Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: Today we are taking you back to an episode that
Speaker 1: originally published eight nineteen twenty twenty two. This is going
Speaker 1: to be nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: a magically dark time. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 1: and this is Joe McCormick. And this week we've got
Speaker 1: a fun family picture for everybody. It is an OZ film,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to endure any songs. It's also
Speaker 1: that special variety of nineteen eighty's big budget fantasy film
Speaker 1: that leans more than a little into what some of
Speaker 1: you might describe as dark fantasy. We are going to
Speaker 1: be telling talking about nineteen eighty five's Return to Oz.
Speaker 3: People have been telling me for years that I needed
Speaker 3: to watch this movie. They'd figure out what like my
Speaker 3: weird taste was, and they were like, you've ever seen
Speaker 3: Return to Oz. That movie messed me up when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. You should watch it And I never
Speaker 3: did until last night, and I am absolutely blown away.
Speaker 3: I in fact, I'm a little bit sad, truly, like,
Speaker 3: not just to joking around. I am a little bit
Speaker 3: sad that I did not actually see this as a child,
Speaker 3: because I know this is this is precisely the kind
Speaker 3: of movie that if I'd seen it when I was
Speaker 3: seven or whatever, I would have been thinking about it
Speaker 3: for months, Like it has just the right mix of
Speaker 3: you know, bizarre original imagery and character types that are
Speaker 3: not just like, you know, the characters you'd find in
Speaker 3: any other fantasy thing. Is you know, it's truly original,
Speaker 3: but a strange combinations of ideas that still nevertheless tap
Speaker 3: into something very deep and archetypal. I think this is
Speaker 3: a wonderful, scary children's movie.
Speaker 1: I think it's great. I never watched it growing up either,
Speaker 1: and I think part of it was just because the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine adaptation of the Wizard of Oz is
Speaker 1: just such a monolith and such an you know, such
Speaker 1: an influential film, but also one that so many people
Speaker 1: held close to their hearts that when this film came out,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of people who are like, oh, we
Speaker 1: don't we don't want that new Oz. We've got that
Speaker 1: old Oz. It comes on television all the time and
Speaker 1: or we have it on VHS. Why do we need
Speaker 1: to dip into this thing that that summer even saying
Speaker 1: is a little frightening. But here's the thing. Yes, we've
Speaker 1: been hearing from people say, oh this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is a weird film you need to watch. This
Speaker 1: is a scary one where this messed me up as
Speaker 1: a child. I really don't think this one is any
Speaker 1: darker or scarier than any of the other big eighties
Speaker 1: fantasy film like Labyrinth or the never Ending story stuff
Speaker 1: of that caliber.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I agree. In fact, I don't think it's
Speaker 3: actually even scarier than the thirty nine Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 3: which if you go back and watch the original Wizard
Speaker 3: of Oz, this movie gave me a new appreciation for
Speaker 3: how weird and how scary the original is. I'm serious, Like,
Speaker 3: if you you kind of accept it because it's part
Speaker 3: of the air we breathe, The Wizard of Oz is.
Speaker 3: You know, you grow up with that. It's just part
Speaker 3: of American culture, so it doesn't seem that strange. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it also has very unusual characters and imagery and and
Speaker 3: there is real tense, frightening, magical peril in it. Do
Speaker 3: you remember how heart stopping that scene is when you're
Speaker 3: a kid and the witch turns the hourglass over and
Speaker 3: says Dorothy's gonna die, and the and the you know,
Speaker 3: the monkey soldiers are everywhere, and the tin man's with
Speaker 3: the axe trying to chop down the door, like it
Speaker 3: the original one is scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thought that the forest was pretty terrifying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's plenty of plenty of weird and scary
Speaker 1: stuff in that that thirty nine adaptation as well. And
Speaker 1: it's funny. We were conversing before we went in here.
Speaker 1: You noted that I had a couple of sort of
Speaker 1: jabs at the thirty nine Wizard of Oz, and so
Speaker 1: you asked me if I hated the original Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz film, and I said, no, no, And truly I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of impossible to hate the thirty nine film.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such, like I said, it's a cinematic monolith.
Speaker 1: It's so influential, Like even if you're not crazy about it,
Speaker 1: it probably influenced some creators or some works that came
Speaker 1: in its wake, you know, like more directly, if you
Speaker 1: didn't have the Wizard of Oz from nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have The Whiz, and of course you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have this film either, but its tentacles run far and
Speaker 1: long through fiction and dream weaving that came to follow.
Speaker 3: But more to your point about I guess how you
Speaker 3: might have heard about this movie when you were a kid,
Speaker 3: if people were saying, oh, you know, it doesn't live
Speaker 3: up to the original, it's not worth seeing, or something.
Speaker 3: I in a way, I think it's kind of silly
Speaker 3: to try to compare them, because it's I think it's
Speaker 3: called an unofficial sequel. It is clearly a sequel to
Speaker 3: The Wizard of Oz, like the events followed directly from
Speaker 3: the first one, but it's also not not like an official,
Speaker 3: sanctioned one. And it came decades later. The original was
Speaker 3: what thirty nine, and this is eighty five, so what
Speaker 3: like forty six years in between. It was a long time,
Speaker 3: and and that makes a big difference in terms of
Speaker 3: tone and you know, the textures that are expected in
Speaker 3: a movie like this, Like the original one has a
Speaker 3: kind of a kind of gilded grandeur of old Hollywood
Speaker 3: about it, whereas this one feels much more. I mean,
Speaker 3: it feels like an eighties movie, but a lovely, scrappy,
Speaker 3: imaginative one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and it's a it is. It is a
Speaker 1: world in which the Emerald City is literally in ruins.
Speaker 1: So there's probably a lot to say there about like
Speaker 1: the state of of of the eighties mindset compared to
Speaker 1: the late thirties mindset. I don't know, at least in
Speaker 1: terms of like cinematic portrayals. But yeah, it is impossible though,
Speaker 1: to go into this and not think of the thirty
Speaker 1: nine film sometimes unfairly so. I actually watched this with
Speaker 1: my whole family. We sat down and watched it, and
Speaker 1: my son he really enjoyed this one. He enjoyed the
Speaker 1: old one, but he was bringing up some things. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: why is Dorothy younger now? And also why didn't Toto
Speaker 1: talk in the last film. This film clearly established that
Speaker 1: animals that come to Oz can talk. Wow, come Toto
Speaker 1: never talked? That's some bs.
