WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Return to Oz 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:08.080 Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:10.720 Today we are taking you back to an episode that 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.760 originally published eight nineteen twenty twenty two. This is going 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:19.320 to be nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz. Oh, it's 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:22.599 a magically dark time. Let's dive right in. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:32.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.720 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:41.839 and this is Joe McCormick. And this week we've got 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.800 a fun family picture for everybody. It is an OZ film, 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.400 but you don't have to endure any songs. It's also 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:53.360 that special variety of nineteen eighty's big budget fantasy film 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.240 that leans more than a little into what some of 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.680 you might describe as dark fantasy. We are going to 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:03.720 be telling talking about nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz. 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:07.320 People have been telling me for years that I needed 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.240 to watch this movie. They'd figure out what like my 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:12.880 weird taste was, and they were like, you've ever seen 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:15.640 Return to Oz. That movie messed me up when I 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:18.319 was a kid. You should watch it And I never 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:22.960 did until last night, and I am absolutely blown away. 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:27.560 I in fact, I'm a little bit sad, truly, like, 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:31.119 not just to joking around. I am a little bit 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:33.839 sad that I did not actually see this as a child, 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.840 because I know this is this is precisely the kind 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:39.240 of movie that if I'd seen it when I was 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.000 seven or whatever, I would have been thinking about it 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:46.040 for months, Like it has just the right mix of 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.040 you know, bizarre original imagery and character types that are 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:54.920 not just like, you know, the characters you'd find in 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.720 any other fantasy thing. Is you know, it's truly original, 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:02.760 but a strange combinations of ideas that still nevertheless tap 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.560 into something very deep and archetypal. I think this is 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.320 a wonderful, scary children's movie. 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.520 I think it's great. I never watched it growing up either, 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.160 and I think part of it was just because the 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:20.760 nineteen thirty nine adaptation of the Wizard of Oz is 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.760 just such a monolith and such an you know, such 0:02:24.760 --> 0:02:27.840 an influential film, but also one that so many people 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:30.320 held close to their hearts that when this film came out, 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:31.520 there were plenty of people who are like, oh, we 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:33.160 don't we don't want that new Oz. We've got that 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.200 old Oz. It comes on television all the time and 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.880 or we have it on VHS. Why do we need 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.720 to dip into this thing that that summer even saying 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.400 is a little frightening. But here's the thing. Yes, we've 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.120 been hearing from people say, oh this is you know, 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:49.959 this is a weird film you need to watch. This 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.680 is a scary one where this messed me up as 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:55.920 a child. I really don't think this one is any 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.280 darker or scarier than any of the other big eighties 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:03.280 fantasy film like Labyrinth or the never Ending story stuff 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:04.119 of that caliber. 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:06.200 Oh yeah, I agree. In fact, I don't think it's 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:08.840 actually even scarier than the thirty nine Wizard of Oz, 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.040 which if you go back and watch the original Wizard 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:14.760 of Oz, this movie gave me a new appreciation for 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.240 how weird and how scary the original is. I'm serious, Like, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.240 if you you kind of accept it because it's part 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:24.160 of the air we breathe, The Wizard of Oz is. 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:26.079 You know, you grow up with that. It's just part 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.560 of American culture, so it doesn't seem that strange. But yeah, 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:34.440 it also has very unusual characters and imagery and and 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.480 there is real tense, frightening, magical peril in it. Do 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:40.960 you remember how heart stopping that scene is when you're 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:43.600 a kid and the witch turns the hourglass over and 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.680 says Dorothy's gonna die, and the and the you know, 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.280 the monkey soldiers are everywhere, and the tin man's with 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:51.920 the axe trying to chop down the door, like it 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:53.560 the original one is scary. 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.600 Yeah, I always thought that the forest was pretty terrifying. 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.080 So yeah, there's plenty of plenty of weird and scary 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.680 stuff in that that thirty nine adaptation as well. And 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.400 it's funny. We were conversing before we went in here. 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:08.000 You noted that I had a couple of sort of 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:10.800 jabs at the thirty nine Wizard of Oz, and so 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.720 you asked me if I hated the original Wizard of 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:18.160 Oz film, and I said, no, no, And truly I 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:21.679 think it's kind of impossible to hate the thirty nine film. 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:23.719 I mean, it's such, like I said, it's a cinematic monolith. 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.600 It's so influential, Like even if you're not crazy about it, 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:33.880 it probably influenced some creators or some works that came 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.839 in its wake, you know, like more directly, if you 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:39.360 didn't have the Wizard of Oz from nineteen thirty nine, 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:41.880 you wouldn't have The Whiz, and of course you wouldn't 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:45.960 have this film either, but its tentacles run far and 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:50.400 long through fiction and dream weaving that came to follow. 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:53.320 But more to your point about I guess how you 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.680 might have heard about this movie when you were a kid, 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:57.720 if people were saying, oh, you know, it doesn't live 0:04:57.800 --> 0:04:59.760 up to the original, it's not worth seeing, or something. 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:01.520 I in a way, I think it's kind of silly 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.039 to try to compare them, because it's I think it's 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:07.320 called an unofficial sequel. It is clearly a sequel to 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.080 The Wizard of Oz, like the events followed directly from 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.400 the first one, but it's also not not like an official, 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.640 sanctioned one. And it came decades later. The original was 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:18.800 what thirty nine, and this is eighty five, so what 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.960 like forty six years in between. It was a long time, 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.880 and and that makes a big difference in terms of 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.359 tone and you know, the textures that are expected in 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.720 a movie like this, Like the original one has a 0:05:30.800 --> 0:05:35.800 kind of a kind of gilded grandeur of old Hollywood 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:38.960 about it, whereas this one feels much more. I mean, 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:43.000 it feels like an eighties movie, but a lovely, scrappy, 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:44.240 imaginative one. 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:47.120 Yeah. Yeah, and it's a it is. It is a 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:50.799 world in which the Emerald City is literally in ruins. 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:52.839 So there's probably a lot to say there about like 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:58.560 the state of of of the eighties mindset compared to 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:00.480 the late thirties mindset. I don't know, at least in 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:06.400 terms of like cinematic portrayals. But yeah, it is impossible though, 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.839 to go into this and not think of the thirty 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.040 nine film sometimes unfairly so. I actually watched this with 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.440 my whole family. We sat down and watched it, and 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.240 my son he really enjoyed this one. He enjoyed the 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.560 old one, but he was bringing up some things. He's like, well, 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:24.360 why is Dorothy younger now? And also why didn't Toto 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.760 talk in the last film. This film clearly established that 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:31.679 animals that come to Oz can talk. Wow, come Toto 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.719 never talked? That's some bs. 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:37.560 Brilliant observation by your son. I did not notice this myself, 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:39.919 but yeah, So the premise of this movie is that 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:44.080 all the animals in Oz talk, and this includes animals 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:46.160 that are brought to Oz, such as one of the 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.920 main characters in this movie, which is a chicken that's 0:06:49.960 --> 0:06:52.640 like a cool gnarly grandma. And the chicken talks. It 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:54.719 didn't talk when it was in Kansas, but it comes 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.320 to Oz with Dorothy talks now, so yes, you are 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.640 your son is absolutely correct. Toto should have to in 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:02.640 the original. This is a major oversight. 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.560 Now, speaking of the chicken, whose name is Billina, I 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:08.880 have to mention the other reason I really love Returned 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.640 to Oz is I think it has better companions because, yes, 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:15.320 we encounter in this film, we do see ten Man again, Scarecrow, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:21.800 cowardly lyon, but Dorothy has basically all new companions that 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.560 she goes on the adventure with here and it's I'm 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:26.080 going to list him here for it for us so 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.120 we can get a taste of what's to come. We 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.960 have Billina, the talking chicken, and this is wonderfully accomplished 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:36.760 via live action chicken actors and an incredible chicken puppet 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.160 that is just light years ahead of what we saw 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.840 in Thrilling Bloody Sword last week. Though I do love 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:43.040 both chickens. 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:45.480 They are both great robotic chickens, but this one is 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:47.280 much more convincing as a chicken. 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:53.360 Yes, then we have TikTok, who is a rotund, wind up, 0:07:53.480 --> 0:07:57.440 mustachioed soldier made out of like bronze or brass. 0:07:57.880 --> 0:07:59.680 I was thinking copper, but yeah, it's one of those. 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.240 He's a metal wind up war machine. 