. We see her being taken

1435
01:15:44,040 --> 01:15:47,320
Speaker 1: away in the back of a carriage that also kind

1436
01:15:47,320 --> 01:15:50,919
Speaker 1: of looks like a cage. Yeah. And then it's revealed

1437
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:55,200
Speaker 1: that doctor Warley died in a fire because he had

1438
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:59,280
Speaker 1: basically the clinic, the facilities there had been struck by

1439
01:15:59,320 --> 01:16:01,839
Speaker 1: lightning and he went back in to save his machine

1440
01:16:01,840 --> 01:16:02,360
Speaker 1: and died.

1441
01:16:02,880 --> 01:16:06,200
Speaker 3: He was too devoted to his machines and it killed him.

1442
01:16:06,720 --> 01:16:09,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, so very very Frank Herbert kind of moment there where.

1443
01:16:09,640 --> 01:16:11,960
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this character died off screen.

1444
01:16:12,360 --> 01:16:19,360
Speaker 3: So return to Oz. Deeply strange, fantastically imaginative, totally wonderful,

1445
01:16:20,040 --> 01:16:24,240
Speaker 3: one of my favorite new fantasy movies or kids movies. Yeah,

1446
01:16:24,280 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 3: it's just a blast.

1447
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:28,519
Speaker 1: I richly enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, parents will have

1448
01:16:28,560 --> 01:16:31,400
Speaker 1: to make their own decisions about films like this. I

1449
01:16:31,479 --> 01:16:33,559
Speaker 1: was researching it a little bit before we watched it.

1450
01:16:33,600 --> 01:16:36,920
Speaker 1: I went to the IMDb parental guidance area where the

1451
01:16:37,000 --> 01:16:40,360
Speaker 1: users submit stuff about films, and they did have the

1452
01:16:40,760 --> 01:16:44,840
Speaker 1: chicken lays an egg in the nome King's head as

1453
01:16:44,880 --> 01:16:47,960
Speaker 1: an example of violence in the picture. I didn't really

1454
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:52,880
Speaker 1: think of it as violence per se, but it's certainly weird.

1455
01:16:53,160 --> 01:16:55,960
Speaker 3: It is an act of inadvertent poisoning, so I guess

1456
01:16:56,000 --> 01:16:58,040
Speaker 3: it would be like a scene where if a character

1457
01:16:58,200 --> 01:17:01,400
Speaker 3: accidentally put arsenic somebody else's sandwich.

1458
01:17:01,680 --> 01:17:05,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, but anywright, Yes, Return to Oz. I

1459
01:17:05,520 --> 01:17:07,400
Speaker 1: absolutely loved it. I think it's a lot of fun.

1460
01:17:07,479 --> 01:17:09,439
Speaker 1: And I'd love to hear from folks out there though, because,

1461
01:17:09,439 --> 01:17:12,920
Speaker 1: like we've been saying, Joe and I only just watched

1462
01:17:12,920 --> 01:17:16,280
Speaker 1: this movie in full as adults. We'd love to hear

1463
01:17:16,320 --> 01:17:18,360
Speaker 1: from folks who saw it back in the day. What

1464
01:17:18,439 --> 01:17:21,559
Speaker 1: was it like seeing Return to Oz on the big

1465
01:17:21,600 --> 01:17:24,760
Speaker 1: screen in nineteen eighty five or seeing it on VHS

1466
01:17:25,640 --> 01:17:29,160
Speaker 1: once it was available on home video? How did other

1467
01:17:29,200 --> 01:17:31,800
Speaker 1: people in your life present it or respond to it?

1468
01:17:31,840 --> 01:17:33,559
Speaker 1: Did you hear people saying, well, this is not what

1469
01:17:33,600 --> 01:17:36,800
Speaker 1: Oz is all about. What is this gump business? It's

1470
01:17:36,800 --> 01:17:38,920
Speaker 1: supposed to be the cowardly lion. Did you have to

1471
01:17:38,960 --> 01:17:41,960
Speaker 1: put up with all that? Was it effective? All of

1472
01:17:42,000 --> 01:17:44,599
Speaker 1: this is fair fair play. I'd love to hear from everyone.

1473
01:17:44,920 --> 01:17:47,600
Speaker 1: So that's it for this edition of Weird House Cinema.

1474
01:17:47,840 --> 01:17:51,360
Speaker 1: Just a reminder, Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in

1475
01:17:51,400 --> 01:17:53,559
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed We are

1476
01:17:53,600 --> 01:17:56,360
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside

1477
01:17:56,400 --> 01:17:58,840
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.

1478
01:17:59,240 --> 01:18:02,799
Speaker 1: I blog about these episodes at Summuto music dot com

1479
01:18:02,840 --> 01:18:05,720
Speaker 1: and if you use letterboxed dot com that's l E

1480
01:18:05,800 --> 01:18:09,040
Speaker 1: T t e r box d dot com. You'll find

1481
01:18:09,080 --> 01:18:11,640
Speaker 1: us on there. Our username is weird house and we

1482
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:15,040
Speaker 1: keep a Weird House Cinema episode list going there where

1483
01:18:15,040 --> 01:18:17,479
Speaker 1: you can see all the films that we've covered thus far.

1484
01:18:18,320 --> 01:18:20,960
Speaker 1: As of this episode, it is eighty two films that

1485
01:18:20,960 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 1: we've covered, and I'll often go ahead and add the

1486
01:18:24,200 --> 01:18:25,960
Speaker 1: next film on the list so you can sort of

1487
01:18:26,000 --> 01:18:28,040
Speaker 1: look ahead and see what we're talking about next.

1488
01:18:28,479 --> 01:18:31,360
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1489
01:18:31,479 --> 01:18:34,320
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1490
01:18:34,360 --> 01:18:36,840
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other

1491
01:18:37,240 --> 01:18:39,439
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1492
01:18:39,479 --> 01:18:42,839
Speaker 3: say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff

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01:18:42,880 --> 01:18:51,800
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.