Speaker 3: Brilliant observation by your son. I did not notice this myself,
Speaker 3: but yeah, So the premise of this movie is that
Speaker 3: all the animals in Oz talk, and this includes animals
Speaker 3: that are brought to Oz, such as one of the
Speaker 3: main characters in this movie, which is a chicken that's
Speaker 3: like a cool gnarly grandma. And the chicken talks. It
Speaker 3: didn't talk when it was in Kansas, but it comes
Speaker 3: to Oz with Dorothy talks now, so yes, you are
Speaker 3: your son is absolutely correct. Toto should have to in
Speaker 3: the original. This is a major oversight.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of the chicken, whose name is Billina, I
Speaker 1: have to mention the other reason I really love Returned
Speaker 1: to Oz is I think it has better companions because, yes,
Speaker 1: we encounter in this film, we do see ten Man again, Scarecrow,
Speaker 1: cowardly lyon, but Dorothy has basically all new companions that
Speaker 1: she goes on the adventure with here and it's I'm
Speaker 1: going to list him here for it for us so
Speaker 1: we can get a taste of what's to come. We
Speaker 1: have Billina, the talking chicken, and this is wonderfully accomplished
Speaker 1: via live action chicken actors and an incredible chicken puppet
Speaker 1: that is just light years ahead of what we saw
Speaker 1: in Thrilling Bloody Sword last week. Though I do love
Speaker 1: both chickens.
Speaker 3: They are both great robotic chickens, but this one is
Speaker 3: much more convincing as a chicken.
Speaker 1: Yes, then we have TikTok, who is a rotund, wind up,
Speaker 1: mustachioed soldier made out of like bronze or brass.
Speaker 3: I was thinking copper, but yeah, it's one of those.
Speaker 3: He's a metal wind up war machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a steampunk soldier and he's fighting on behalf
Speaker 1: of the Emerald City and Dorothy. Oh, and then the
Speaker 1: next one we have we have the Gump, and the
Speaker 1: Gump is basically a junk gollum. It's like junk is
Speaker 1: put together a moose's head on a couch with some
Speaker 1: ferns and whatever else they could scare. They are able
Speaker 1: to assemble together and then it's given life. And you
Speaker 1: gotta love the Gump.
Speaker 3: They like shake some borax powder on it and that
Speaker 3: makes it come to life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, and then we have Jack Pumpkinhead, who is
Speaker 1: kind of a superior Halloween themed scarecrow sort of guy.
Speaker 1: Would you say that's fair? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Jack Pumpkinhead is interesting because he has the scariest form
Speaker 3: of all of Dorothy's companions, but his nature is to
Speaker 3: be incredibly innocent and sweet.
Speaker 1: So that's the crew. That's the adventuring party for this film.
Speaker 3: But one has to wonder, Okay, wait a minute, what
Speaker 3: more adventures are there to have in Oz because the
Speaker 3: last time Dorothy was in Oz, didn't they defeat the
Speaker 3: way Could Witch? And then everything was cool in Emerald City,
Speaker 3: like they had a big ceremony. Was basically to celebrate
Speaker 3: the fact that now everything's good and nothing bad. Every
Speaker 3: is gonna happen again.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think back to exactly how The
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz ended. Did it end with the Scarecrow
Speaker 1: becoming king of the Emerald City?
Speaker 3: I don't remember if it did or not. So that's
Speaker 3: the premise of this movie, is that at the end
Speaker 3: of the last one, the Scarecrow was king. That's a
Speaker 3: detail that I could see being in the original that
Speaker 3: I forgot about, but I didn't check to make sure.
Speaker 3: But either way, things are good in Oz. When Dorothy leaves,
Speaker 3: remember she's gonna leave on the balloon. But then the
Speaker 3: professor or not the Professor, I think it's the guy,
Speaker 3: the guy from like the Carnival Barker Charlatan guy, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, he floats away on the balloon. He
Speaker 3: doesn't know how to bring it back. And then she
Speaker 3: thinks she stranded in Oz. But then she clicks her
Speaker 3: heels together with the ruby slippers and says there's no
Speaker 3: place like home, and then she wakes up back in
Speaker 3: her bed and you were there, and you were there
Speaker 3: and it was great.
Speaker 1: But basically the the pitch here is that in the
Speaker 1: previous movie, the Previous Adventure anyway, Dorothy greatly destabilized Oz.
Speaker 1: She ends up installing her own ruler, the Scarecrow, and
Speaker 1: I get the impression of the Scarecrow's rule of Oz
Speaker 1: last like maybe an afternoon before he is then conquered
Speaker 1: by an entity known as the Nome King, and now
Speaker 1: it's time for Dorothy to come back to Oz and
Speaker 1: fix everything once more.
Speaker 3: The villains in this movie are Sue perb just excellent,
Speaker 3: some of my new favorite movie villains of all time,
Speaker 3: Gene Marsh as Momby, and Nicol Williamson is the Nome King.
Speaker 3: They should go in the Hall of Fame of Children's
Speaker 3: movie fantasy movie Villains.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they absolutely should, And it makes sense because we
Speaker 1: often forget again just because how well known the thirty
Speaker 1: nine Wizard of Oz film is. But Margaret Hamilton is
Speaker 1: a terrific villain in that film, playing Miss gulch And
Speaker 1: and of course the Wicked Witch of the East. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just a great cackling performance that you don't even
Speaker 1: think of as a performance after a while, Like that
Speaker 1: is just the wicked witch on the screen there.
Speaker 3: Wait, is she the east or the West? I thought
Speaker 3: she was the west?
Speaker 1: Is she the west? We have a good No, Wait,
Speaker 1: the East is the eastern witch? Is the one who
Speaker 1: had the house dropped on her? Is that correct?
Speaker 3: I think that is right? Yes, I was correct. Margaret
Speaker 3: Hamilton is the West. We never see the East. You
Speaker 3: just see her socks.
Speaker 1: Both of those witches though out of the picture. Though.
Speaker 1: At one point Mamby, who will get into here in
Speaker 1: a bit, is described as a witch. So I guess
Speaker 1: she's keeping the witching tradition going.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like how she's first described I think as
Speaker 3: a princess and then later as a witch. But I
Speaker 3: guess we'll get into more detail later. Mamby is just wonderful. Well,
Speaker 3: I guess you already sort of gave the elevator pitch right.
Speaker 3: It's like, so Dorothy came in, she did a foreign intervention.
Speaker 3: She installed a puppet ruler in the form of the Scarecrow.
Speaker 3: Scarecrow has been deposed. Now Dorothy is back to Oz
Speaker 3: and it's up against the Nome King.
Speaker 1: That's right, Let's go ahead and hear some trailer audio.
Speaker 1: Four Returned to Oz.
Speaker 4: This summer, Walt Disney Pictures presents a motion picture fantasy
Speaker 4: adventure beyond your fondest imagination. You'll be transported miraculously back
Speaker 4: to the enchanted land of Oz, that magical kingdom beloved
Speaker 4: by young and old for generations. It's just a.
Speaker 1: Yellow bick, no bollina, you don't understand. This was the
Speaker 1: yellow Wick road.
Speaker 4: You'll share with Dorothy Gale, the shock of finding everything
Speaker 4: mysteriously changed everybody, and you'll delight with her discovery of
Speaker 4: four wonderful new friends who band together against a wicked
Speaker 4: queen of the dreaded Long King. This is the Ours
Speaker 4: you have seen before, and this is the Ours you'll
Speaker 4: want to visit again and again. More Disney Pictures comes
Speaker 4: a whole of entertainments. I don't just fly back to
Speaker 4: Kansas too. Wow.