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.960 Yeah, he's a steampunk soldier and he's fighting on behalf 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:09.000 of the Emerald City and Dorothy. Oh, and then the 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.040 next one we have we have the Gump, and the 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:15.400 Gump is basically a junk gollum. It's like junk is 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.200 put together a moose's head on a couch with some 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.840 ferns and whatever else they could scare. They are able 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.040 to assemble together and then it's given life. And you 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:25.960 gotta love the Gump. 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:28.560 They like shake some borax powder on it and that 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:29.720 makes it come to life. 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.160 Yeah. Oh, and then we have Jack Pumpkinhead, who is 0:08:33.240 --> 0:08:36.560 kind of a superior Halloween themed scarecrow sort of guy. 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:38.280 Would you say that's fair? Yeah. 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:42.160 Jack Pumpkinhead is interesting because he has the scariest form 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.680 of all of Dorothy's companions, but his nature is to 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:47.760 be incredibly innocent and sweet. 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.040 So that's the crew. That's the adventuring party for this film. 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.680 But one has to wonder, Okay, wait a minute, what 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:56.760 more adventures are there to have in Oz because the 0:08:56.840 --> 0:08:59.760 last time Dorothy was in Oz, didn't they defeat the 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.280 way Could Witch? And then everything was cool in Emerald City, 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.640 like they had a big ceremony. Was basically to celebrate 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.440 the fact that now everything's good and nothing bad. Every 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:09.560 is gonna happen again. 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:11.920 I was trying to think back to exactly how The 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.599 Wizard of Oz ended. Did it end with the Scarecrow 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:17.600 becoming king of the Emerald City? 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:19.679 I don't remember if it did or not. So that's 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:21.679 the premise of this movie, is that at the end 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:23.520 of the last one, the Scarecrow was king. That's a 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.440 detail that I could see being in the original that 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:28.760 I forgot about, but I didn't check to make sure. 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:33.280 But either way, things are good in Oz. When Dorothy leaves, 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:35.839 remember she's gonna leave on the balloon. But then the 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.840 professor or not the Professor, I think it's the guy, 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:44.280 the guy from like the Carnival Barker Charlatan guy, and 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:46.400 he's like, oh, he floats away on the balloon. He 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:47.960 doesn't know how to bring it back. And then she 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:50.200 thinks she stranded in Oz. But then she clicks her 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.920 heels together with the ruby slippers and says there's no 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:55.200 place like home, and then she wakes up back in 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:57.640 her bed and you were there, and you were there 0:09:57.840 --> 0:09:58.600 and it was great. 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.160 But basically the the pitch here is that in the 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:08.280 previous movie, the Previous Adventure anyway, Dorothy greatly destabilized Oz. 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.920 She ends up installing her own ruler, the Scarecrow, and 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.760 I get the impression of the Scarecrow's rule of Oz 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.520 last like maybe an afternoon before he is then conquered 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:23.240 by an entity known as the Nome King, and now 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.800 it's time for Dorothy to come back to Oz and 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:27.280 fix everything once more. 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:32.840 The villains in this movie are Sue perb just excellent, 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.400 some of my new favorite movie villains of all time, 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.920 Gene Marsh as Momby, and Nicol Williamson is the Nome King. 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:43.360 They should go in the Hall of Fame of Children's 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:44.760 movie fantasy movie Villains. 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:48.280 Yeah, they absolutely should, And it makes sense because we 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:52.240 often forget again just because how well known the thirty 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.720 nine Wizard of Oz film is. But Margaret Hamilton is 0:10:55.760 --> 0:11:00.520 a terrific villain in that film, playing Miss gulch And 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.960 and of course the Wicked Witch of the East. I mean, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.559 it's just a great cackling performance that you don't even 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:08.319 think of as a performance after a while, Like that 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:10.880 is just the wicked witch on the screen there. 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:12.720 Wait, is she the east or the West? I thought 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:13.440 she was the west? 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:15.880 Is she the west? We have a good No, Wait, 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:18.679 the East is the eastern witch? Is the one who 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:20.280 had the house dropped on her? Is that correct? 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.040 I think that is right? Yes, I was correct. Margaret 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.240 Hamilton is the West. We never see the East. You 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:26.160 just see her socks. 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:28.600 Both of those witches though out of the picture. Though. 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:30.760 At one point Mamby, who will get into here in 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.200 a bit, is described as a witch. So I guess 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.560 she's keeping the witching tradition going. 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.000 Yeah. I like how she's first described I think as 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:40.240 a princess and then later as a witch. But I 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:44.280 guess we'll get into more detail later. Mamby is just wonderful. Well, 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:46.439 I guess you already sort of gave the elevator pitch right. 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:50.319 It's like, so Dorothy came in, she did a foreign intervention. 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:53.319 She installed a puppet ruler in the form of the Scarecrow. 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:57.080 Scarecrow has been deposed. Now Dorothy is back to Oz 0:11:57.520 --> 0:11:59.120 and it's up against the Nome King. 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.240 That's right, Let's go ahead and hear some trailer audio. 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:05.080 Four Returned to Oz. 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:18.040 This summer, Walt Disney Pictures presents a motion picture fantasy 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:25.640 adventure beyond your fondest imagination. You'll be transported miraculously back 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.880 to the enchanted land of Oz, that magical kingdom beloved 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.760 by young and old for generations. It's just a. 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:38.920 Yellow bick, no bollina, you don't understand. This was the 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:39.880 yellow Wick road. 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:44.520 You'll share with Dorothy Gale, the shock of finding everything 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:50.240 mysteriously changed everybody, and you'll delight with her discovery of 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.319 four wonderful new friends who band together against a wicked 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:59.400 queen of the dreaded Long King. This is the Ours 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.520 you have seen before, and this is the Ours you'll 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:07.520 want to visit again and again. More Disney Pictures comes 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:11.960 a whole of entertainments. I don't just fly back to 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:17.719 Kansas too. Wow. 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.600 All right, now, before we go any further here, I 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:28.760 do want to mention where you can watch this. Where 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:30.680 you can watch it just about anywhere. This is a 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.120 big release. It may not have performed especially well at 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:37.240 the box office, I understand, but Yeah, you can find 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:40.199 it in multiple different forms these days. If you subscribe 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.600 to Disney Plus, at least in the United States, you 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:45.440 can watch it there. That's where we watched it. 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:47.320 Yeah, I watched Disney Plus two. 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:49.480 All right, well, let's get into some of the people 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:51.840 behind this. I'm going to start at the top, and 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:55.760 that is with a director who also has a screenplay 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:59.960 credit on this. It is Walter Merch born nineteen forty three, 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.679 highly influential Hollywood sound and film editor who worked on 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:09.160 such pictures as THHX eleven, thirty eight, American Graffiti, The 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:13.160 Godfather Part two, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and I 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.640 think I think those are some of the ones where 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:18.520 he did sound. But he also was a film editor 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.160 on such films as Apocalypse Now, Ghost, Romeo Is Bleeding, 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:26.520 The Godfather Part three, and much more. The Lucas connection 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.600 is also interesting because when you look at Walter Murch's 0:14:30.720 --> 0:14:34.360 directorial credits, there are only two titles there. There's Return 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.920 to Oz, which of course is what we're discussing here today. 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.960 This is only film directing credit, and then he doesn't 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.040 direct anything else. But he does pop up as a 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:46.640 director on a twenty eleven episode of Star Wars, the 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:51.800 Clone Wars, the animated series, and I was immediately curious, Okay, 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.120 which which episode was this, because I've seen them all 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:57.400 with my son, And it is an episode titled The General, 0:14:57.640 --> 0:14:59.280 and it's a pretty great episode. It's one of the 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:04.600 episodes in a multi episode story arc concerning the Republic's 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:09.320 campaign on a planet called Umbara. So it's this shadowy 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.560 kind of world. They're not fighting the droids of the Separatists, 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:16.080 they're fighting another separatist faction, and the Clones are under 0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:20.960 the ruthless leadership of one General Palm Krell, who is 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:26.040 this forearmed basilisque creature. But he's like a really just 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.040 ruthless general who is ready to just sacrifice as many 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.880 Clone lives as necessary to win the day. So it's ultimately, 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:37.520 I think one of the one of the best story 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:39.640 arcs you see in that series. And so they brought 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.040 in Walter Merch to direct this one episode, so I 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:43.000 thought that was pretty cool. 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.200 Well for a mostly one and done director's filmography, this 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:51.440 is a strong entry. I much respect to Walter Merch. 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:53.120 I wish he had directed more movies. 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:57.680 Yeah, Now, the screenplay credit the mainscreenplay credit, and this 0:15:57.720 --> 0:16:01.160 goes to Gil Dennis, who lived nineteen forty one twenty fifteen, 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:03.960 writer and actor, best known for his work on the 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:07.960 screenplays for This nineteen ninety fives Without Evidence in two 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.320 thousand and fives Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopick. 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:15.120 As an actor, he played Man with Cigar in nineteen 0:16:15.160 --> 0:16:16.680 seventy seven's Eraserhead. 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.120 Oh yeah, I think I read somewhere that he may 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:24.680 have been a classmate of David Lynch, which would make 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:26.640 sense that if he showed up an Eraserhead. 