Speaker 1: All right, now, before we go any further here, I
Speaker 1: do want to mention where you can watch this. Where
Speaker 1: you can watch it just about anywhere. This is a
Speaker 1: big release. It may not have performed especially well at
Speaker 1: the box office, I understand, but Yeah, you can find
Speaker 1: it in multiple different forms these days. If you subscribe
Speaker 1: to Disney Plus, at least in the United States, you
Speaker 1: can watch it there. That's where we watched it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I watched Disney Plus two.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into some of the people
Speaker 1: behind this. I'm going to start at the top, and
Speaker 1: that is with a director who also has a screenplay
Speaker 1: credit on this. It is Walter Merch born nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: highly influential Hollywood sound and film editor who worked on
Speaker 1: such pictures as THHX eleven, thirty eight, American Graffiti, The
Speaker 1: Godfather Part two, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, and I
Speaker 1: think I think those are some of the ones where
Speaker 1: he did sound. But he also was a film editor
Speaker 1: on such films as Apocalypse Now, Ghost, Romeo Is Bleeding,
Speaker 1: The Godfather Part three, and much more. The Lucas connection
Speaker 1: is also interesting because when you look at Walter Murch's
Speaker 1: directorial credits, there are only two titles there. There's Return
Speaker 1: to Oz, which of course is what we're discussing here today.
Speaker 1: This is only film directing credit, and then he doesn't
Speaker 1: direct anything else. But he does pop up as a
Speaker 1: director on a twenty eleven episode of Star Wars, the
Speaker 1: Clone Wars, the animated series, and I was immediately curious, Okay,
Speaker 1: which which episode was this, because I've seen them all
Speaker 1: with my son, And it is an episode titled The General,
Speaker 1: and it's a pretty great episode. It's one of the
Speaker 1: episodes in a multi episode story arc concerning the Republic's
Speaker 1: campaign on a planet called Umbara. So it's this shadowy
Speaker 1: kind of world. They're not fighting the droids of the Separatists,
Speaker 1: they're fighting another separatist faction, and the Clones are under
Speaker 1: the ruthless leadership of one General Palm Krell, who is
Speaker 1: this forearmed basilisque creature. But he's like a really just
Speaker 1: ruthless general who is ready to just sacrifice as many
Speaker 1: Clone lives as necessary to win the day. So it's ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think one of the one of the best story
Speaker 1: arcs you see in that series. And so they brought
Speaker 1: in Walter Merch to direct this one episode, so I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Well for a mostly one and done director's filmography, this
Speaker 3: is a strong entry. I much respect to Walter Merch.
Speaker 3: I wish he had directed more movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, the screenplay credit the mainscreenplay credit, and this
Speaker 1: goes to Gil Dennis, who lived nineteen forty one twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: writer and actor, best known for his work on the
Speaker 1: screenplays for This nineteen ninety fives Without Evidence in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fives Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopick.
Speaker 1: As an actor, he played Man with Cigar in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven's Eraserhead.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think I read somewhere that he may
Speaker 3: have been a classmate of David Lynch, which would make
Speaker 3: sense that if he showed up an Eraserhead.
Speaker 1: All right, But of course the screenplay is based on
Speaker 1: the work of L. Frank Baum, whose novels I think
Speaker 1: in particular, this screenplay is based on two novels, Ozma
Speaker 1: of Oz and The Land of Oz. Bomb lived eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty six through nineteen nineteen. Bomb was an American author
Speaker 1: best known for his novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 1: published in nineteen hundred, as well as its many sequels.
Speaker 1: And this was fascinating for me because I really didn't
Speaker 1: know much about the cinematic history of The Wizard of
Speaker 1: Oz pre nineteen thirty nine, but even ahead of the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine film adaptation, this was already a highly
Speaker 1: successful property. It was a Broadway musical in nineteen oh two.
Speaker 1: The thirty nine film, though momentous, wasn't even the first adaptation.
Speaker 1: The first attempt was apparently in nineteen oh eight with
Speaker 1: the Fairy log and radio plays, followed by at least
Speaker 1: a good half dozen silent films adapting the world of Oz.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I've got to see the silent films and
Speaker 3: what they do with TikTok and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they looked that. I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: really watching them, but they look interesting. We might have
Speaker 1: to come back to some of those in the future now.
Speaker 1: Of course, following the nineteen thirty nine classic, there's still
Speaker 1: plenty of other dips into the world of Oz. There
Speaker 1: was an ultra low budget adaptation titled The Wonderful Land
Speaker 1: of Oz in nineteen sixty nine. There were a few
Speaker 1: different animated adaptations, including a nineteen eighty two Toho produced
Speaker 1: Japanese adaptation. There's there's really quite a lot of Oz
Speaker 1: related media out there, including such works as the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five musical and subsequent film, a film adaptation The Whiz,
Speaker 1: the book in Broadway musical Wicked, and then there are
Speaker 1: all sorts of literary treatments, spinoff illusions and more. Like
Speaker 1: I had to think back on it because again, thirty
Speaker 1: nine Wizard, especially as such a monolith that you don't
Speaker 1: even think about the references to it. But like even
Speaker 1: Stephen King includes more than a little OZ sprinkled throughout
Speaker 1: his Dark Tower series, and yeah, they're honestly just seems
Speaker 1: no end in sight to our fascination with Oz. Baum
Speaker 1: wrote seventeen OZ books during his lifetime, numerous other children's
Speaker 1: and adventures books as well. But we keep making OZ
Speaker 1: related media, and it seems like it's just going to
Speaker 1: keep going.
Speaker 3: I've never actually read any of the OZ books, but
Speaker 3: I'm kind of tempted to check them out, because, at
Speaker 3: least with the two movies, there's so much unexpected original
Speaker 3: texture to the fantasy world created here when compared to
Speaker 3: most fantasy. Because you know, after you consumed a decent
Speaker 3: amount of fantasy, you see a lot of recycled elements.
Speaker 3: There's sort of, you know, the standard tropes of high
Speaker 3: fantasy that show up again and again. But but the
Speaker 3: OZ world is full of bizarre, unfamiliar things and beings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and one of the things that I'm always hit
Speaker 1: with when I when I have looked at you know,
Speaker 1: often just cover art and illustrations from these books. Is
Speaker 1: that I feel like there's this there's certainly this familiar
Speaker 1: sense to it, all due to the cultural impact of
Speaker 1: the Wizard of Oz, but also this weird sense that
Speaker 1: you get from popular fiction that is very much centered
Speaker 1: in a particular past. You know, like I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: the intended recipient of these tales, and they're not even
Speaker 1: though they're in English in their you know, their American stories.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I am like I have all
Speaker 1: of the gear lined up in which to receive the
Speaker 1: message that is being sent to me through it.
Speaker 3: Like your operating system no longer supports this software.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I've never lived on a farm in the
Speaker 1: middle of a prairie. How am I supposed to take
Speaker 1: some of this stuff?
Speaker 3: You know, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, let's get into the cast here.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Dorothy. This film's Dorothy was played by
Speaker 1: Feruza Bauk, who was born in nineteen seventy four, still
Speaker 1: active American actor, who might be better known to some
Speaker 1: of you for her roles as an adult, but she
Speaker 1: started out very young and this was her first motion picture.
Speaker 1: Subsequent films included Valmont in nineteen eighty nine, Things to
Speaker 1: Do in Denver when You're Dead in nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 1: That's an allusion to a Warren Zevon song, by the way,
Speaker 1: and of course the big one is The Craft in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: Oh man, several years back, Rachel and I around Halloween
Speaker 3: decided to watch The Craft. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: i'd say it's a good movie, but that was a
Speaker 3: fun time.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen it, but you know,
Speaker 1: of course I'm familiar with I remember the trailer, isn't all.
Speaker 1: But this was a big film, and after this she
Speaker 1: was in a string of big films, including The Cursed
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six adaptation of the Island of Doctor Moreau.
Speaker 1: Oh is that? Oh yeah, this is the one. If
Speaker 1: you're asking, is that the Island of Doctor Moreau, in
Speaker 1: which yes it is. Okay, it is the Marlon Brando.
Speaker 3: One, yes, yes, the one where he allegedly had to
Speaker 3: be fed his lines through an earpiece because he wouldn't
Speaker 3: learn them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a I mean, their documentary is about this
Speaker 1: is just a ridiculous production. That still is it has
Speaker 1: things going for it. I mean it's it's it's oddly
Speaker 1: hypnotizing if you catch it on TV and all. I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever given it a dedicated viewing. It
Speaker 1: just it was on a lot for a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time, I guess back in the late nineties, and
Speaker 1: so you would catch bits of it and it's it's
Speaker 1: thoroughly weird and just thoroughly a mess.
Speaker 3: Okay, sorry to interrupt.
Speaker 1: American History Acts in nineteen ninety eight is another big one,
Speaker 1: almost famous in two thousand and she was also in
Speaker 1: Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant Port of Call, New Orleans in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, which also featured Nick cage Val Kilmer. Again,
Speaker 1: he was in the Doctor Moreau movie Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dorof,
Speaker 1: and Michael Shannon.
Speaker 3: I've not seen Port of Call, New Orleans since it
Speaker 3: came out, but I've been meaning to revisit it because
Speaker 3: that one I remember being a jaw dropping experience.
Speaker 1: Another interesting fact for Usa, Bauk's father, Solomon Felthaus, was
Speaker 1: one of the founding members of the psychedelic band Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and Balk herself is also a musician.
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like we tend to if a
Speaker 3: child performance in a movie is bad, we tend not
Speaker 3: to dwell on it as much as we might on
Speaker 3: a notably bad adult performance, because I don't know, you
Speaker 3: don't want to be mean about a child actor. But
Speaker 3: I would say not just being nice. She's genuinely great
Speaker 3: in this great great performances Dorothy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she has this great, big eyed engagement. She's always
Speaker 1: seems very much a part of the action going on.
Speaker 1: Sometimes with kid actors, this kind of just you can
Speaker 1: kind of just at times just see a child standing
Speaker 1: on a set. You know, there's this less of a
Speaker 1: sense that they're connected to their surroundings and the scene
Speaker 1: and the characters. But she's totally in there. She helps
Speaker 1: make these scenes which often feature no other human characters.
Speaker 1: It's all puppets and suits and so forth. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're humans inside the suits obviously, but no other visible
Speaker 1: human in the scene. And she's able to be that
Speaker 1: human center for everything. And also I would say that
Speaker 1: she has a confidence, like she's a confident character. It's
Speaker 1: a confident performance that maybe make some of the otherwise
Speaker 1: scary elements a little less scary, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I agree with that. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: she also, firs of all, also has the natural energy
Speaker 3: of kind of a government created scanner child who might
Speaker 3: make people's heads explode if she doesn't get her string cheese.
Speaker 1: You know, which is I think the appropriate energy for
Speaker 1: a child who is able to to journey through the
Speaker 1: mists to another dimension ruled by scary individuals scary entities,
Speaker 1: and then move back again.
Speaker 3: Yes, so really notably good kid performance. But we've got
Speaker 3: to talk about Nicol Williamson. He left me floored in
Speaker 3: this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nichol Williamson plays it's a double role. He plays
Speaker 1: doctor Warley, the electricity obsessed physician. And let's say is
Speaker 1: a psychologist or his credentials exactly?
Speaker 3: Well, it takes place in nineteen hundred, so I don't
Speaker 3: know if they add all the same categories. I guess
Speaker 3: he's a psychiatrist, a you know, a physico psychiatrist. This movie,
Speaker 3: I will say, takes a firm stance against mental health.
Speaker 3: We can explain. We can explain more about that when
Speaker 3: we get into the plot. But yes, he plays a
Speaker 3: kind of his psychiatrist's character I think is supposed to
Speaker 3: be taken in a very negative way, though it's not
Speaker 3: as explicitly evil as the Nome King. But he's great
Speaker 3: in bo roles.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, because he had the alter ego in the
Speaker 1: Land of Oz is the Nome King that's spelled nog.
Speaker 1: But yeah. Williamson lived nineteen thirty six through twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and he's I think he's always a treat, at least
Speaker 1: for the viewer. Has discussed in our episode on the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one snake movie Venom. Williamson had a reputation
Speaker 1: apparently for being difficult to work with, which again, sometimes
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly what to make of those supposed reputations.
Speaker 1: Making movies is obviously complicated, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of personalities involved, So I imagine there's some cases out
Speaker 1: there where these reputations are well deserved. Other times there
Speaker 1: maybe it's a little more complicated than this person was difficult,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, however difficult he was or wasn't
Speaker 1: to work with, definitely a great actor. He played Merlin
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighty one movie ex Caliber, which is
Speaker 1: a really shiny, very just glistening King Arthur movie. He
Speaker 1: also was in the nineteen ninety seven Spawn movie. He
Speaker 1: was in The Exorcist three, and he played Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: in The Seven Percent Solution.
Speaker 3: This is the one that was made by Nicholas Meyer,
Speaker 3: who did Time after Time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and he was in tons of other stuff
Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, in this movie. The thing about
Speaker 1: the Nome King is, I guess the Nome King is
Speaker 1: largely a vo character except for the very end of
Speaker 1: the film, and even then he's under a lot of makeup,
Speaker 1: and I think there's still some voice distortion going on.
Speaker 1: But it's still a great role.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I think he is hypnotizing. I just
Speaker 3: wish there were more movies where he plays a magical
Speaker 3: big bad of some kind. What just occurred to me
Speaker 3: when you were talking about like great but difficult actors,
Speaker 3: I was thinking, wouldn't it have been great if you
Speaker 3: could get a Blade sequel that was Wesley Snipes versus
Speaker 3: Nicol Williamson.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, it would have been good. Have you seen
Speaker 1: ex Caliber No, she plays Merlin. Oh it's a great performance.