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.760 All right, But of course the screenplay is based on 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.960 the work of L. Frank Baum, whose novels I think 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:38.320 in particular, this screenplay is based on two novels, Ozma 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.200 of Oz and The Land of Oz. Bomb lived eighteen 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:46.120 fifty six through nineteen nineteen. Bomb was an American author 0:16:46.240 --> 0:16:48.840 best known for his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.280 published in nineteen hundred, as well as its many sequels. 0:16:53.160 --> 0:16:55.480 And this was fascinating for me because I really didn't 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.040 know much about the cinematic history of The Wizard of 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:02.560 Oz pre nineteen thirty nine, but even ahead of the 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:05.800 nineteen thirty nine film adaptation, this was already a highly 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.320 successful property. It was a Broadway musical in nineteen oh two. 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:14.240 The thirty nine film, though momentous, wasn't even the first adaptation. 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.320 The first attempt was apparently in nineteen oh eight with 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.960 the Fairy log and radio plays, followed by at least 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.000 a good half dozen silent films adapting the world of Oz. 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:27.720 Oh man, I've got to see the silent films and 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:29.840 what they do with TikTok and stuff. 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:32.800 Yeah, they looked that. I didn't get a chance to 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.159 really watching them, but they look interesting. We might have 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:37.040 to come back to some of those in the future now. 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.800 Of course, following the nineteen thirty nine classic, there's still 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.160 plenty of other dips into the world of Oz. There 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.960 was an ultra low budget adaptation titled The Wonderful Land 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.200 of Oz in nineteen sixty nine. There were a few 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:54.159 different animated adaptations, including a nineteen eighty two Toho produced 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:58.080 Japanese adaptation. There's there's really quite a lot of Oz 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.439 related media out there, including such works as the nineteen 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.120 seventy five musical and subsequent film, a film adaptation The Whiz, 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:09.080 the book in Broadway musical Wicked, and then there are 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:13.760 all sorts of literary treatments, spinoff illusions and more. Like 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:17.399 I had to think back on it because again, thirty 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.280 nine Wizard, especially as such a monolith that you don't 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:22.280 even think about the references to it. But like even 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:25.560 Stephen King includes more than a little OZ sprinkled throughout 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:30.000 his Dark Tower series, and yeah, they're honestly just seems 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.720 no end in sight to our fascination with Oz. Baum 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:37.199 wrote seventeen OZ books during his lifetime, numerous other children's 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:41.280 and adventures books as well. But we keep making OZ 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:43.320 related media, and it seems like it's just going to 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:43.879 keep going. 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:46.640 I've never actually read any of the OZ books, but 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.199 I'm kind of tempted to check them out, because, at 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.920 least with the two movies, there's so much unexpected original 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.199 texture to the fantasy world created here when compared to 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.879 most fantasy. Because you know, after you consumed a decent 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:03.520 amount of fantasy, you see a lot of recycled elements. 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.640 There's sort of, you know, the standard tropes of high 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.560 fantasy that show up again and again. But but the 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:14.160 OZ world is full of bizarre, unfamiliar things and beings. 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.159 Yeah, and one of the things that I'm always hit 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.200 with when I when I have looked at you know, 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:22.439 often just cover art and illustrations from these books. Is 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.200 that I feel like there's this there's certainly this familiar 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.159 sense to it, all due to the cultural impact of 0:19:28.160 --> 0:19:31.199 the Wizard of Oz, but also this weird sense that 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.640 you get from popular fiction that is very much centered 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:37.919 in a particular past. You know, like I'm I'm not 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:41.320 the intended recipient of these tales, and they're not even 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.440 though they're in English in their you know, their American stories. 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.880 I don't feel like I am like I have all 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:53.520 of the gear lined up in which to receive the 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:55.400 message that is being sent to me through it. 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.040 Like your operating system no longer supports this software. 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:02.240 Yeah, Like I've never lived on a farm in the 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:06.040 middle of a prairie. How am I supposed to take 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:06.760 some of this stuff? 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:08.080 You know, I see what you're saying. 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:18.720 Yeah, all right, Well, let's get into the cast here. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:24.240 Let's talk about Dorothy. This film's Dorothy was played by 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:28.240 Feruza Bauk, who was born in nineteen seventy four, still 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:32.600 active American actor, who might be better known to some 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:34.639 of you for her roles as an adult, but she 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.280 started out very young and this was her first motion picture. 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.480 Subsequent films included Valmont in nineteen eighty nine, Things to 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:43.760 Do in Denver when You're Dead in nineteen ninety five. 0:20:43.840 --> 0:20:46.040 That's an allusion to a Warren Zevon song, by the way, 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:48.800 and of course the big one is The Craft in 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:49.960 nineteen ninety six. 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:53.600 Oh man, several years back, Rachel and I around Halloween 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.159 decided to watch The Craft. And I don't know if 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:57.639 i'd say it's a good movie, but that was a 0:20:57.640 --> 0:20:58.280 fun time. 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:01.800 I don't think I've ever seen it, but you know, 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:04.320 of course I'm familiar with I remember the trailer, isn't all. 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:06.639 But this was a big film, and after this she 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.159 was in a string of big films, including The Cursed 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:12.920 nineteen ninety six adaptation of the Island of Doctor Moreau. 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:15.639 Oh is that? Oh yeah, this is the one. If 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.080 you're asking, is that the Island of Doctor Moreau, in 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.879 which yes it is. Okay, it is the Marlon Brando. 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:24.359 One, yes, yes, the one where he allegedly had to 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:26.760 be fed his lines through an earpiece because he wouldn't 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:27.280 learn them. 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.560 Yeah, just a I mean, their documentary is about this 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:35.640 is just a ridiculous production. That still is it has 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.400 things going for it. I mean it's it's it's oddly 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:42.080 hypnotizing if you catch it on TV and all. I 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.199 don't think I've ever given it a dedicated viewing. It 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:47.399 just it was on a lot for a certain amount 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:50.719 of time, I guess back in the late nineties, and 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:52.600 so you would catch bits of it and it's it's 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:54.600 thoroughly weird and just thoroughly a mess. 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:56.040 Okay, sorry to interrupt. 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:58.840 American History Acts in nineteen ninety eight is another big one, 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:02.240 almost famous in two thousand and she was also in 0:22:02.320 --> 0:22:05.399 Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans in 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:09.639 two thousand and nine, which also featured Nick cage Val Kilmer. Again, 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:14.200 he was in the Doctor Moreau movie Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dorof, 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:15.280 and Michael Shannon. 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:18.040 I've not seen Port of Call, New Orleans since it 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.480 came out, but I've been meaning to revisit it because 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:25.160 that one I remember being a jaw dropping experience. 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:30.960 Another interesting fact for Usa, Bauk's father, Solomon Felthaus, was 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:34.000 one of the founding members of the psychedelic band Kaleidoscope 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.560 and Balk herself is also a musician. 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.000 You know, I feel like we tend to if a 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.960 child performance in a movie is bad, we tend not 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:43.879 to dwell on it as much as we might on 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:45.960 a notably bad adult performance, because I don't know, you 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:47.560 don't want to be mean about a child actor. But 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:50.560 I would say not just being nice. She's genuinely great 0:22:50.560 --> 0:22:53.280 in this great great performances Dorothy. 0:22:53.640 --> 0:22:58.280 Yeah, she has this great, big eyed engagement. She's always 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:00.520 seems very much a part of the action going on. 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:03.320 Sometimes with kid actors, this kind of just you can 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:05.840 kind of just at times just see a child standing 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:08.199 on a set. You know, there's this less of a 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.840 sense that they're connected to their surroundings and the scene 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:15.080 and the characters. But she's totally in there. She helps 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.720 make these scenes which often feature no other human characters. 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:22.000 It's all puppets and suits and so forth. I mean, 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:25.960 they're humans inside the suits obviously, but no other visible 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:28.679 human in the scene. And she's able to be that 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.760 human center for everything. And also I would say that 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:35.520 she has a confidence, like she's a confident character. It's 0:23:35.520 --> 0:23:38.520 a confident performance that maybe make some of the otherwise 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.160 scary elements a little less scary, you know what I'm saying. 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.480 Yes, so I agree with that. And at the same time, 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:48.159 she also, firs of all, also has the natural energy 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:51.800 of kind of a government created scanner child who might 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:54.800 make people's heads explode if she doesn't get her string cheese. 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:57.520 You know, which is I think the appropriate energy for 0:23:57.600 --> 0:24:01.199 a child who is able to to journey through the 0:24:01.280 --> 0:24:05.600 mists to another dimension ruled by scary individuals scary entities, 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:06.760 and then move back again. 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:11.199 Yes, so really notably good kid performance. But we've got 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:16.320 to talk about Nicol Williamson. He left me floored in 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:16.960 this movie. 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:21.240 Yeah, Nichol Williamson plays it's a double role. He plays 0:24:21.280 --> 0:24:27.800 doctor Warley, the electricity obsessed physician. And let's say is 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:32.000 a psychologist or his credentials exactly? 