Speaker 1: He gives a great Merlin. All right, but our main villain,
Speaker 1: but we also have a secondary villain and that and
Speaker 1: is also a dual role we have. It's Mombi, the
Speaker 1: Witch the princess, but also her earthly counterpart is Nurse Wilson.
Speaker 1: These characters are played by Jean Marsh.
Speaker 3: Jean Marsh is also just off the charts on this
Speaker 3: So good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Born nineteen thirty four, an awesome British actor who
Speaker 1: appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent nineteen seventy two thriller Frenzy,
Speaker 1: and many viewers I think will probably best remember her
Speaker 1: for her portrayal of the evil witch Queen bav Morda
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight's Willow Joe. Have you seen Willow's Been?
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it since I was a kid, basically,
Speaker 3: so I don't really remember it except for little little
Speaker 3: images here and there I remember. Does that Val Kilmer
Speaker 3: like hanging in a cage?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yeah, Val Kilmer is all over the place in
Speaker 1: this one as well. But yeah, Jean Marsh plays this
Speaker 1: evil witch queen and it's just a wonderful, snarling and
Speaker 1: cold role. This movie has I think the greatest witch
Speaker 1: versus witch battle ever ever committed on film. Right right
Speaker 1: at the end of the picture, It's just a real
Speaker 1: like eye gouging, spell slinging kind of encounter. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. Anyway, Marsh did a lot of TV during
Speaker 1: her career, and I believe she's retired now, but those
Speaker 1: TV credits include an award winning role on the British
Speaker 1: drama series Upstairs Downstairs. She was also on Doctor Who,
Speaker 1: an episode of Tales from the Dark Side the Saint,
Speaker 1: and even a nineteen to fifty nine episode of the
Speaker 1: original Twilight Zone one called The Lonely This is one
Speaker 1: I've seen before. This is the one where a convict
Speaker 1: living alone on an asteroid which just looks like the desert,
Speaker 1: the California desert or something. He receives a female robot
Speaker 1: from his captors to help keep him company on the
Speaker 1: asteroid for some reason. And anyway, Marsh plays the robot
Speaker 1: woman opposite Jack Warden, and Ted Knight is in that
Speaker 1: episode too, in an uncredited kind of background role.
Speaker 3: So something that's interesting about Marsh and Nicol Williamson in
Speaker 3: this movie is that they both get to play these
Speaker 3: dual roles in which in the mundane world in the
Speaker 3: world of Kansas, they are presented as villains, but in
Speaker 3: a very subtle way, you know, sort of blending in
Speaker 3: with society and doing something that from Dorothy's perspective in
Speaker 3: the movie we see as wicked. But you know they're
Speaker 3: not chewing the scenery, they're not overt. In fact, they
Speaker 3: their outward appearances is sort of friendly, or at least
Speaker 3: Nicol Williamson's is Jane marsh is kind of cold as
Speaker 3: the lady in the clinic. But then you get to
Speaker 3: flip the script and go to Oz, where the characters
Speaker 3: reappear once again, but as just like frothing monstrous versions
Speaker 3: of their mundane world characters.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, characters that demand over the top performances. Just
Speaker 1: you use every muscle in your face. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: crank your eye intensity up to to to eleven or twelve.
Speaker 1: That's that's the sort of villains that populate the world
Speaker 1: of Oz, all right. Now. A few more performers have
Speaker 1: note in this. Auntie m aunt Em in This is
Speaker 1: played by Piper Laurie born nineteen thirty two. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, Joe, but I thought this was this
Speaker 1: was rather hilarious, given yes, that she plays Carrie's mom.
Speaker 1: Margaret White in seventy six is Carrie both movies about
Speaker 1: special girls with special powers, and this is the and
Speaker 1: Piper Laurie plays the moms sort of trying to understand
Speaker 1: these these these young women.
Speaker 3: No, I would say, auntim is a is a is
Speaker 3: a good caregiver, like she's you know, she she's trying
Speaker 3: to be loving. And she does end up taking Dorothy
Speaker 3: to a bad place, but she doesn't mean bad. She's
Speaker 3: trying to help. And her her benevolence in this movie
Speaker 3: is yes, almost hilariously contrasted with the other main roles.
Speaker 1: I can think of her in Yeah, she's aside from Carrie.
Speaker 1: She was also in nineteen sixty one's The Hustler, she
Speaker 1: was in Twin Peaks and Children of a Lesser God.
Speaker 3: So another funny thing Rachel and I always talk about
Speaker 3: whenever Piper Laurie comes up is the the just the
Speaker 3: absurdity of the machinations about the mill in Twin Peaks.
Speaker 3: Remember that's like one of her main motivations is fighting
Speaker 3: about the mill.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I don't remember that, all right. So
Speaker 1: those are some of the really those are the main
Speaker 1: human characters. A lot of the other characters were Gonna
Speaker 1: or a lot of the other actors and individuals involved
Speaker 1: here are. They're kind of a mix of actual like
Speaker 1: physical performers or puppeteers or special effects manipulators. So and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to list all of them here, but
Speaker 1: some of them stand out because of other work that
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 3: I like that in the credits at the end of
Speaker 3: this movie, when the not human characters appear, they will
Speaker 3: be given multiple credits for multiple people playing the role,
Speaker 3: like they put the often the puppeteer and the voice
Speaker 3: actor side by side. I think that's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So one name that does stand out is
Speaker 1: the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead. It's Brian Henson born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three. This is, of course the son of the
Speaker 1: late Jim Henson, producer, director, actor, and writer. He's of
Speaker 1: course been involved in tons of Hinson projects over the decades,
Speaker 1: but I think his most treasured place in my cinematic
Speaker 1: memories is as the voice of Hoggle in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six Labyrinth. He was also the voice of the dog
Speaker 1: on Jim Henson's Storyteller.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I think he also did
Speaker 1: some manipulation on Jack Pumpkinhead's head in this film as well.
Speaker 3: I couldn't tell was Jack pumpkinhead a puppet or was
Speaker 3: there like a really skinny actor inside a costume.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a tough call, right without really diving back
Speaker 1: into the credits, because he is supposed to look like
Speaker 1: a thing that is essentially a magical puppet made out
Speaker 1: of parts. But there may well have been a human
Speaker 1: actor in there at least for some of the scenes,
Speaker 1: along with some sort of puppetry manipulation of the head.
Speaker 1: And also sometimes the chicken ballina is inside the Jack o'
Speaker 1: lantern head. So there's a lot going on here. Oh, now,
Speaker 1: this one was fun. I wasn't prepared for this, but
Speaker 1: I mentioned we have the Gump here, which is this
Speaker 1: junk gollum that has a like a stuffed moose's head,
Speaker 1: and the individual that's credited for effects and manipulation on
Speaker 1: the Gump's head is Stephen Norrington born nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the man who would go on to direct nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: nine's Blade and did monster effects on nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Split second.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he keeps coming up on the show, and
Speaker 1: he's going to keep coming up.
Speaker 3: The connections never stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, now this next one is more of a
Speaker 1: physical performance, and that is the Lee Wheeler. The Wheelers
Speaker 1: are kind of the flying monkeys of this film, only
Speaker 1: instead of flying monkeys, instead of some sort of a
Speaker 1: simian creature with feathered wings. They are like half human
Speaker 1: half old timey bicycle people. Or they are a like
Speaker 1: a tribe of post apocalyptic maniacs who have taken up,
Speaker 1: you know, vehicular locomotion instead of walking. They're really odd.
Speaker 1: They're difficult to describe. Anyway. There's a whole group of
Speaker 1: these Wheelers and the lead Wheeler is played by this
Speaker 1: actor by the name of ponds Mar, and I'm glad
Speaker 1: we finally get to mention pons Mar because he's a
Speaker 1: Florida born artist, affects artists, puppeteer, and a monster suit guy.
Speaker 1: He's one of He's just one of the creepy Wheelers
Speaker 1: in this movie. But he is also memorable for playing
Speaker 1: the reptile man Saarrodd in nineteen eighty seven's Masters of
Speaker 1: the Universe and the character Fu in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: is the Golden Child. He also did some Dino sued work,
Speaker 1: both on TV's Dinosaurs the Hintson Effected sitcom, but also
Speaker 1: the nineteen ninety five movie Theodore Rex, in which he
Speaker 1: plays a cool talking t Rex opposite Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaker 3: To clarify, Theodore Rex is a buddy cop movie, and
Speaker 3: the buddy cops are Whoopi Goldberg and a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Wow. Have you seen it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it. I just know the premise, and
Speaker 3: apparently he's like a rad dinosaur.
Speaker 1: He looks rat. He looks pretty rat at any rate.
Speaker 1: Oh Man Ponsmar is the lead Wheeler. His performance in
Speaker 1: this is just cranked up to about a thousand. I
Speaker 1: was thinking, it's kind of like, what if you took
Speaker 1: one of Bill Irwin's mind performances, like he would do
Speaker 1: on Sesame Street and so forth. What if you had
Speaker 1: that level of intensity but it was also deafeningly loud
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, he is manic oh and Rob. I noticed
Speaker 3: something I put together about the Wheelers only after I
Speaker 3: watched the movie, not while I was watching it. Okay,
Speaker 3: So throughout the movie, you've got these characters who appear
Speaker 3: in OZ, but then there's some sort of counterpart in
Speaker 3: the mundane world back in Kansas. So of course Mamby
Speaker 3: is the nurse at the clinic. The nome King is
Speaker 3: the doctor at the clinic, but I think the Wheelers
Speaker 3: are the sallow, moist looking orderlies at the clinic who
Speaker 3: are like wheeling the gurneyes around and they look haven't
Speaker 3: slept in a month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe you're right on that because I.
Speaker 3: Think looking back on it now, I'm not positive about this,
Speaker 3: but I think Ponsmar is also one of those orderlies.
Speaker 1: M hmm, Yeah, I think he is. He has a
Speaker 1: very distinctive look that shines through even when he's not
Speaker 1: made up like some sort of reptile man. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of monster suits, Oh, I have to mention this guy,
Speaker 1: even though the Cowardly Lion is not much of a
Speaker 1: character in this The Cowardly Lion is basically turned a
Speaker 1: stone and only becomes unfrozen at the very end of
Speaker 1: the film. But when he does move again, it's this
Speaker 1: cool monster suit. And the man in the monster suit
Speaker 1: is John Alexander, who is a gorilla guy. Gotta love
Speaker 1: a good gorilla guy.
Speaker 3: Oh, he does gorillas quite often.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Alexander was a former circus performer,
Speaker 1: cabaret actor, and theater actor who first climbed into a
Speaker 1: gorilla costume on screen for nineteen eighty four's Gray Stoke
Speaker 1: The Legend of Tarzan. This was the one that starred
Speaker 1: Christopher Lambert. Of course this was his This was his
Speaker 1: follow up performance and return to OZ, but he also
Speaker 1: played a gorilla on the TV show Jeeves and Wooster.
Speaker 1: He was in who played a gorilla on Baby's Day Out,
Speaker 1: Fierce Creatures, nineteen ninety eight's Mighty Joe Young, twenty eleven's
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, and he, along with a few
Speaker 1: others I found this kind of interesting, are credited as
Speaker 1: quote unquote mime AARs in nineteen eighty eights Gorillas in
Speaker 1: the Mist. And the thing about Gorillas in the Mist
Speaker 1: is Gorillas in the Mist definitely has gorilla costumes. It
Speaker 1: has great gorilla costumes designed by the great Rick Baker,
Speaker 1: But the credits don't say don't list humans as gorillas
Speaker 1: or say gorilla suit. They say these are mime artists,
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting.
Speaker 3: Oh, Gorillas in the Mist is the one that has
Speaker 3: Sigourney Weaver playing Diane Fosse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good movie, I guess it. Thought it was a
Speaker 1: little over like it was above gorilla suits for some reason,
Speaker 1: but at any rate.
Speaker 3: Above gorilla suits.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe they just they were like, it's
Speaker 1: it would be we shouldn't list people as gorillas, or
Speaker 1: maybe they thought they would They wanted to keep this
Speaker 1: suspension of disbelief alive that these are real gorillas. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but John Alexander also did monster suit, creature
Speaker 1: suit work, and Men in Black one and two, The
Speaker 1: Country Bears Zathura and hell Boy two.
Speaker 3: Now, as we mentioned, the original opinions from the First
Speaker 3: Wizard of Oz are only sort of in this movie. Well,
Speaker 3: Scarecrow is in it more. But I felt bad for
Speaker 3: the tin Man at the end of this movie because
Speaker 3: Dorothy when she's like, you know, saying goodbye. Of course,
Speaker 3: she has a pretty extended scene with the Scarecrow. She
Speaker 3: has a real good hug on the cowardly Lion. It's like, hey, world, buddies,
Speaker 3: he has good to see you again. But then she
Speaker 3: just disses the tin Man. Basically, I don't think she
Speaker 3: ever even says anything to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's barely in this as well. But it is
Speaker 1: noteworthy that the tin Man is played by Deep Roy
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty seven, the Kenyan British actor who, at
Speaker 1: four foot four has been a go to actor for
Speaker 1: creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. So Roy
Speaker 1: has popped up in Star Wars, The Dark, Crystal Flash,
Speaker 1: Gordon Gray Stroke, The Never Ending Story, The X Files,
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, in which he plays a gorilla kid.