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:34.120 Well, it takes place in nineteen hundred, so I don't 0:24:34.119 --> 0:24:36.080 know if they add all the same categories. I guess 0:24:36.080 --> 0:24:40.399 he's a psychiatrist, a you know, a physico psychiatrist. This movie, 0:24:40.440 --> 0:24:43.960 I will say, takes a firm stance against mental health. 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:47.560 We can explain. We can explain more about that when 0:24:47.560 --> 0:24:49.960 we get into the plot. But yes, he plays a 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:54.600 kind of his psychiatrist's character I think is supposed to 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:56.879 be taken in a very negative way, though it's not 0:24:57.000 --> 0:24:59.680 as explicitly evil as the Nome King. But he's great 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:01.200 in bo roles. 0:25:00.920 --> 0:25:03.159 Right, yeah, because he had the alter ego in the 0:25:03.240 --> 0:25:07.359 Land of Oz is the Nome King that's spelled nog. 0:25:08.240 --> 0:25:12.840 But yeah. Williamson lived nineteen thirty six through twenty eleven, 0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:15.880 and he's I think he's always a treat, at least 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:18.720 for the viewer. Has discussed in our episode on the 0:25:18.800 --> 0:25:22.560 nineteen eighty one snake movie Venom. Williamson had a reputation 0:25:22.640 --> 0:25:26.480 apparently for being difficult to work with, which again, sometimes 0:25:26.480 --> 0:25:30.680 you don't know exactly what to make of those supposed reputations. 0:25:31.640 --> 0:25:34.400 Making movies is obviously complicated, and there are a lot 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.920 of personalities involved, So I imagine there's some cases out 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:41.560 there where these reputations are well deserved. Other times there 0:25:41.600 --> 0:25:45.200 maybe it's a little more complicated than this person was difficult, 0:25:45.600 --> 0:25:48.800 But at any rate, however difficult he was or wasn't 0:25:48.800 --> 0:25:52.320 to work with, definitely a great actor. He played Merlin 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:54.879 in the nineteen eighty one movie ex Caliber, which is 0:25:54.880 --> 0:26:00.080 a really shiny, very just glistening King Arthur movie. He 0:26:00.119 --> 0:26:02.680 also was in the nineteen ninety seven Spawn movie. He 0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:06.119 was in The Exorcist three, and he played Sherlock Holmes 0:26:06.119 --> 0:26:07.640 in The Seven Percent Solution. 0:26:08.080 --> 0:26:10.280 This is the one that was made by Nicholas Meyer, 0:26:10.600 --> 0:26:11.879 who did Time after Time. 0:26:12.440 --> 0:26:15.600 Yeah. Yeah, and he was in tons of other stuff 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:19.440 as well. But yeah, in this movie. The thing about 0:26:19.440 --> 0:26:21.280 the Nome King is, I guess the Nome King is 0:26:21.800 --> 0:26:25.320 largely a vo character except for the very end of 0:26:25.320 --> 0:26:27.480 the film, and even then he's under a lot of makeup, 0:26:27.520 --> 0:26:29.719 and I think there's still some voice distortion going on. 0:26:29.960 --> 0:26:31.000 But it's still a great role. 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:34.720 Oh yeah, yeah, I think he is hypnotizing. I just 0:26:34.800 --> 0:26:37.560 wish there were more movies where he plays a magical 0:26:37.600 --> 0:26:39.879 big bad of some kind. What just occurred to me 0:26:39.920 --> 0:26:42.800 when you were talking about like great but difficult actors, 0:26:42.800 --> 0:26:44.760 I was thinking, wouldn't it have been great if you 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:48.440 could get a Blade sequel that was Wesley Snipes versus 0:26:48.520 --> 0:26:49.359 Nicol Williamson. 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:53.520 Oh, yeah, it would have been good. Have you seen 0:26:53.560 --> 0:26:57.480 ex Caliber No, she plays Merlin. Oh it's a great performance. 0:26:57.600 --> 0:27:01.480 He gives a great Merlin. All right, but our main villain, 0:27:01.520 --> 0:27:04.800 but we also have a secondary villain and that and 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:07.560 is also a dual role we have. It's Mombi, the 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:12.920 Witch the princess, but also her earthly counterpart is Nurse Wilson. 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:16.000 These characters are played by Jean Marsh. 0:27:16.160 --> 0:27:19.639 Jean Marsh is also just off the charts on this 0:27:19.840 --> 0:27:20.439 So good. 0:27:20.800 --> 0:27:24.680 Yeah. Born nineteen thirty four, an awesome British actor who 0:27:24.800 --> 0:27:29.200 appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent nineteen seventy two thriller Frenzy, 0:27:29.720 --> 0:27:33.360 and many viewers I think will probably best remember her 0:27:33.640 --> 0:27:37.840 for her portrayal of the evil witch Queen bav Morda 0:27:38.200 --> 0:27:42.480 in nineteen eighty eight's Willow Joe. Have you seen Willow's Been? 0:27:42.520 --> 0:27:44.320 I haven't seen it since I was a kid, basically, 0:27:44.320 --> 0:27:46.960 so I don't really remember it except for little little 0:27:47.119 --> 0:27:50.320 images here and there I remember. Does that Val Kilmer 0:27:50.400 --> 0:27:51.720 like hanging in a cage? 0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:54.520 Yes? Yeah, Val Kilmer is all over the place in 0:27:54.560 --> 0:27:57.520 this one as well. But yeah, Jean Marsh plays this 0:27:57.760 --> 0:28:02.600 evil witch queen and it's just a wonderful, snarling and 0:28:02.760 --> 0:28:06.720 cold role. This movie has I think the greatest witch 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:12.119 versus witch battle ever ever committed on film. Right right 0:28:12.119 --> 0:28:13.800 at the end of the picture, It's just a real 0:28:14.000 --> 0:28:19.000 like eye gouging, spell slinging kind of encounter. I highly 0:28:19.040 --> 0:28:21.840 recommend it. Anyway, Marsh did a lot of TV during 0:28:21.920 --> 0:28:25.359 her career, and I believe she's retired now, but those 0:28:25.400 --> 0:28:28.879 TV credits include an award winning role on the British 0:28:28.960 --> 0:28:32.920 drama series Upstairs Downstairs. She was also on Doctor Who, 0:28:33.440 --> 0:28:36.439 an episode of Tales from the Dark Side the Saint, 0:28:36.840 --> 0:28:39.120 and even a nineteen to fifty nine episode of the 0:28:39.160 --> 0:28:42.719 original Twilight Zone one called The Lonely This is one 0:28:43.040 --> 0:28:45.760 I've seen before. This is the one where a convict 0:28:46.080 --> 0:28:49.760 living alone on an asteroid which just looks like the desert, 0:28:50.280 --> 0:28:54.640 the California desert or something. He receives a female robot 0:28:54.800 --> 0:28:57.840 from his captors to help keep him company on the 0:28:57.880 --> 0:29:02.200 asteroid for some reason. And anyway, Marsh plays the robot 0:29:02.240 --> 0:29:05.400 woman opposite Jack Warden, and Ted Knight is in that 0:29:05.480 --> 0:29:08.520 episode too, in an uncredited kind of background role. 0:29:08.840 --> 0:29:12.840 So something that's interesting about Marsh and Nicol Williamson in 0:29:12.920 --> 0:29:15.600 this movie is that they both get to play these 0:29:15.680 --> 0:29:18.600 dual roles in which in the mundane world in the 0:29:18.600 --> 0:29:23.800 world of Kansas, they are presented as villains, but in 0:29:23.880 --> 0:29:27.400 a very subtle way, you know, sort of blending in 0:29:27.440 --> 0:29:31.080 with society and doing something that from Dorothy's perspective in 0:29:31.120 --> 0:29:34.720 the movie we see as wicked. But you know they're 0:29:34.720 --> 0:29:37.120 not chewing the scenery, they're not overt. In fact, they 0:29:38.120 --> 0:29:41.880 their outward appearances is sort of friendly, or at least 0:29:41.960 --> 0:29:44.440 Nicol Williamson's is Jane marsh is kind of cold as 0:29:44.480 --> 0:29:47.320 the lady in the clinic. But then you get to 0:29:47.360 --> 0:29:50.160 flip the script and go to Oz, where the characters 0:29:50.200 --> 0:29:54.880 reappear once again, but as just like frothing monstrous versions 0:29:55.000 --> 0:29:57.280 of their mundane world characters. 0:29:57.840 --> 0:30:03.360 Yes, yes, characters that demand over the top performances. Just 0:30:03.480 --> 0:30:05.920 you use every muscle in your face. Go ahead and 0:30:05.920 --> 0:30:09.760 crank your eye intensity up to to to eleven or twelve. 0:30:10.280 --> 0:30:13.440 That's that's the sort of villains that populate the world 0:30:13.480 --> 0:30:16.200 of Oz, all right. Now. A few more performers have 0:30:16.280 --> 0:30:19.440 note in this. Auntie m aunt Em in This is 0:30:19.480 --> 0:30:23.800 played by Piper Laurie born nineteen thirty two. I don't 0:30:23.800 --> 0:30:25.360 know about you, Joe, but I thought this was this 0:30:25.440 --> 0:30:29.120 was rather hilarious, given yes, that she plays Carrie's mom. 0:30:29.240 --> 0:30:32.880 Margaret White in seventy six is Carrie both movies about 0:30:32.920 --> 0:30:37.760 special girls with special powers, and this is the and 0:30:38.200 --> 0:30:41.840 Piper Laurie plays the moms sort of trying to understand 0:30:41.880 --> 0:30:43.360 these these these young women. 0:30:43.920 --> 0:30:46.480 No, I would say, auntim is a is a is 0:30:46.520 --> 0:30:49.920 a good caregiver, like she's you know, she she's trying 0:30:49.920 --> 0:30:54.800 to be loving. And she does end up taking Dorothy 0:30:54.840 --> 0:30:57.080 to a bad place, but she doesn't mean bad. She's 0:30:57.080 --> 0:31:01.560 trying to help. And her her benevolence in this movie 0:31:02.120 --> 0:31:06.360 is yes, almost hilariously contrasted with the other main roles. 0:31:06.400 --> 0:31:10.360 I can think of her in Yeah, she's aside from Carrie. 0:31:10.440 --> 0:31:13.080 She was also in nineteen sixty one's The Hustler, she 0:31:13.200 --> 0:31:15.920 was in Twin Peaks and Children of a Lesser God. 0:31:16.200 --> 0:31:18.920 So another funny thing Rachel and I always talk about 0:31:18.920 --> 0:31:23.160 whenever Piper Laurie comes up is the the just the 0:31:23.200 --> 0:31:28.200 absurdity of the machinations about the mill in Twin Peaks. 0:31:28.360 --> 0:31:31.000 Remember that's like one of her main motivations is fighting 0:31:31.040 --> 0:31:31.720 about the mill. 0:31:32.240 --> 0:31:35.560 Oh no, no, I don't remember that, all right. So 0:31:35.600 --> 0:31:37.320 those are some of the really those are the main 0:31:37.880 --> 0:31:40.960 human characters. A lot of the other characters were Gonna 0:31:41.320 --> 0:31:43.680 or a lot of the other actors and individuals involved 0:31:43.680 --> 0:31:46.040 here are. They're kind of a mix of actual like 0:31:46.120 --> 0:31:51.680 physical performers or puppeteers or special effects manipulators. So and 0:31:51.720 --> 0:31:53.320 I'm not going to list all of them here, but 0:31:53.480 --> 0:31:55.320 some of them stand out because of other work that 0:31:55.400 --> 0:31:55.800 they did. 0:31:56.120 --> 0:31:57.880 I like that in the credits at the end of 0:31:57.920 --> 0:32:02.560 this movie, when the not human characters appear, they will 0:32:02.560 --> 0:32:05.440 be given multiple credits for multiple people playing the role, 0:32:05.480 --> 0:32:08.320 like they put the often the puppeteer and the voice 0:32:08.320 --> 0:32:10.520 actor side by side. I think that's cool. 0:32:10.760 --> 0:32:13.960 Yeah, yeah, So one name that does stand out is 0:32:14.000 --> 0:32:17.600 the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead. It's Brian Henson born nineteen 0:32:17.640 --> 0:32:19.680 sixty three. This is, of course the son of the 0:32:19.760 --> 0:32:24.200 late Jim Henson, producer, director, actor, and writer. He's of 0:32:24.240 --> 0:32:27.400 course been involved in tons of Hinson projects over the decades, 0:32:27.920 --> 0:32:30.480 but I think his most treasured place in my cinematic 0:32:30.520 --> 0:32:33.960 memories is as the voice of Hoggle in nineteen eighty 0:32:34.000 --> 0:32:37.000 six Labyrinth. He was also the voice of the dog 0:32:37.080 --> 0:32:38.520 on Jim Henson's Storyteller. 0:32:38.920 --> 0:32:40.240 Oh okay, and. 0:32:40.200 --> 0:32:41.600 I could be wrong, but I think he also did 0:32:41.640 --> 0:32:47.040 some manipulation on Jack Pumpkinhead's head in this film as well. 0:32:47.320 --> 0:32:50.840 I couldn't tell was Jack pumpkinhead a puppet or was 0:32:50.880 --> 0:32:53.680 there like a really skinny actor inside a costume. 0:32:54.080 --> 0:32:57.160 Oh that's a tough call, right without really diving back 0:32:57.160 --> 0:33:00.040 into the credits, because he is supposed to look like 0:33:00.080 --> 0:33:03.680 a thing that is essentially a magical puppet made out 0:33:03.720 --> 0:33:06.120 of parts. But there may well have been a human 0:33:06.160 --> 0:33:07.920 actor in there at least for some of the scenes, 0:33:09.280 --> 0:33:12.400 along with some sort of puppetry manipulation of the head. 0:33:12.960 --> 0:33:18.840 And also sometimes the chicken ballina is inside the Jack o' 0:33:18.880 --> 0:33:22.440 lantern head. So there's a lot going on here. Oh, now, 0:33:22.440 --> 0:33:24.400 this one was fun. I wasn't prepared for this, but 0:33:24.920 --> 0:33:27.040 I mentioned we have the Gump here, which is this 0:33:27.480 --> 0:33:30.800 junk gollum that has a like a stuffed moose's head, 0:33:31.320 --> 0:33:36.560 and the individual that's credited for effects and manipulation on 0:33:36.680 --> 0:33:40.800 the Gump's head is Stephen Norrington born nineteen sixty four, 0:33:41.160 --> 0:33:43.520 the man who would go on to direct nineteen ninety 0:33:43.600 --> 0:33:46.560 nine's Blade and did monster effects on nineteen ninety two. 0:33:46.600 --> 0:33:47.360 Split second. 0:33:47.840 --> 0:33:48.320 Wow. 0:33:48.640 --> 0:33:50.440 So yeah, he keeps coming up on the show, and 0:33:50.680 --> 0:33:51.719 he's going to keep coming up. 0:33:51.800 --> 0:33:53.040 The connections never stop. 0:33:53.480 --> 0:33:56.400 Yeah. Okay, now this next one is more of a 0:33:56.440 --> 0:34:01.480 physical performance, and that is the Lee Wheeler. The Wheelers 0:34:01.520 --> 0:34:03.960 are kind of the flying monkeys of this film, only 0:34:04.080 --> 0:34:06.959 instead of flying monkeys, instead of some sort of a 0:34:07.000 --> 0:34:13.160 simian creature with feathered wings. They are like half human 0:34:13.480 --> 0:34:17.920 half old timey bicycle people. Or they are a like 0:34:17.960 --> 0:34:22.560 a tribe of post apocalyptic maniacs who have taken up, 0:34:24.320 --> 0:34:29.840 you know, vehicular locomotion instead of walking. They're really odd. 0:34:29.880 --> 0:34:32.840 They're difficult to describe. Anyway. There's a whole group of 0:34:32.880 --> 0:34:36.600 these Wheelers and the lead Wheeler is played by this 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:39.839 actor by the name of ponds Mar, and I'm glad 0:34:39.920 --> 0:34:43.200 we finally get to mention pons Mar because he's a 0:34:43.239 --> 0:34:48.040 Florida born artist, affects artists, puppeteer, and a monster suit guy. 0:34:48.080 --> 0:34:51.160 He's one of He's just one of the creepy Wheelers 0:34:51.200 --> 0:34:54.680 in this movie. But he is also memorable for playing 0:34:54.719 --> 0:34:58.279 the reptile man Saarrodd in nineteen eighty seven's Masters of 0:34:58.320 --> 0:35:01.600 the Universe and the character Fu in nineteen eighty six 0:35:01.719 --> 0:35:05.200 is the Golden Child. He also did some Dino sued work, 0:35:05.239 --> 0:35:12.160 both on TV's Dinosaurs the Hintson Effected sitcom, but also 0:35:12.360 --> 0:35:15.600 the nineteen ninety five movie Theodore Rex, in which he 0:35:15.640 --> 0:35:19.280 plays a cool talking t Rex opposite Whoopi Goldberg. 0:35:19.520 --> 0:35:23.440 To clarify, Theodore Rex is a buddy cop movie, and 0:35:23.480 --> 0:35:27.040 the buddy cops are Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur. 0:35:27.520 --> 0:35:28.680 Wow. Have you seen it? 0:35:28.880 --> 0:35:28.960 No? 0:35:29.080 --> 0:35:30.880 I haven't seen it. I just know the premise, and 0:35:31.360 --> 0:35:33.319 apparently he's like a rad dinosaur. 