Speaker 1: That is what is he's credited as. He's in Charlie
Speaker 1: and the Chocolate Factory. He's been in I think, various
Speaker 1: Star Trek shows and much more. All right, and so
Speaker 1: just a few behind the scenes credits to go through
Speaker 1: real quick. Norman Reynolds was the production designer on this
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty four British production designer who worked on
Speaker 1: the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Arc,
Speaker 1: The Exorsis three, Alien three, and more.
Speaker 3: The sets in this movie are tremendous.
Speaker 1: They are amazing. Yeah, so I just had to call
Speaker 1: that out. Also, this film has some great claymation, some
Speaker 1: stop motion animation using clay in it. Really if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of that genre of effects like this is
Speaker 1: definitely an eighties film to check out.
Speaker 3: Like when the Rocks are delivering reports to the Nome
Speaker 3: King before you ever see him, you just see the
Speaker 3: face in the stone sort of scrunching up and getting
Speaker 3: worried about giving the Nome King bad news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's tremendous. So I'm not even gonna list
Speaker 1: all the Claymation team members that worked on this, but
Speaker 1: the team included such artists as Will Vinton who lived
Speaker 1: forty seven through twenty eighteen, Joanne rad Milovich, who you
Speaker 1: can find images of. I included an image for you here, Joe,
Speaker 1: where you can see the artist working on some of
Speaker 1: the Nome King's minions. Here, Bruce McKean, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one through nineteen ninety three. Oh, and this is
Speaker 1: an interesting one. Mark Gustafson, who is co director on
Speaker 1: the upcoming guiermel del Toro Pinocchio movie. And then there
Speaker 1: it's also Craig Bartlett born nineteen fifty six, who worked
Speaker 1: on Dinosaur Train, which was is. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: it's still going, but at any rate, Is was a
Speaker 1: long running Jim Henson animated series that I believe also
Speaker 1: used poppetry to create the movements for the animated dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: And finally, the music. The music credit here goes to
Speaker 1: David Schier born nineteen thirty seven, American composer who scored
Speaker 1: a ton of films over the years, including All the
Speaker 1: President's Men, Oh Godjo Devil, Short Circuit, Monkey Shines, and
Speaker 1: David Fincher's Zodiac.
Speaker 3: Trying to remember the music in Zodiac. But I can't
Speaker 3: recall the orchestration. All I recall is the hurdy gurdy man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excellent use of the hurdy gurdy man. But I
Speaker 1: too don't remember the score offhand. Likewise, I don't really
Speaker 1: remember the score from this movie. I watched it the
Speaker 1: other day. It's one of those scores that does its job,
Speaker 1: does its job well, but you don't necessarily think back
Speaker 1: on it. It's just not that type of score.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, a movie like this depends on the music
Speaker 3: being good, so it must have been good, but it
Speaker 3: didn't stand. I don't recall what it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's also not a musical, so there's not a
Speaker 1: scene where Dorothy says something and then the TikTok is like,
Speaker 1: well that sounds good, Dorothy, But could you sing a
Speaker 1: song about it so I can remember it. No, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3: Oh, we are the Wheelers, we will everywhere.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what I can't I don't even like to
Speaker 1: think what sort of musical genre the Wheelers would use.
Speaker 1: It would just have to be some sort of like
Speaker 1: screaming punk song or something. Yeah, some sort of screeching
Speaker 1: avant garde industrial punk. That would be my guess what.
Speaker 3: Would Mom be saying, I want all your heads?
Speaker 1: Oh, maybe it would be a different genre. It would
Speaker 1: certainly be a different voice depending on which head she chooses. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to the Nome King, it would
Speaker 1: just it would be hard rock because that's what he's
Speaker 1: made of.
Speaker 3: That's that's good. Okay. I guess we've already teased the
Speaker 3: plot a good bit. But I think this is one
Speaker 3: of those ones where we're not going to try to
Speaker 3: go scene by scene and describe the whole movie. Because
Speaker 3: this is this one. It's good to let some surprises remain.
Speaker 3: But maybe we should talk about some broad broad sections
Speaker 3: of the plot and some of our favorite details. So
Speaker 3: do you want to start with life in Kansas?
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So.
Speaker 3: The film seems to take place a little while after
Speaker 3: the events of the original Wizard of Oz. Dorothy Gale
Speaker 3: is back on the farm with Aunt em and Uncle Henry.
Speaker 3: They are rebuilding the house because of course it was
Speaker 3: you know, carried away by the Kansas cyclone in the
Speaker 3: previous movie. But Dorothy is you know, she not just
Speaker 3: totally back to normal. She is obsessed with her memories
Speaker 3: of adventurous in the Land of Oz, to the point
Speaker 3: where she can't sleep at night. Like you see Piper
Speaker 3: Laurie come into the room and it's like, Dorothy, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to go to sleep. But she's you know,
Speaker 3: she's looking at the stars because she's thinking about monsters
Speaker 3: and thinking about trees that trees that attack.
Speaker 1: Well, this is what they get for living in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. The stars are so bride out there,
Speaker 1: they basically keep you up at night.
Speaker 3: It's true. I can report from brief experiences. If you
Speaker 3: go to a place with truly dark skies and you
Speaker 3: look up at the stars at night, it is a
Speaker 3: borderline hallucinatory experience. Yeah, but okay, aunt Em and Uncle
Speaker 3: Henry are troubled by what's happened to Dorothy. They think
Speaker 3: she is suffering from persistent delusions because of her belief
Speaker 3: that Oz is real. So ann Em gets the idea
Speaker 3: that they've got to send her to a doctor in
Speaker 3: town who has a machine that can cure her brain
Speaker 3: with electricity. So there are a few things that are
Speaker 3: established in this early section. On the farm, we see,
Speaker 3: you know that ann M and Uncle Henry are our
Speaker 3: loving parents. You know, they care about Dorothy and they're
Speaker 3: trying to do good, but also that they're disturbed by
Speaker 3: her seeming to believe that Oz is a real place
Speaker 3: and she actually went there, and you see them trying
Speaker 3: to discourage these apparent delusions. And meanwhile, Dorothy's just thinking
Speaker 3: about Oz all the time. Like she finds a key
Speaker 3: on the farm and she's like, see this key is
Speaker 3: from OZ because it's got like the handle on it
Speaker 3: is round like an O, and then it's got to
Speaker 3: slash through the middle of it that sort of makes
Speaker 3: like a crossbar on a Z. So yeah, this is
Speaker 3: obviously an artifact from OZ. And then I think it
Speaker 3: literally is. Later but we also we meet a chicken
Speaker 3: who can't talk. But this chicken who cannot talk is
Speaker 3: Dorothy's friend, and the chicken is threatened by Aunt Em
Speaker 3: because An M's like, if you don't lay an egg soon,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna turn you into soup.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, this is Billina. Billina is going to be
Speaker 1: a major character. Delena is not just there for comic relief.
Speaker 3: Now, shortly into the movie, Dorothy is taken by aunt
Speaker 3: Em to town and Toto tries to follow them. They
Speaker 3: have a very cute dog to play, Toto, but Toto
Speaker 3: does not accompany Dorothy on her adventures in this movie.