0:35:33.520 --> 0:35:37.040 He looks rat. He looks pretty rat at any rate. 0:35:37.360 --> 0:35:41.200 Oh Man Ponsmar is the lead Wheeler. His performance in 0:35:41.280 --> 0:35:43.560 this is just cranked up to about a thousand. I 0:35:43.640 --> 0:35:45.239 was thinking, it's kind of like, what if you took 0:35:45.239 --> 0:35:48.400 one of Bill Irwin's mind performances, like he would do 0:35:48.440 --> 0:35:50.759 on Sesame Street and so forth. What if you had 0:35:50.760 --> 0:35:54.200 that level of intensity but it was also deafeningly loud 0:35:54.239 --> 0:35:55.080 at the same time. 0:35:55.440 --> 0:35:58.800 Yes, yes, he is manic oh and Rob. I noticed 0:35:58.800 --> 0:36:03.239 something I put together about the Wheelers only after I 0:36:03.280 --> 0:36:05.240 watched the movie, not while I was watching it. Okay, 0:36:05.239 --> 0:36:08.560 So throughout the movie, you've got these characters who appear 0:36:08.960 --> 0:36:12.200 in OZ, but then there's some sort of counterpart in 0:36:12.400 --> 0:36:16.040 the mundane world back in Kansas. So of course Mamby 0:36:16.360 --> 0:36:20.440 is the nurse at the clinic. The nome King is 0:36:20.520 --> 0:36:24.279 the doctor at the clinic, but I think the Wheelers 0:36:24.440 --> 0:36:30.120 are the sallow, moist looking orderlies at the clinic who 0:36:30.120 --> 0:36:33.320 are like wheeling the gurneyes around and they look haven't 0:36:33.360 --> 0:36:34.200 slept in a month. 0:36:34.680 --> 0:36:36.560 Yeah, I believe you're right on that because I. 0:36:36.600 --> 0:36:39.400 Think looking back on it now, I'm not positive about this, 0:36:39.440 --> 0:36:42.600 but I think Ponsmar is also one of those orderlies. 0:36:43.040 --> 0:36:44.719 M hmm, Yeah, I think he is. He has a 0:36:44.840 --> 0:36:48.520 very distinctive look that shines through even when he's not 0:36:48.640 --> 0:36:51.880 made up like some sort of reptile man. Now, speaking 0:36:52.000 --> 0:36:54.440 of monster suits, Oh, I have to mention this guy, 0:36:54.480 --> 0:36:56.800 even though the Cowardly Lion is not much of a 0:36:56.920 --> 0:36:59.600 character in this The Cowardly Lion is basically turned a 0:36:59.600 --> 0:37:03.160 stone and only becomes unfrozen at the very end of 0:37:03.160 --> 0:37:06.560 the film. But when he does move again, it's this 0:37:06.960 --> 0:37:10.200 cool monster suit. And the man in the monster suit 0:37:10.360 --> 0:37:13.920 is John Alexander, who is a gorilla guy. Gotta love 0:37:13.920 --> 0:37:14.799 a good gorilla guy. 0:37:14.960 --> 0:37:16.879 Oh, he does gorillas quite often. 0:37:16.960 --> 0:37:21.520 Oh yeah, oh yeah. Alexander was a former circus performer, 0:37:21.719 --> 0:37:25.040 cabaret actor, and theater actor who first climbed into a 0:37:25.040 --> 0:37:28.640 gorilla costume on screen for nineteen eighty four's Gray Stoke 0:37:29.080 --> 0:37:32.600 The Legend of Tarzan. This was the one that starred 0:37:32.680 --> 0:37:37.000 Christopher Lambert. Of course this was his This was his 0:37:37.040 --> 0:37:39.719 follow up performance and return to OZ, but he also 0:37:39.760 --> 0:37:43.120 played a gorilla on the TV show Jeeves and Wooster. 0:37:43.880 --> 0:37:47.280 He was in who played a gorilla on Baby's Day Out, 0:37:47.719 --> 0:37:52.320 Fierce Creatures, nineteen ninety eight's Mighty Joe Young, twenty eleven's 0:37:52.360 --> 0:37:55.359 Planet of the Apes, and he, along with a few 0:37:55.360 --> 0:37:58.319 others I found this kind of interesting, are credited as 0:37:58.640 --> 0:38:02.480 quote unquote mime AARs in nineteen eighty eights Gorillas in 0:38:02.520 --> 0:38:06.160 the Mist. And the thing about Gorillas in the Mist 0:38:06.239 --> 0:38:09.319 is Gorillas in the Mist definitely has gorilla costumes. It 0:38:09.320 --> 0:38:12.840 has great gorilla costumes designed by the great Rick Baker, 0:38:13.280 --> 0:38:16.920 But the credits don't say don't list humans as gorillas 0:38:17.280 --> 0:38:20.040 or say gorilla suit. They say these are mime artists, 0:38:20.280 --> 0:38:21.560 which I thought was interesting. 0:38:22.080 --> 0:38:24.040 Oh, Gorillas in the Mist is the one that has 0:38:24.080 --> 0:38:25.840 Sigourney Weaver playing Diane Fosse. 0:38:26.400 --> 0:38:28.400 Yeah, good movie, I guess it. Thought it was a 0:38:28.440 --> 0:38:31.440 little over like it was above gorilla suits for some reason, 0:38:31.440 --> 0:38:32.840 but at any rate. 0:38:33.880 --> 0:38:35.200 Above gorilla suits. 0:38:35.360 --> 0:38:37.640 I don't know. Maybe they just they were like, it's 0:38:37.760 --> 0:38:40.759 it would be we shouldn't list people as gorillas, or 0:38:40.800 --> 0:38:43.520 maybe they thought they would They wanted to keep this 0:38:43.800 --> 0:38:46.520 suspension of disbelief alive that these are real gorillas. I 0:38:46.520 --> 0:38:51.040 don't know, but John Alexander also did monster suit, creature 0:38:51.080 --> 0:38:53.160 suit work, and Men in Black one and two, The 0:38:53.200 --> 0:38:56.560 Country Bears Zathura and hell Boy two. 0:38:57.040 --> 0:39:01.040 Now, as we mentioned, the original opinions from the First 0:39:01.080 --> 0:39:03.799 Wizard of Oz are only sort of in this movie. Well, 0:39:03.840 --> 0:39:06.600 Scarecrow is in it more. But I felt bad for 0:39:06.680 --> 0:39:09.160 the tin Man at the end of this movie because 0:39:09.920 --> 0:39:12.399 Dorothy when she's like, you know, saying goodbye. Of course, 0:39:12.400 --> 0:39:15.920 she has a pretty extended scene with the Scarecrow. She 0:39:16.280 --> 0:39:19.560 has a real good hug on the cowardly Lion. It's like, hey, world, buddies, 0:39:19.640 --> 0:39:21.160 he has good to see you again. But then she 0:39:21.360 --> 0:39:23.719 just disses the tin Man. Basically, I don't think she 0:39:23.760 --> 0:39:25.080 ever even says anything to him. 0:39:26.080 --> 0:39:28.920 Yeah, he's barely in this as well. But it is 0:39:29.280 --> 0:39:32.439 noteworthy that the tin Man is played by Deep Roy 0:39:32.880 --> 0:39:36.480 born nineteen fifty seven, the Kenyan British actor who, at 0:39:36.560 --> 0:39:39.080 four foot four has been a go to actor for 0:39:39.120 --> 0:39:44.680 creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. So Roy 0:39:44.719 --> 0:39:47.600 has popped up in Star Wars, The Dark, Crystal Flash, 0:39:47.680 --> 0:39:51.320 Gordon Gray Stroke, The Never Ending Story, The X Files, 0:39:51.680 --> 0:39:54.640 Planet of the Apes, in which he plays a gorilla kid. 0:39:54.840 --> 0:39:57.680 That is what is he's credited as. He's in Charlie 0:39:57.680 --> 0:40:00.000 and the Chocolate Factory. He's been in I think, various 0:40:00.080 --> 0:40:03.279 Star Trek shows and much more. All right, and so 0:40:03.440 --> 0:40:06.120 just a few behind the scenes credits to go through 0:40:06.160 --> 0:40:09.040 real quick. Norman Reynolds was the production designer on this 0:40:09.080 --> 0:40:12.319 born nineteen thirty four British production designer who worked on 0:40:12.400 --> 0:40:15.400 the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Arc, 0:40:15.719 --> 0:40:18.200 The Exorsis three, Alien three, and more. 0:40:18.480 --> 0:40:20.720 The sets in this movie are tremendous. 0:40:20.880 --> 0:40:23.799 They are amazing. Yeah, so I just had to call 0:40:23.840 --> 0:40:27.480 that out. Also, this film has some great claymation, some 0:40:27.560 --> 0:40:31.680 stop motion animation using clay in it. Really if you're 0:40:31.680 --> 0:40:35.120 a fan of that genre of effects like this is 0:40:35.320 --> 0:40:37.000 definitely an eighties film to check out. 0:40:37.200 --> 0:40:40.880 Like when the Rocks are delivering reports to the Nome 0:40:41.040 --> 0:40:43.040 King before you ever see him, you just see the 0:40:43.120 --> 0:40:47.400 face in the stone sort of scrunching up and getting 0:40:47.440 --> 0:40:50.000 worried about giving the Nome King bad news. 0:40:50.719 --> 0:40:54.120 Yeah, yeah, it's tremendous. So I'm not even gonna list 0:40:54.160 --> 0:40:57.040 all the Claymation team members that worked on this, but 0:40:57.520 --> 0:41:00.799 the team included such artists as Will Vinton who lived 0:41:00.800 --> 0:41:05.920 forty seven through twenty eighteen, Joanne rad Milovich, who you 0:41:05.960 --> 0:41:08.880 can find images of. I included an image for you here, Joe, 0:41:09.440 --> 0:41:12.240 where you can see the artist working on some of 0:41:11.640 --> 0:41:16.080 the Nome King's minions. Here, Bruce McKean, who lived nineteen 0:41:16.120 --> 0:41:19.040 fifty one through nineteen ninety three. Oh, and this is 0:41:19.040 --> 0:41:23.319 an interesting one. Mark Gustafson, who is co director on 0:41:23.400 --> 0:41:28.160 the upcoming guiermel del Toro Pinocchio movie. And then there 0:41:28.160 --> 0:41:31.399 it's also Craig Bartlett born nineteen fifty six, who worked 0:41:31.440 --> 0:41:34.440 on Dinosaur Train, which was is. I'm not sure if 0:41:34.440 --> 0:41:37.719 it's still going, but at any rate, Is was a 0:41:37.760 --> 0:41:41.000 long running Jim Henson animated series that I believe also 0:41:41.160 --> 0:41:46.600 used poppetry to create the movements for the animated dinosaurs. 0:41:46.880 --> 0:41:49.680 And finally, the music. The music credit here goes to 0:41:49.760 --> 0:41:52.960 David Schier born nineteen thirty seven, American composer who scored 0:41:53.000 --> 0:41:55.520 a ton of films over the years, including All the 0:41:55.560 --> 0:41:59.799 President's Men, Oh Godjo Devil, Short Circuit, Monkey Shines, and 0:42:00.040 --> 0:42:01.200 David Fincher's Zodiac. 0:42:01.520 --> 0:42:05.240 Trying to remember the music in Zodiac. But I can't 0:42:05.280 --> 0:42:08.160 recall the orchestration. All I recall is the hurdy gurdy man. 0:42:08.560 --> 0:42:10.799 Yeah, excellent use of the hurdy gurdy man. But I 0:42:10.840 --> 0:42:13.839 too don't remember the score offhand. Likewise, I don't really 0:42:13.880 --> 0:42:16.120 remember the score from this movie. I watched it the 0:42:16.120 --> 0:42:19.000 other day. It's one of those scores that does its job, 0:42:19.680 --> 0:42:22.480 does its job well, but you don't necessarily think back 0:42:22.520 --> 0:42:24.240 on it. It's just not that type of score. 0:42:24.520 --> 0:42:24.719 Yeah. 0:42:24.760 --> 0:42:26.919 I mean, a movie like this depends on the music 0:42:27.000 --> 0:42:29.000 being good, so it must have been good, but it 0:42:29.040 --> 0:42:31.000 didn't stand. I don't recall what it was. 0:42:31.280 --> 0:42:34.360 Yeah. It's also not a musical, so there's not a 0:42:34.400 --> 0:42:37.920 scene where Dorothy says something and then the TikTok is like, 0:42:37.960 --> 0:42:39.920 well that sounds good, Dorothy, But could you sing a 0:42:39.960 --> 0:42:42.480 song about it so I can remember it. No, it 0:42:42.160 --> 0:42:43.319 doesn't work like that. 0:42:43.719 --> 0:42:47.400 Oh, we are the Wheelers, we will everywhere. 0:42:48.320 --> 0:42:50.400 Oh man, what I can't I don't even like to 0:42:50.400 --> 0:42:54.000 think what sort of musical genre the Wheelers would use. 0:42:54.120 --> 0:42:55.560 It would just have to be some sort of like 0:42:55.960 --> 0:42:59.880 screaming punk song or something. Yeah, some sort of screeching 0:43:00.040 --> 0:43:03.560 avant garde industrial punk. That would be my guess what. 0:43:03.520 --> 0:43:07.200 Would Mom be saying, I want all your heads? 0:43:07.880 --> 0:43:10.120 Oh, maybe it would be a different genre. It would 0:43:10.120 --> 0:43:13.080 certainly be a different voice depending on which head she chooses. Right. 0:43:13.120 --> 0:43:14.120 Oh, that's a good point. 0:43:14.320 --> 0:43:16.640 And when it comes to the Nome King, it would 0:43:16.640 --> 0:43:19.000 just it would be hard rock because that's what he's 0:43:19.080 --> 0:43:19.400 made of. 0:43:19.920 --> 0:43:31.120 That's that's good. Okay. I guess we've already teased the 0:43:31.160 --> 0:43:33.799 plot a good bit. But I think this is one 0:43:33.840 --> 0:43:35.120 of those ones where we're not going to try to 0:43:35.160 --> 0:43:38.280 go scene by scene and describe the whole movie. Because 0:43:38.320 --> 0:43:41.560 this is this one. It's good to let some surprises remain. 0:43:41.640 --> 0:43:44.480 But maybe we should talk about some broad broad sections 0:43:44.480 --> 0:43:48.120 of the plot and some of our favorite details. So 0:43:48.160 --> 0:43:49.840 do you want to start with life in Kansas? 0:43:50.160 --> 0:43:51.080 Let's do it. So. 0:43:51.440 --> 0:43:54.320 The film seems to take place a little while after 0:43:54.360 --> 0:43:56.920 the events of the original Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale 0:43:57.320 --> 0:44:00.120 is back on the farm with Aunt em and Uncle Henry. 0:44:00.280 --> 0:44:03.239 They are rebuilding the house because of course it was 0:44:03.560 --> 0:44:06.040 you know, carried away by the Kansas cyclone in the 0:44:06.080 --> 0:44:10.160 previous movie. But Dorothy is you know, she not just 0:44:10.239 --> 0:44:13.360 totally back to normal. She is obsessed with her memories 0:44:13.400 --> 0:44:15.879 of adventurous in the Land of Oz, to the point 0:44:15.920 --> 0:44:17.959 where she can't sleep at night. Like you see Piper 0:44:18.040 --> 0:44:20.279 Laurie come into the room and it's like, Dorothy, you know, 0:44:20.360 --> 0:44:22.400 you got to go to sleep. But she's you know, 0:44:22.440 --> 0:44:25.120 she's looking at the stars because she's thinking about monsters 0:44:25.160 --> 0:44:27.240 and thinking about trees that trees that attack. 0:44:27.520 --> 0:44:28.640 Well, this is what they get for living in the 0:44:28.680 --> 0:44:30.839 middle of nowhere. The stars are so bride out there, 0:44:31.280 --> 0:44:32.640 they basically keep you up at night. 0:44:32.920 --> 0:44:36.560 It's true. I can report from brief experiences. If you 0:44:36.600 --> 0:44:39.719 go to a place with truly dark skies and you 0:44:39.760 --> 0:44:41.359 look up at the stars at night, it is a 0:44:41.400 --> 0:44:46.479 borderline hallucinatory experience. Yeah, but okay, aunt Em and Uncle 0:44:46.520 --> 0:44:49.480 Henry are troubled by what's happened to Dorothy. They think 0:44:49.600 --> 0:44:53.600 she is suffering from persistent delusions because of her belief 0:44:53.680 --> 0:44:57.360 that Oz is real. So ann Em gets the idea 0:44:57.560 --> 0:44:59.560 that they've got to send her to a doctor in 0:44:59.640 --> 0:45:03.080 town who has a machine that can cure her brain 0:45:03.480 --> 0:45:06.759 with electricity. So there are a few things that are 0:45:06.840 --> 0:45:10.400 established in this early section. On the farm, we see, 0:45:10.480 --> 0:45:13.640 you know that ann M and Uncle Henry are our 0:45:13.840 --> 0:45:17.600 loving parents. You know, they care about Dorothy and they're 0:45:17.640 --> 0:45:20.719 trying to do good, but also that they're disturbed by 0:45:21.000 --> 0:45:23.160 her seeming to believe that Oz is a real place 0:45:23.160 --> 0:45:25.799 and she actually went there, and you see them trying 0:45:25.800 --> 0:45:30.680 to discourage these apparent delusions. And meanwhile, Dorothy's just thinking 0:45:30.680 --> 0:45:32.600 about Oz all the time. Like she finds a key 0:45:33.080 --> 0:45:35.080 on the farm and she's like, see this key is 0:45:35.080 --> 0:45:37.880 from OZ because it's got like the handle on it 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:39.880 is round like an O, and then it's got to 0:45:39.920 --> 0:45:41.839 slash through the middle of it that sort of makes 0:45:41.880 --> 0:45:44.960 like a crossbar on a Z. So yeah, this is 0:45:45.120 --> 0:45:47.759 obviously an artifact from OZ. And then I think it 0:45:47.840 --> 0:45:51.800 literally is. Later but we also we meet a chicken 0:45:51.840 --> 0:45:55.480 who can't talk. But this chicken who cannot talk is 0:45:55.560 --> 0:45:58.839 Dorothy's friend, and the chicken is threatened by Aunt Em 0:45:58.920 --> 0:46:01.439 because An M's like, if you don't lay an egg soon, 0:46:01.560 --> 0:46:02.800 I'm gonna turn you into soup. 0:46:03.239 --> 0:46:06.160 Yep, yeah, this is Billina. Billina is going to be 0:46:06.200 --> 0:46:09.840 a major character. Delena is not just there for comic relief. 0:46:10.200 --> 0:46:13.080 Now, shortly into the movie, Dorothy is taken by aunt 0:46:13.160 --> 0:46:16.839 Em to town and Toto tries to follow them. They 0:46:16.880 --> 0:46:19.160 have a very cute dog to play, Toto, but Toto 0:46:19.680 --> 0:46:22.880 does not accompany Dorothy on her adventures in this movie. 0:46:22.880 --> 0:46:27.120 Toto stays behind and so she's taken to town to 0:46:27.120 --> 0:46:30.120 go to the offices of doctor JB. Worley played by 0:46:30.200 --> 0:46:33.040 Nicole Williamson. And again this is going to be for 0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:37.279 the electrical cure. Now. As I said earlier, Williamson and 0:46:37.360 --> 0:46:40.440 Jean marsh are both fabulous in their roles because, like 0:46:40.440 --> 0:46:43.160 in the original Wizard of Oz, they play these characters 0:46:43.200 --> 0:46:47.080 on both sides of the fantasy divide, right, they have 0:46:47.200 --> 0:46:51.960 real mundane characters and fantasy counterparts in Oz. Nicole Williamson's 0:46:52.000 --> 0:46:56.239 Earth character, doctor Warley, is I think wonderfully realized as 0:46:56.480 --> 0:46:59.720 as the kind of man who presents a soft, friendly, 0:47:00.120 --> 0:47:04.880 reassuring exterior while preparing the machinery that will steal your soul. 0:47:05.400 --> 0:47:08.200 Yeah, this is this is a wonderful performance. And you 0:47:08.200 --> 0:47:10.200 know you don't see a lot of him here. We're 0:47:10.200 --> 0:47:13.160 not in Kansas for too long. But yeah. Yeah, he 0:47:13.239 --> 0:47:16.160 seems he is a He doesn't come off as a 0:47:16.239 --> 0:47:19.160 suspicious adult. He seems like a trusting adult who is 0:47:19.200 --> 0:47:22.200 in who's rightfully in a position of authority and is 0:47:22.239 --> 0:47:23.280 going to help you. 0:47:23.320 --> 0:47:25.760 Like there's a part where he's showing Dorothy. He says, look, 0:47:25.880 --> 0:47:28.680 this machine has a face. Here are its eyes, and 0:47:28.760 --> 0:47:32.560 here is its nose. And of course the machine is 0:47:32.600 --> 0:47:37.200 the machine they're going to use to administer electroconvulsive therapy 0:47:37.320 --> 0:47:41.359 to Dorothy. Now, a brief note on psychiatry in this film. 0:47:41.640 --> 0:47:45.040 I would say this movie depicts psychiatry in general and 0:47:45.120 --> 0:47:49.960 electroconvulsive therapy in particular as cruel and evil, which I 0:47:49.960 --> 0:47:53.000 would say I have twofold thoughts about number one. It 0:47:53.200 --> 0:47:57.080 really works in the context of the plot. But of course, 0:47:57.160 --> 0:47:58.959 if you're going to be literal about it, I think 0:47:59.200 --> 0:48:01.239 this is very mis guided. Like I think if you 0:48:01.280 --> 0:48:04.080 get your ideas about ECT from the movies, especially like 0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:06.560 I don't know, movies made in the seventies and eighties, 0:48:06.800 --> 0:48:08.879 such as scenes from One Flow of the Cuckoo's Nest 0:48:08.920 --> 0:48:11.880 and stuff, you would basically think that it is like 0:48:11.960 --> 0:48:17.320 a pseudoscientific involuntary torture mechanism. Used to inflict pain and terror. 0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:21.080 But I think actually, you know, a lot of psychiatrists 0:48:21.080 --> 0:48:23.200 think that there's very good evidence that it's helpful and 0:48:23.239 --> 0:48:26.600 that you'll meet people who have experienced severe, major depression 0:48:26.640 --> 0:48:29.560 that did not respond to other treatments, and they would 0:48:29.600 --> 0:48:34.000 say ECT made a major positive difference in their lives. Though, obviously, 0:48:34.040 --> 0:48:36.560 if it were actually administered in the way it is 0:48:36.600 --> 0:48:40.239 depicted in this movie, which is like an unexplained, non 0:48:40.320 --> 0:48:44.000 consensual punishment inflicted on children for the crime of having 0:48:44.080 --> 0:48:47.360 an imagination, that would be pretty awful. So while you 0:48:47.360 --> 0:48:51.080 should obviously not get your real, real world ideas about 0:48:51.080 --> 0:48:55.120 ECT from the OZ universe, it does make a really 0:48:55.160 --> 0:48:59.279 great plot device, scary plot device within the fantasy context 0:48:59.280 --> 0:48:59.920 of the movie. 0:49:00.200 --> 0:49:01.640 Yeah, absolutely so. 0:49:01.760 --> 0:49:05.560 Anyway, Dorothy is left at this clinic to be subjected 0:49:05.600 --> 0:49:08.360 to the electrical cure for her brain, and there's this 0:49:08.440 --> 0:49:11.560 great scene where you know, Dorothy's kind of thinking about 0:49:11.600 --> 0:49:14.279 other things while you hear the doctor talking to aunt 0:49:14.360 --> 0:49:16.440 Em in the background saying, you know, the mind is 0:49:16.440 --> 0:49:20.760 simply a machine. Sometimes the machine has too much electricity 0:49:20.840 --> 0:49:26.359 in it, and you get a similar foreboding elements from 0:49:26.400 --> 0:49:29.960 other things at the clinic so Gene Marsh plays a 0:49:30.680 --> 0:49:32.480 what would you call her, She's like an assistance sort 0:49:32.480 --> 0:49:35.040 of a warden at this clinic, and she's wearing a 0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:37.319 dress that looks like it might as well be Darth 0:49:37.440 --> 0:49:38.240 Vader's suit. 0:49:39.360 --> 0:49:42.719 Yeah. It is like such a gothy number. I don't 0:49:42.760 --> 0:49:46.120 know how else to describe it. It's just like multiple 0:49:46.160 --> 0:49:50.560 shades of black, and how's all of these like cremulations 0:49:50.760 --> 0:49:53.440 and sort of fabric spikes on it. 0:49:53.440 --> 0:49:55.719 It's like if you combine like a Little House on 0:49:55.800 --> 0:50:00.600 the Prairie dress and the Road Warrior. Yeah. But also 0:50:00.680 --> 0:50:03.800 here at the clinic, Dorothy meets a mysterious blonde girl 0:50:03.840 --> 0:50:06.480 who like appears in her room and warns her about 0:50:06.480 --> 0:50:08.919 doctor Worley's machines. I think, is this the scene where 0:50:08.920 --> 0:50:12.080 they're like hearing people screaming and she says like those 0:50:12.080 --> 0:50:14.920 are the people who have been subjected to the machine. 0:50:15.480 --> 0:50:19.200 Yeah, yeah, and that's this is probably the darkest moment 0:50:19.320 --> 0:50:21.879 in the film. I thought for me anyway, like this 0:50:21.960 --> 0:50:24.200 is this This is the moment where I was sitting 0:50:24.200 --> 0:50:25.960 there watching it, you know, next to my son, and 0:50:26.000 --> 0:50:30.000 I'm like, this is maybe a little too dark, But 0:50:30.160 --> 0:50:33.120 he didn't seem to mind. And you're through it pretty quickly. 0:50:33.440 --> 0:50:35.719 And there's a scene where they're like taking Dorothy to 0:50:36.120 --> 0:50:38.520 be hooked up to the electrical machine, the one that 0:50:38.600 --> 0:50:40.719 had eyes and a nose and a mouth, and they're 0:50:40.760 --> 0:50:43.200 hooking the electrodes up to her head, and just when 0:50:43.200 --> 0:50:46.160 they're getting ready to send the charge the there is 0:50:46.200 --> 0:50:50.080 a storm and lightning strikes and power is lost, and 0:50:50.440 --> 0:50:53.960 Dorothy actually escapes during this lightning storm, along with that 0:50:54.080 --> 0:50:56.520 strange blonde girl who she keeps seeing in the mirror, 0:50:57.320 --> 0:51:00.279 and they they get swept up in a flood, being 0:51:00.360 --> 0:51:03.880 chased by Jeane marsh in that crazy black dress, and 0:51:03.920 --> 0:51:06.200 they end up floating away down a torrent in a 0:51:06.320 --> 0:51:06.960 chicken coop. 0:51:07.360 --> 0:51:10.680 By the way, I couldn't help it be reminded of 0:51:10.719 --> 0:51:13.520 the movie Brazil, which I guess came out the same year, 0:51:14.160 --> 0:51:17.359 nineteen eighty five. But that film has a scene where 0:51:17.360 --> 0:51:20.839 an individual's strapped to a contraption and in that case 0:51:20.880 --> 0:51:24.000 is about to be tortured when something miraculous happens that 0:51:24.080 --> 0:51:25.920 seems to save him. And then at the end of 0:51:25.960 --> 0:51:28.640 the film, all depending on the cut, you find out 0:51:28.880 --> 0:51:31.840 that this was all just what an occurrence at what 0:51:31.920 --> 0:51:35.600 is at Awl Creek Bridge situation where everything was happening 0:51:35.640 --> 0:51:38.280 in his head and he really died on the interrogation table. 0:51:38.520 --> 0:51:41.200 So I'm happy to say that that is not the 0:51:41.239 --> 0:51:43.719 case in Return to oz there's not a scene later 0:51:43.760 --> 0:51:46.520 where you realize, oh, this was all just electricity going 0:51:46.560 --> 0:51:47.560 through Dorothy's brain. 0:51:48.040 --> 0:51:51.120 Right. No, no, no, there is like a waking up later scene, 0:51:51.120 --> 0:51:51.680 but it's not that. 0:51:52.280 --> 0:51:53.880 Yeah, she did. 0:51:53.760 --> 0:51:55.440 Really go out and get in the mud. 0:51:55.400 --> 0:51:57.800 And into the river and then seemingly into the ocean. 0:51:57.960 --> 0:52:00.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's a good thing she did 0:52:00.239 --> 0:52:03.600 run out into the floodwaters because apparently if she had 0:52:03.600 --> 0:52:06.279 remained behind at the clinic, she may be she may 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:10.360 have been incinerated. Yes, But so from here we're gonna 0:52:10.360 --> 0:52:13.719 go to Ozta. We gotta talk oz First thing is 0:52:13.960 --> 0:52:17.239 she wakes up in that chicken coop being wrecked in 0:52:17.400 --> 0:52:20.320 what's called the Deadly Desert, which is a plot device 0:52:20.360 --> 0:52:23.640 that I love. The idea of the Deadly desert is 0:52:23.680 --> 0:52:26.319 if you touch the sand, you turn to sand, and 0:52:26.560 --> 0:52:30.080 it's very simple, but it's great. We see a wheeler 0:52:30.120 --> 0:52:32.880 turned to sand at some point and it's brutal. 0:52:33.080 --> 0:52:35.960 Yeah. That was one of my son's favorite moments, and 0:52:36.040 --> 0:52:37.920 in part because we hated the Wheelers. All we could 0:52:37.920 --> 0:52:40.160 tell the Wheelers were bad news, So any bad things 0:52:40.160 --> 0:52:42.480 that happened to the Wheelers are somewhat justified. 0:52:42.680 --> 0:52:45.120 But as soon as Dorothy wakes up in the deadly desert, 0:52:45.200 --> 0:52:48.320 her chicken friend Billina is there with her, and Billina 0:52:48.360 --> 0:52:50.960 can talk. Now, remember by the mechanism we discussed earlier, 0:52:51.040 --> 0:52:52.920 you know, you're an animal, you're in Oz. Now you're 0:52:52.920 --> 0:52:56.239 a talking animal. And it turns out all along, if 0:52:56.280 --> 0:52:59.040 Billina could talk, we would have noticed that she has 0:52:59.120 --> 0:53:01.920 like a sassy, old prairie grandma tude. 0:53:02.320 --> 0:53:05.720 Yeah. Yeah, it was full of fun one liners as well, 0:53:06.080 --> 0:53:08.200 and occasionally has information and advice. 0:53:08.560 --> 0:53:11.120 So they're going around, they're checking out Oz. They're like, 0:53:11.160 --> 0:53:14.120 what's up in Oz? And uh oh, everything is wrecked. 0:53:14.239 --> 0:53:16.799 Nothing's good anymore. The yellow brick road is all torn up, 0:53:17.480 --> 0:53:20.719 Munchkin Village is gone. I think Emerald City is in ruins. 0:53:21.040 --> 0:53:22.640 We see it in the distance and it looks like 0:53:22.680 --> 0:53:27.239 it has been shelled. Yeah, and we gather that when 0:53:27.440 --> 0:53:30.719 Dorothy last left, the Scarecrow had been crowned King of 0:53:30.719 --> 0:53:33.560 Oz in the Emerald City. And I think there's an 0:53:33.680 --> 0:53:35.680 understanding that Scarecrow is going to be a good and 0:53:35.840 --> 0:53:38.880 just ruler. Scarecrow is kind, Scarecrow is thoughtful. You know, 0:53:38.960 --> 0:53:41.719 he wouldn't do he wouldn't be a bad king. But 0:53:42.080 --> 0:53:45.680 in the meantime, something has gone terribly wrong, and I 0:53:45.800 --> 0:53:48.640 was immediately tempted to think how different the story would 0:53:48.680 --> 0:53:51.160 be if it had been like George R. R. Martin's 0:53:51.200 --> 0:53:54.600 Return to Oz, where the friendly Scarecrow has a heel turn. 0:53:54.760 --> 0:53:58.000 As soon as Dorothy leaves, he's corrupted by power. He 0:53:58.080 --> 0:54:03.280 immediately institutes, you know, Tonyan repression, purges of his perceived enemies. 0:54:03.480 --> 0:54:06.800 He sends ten man to prison, He's got dungeons in 0:54:06.840 --> 0:54:09.160 the Emerald City. That would have been a way to go. 0:54:09.200 --> 0:54:12.680 But no, it's not that the Scarecrow had a heel turned. Instead, 0:54:12.719 --> 0:54:15.400 what happened is that the Scarecrow has been deposed and 0:54:15.440 --> 0:54:17.440 someone else has taken over someone bad. 0:54:17.920 --> 0:54:18.920 Yeah, but I don't know. 0:54:18.960 --> 0:54:20.560 Wouldn't that have been a good twist. What if the 0:54:20.560 --> 0:54:22.120 Scarecrow was the villain of the movie. 0:54:22.520 --> 0:54:24.480 Yeah, yeah, it would have been. It would have been 0:54:24.560 --> 0:54:26.080 nice and twisty. It seems like the kind of thing 0:54:26.080 --> 0:54:28.000 they would do today if they were to make return 0:54:28.080 --> 0:54:30.360 to Oz, though this film does have some neat twists 0:54:30.400 --> 0:54:31.880 concerning what exactly happened. 0:54:32.160 --> 0:54:35.839 So anyway, Dorothy and Billina investigate everywhere there are statues 0:54:35.880 --> 0:54:38.360 of human forms, and in the ruins of the Emerald 0:54:38.400 --> 0:54:42.680 City they find a creepy graffito on a wall that says, 0:54:42.719 --> 0:54:44.440 beware the Wheelers. 0:54:44.960 --> 0:54:48.400 Yes, written in red. I don't think it's written in blood, 0:54:48.840 --> 0:54:50.800 but who can say for certain. 0:54:51.000 --> 0:54:53.520 It looks like it's written in red colored pencil. 0:54:53.800 --> 0:54:56.279 Yeah, or they didn't have a lot of blood. It's 0:54:56.280 --> 0:54:59.520 not drippy blood, but it's like, we're not not going 0:54:59.600 --> 0:55:02.160 to really just layer it on. We only have so 0:55:02.200 --> 0:55:04.160 much blood to work with here. I'm just saying it 0:55:04.160 --> 0:55:05.840 could be blood. It could be blood. 0:55:06.000 --> 0:55:08.319 I think blood is a scarce resource in Oz now 0:55:08.360 --> 0:55:11.160 because most human bodies have been turned into stone from 0:55:11.200 --> 0:55:14.120 what we can see. And in the ruins of the city, 0:55:14.200 --> 0:55:16.960 Dorothy and Billina get attacked by these horrible creatures called 0:55:17.000 --> 0:55:19.480 wheelers we've already talked about. They got wheels instead of 0:55:19.480 --> 0:55:23.920 hands and feet, and Dorothy uses her special key. I 0:55:23.920 --> 0:55:25.960 think this is the oz key that she found on 0:55:26.000 --> 0:55:27.560 the farm in Kansas. Is that right? 0:55:27.880 --> 0:55:28.200 Yep? 0:55:28.360 --> 0:55:31.279 He uses that to open a door inside a secret room. 0:55:31.320 --> 0:55:35.160 There she finds this bulbous mechanical man and this is 0:55:35.160 --> 0:55:39.799 one of our heroes, TikTok. I loved TikTok. He is 0:55:39.880 --> 0:55:43.480 like a wind up copper Ronan. He is a mechanical 0:55:43.520 --> 0:55:47.600 warrior whose master has been deposed and now he's in 0:55:47.600 --> 0:55:48.560 the service of Dorothy. 0:55:49.000 --> 0:55:55.600 Great design, great effects with this being the like a 0:55:55.600 --> 0:55:57.480 lot of it is puppetry, but also it's clearly a 0:55:57.480 --> 0:56:00.000 person in a suit, and it's they're able to pull 0:56:00.120 --> 0:56:03.719 off this wonderful gait, this wonderful walking style of of 0:56:04.160 --> 0:56:06.719 of TikTok. It's it's, it's it's absolutely wonderful. He was 0:56:06.719 --> 0:56:08.200 one of my favorite parts of the whole film. 0:56:08.400 --> 0:56:11.440 He's sort of a little bit teddy roosevelt Ish, but 0:56:11.719 --> 0:56:15.239 other elements too, like he's blustery and headstrong and has 0:56:15.280 --> 0:56:18.520 a big walrus mustache, a metal one, of course. But 0:56:18.800 --> 0:56:22.680 I thought a really interesting recurring theme is that we 0:56:22.719 --> 0:56:26.640 are frequently reminded throughout the movie that TikTok is not alive, 0:56:27.040 --> 0:56:29.680 Like when Dorothy first finds him, there are instructions on 0:56:29.760 --> 0:56:31.560 his back for how to wind him up and make 0:56:31.640 --> 0:56:34.440 him work. But U and one of the things the 0:56:34.440 --> 0:56:36.719 instruction says is like that, you know, the TikTok, the 0:56:36.760 --> 0:56:42.160 mechanical man, does everything but live. Yes, but what does 0:56:42.200 --> 0:56:45.719 that mean? So TikTok clearly has a mind, he has 0:56:45.760 --> 0:56:49.600 a personality, and he even has preferences in the ability 0:56:49.640 --> 0:56:52.359 to take a fence like. There's a scene later when 0:56:52.480 --> 0:56:56.200 Jack Pumpkinhead suggests throwing TikTok out of the gump aircraft 0:56:56.239 --> 0:56:59.520 because he's the heaviest of them, and TikTok clearly takes 0:56:59.520 --> 0:57:02.600 a front like he is annoyed by this suggestion. Yes, 0:57:02.960 --> 0:57:05.600 and yet there are other times where TikTok seems to 0:57:06.200 --> 0:57:08.920 reference the fact that he is not alive as a 0:57:08.960 --> 0:57:11.759 reason for not being concerned about something. It's like, you know, 0:57:11.960 --> 0:57:14.960 I don't really worry about getting turned into an inanimate 0:57:15.000 --> 0:57:16.760 object because I'm not alive anyway. 0:57:17.080 --> 0:57:21.120 Well, in Oz, being a non living entity, I think 0:57:21.160 --> 0:57:22.640 you have a lot of company. It's not one of 0:57:22.680 --> 0:57:25.320 these stories where oh, I am the lonely being that 0:57:25.480 --> 0:57:27.640 is a machine and not a human but has feelings. 0:57:27.800 --> 0:57:31.600 In Oz, everywhere you look there's some sort of reanimated form. 0:57:31.680 --> 0:57:34.680 There's there a machine people all over the place. 0:57:34.680 --> 0:57:37.880 They just different varieties I think Return to Oz explores 0:57:37.920 --> 0:57:41.560 some of the same thematic territory as Terminator too. Can 0:57:41.640 --> 0:57:44.760 this machine be a good parent? Does this machine know? 0:57:45.080 --> 0:57:47.560 Does it understand why we cry? Even if it's something 0:57:47.560 --> 0:57:49.880 it can never do? Yeah, so anyway, I thought that 0:57:49.960 --> 0:57:52.640 might This is like a kind of a thoughtful movie 0:57:52.640 --> 0:57:56.120 for kids. It planned some interesting philosophical ideas in their mind. 0:57:56.200 --> 0:57:58.720 But what does it mean to be alive? But also 0:57:58.920 --> 0:58:02.480 I like the wind up and wind down dynamic with TikTok. 0:58:02.560 --> 0:58:08.040 So TikTok has winding keys for three different things, thought, speech, 0:58:08.200 --> 0:58:11.720 and action, and at various times throughout the movie, one 0:58:11.920 --> 0:58:14.680 of the three but not the other two, will wind down, 0:58:14.760 --> 0:58:17.840 including a very funny scene where they're trying where all 0:58:17.880 --> 0:58:20.000 the good characters are trying to like work on a 0:58:20.040 --> 0:58:24.120 project together, but TikTok's thought runs down while his speech 0:58:24.200 --> 0:58:25.560 and action are still active. 0:58:26.040 --> 0:58:29.560 Yeah. I love this as well, the three wind up 0:58:29.600 --> 0:58:32.640 wind down dynamics, because on one level, I think it's 0:58:32.720 --> 0:58:35.640 it's a good way to get kids potentially thinking about 0:58:35.880 --> 0:58:38.440 like what what what the human experience is, you know, 0:58:38.800 --> 0:58:41.840 like thinking of our of our own mental facult faculties, 0:58:41.880 --> 0:58:43.840 not as a single entity, but this thing that sort 0:58:43.880 --> 0:58:48.440 of emerges out of out of out of different things 0:58:48.480 --> 0:58:53.280 and different stimuli and different processes. So, uh, it's it's 0:58:53.320 --> 0:58:56.320 an interesting way to look at a in this case 0:58:56.360 --> 0:58:59.600 of fantastic being, but also to sort of turn that 0:59:00.040 --> 0:59:01.760 reflection back on yourself at times. 0:59:02.000 --> 0:59:04.920 But so we said the TikTok he's a soldier, right, 0:59:05.000 --> 0:59:07.760 he's a warrior for the Scarecrow, and he's been left 0:59:07.800 --> 0:59:11.320 behind by the Scarecrow. I think to wait for Dorothy. 0:59:11.400 --> 0:59:15.040 So here's Dorothy and now they're teaming up. So right 0:59:15.080 --> 0:59:18.280 from the outset, TikTok is ready to beat up some wheelers. 0:59:18.280 --> 0:59:23.560 He like walks out. Oh there's a fight scene that 0:59:23.720 --> 0:59:27.080 you could regard as underwhelming because TikTok is just basically 0:59:27.160 --> 0:59:31.800 spinning around in a circle whacking wheelers, But I don't. 0:59:31.960 --> 0:59:33.320 Something about it is really good. 0:59:33.600 --> 0:59:37.160 Yeah, it's intensely satisfying, in part because the wheelers have 0:59:37.280 --> 0:59:41.320 established themselves as a total menace and their acting is 0:59:41.360 --> 0:59:45.360 over the top. Here comes TikTok. He absolutely wails on them, 0:59:45.400 --> 0:59:48.959 and then he captures the lead wheeler, who is again 0:59:49.000 --> 0:59:52.120 the most animated and annoying of the wheelers, and begins 0:59:52.160 --> 0:59:55.240 to roughly interrogate him, and we were just cheering for 0:59:55.320 --> 0:59:57.880 TikTok during this scene. We're like, yeah, get him TikTok. 0:59:58.920 --> 1:00:04.120 It's great and of course under torture essentially no under threat. 1:00:04.800 --> 1:00:07.960 The lead Wheeler reveals that the Scarecrow has been overthrown 1:00:07.960 --> 1:00:11.720 and taken prisoner by the Gnome King, and to learn 1:00:11.760 --> 1:00:13.360 more about what's going on, they have to go and 1:00:13.480 --> 1:00:26.040 visit the castle of Princess Mamby. Yeah, so that's what 1:00:26.040 --> 1:00:29.440 happens next. The whole section in Momby's castle in the 1:00:29.440 --> 1:00:32.720 middle of the movie is just awesome. Where do you 1:00:32.720 --> 1:00:35.960 want to start here? So Mamby's palace is like in 1:00:36.000 --> 1:00:38.600 many ways it's made of mirrors, or at least sort of. 1:00:38.600 --> 1:00:42.240 The throne room is, which is very creepy, especially in 1:00:42.280 --> 1:00:44.680 scenes where like Dorothy's trying to find a door or 1:00:44.720 --> 1:00:45.680 figure out what to do. 1:00:46.160 --> 1:00:49.240 Yeah, her whole palace is just, oh my goodness. The 1:00:49.240 --> 1:00:53.400 sets are amazing. Even sets, even parts of the palace 1:00:53.400 --> 1:00:56.280 that you don't really spend much time in just look incredible. 1:00:56.320 --> 1:00:59.280 Like they walk through a bedroom and nothing ever happens 1:00:59.320 --> 1:01:01.320 with the bedroom. You see it in the background as 1:01:01.920 --> 1:01:07.000 just stupendous. It's like this weird evil Princess Cathedral, and 1:01:07.480 --> 1:01:11.360 then you venture into this hall of heads. This is 1:01:11.400 --> 1:01:16.760 where Momby stores these various stolen female heads that she has, 1:01:17.040 --> 1:01:21.120 stores them alive, and we'll use them. We've mentioned this 1:01:21.120 --> 1:01:23.760 on the show before because somebody wrote in on listener 1:01:23.760 --> 1:01:26.760 mail about this. How curious it is that Momby is 1:01:26.840 --> 1:01:30.400 always the same Mamby. But Momby takes off her original 1:01:30.400 --> 1:01:33.400 head and puts on these other heads, and while she 1:01:33.480 --> 1:01:36.600 has these other heads on, she again is still Momby. 1:01:36.840 --> 1:01:40.440 But it also is stated in the film where it's 1:01:40.480 --> 1:01:44.240 sort of suggested in the film where it's hypothesized by 1:01:44.240 --> 1:01:47.360 one of the characters that if she does something with 1:01:47.440 --> 1:01:49.680 one head on and she switches to another head, she 1:01:49.800 --> 1:01:55.200 might not remember something she did previously, which just sends 1:01:55.240 --> 1:01:57.280 my head reeling trying to figure out how all of 1:01:57.320 --> 1:01:57.840 that works. 1:01:58.040 --> 1:02:00.760 Yeah, her personality always seems to be the same, but 1:02:00.920 --> 1:02:04.160 I think it's Jack Pumpkinhead says that because Dorothy's about 1:02:04.160 --> 1:02:07.960 to meet him. He says that Momby locked him up 1:02:08.000 --> 1:02:10.080 in the tower, but then forgot he was in there 1:02:10.120 --> 1:02:12.440 because she switched heads and that Memby was in a 1:02:12.440 --> 1:02:14.760 different head. And when we first meet her, it's not 1:02:14.840 --> 1:02:17.440 Jean Marsh's head. So we don't you know, our guard 1:02:17.520 --> 1:02:20.080 is down. We're not seeing like, oh, that's the scary lady, 1:02:20.120 --> 1:02:22.680 remember her from the clinic. It's just some other lady. 1:02:22.720 --> 1:02:25.360 She looks nice and you know, she's sitting there playing 1:02:25.360 --> 1:02:27.840 a harp. And then she and Dorothy start talking. But 1:02:27.880 --> 1:02:30.480 then she's like, Dorothy, I'm gonna need to cut your 1:02:30.520 --> 1:02:32.480 head off and keep it in my keep it in 1:02:32.480 --> 1:02:34.760 my collection. But you're not old enough yet, So I 1:02:34.760 --> 1:02:36.880 got to lock you in a tower for a few years. 1:02:37.080 --> 1:02:38.919 Then your head will get bigger and then I'll cut 1:02:38.920 --> 1:02:39.960 it off and then I'll keep it. 1:02:40.200 --> 1:02:42.720 Yeah, she realized is an investment. We're gonna wait for 1:02:42.760 --> 1:02:45.479 you to mature a bit. She didn't want to wear 1:02:46.000 --> 1:02:48.680 Little Girl for USA balk Head. She wants to wear 1:02:48.760 --> 1:02:51.200 the Craft for USA balk Head, and she doesn't have 1:02:51.240 --> 1:02:52.800 to wait a few years for that to happen. So 1:02:53.200 --> 1:02:56.400 off to the dungeon chamber with you, up to the 1:02:57.400 --> 1:03:01.120 locked room, and so she's thrown in there with Jack Pumpkinhead, 1:03:01.640 --> 1:03:04.920 who she meets. But also there are all these pieces 1:03:04.960 --> 1:03:08.040 that will eventually become the Gump because at this point 1:03:08.280 --> 1:03:12.080 we're dealing with an escape plan they find out about this. 1:03:12.120 --> 1:03:15.400 What is it the Is it the powder of animation 1:03:15.600 --> 1:03:16.640 or the powder of life? 1:03:16.840 --> 1:03:19.800 Powder of life? Yeah, it's a magical powder that Momby 1:03:19.880 --> 1:03:23.520 has that she sprinkles over inanimate objects to wake them up. 1:03:24.600 --> 1:03:28.000 And this is originally, I think where Jack pumpkinhead comes from. 1:03:28.080 --> 1:03:32.240 That's like he's made of sticks and a pumpkin. Though wait, 1:03:32.320 --> 1:03:35.160 I think he was originally a real boy. Maybe I'm 1:03:35.160 --> 1:03:35.600 not sure. 1:03:35.960 --> 1:03:39.160 He asks if he can call Dorothy mom and she 1:03:39.240 --> 1:03:40.400 allows it, which. 1:03:40.200 --> 1:03:42.680 Is a little creepy, but it's also kind of sweet 1:03:42.720 --> 1:03:43.880 at the same time. I don't know. 1:03:44.560 --> 1:03:47.200 Yeah, but any rate, they realize we got to get 1:03:47.200 --> 1:03:49.720 out of here. Well, we could fly out of here 1:03:49.720 --> 1:03:52.840 if only we had a winged mount. Well, we could 1:03:52.880 --> 1:03:56.760 make one out of this moose's head or Gump's head 1:03:56.760 --> 1:03:58.880 on the wall and this couch and we could use 1:03:58.880 --> 1:04:01.920 these pieces of this to make wings and this will 1:04:01.960 --> 1:04:05.200 somehow work. But we need that powder in order to 1:04:05.320 --> 1:04:07.520 bring all this to life and fly out the window. 1:04:07.920 --> 1:04:10.720 Where's the powder? Well, we find out it's stored with 1:04:10.880 --> 1:04:14.120 Momby's original head. So Dorothy is going to have to 1:04:14.200 --> 1:04:18.000 sneak out and make her way through that museum of 1:04:18.120 --> 1:04:22.120 heads and try and find the original head and steal 1:04:22.600 --> 1:04:24.760 the powder from that headlocker. 1:04:25.200 --> 1:04:27.200 It's a heist at the head repository. 1:04:27.560 --> 1:04:31.000 Yeah, and this is an amazing sequence and also just 1:04:31.040 --> 1:04:35.560 a wonderfully magical dark fantasy sequence because you know, it's 1:04:35.560 --> 1:04:38.240 the scene where Dorothy's creeping down the hallway. All these 1:04:38.280 --> 1:04:41.520 silent heads are in the are in their chambers, and 1:04:41.560 --> 1:04:44.200 then when she gets there she opens it up. There's 1:04:44.240 --> 1:04:47.320 Jeane Marsh's head and they're the original Mamby head. And 1:04:47.440 --> 1:04:49.720 of course it's not going to go without it without 1:04:49.760 --> 1:04:53.040 at least a single hiccup, because she ends up waking 1:04:53.120 --> 1:04:55.720 up the Momby head. All of the heads wake up, 1:04:55.800 --> 1:04:58.720 all of the heads are screaming, and then she takes 1:04:58.720 --> 1:05:02.040 off with the powder while Mombi's body is waking up 1:05:02.040 --> 1:05:04.040 from the bed. We do see something with the bedroom 1:05:04.560 --> 1:05:07.240 and that's right, and it's like walking around like a 1:05:07.320 --> 1:05:11.280 zombie with no head coming after. It's a wonderful nightmare. 1:05:11.520 --> 1:05:14.600 So with the gump aircraft they've put together again, it's 1:05:14.640 --> 1:05:17.800 like a moose type thing, a gump head that's mounted 1:05:17.840 --> 1:05:20.240 and then it goes with some couches and wings made 1:05:20.280 --> 1:05:23.680 out of plant leaves like I think palm leaves or something. 1:05:24.400 --> 1:05:27.120 They make this aircraft and they fly out to escape, 1:05:27.120 --> 1:05:29.720 and they're gonna fly to the Nome King's mountain. Though 1:05:29.760 --> 1:05:31.680 it's very funny because the Gump is like, I don't 1:05:31.680 --> 1:05:34.840 know how to fly. I'm just ahead. I never flew 1:05:34.880 --> 1:05:36.320 in life, so I don't know what I'm doing. 1:05:36.480 --> 1:05:39.600 Yeah, the Gump is wonderful and has lots of little 1:05:39.600 --> 1:05:42.040 snide comments about how he liked it better when he 1:05:42.160 --> 1:05:46.160 was just ahead. This current life is a little more 1:05:46.200 --> 1:05:48.640 challenging than he likes a little more moving around, So. 1:05:48.640 --> 1:05:51.600 They fly over the deadly desert to get to the 1:05:51.600 --> 1:05:55.200 Nome King's mountain. He lives in a mountain, and ooh, 1:05:55.240 --> 1:05:57.960 the nome King. When they get there, I feel like 1:05:58.000 --> 1:05:59.919 here maybe we should start to describe in a little 1:06:00.160 --> 1:06:03.480 or in lighter detail. But warning, if you are going 1:06:03.520 --> 1:06:05.440 to watch the movie, you don't want anything about the ending. 1:06:05.520 --> 1:06:08.280 It all spoiled. Maybe maybe you can tune out here 1:06:08.360 --> 1:06:10.919 until you've seen it, because we will discuss a few things. 1:06:10.920 --> 1:06:14.080 But the Nome King is so cool. He is some 1:06:14.160 --> 1:06:19.560 kind of humanoid elemental being of mineral origin. He's a 1:06:19.600 --> 1:06:24.280 greedy but clever sorcerer of rocks. Yeah, and the claymation 1:06:24.400 --> 1:06:26.920 here is just wicked. So throughout the movie we've seen 1:06:26.960 --> 1:06:30.760 this like rock Face doing reports of what's happening to 1:06:31.000 --> 1:06:34.400 the Nome King, and that's all stop motion animation. That's 1:06:34.720 --> 1:06:38.560 very good. But here we start seeing claymation and general 1:06:38.560 --> 1:06:42.600 stop motion of the king himself and the sorcery that 1:06:42.680 --> 1:06:45.920 he casts. Like one of my favorite animations is that 1:06:45.960 --> 1:06:48.360 there's a that like Dorothy and her friends are in 1:06:48.400 --> 1:06:51.200 a cave with the Nome King, and occasionally the Nome 1:06:51.280 --> 1:06:53.919 King will open a portal to go into a into 1:06:53.960 --> 1:06:56.640 a palace with these halls, and the way the portal 1:06:56.680 --> 1:07:00.320 opens is the rock turns into many hands that starting 1:07:00.440 --> 1:07:03.840 the like pulling a hole open in the rock itself. 1:07:04.360 --> 1:07:06.720 Yeah, all of these effects, all of the effects they 1:07:06.800 --> 1:07:08.840 used to bring the Nome King to live, are amazing, 1:07:08.880 --> 1:07:12.120 and most of them are these kind of stop motion effects. Though, 1:07:12.360 --> 1:07:15.520 as we'll discuss, something is happening that makes the Nome 1:07:15.640 --> 1:07:22.080 King increasingly more human in form. So we eventually get 1:07:22.600 --> 1:07:26.200 Williamson himself there as the Nome King, but covered under 1:07:26.200 --> 1:07:29.200 a lot of rock makeup and like a rocky beard 1:07:29.240 --> 1:07:30.240 and so forth. 1:07:30.160 --> 1:07:33.240 Right, So the Nome King has Dorothy and her friends 1:07:34.040 --> 1:07:36.640 play a guessing game where he says, oh, yes, I 1:07:36.720 --> 1:07:40.760 have the scarecrow captive, and I've turned him into an 1:07:40.800 --> 1:07:44.560 inanimate object, into an ornament. And if you can walk 1:07:44.600 --> 1:07:47.680 around my palace and guess which ornament is the scarecrow, 1:07:48.120 --> 1:07:50.880 then I'll let him go. But if you guess wrong 1:07:50.920 --> 1:07:52.800 three times in a row, I'm going to turn you 1:07:52.840 --> 1:07:55.120 into an ornament. Actually he doesn't tell them that at 1:07:55.160 --> 1:07:58.960 the beginning. It happens first to I think the Gump 1:07:59.240 --> 1:08:01.000 and then they're like, wait, you didn't say that was 1:08:01.040 --> 1:08:03.040 going to happen, and he's like, oh, you didn't ask. 1:08:03.720 --> 1:08:07.800 Yeah, he's adding a lot of rules after the fact, 1:08:07.800 --> 1:08:10.919 though at the same time, our heroes are not really 1:08:10.960 --> 1:08:13.440 asking for a full breakdown of the terms ahead of 1:08:13.520 --> 1:08:14.040 time either. 1:08:14.360 --> 1:08:18.320 Yeah. So you get the sense that he is made 1:08:18.360 --> 1:08:20.880 of rock, but he sort of wants to become a 1:08:20.960 --> 1:08:26.720 human for some reason. And the more humans he absorbs 1:08:26.760 --> 1:08:30.120 and turns into inanimate objects are not necessarily humans living 1:08:30.160 --> 1:08:33.519 things he absorbs and turns into inanimate objects, the more 1:08:33.640 --> 1:08:36.639 he becomes a fleshly creature instead of a rock. 1:08:37.120 --> 1:08:41.000 Yeah, And it's not explained in the film why this is, 1:08:41.560 --> 1:08:44.559 and I kind of like that. I like anytime there's 1:08:44.600 --> 1:08:48.800 sort of grandiose evil magic going on in something, it's 1:08:48.880 --> 1:08:50.760 even more creepy if there's stuff going on that you 1:08:50.800 --> 1:08:54.680 don't fully understand. We don't know why he wants this 1:08:54.800 --> 1:08:58.120 transformation to occur or why it is occurring, but it 1:08:58.200 --> 1:09:01.160 is at least a byproduct of the evil that he 1:09:01.280 --> 1:09:01.719 is doing. 1:09:02.120 --> 1:09:04.240 Oh, we should say. The entire time they're with the 1:09:04.280 --> 1:09:08.519 Nome King and playing this guessing game, Billina, the chicken 1:09:08.720 --> 1:09:13.280 is hiding inside of Jack Pumpkinhead's pumpkin head. He's like, right, 1:09:13.560 --> 1:09:14.920 she's in the jack o lantern. 1:09:15.200 --> 1:09:17.559 Oh, so this is another important thing now that we've 1:09:17.560 --> 1:09:20.479 mentioned the chicken. It has been established a few different 1:09:20.479 --> 1:09:25.120 times that the chicken is noteworthy in Oz and that 1:09:25.200 --> 1:09:27.599 the Nome King will want to know about this chicken. 1:09:27.640 --> 1:09:30.000 And it's even implied that the chicken is really the 1:09:30.040 --> 1:09:32.519 most important member of this party. He is of the 1:09:32.560 --> 1:09:36.760 most interest to the Nome King. And Mamby realizes this, 1:09:36.840 --> 1:09:40.400 and Mamby is rushing to the Nome King's castle, I 1:09:40.439 --> 1:09:44.000 guess to warn him of the chicken, and she does so. 1:09:44.200 --> 1:09:46.720 Oh God, I love this sequence. She does so by 1:09:46.720 --> 1:09:49.960 getting all of her wheelers together and lashing them to 1:09:50.040 --> 1:09:53.919 a chariot and then climbing aboard the chariot and whipping 1:09:53.960 --> 1:09:57.240 them to get them to ride at top speed and 1:09:57.320 --> 1:09:59.120 take her to the Nome King's castle. 1:09:59.400 --> 1:10:02.600 It is t they're traveling through some kind of underground 1:10:02.640 --> 1:10:05.200 tunnel that cuts underneath the deadly desert. 1:10:05.240 --> 1:10:10.120 I think, yeah, it is. It's wonderful and eyebrow raising, 1:10:10.760 --> 1:10:12.240 it's it's it's tremendous. 1:10:12.520 --> 1:10:15.000 And she does get there, but I don't think she's 1:10:15.040 --> 1:10:18.479 able to really to warn him sufficiently, at least not 1:10:18.680 --> 1:10:21.599 enough to save him in the end. I don't remember 1:10:21.640 --> 1:10:24.000 what she says, but like when she gets there, he's 1:10:24.120 --> 1:10:26.759 very haughty. He's like bow bow lower. 1:10:27.240 --> 1:10:28.599 Yeah, and then he locks her in a cage. 1:10:29.040 --> 1:10:29.400 Yeah. 1:10:29.439 --> 1:10:33.360 I believe so. Yeah. Ultimately, it doesn't really make a 1:10:33.400 --> 1:10:35.280 huge difference that she made it there at all. But 1:10:35.360 --> 1:10:37.960 the Nome King here is becoming more and more humanoid 1:10:37.960 --> 1:10:42.439 in appearance, and more and more of Dorothy's friends are 1:10:42.479 --> 1:10:45.840 being turned into unknown ornaments in the room, and I 1:10:45.840 --> 1:10:48.120 think this is is this also where we find out 1:10:48.479 --> 1:10:52.320 how the Nome King was able to carry out this 1:10:52.320 --> 1:10:54.720 this attack on the Emerald City. Is this when he 1:10:54.800 --> 1:10:56.000 reveals his feet. 1:10:56.000 --> 1:10:56.960 Oh, no, explain that. 1:10:57.280 --> 1:11:01.559 Well, there's he reveals that it's mentioned earlier in the 1:11:01.560 --> 1:11:05.479 film that you know, I think it's an m asking. Well, Dorothy, 1:11:05.520 --> 1:11:07.280 if all this odd stuff is realed, and where are 1:11:07.280 --> 1:11:10.120 these ruby slippers that you speak of that gave you 1:11:10.240 --> 1:11:12.400 this power? And she's like, well, they fell off when 1:11:12.439 --> 1:11:14.840 I was returning to Earth. And they're like, okay, we'll 1:11:14.880 --> 1:11:18.000 see there's no proof. Well, the Nome King reveals that 1:11:18.120 --> 1:11:22.120 he is wearing the ruby slippers, but they basically fell 1:11:22.160 --> 1:11:24.760 into his lap, and he used the power of the 1:11:24.880 --> 1:11:29.360 ruby slippers to then overthrow the Scarecrow King. And so 1:11:29.400 --> 1:11:32.800 we see the see of the Nome King wearing the 1:11:33.360 --> 1:11:34.599 shiny ruby slippers. 1:11:34.600 --> 1:11:37.120 There great twist, and I think Dorothy tries to go 1:11:37.240 --> 1:11:39.000 for them, but he's like no, no, when he tucks 1:11:39.040 --> 1:11:43.680 them back under. Yeah, and in the end, how are 1:11:43.680 --> 1:11:45.320 they going to defeat the Nome King? I mean, the 1:11:45.360 --> 1:11:48.080 Nome King is so powerful? What kind of power do 1:11:48.120 --> 1:11:50.600 they have that could stand up against a creature of 1:11:50.680 --> 1:11:52.400 such such immense potency? 1:11:53.160 --> 1:11:56.439 Well, well, for starters, Dorothy is able to retrieve some 1:11:56.520 --> 1:12:00.720 of her friends from ornament transformation. But but This just 1:12:00.720 --> 1:12:03.160 makes the Nome King all the more enraged. He turns 1:12:03.160 --> 1:12:08.040 into this gigantic stone monster and he has decided he's 1:12:08.120 --> 1:12:10.800 going to eat them. He picks up the gump and 1:12:10.880 --> 1:12:14.120 like eats the gump's body and like the head falls off, 1:12:14.560 --> 1:12:19.000 and then he goes to eat Jack Pumpkinhead instead as well. 1:12:19.840 --> 1:12:23.519 But Billina the chicken is in Jack pumpkin Head's head 1:12:24.160 --> 1:12:27.519 and it is finally time for Billina to lay her egg. 1:12:27.880 --> 1:12:32.360 She lays the egg inside Jack Pumpkinhead's head. It rolls 1:12:32.400 --> 1:12:35.599 out of the pumpkin and goes down the Nome King's 1:12:35.640 --> 1:12:39.840 throat and then uh oh, the Nome King realizes that 1:12:39.920 --> 1:12:41.840 something has gone terribly wrong. 1:12:42.120 --> 1:12:47.280 Because the big twist is that eggs are poison to 1:12:47.360 --> 1:12:48.040 the Nome King. 1:12:48.439 --> 1:12:51.160 Right, we didn't know this until it is finally revealed. 1:12:51.200 --> 1:12:53.519 We knew that we kind of got the sense that 1:12:53.560 --> 1:12:55.400 the chicken was a threat, but we didn't know why 1:12:55.439 --> 1:12:57.320 the chicken was a threat to the Nome King's rule. 1:12:57.400 --> 1:13:02.799 Now it is revealed, the egg is It has terrible 1:13:02.840 --> 1:13:05.160 magic in it, the terri and does terrible things to 1:13:05.200 --> 1:13:08.680 the Nome King's power, which I guess is not I 1:13:08.720 --> 1:13:10.479 don't know I didn't do a lot of deep thinking 1:13:10.520 --> 1:13:16.000 about this, but eggs do factor into various magical rituals 1:13:16.040 --> 1:13:18.160 and so forth. There is something about the egg that 1:13:18.320 --> 1:13:21.479 is often seen as sacred, and somehow the egg is 1:13:21.520 --> 1:13:24.519 able to undo everything that the nome King is doing. 1:13:24.880 --> 1:13:30.880 Yeah, the egg symbolizes potential, symbolizes transformation. Yeah yeah, it 1:13:30.920 --> 1:13:34.479 has a lot of symbolic loading, so that makes sense. 1:13:35.080 --> 1:13:37.360 But of course, so, yeah, the nome King is defeated, 1:13:37.439 --> 1:13:40.639 and then Scarecrow, who has been restored from I think 1:13:40.680 --> 1:13:42.360 he had been turned into a like a just a 1:13:42.360 --> 1:13:47.320 big green gem. He's he's back into his form. Dorothy 1:13:47.400 --> 1:13:50.240 is able to restore everybody who got turned into an ornament, 1:13:50.680 --> 1:13:52.679 and then they all go back to the Emerald City, 1:13:53.160 --> 1:13:55.840 where the Scarecrow's back on the throne. Everybody's happy again. 1:13:56.320 --> 1:14:00.360 Momby is in a cage, and then they're like, they're like, oh, well, 1:14:00.400 --> 1:14:02.640 you know, she doesn't have powers anymore, so she'll be 1:14:02.640 --> 1:14:03.040 all right. 1:14:03.360 --> 1:14:05.879 I know. It's the Wheelers are also just hanging around 1:14:05.960 --> 1:14:09.720 at this point in the movie, and I was thinking, well, okay, cage. 1:14:10.040 --> 1:14:11.720 The Wheelers just yeah, they just get by with the 1:14:11.840 --> 1:14:15.400 sorry like they seem to be the scourge of the 1:14:16.400 --> 1:14:19.920 of the realm there for a while, but everything's forgiven. 1:14:20.000 --> 1:14:21.040 Everybody's happy again. 1:14:21.360 --> 1:14:24.080 How many denizens of Oz did they eat? Or whatever 1:14:24.160 --> 1:14:29.160 they do? But also we get another twist, which is 1:14:29.200 --> 1:14:32.160 that the blonde girl that Dorothy had seen several times 1:14:32.200 --> 1:14:36.559 already is her name is Ozma, and what is her role? 1:14:36.600 --> 1:14:39.280 She's like the rightful Princess of Oz or something. 1:14:40.160 --> 1:14:44.000 Yeah, she's like the Yeah, she's she's the good She's 1:14:44.000 --> 1:14:46.360 the good Witch of this movie basically, and she's been 1:14:46.600 --> 1:14:49.439 sort of in the background helping things move along the 1:14:49.479 --> 1:14:51.960 whole time. But then also there's this idea that like 1:14:52.000 --> 1:14:54.400 she is also connected to Dorothy, she is going to 1:14:54.479 --> 1:14:57.519 be She is like the way that Dorothy remains in 1:14:57.600 --> 1:15:01.400 Oz and in the Earth realm at the same time. 1:15:01.880 --> 1:15:05.200 She is Dorothy's counterpart, so Dorothy can be on both 1:15:05.240 --> 1:15:07.879 sides of the mirror. Dorothy can go back to Kansas 1:15:07.920 --> 1:15:10.720 and be home, but also stay in Oz in the 1:15:10.760 --> 1:15:14.080 form of this other girl and be the princess there. 1:15:14.439 --> 1:15:17.120 And Ozma's like, basically like, hey, you can still be 1:15:17.120 --> 1:15:18.679 in Oz all the time in your head. Just don't 1:15:18.680 --> 1:15:20.960 tell anni em about it. Just be quiet about it. 1:15:21.280 --> 1:15:23.479 And everything's fun, and then we. 1:15:23.439 --> 1:15:26.639 Get a very sweet reunion back in Kansas where Toto 1:15:26.800 --> 1:15:29.320 finds Dorothy washed up on a washed up on a 1:15:29.360 --> 1:15:33.200 grimy river shore. And then there's Uncle Henry and they 1:15:33.240 --> 1:15:35.360 all get back together again and it's very sweet. 1:15:35.560 --> 1:15:40.720 Yeah. Yeah, though we do see mom Be's earthly counterpart, 1:15:40.840 --> 1:15:44.000 this would be Nurse Wilson. We see her being taken 1:15:44.040 --> 1:15:47.320 away in the back of a carriage that also kind 1:15:47.320 --> 1:15:50.919 of looks like a cage. Yeah. And then it's revealed 1:15:50.920 --> 1:15:55.200 that doctor Warley died in a fire because he had 1:15:55.640 --> 1:15:59.280 basically the clinic, the facilities there had been struck by 1:15:59.320 --> 1:16:01.839 lightning and he went back in to save his machine 1:16:01.840 --> 1:16:02.360 and died. 1:16:02.880 --> 1:16:06.200 He was too devoted to his machines and it killed him. 1:16:06.720 --> 1:16:09.400 Yeah, so very very Frank Herbert kind of moment there where. 1:16:09.640 --> 1:16:11.960 Oh yes, this character died off screen. 1:16:12.360 --> 1:16:19.360 So return to Oz. Deeply strange, fantastically imaginative, totally wonderful, 1:16:20.040 --> 1:16:24.240 one of my favorite new fantasy movies or kids movies. Yeah, 1:16:24.280 --> 1:16:25.280 it's just a blast. 1:16:25.680 --> 1:16:28.519 I richly enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, parents will have 1:16:28.560 --> 1:16:31.400 to make their own decisions about films like this. I 1:16:31.479 --> 1:16:33.559 was researching it a little bit before we watched it. 1:16:33.600 --> 1:16:36.920 I went to the IMDb parental guidance area where the 1:16:37.000 --> 1:16:40.360 users submit stuff about films, and they did have the 1:16:40.760 --> 1:16:44.840 chicken lays an egg in the nome King's head as 1:16:44.880 --> 1:16:47.960 an example of violence in the picture. I didn't really 1:16:48.000 --> 1:16:52.880 think of it as violence per se, but it's certainly weird. 1:16:53.160 --> 1:16:55.960 It is an act of inadvertent poisoning, so I guess 1:16:56.000 --> 1:16:58.040 it would be like a scene where if a character 1:16:58.200 --> 1:17:01.400 accidentally put arsenic somebody else's sandwich. 1:17:01.680 --> 1:17:05.519 Yeah, I guess, but anywright, Yes, Return to Oz. I 1:17:05.520 --> 1:17:07.400 absolutely loved it. I think it's a lot of fun. 1:17:07.479 --> 1:17:09.439 And I'd love to hear from folks out there though, because, 1:17:09.439 --> 1:17:12.920 like we've been saying, Joe and I only just watched 1:17:12.920 --> 1:17:16.280 this movie in full as adults. We'd love to hear 1:17:16.320 --> 1:17:18.360 from folks who saw it back in the day. What 1:17:18.439 --> 1:17:21.559 was it like seeing Return to Oz on the big 1:17:21.600 --> 1:17:24.760 screen in nineteen eighty five or seeing it on VHS 1:17:25.640 --> 1:17:29.160 once it was available on home video? How did other 1:17:29.200 --> 1:17:31.800 people in your life present it or respond to it? 1:17:31.840 --> 1:17:33.559 Did you hear people saying, well, this is not what 1:17:33.600 --> 1:17:36.800 Oz is all about. What is this gump business? It's 1:17:36.800 --> 1:17:38.920 supposed to be the cowardly lion. Did you have to 1:17:38.960 --> 1:17:41.960 put up with all that? Was it effective? All of 1:17:42.000 --> 1:17:44.599 this is fair fair play. I'd love to hear from everyone. 1:17:44.920 --> 1:17:47.600 So that's it for this edition of Weird House Cinema. 1:17:47.840 --> 1:17:51.360 Just a reminder, Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in 1:17:51.400 --> 1:17:53.559 the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed We are 1:17:53.600 --> 1:17:56.360 primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside 1:17:56.400 --> 1:17:58.840 most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. 1:17:59.240 --> 1:18:02.799 I blog about these episodes at Summuto music dot com 1:18:02.840 --> 1:18:05.720 and if you use letterboxed dot com that's l E 1:18:05.800 --> 1:18:09.040 T t e r box d dot com. You'll find 1:18:09.080 --> 1:18:11.640 us on there. Our username is weird house and we 1:18:11.720 --> 1:18:15.040 keep a Weird House Cinema episode list going there where 1:18:15.040 --> 1:18:17.479 you can see all the films that we've covered thus far. 1:18:18.320 --> 1:18:20.960 As of this episode, it is eighty two films that 1:18:20.960 --> 1:18:24.160 we've covered, and I'll often go ahead and add the 1:18:24.200 --> 1:18:25.960 next film on the list so you can sort of 1:18:26.000 --> 1:18:28.040 look ahead and see what we're talking about next. 1:18:28.479 --> 1:18:31.360 Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth 1:18:31.479 --> 1:18:34.320 Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch 1:18:34.360 --> 1:18:36.840 with us with feedback on this episode or any other 1:18:37.240 --> 1:18:39.439 to suggest a topic for the future, or just to 1:18:39.479 --> 1:18:42.839 say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff 1:18:42.880 --> 1:18:51.800 to Blow your Mind dot com. 1:18:51.920 --> 1:18:54.880 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For 1:18:54.960 --> 1:18:57.759 more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 1:18:57.920 --> 1:19:00.880 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.