Speaker 3: Toto stays behind and so she's taken to town to
Speaker 3: go to the offices of doctor JB. Worley played by
Speaker 3: Nicole Williamson. And again this is going to be for
Speaker 3: the electrical cure. Now. As I said earlier, Williamson and
Speaker 3: Jean marsh are both fabulous in their roles because, like
Speaker 3: in the original Wizard of Oz, they play these characters
Speaker 3: on both sides of the fantasy divide, right, they have
Speaker 3: real mundane characters and fantasy counterparts in Oz. Nicole Williamson's
Speaker 3: Earth character, doctor Warley, is I think wonderfully realized as
Speaker 3: as the kind of man who presents a soft, friendly,
Speaker 3: reassuring exterior while preparing the machinery that will steal your soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is a wonderful performance. And you
Speaker 1: know you don't see a lot of him here. We're
Speaker 1: not in Kansas for too long. But yeah. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: seems he is a He doesn't come off as a
Speaker 1: suspicious adult. He seems like a trusting adult who is
Speaker 1: in who's rightfully in a position of authority and is
Speaker 1: going to help you.
Speaker 3: Like there's a part where he's showing Dorothy. He says, look,
Speaker 3: this machine has a face. Here are its eyes, and
Speaker 3: here is its nose. And of course the machine is
Speaker 3: the machine they're going to use to administer electroconvulsive therapy
Speaker 3: to Dorothy. Now, a brief note on psychiatry in this film.
Speaker 3: I would say this movie depicts psychiatry in general and
Speaker 3: electroconvulsive therapy in particular as cruel and evil, which I
Speaker 3: would say I have twofold thoughts about number one. It
Speaker 3: really works in the context of the plot. But of course,
Speaker 3: if you're going to be literal about it, I think
Speaker 3: this is very mis guided. Like I think if you
Speaker 3: get your ideas about ECT from the movies, especially like
Speaker 3: I don't know, movies made in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 3: such as scenes from One Flow of the Cuckoo's Nest
Speaker 3: and stuff, you would basically think that it is like
Speaker 3: a pseudoscientific involuntary torture mechanism. Used to inflict pain and terror.
Speaker 3: But I think actually, you know, a lot of psychiatrists
Speaker 3: think that there's very good evidence that it's helpful and
Speaker 3: that you'll meet people who have experienced severe, major depression
Speaker 3: that did not respond to other treatments, and they would
Speaker 3: say ECT made a major positive difference in their lives. Though, obviously,
Speaker 3: if it were actually administered in the way it is
Speaker 3: depicted in this movie, which is like an unexplained, non
Speaker 3: consensual punishment inflicted on children for the crime of having
Speaker 3: an imagination, that would be pretty awful. So while you
Speaker 3: should obviously not get your real, real world ideas about
Speaker 3: ECT from the OZ universe, it does make a really
Speaker 3: great plot device, scary plot device within the fantasy context
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Dorothy is left at this clinic to be subjected
Speaker 3: to the electrical cure for her brain, and there's this
Speaker 3: great scene where you know, Dorothy's kind of thinking about
Speaker 3: other things while you hear the doctor talking to aunt
Speaker 3: Em in the background saying, you know, the mind is
Speaker 3: simply a machine. Sometimes the machine has too much electricity
Speaker 3: in it, and you get a similar foreboding elements from
Speaker 3: other things at the clinic so Gene Marsh plays a
Speaker 3: what would you call her, She's like an assistance sort
Speaker 3: of a warden at this clinic, and she's wearing a
Speaker 3: dress that looks like it might as well be Darth
Speaker 3: Vader's suit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It is like such a gothy number. I don't
Speaker 1: know how else to describe it. It's just like multiple
Speaker 1: shades of black, and how's all of these like cremulations
Speaker 1: and sort of fabric spikes on it.
Speaker 3: It's like if you combine like a Little House on
Speaker 3: the Prairie dress and the Road Warrior. Yeah. But also
Speaker 3: here at the clinic, Dorothy meets a mysterious blonde girl
Speaker 3: who like appears in her room and warns her about
Speaker 3: doctor Worley's machines. I think, is this the scene where
Speaker 3: they're like hearing people screaming and she says like those
Speaker 3: are the people who have been subjected to the machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's this is probably the darkest moment
Speaker 1: in the film. I thought for me anyway, like this
Speaker 1: is this This is the moment where I was sitting
Speaker 1: there watching it, you know, next to my son, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is maybe a little too dark, But
Speaker 1: he didn't seem to mind. And you're through it pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: And there's a scene where they're like taking Dorothy to
Speaker 3: be hooked up to the electrical machine, the one that
Speaker 3: had eyes and a nose and a mouth, and they're
Speaker 3: hooking the electrodes up to her head, and just when
Speaker 3: they're getting ready to send the charge the there is
Speaker 3: a storm and lightning strikes and power is lost, and
Speaker 3: Dorothy actually escapes during this lightning storm, along with that
Speaker 3: strange blonde girl who she keeps seeing in the mirror,
Speaker 3: and they they get swept up in a flood, being
Speaker 3: chased by Jeane marsh in that crazy black dress, and
Speaker 3: they end up floating away down a torrent in a
Speaker 3: chicken coop.
Speaker 1: By the way, I couldn't help it be reminded of
Speaker 1: the movie Brazil, which I guess came out the same year,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five. But that film has a scene where
Speaker 1: an individual's strapped to a contraption and in that case
Speaker 1: is about to be tortured when something miraculous happens that
Speaker 1: seems to save him. And then at the end of
Speaker 1: the film, all depending on the cut, you find out
Speaker 1: that this was all just what an occurrence at what
Speaker 1: is at Awl Creek Bridge situation where everything was happening
Speaker 1: in his head and he really died on the interrogation table.
Speaker 1: So I'm happy to say that that is not the
Speaker 1: case in Return to oz there's not a scene later
Speaker 1: where you realize, oh, this was all just electricity going
Speaker 1: through Dorothy's brain.
Speaker 3: Right. No, no, no, there is like a waking up later scene,
Speaker 3: but it's not that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she did.
Speaker 3: Really go out and get in the mud.
Speaker 1: And into the river and then seemingly into the ocean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's a good thing she did
Speaker 3: run out into the floodwaters because apparently if she had
Speaker 3: remained behind at the clinic, she may be she may
Speaker 3: have been incinerated. Yes, But so from here we're gonna
Speaker 3: go to Ozta. We gotta talk oz First thing is
Speaker 3: she wakes up in that chicken coop being wrecked in
Speaker 3: what's called the Deadly Desert, which is a plot device
Speaker 3: that I love. The idea of the Deadly desert is
Speaker 3: if you touch the sand, you turn to sand, and
Speaker 3: it's very simple, but it's great. We see a wheeler
Speaker 3: turned to sand at some point and it's brutal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That was one of my son's favorite moments, and
Speaker 1: in part because we hated the Wheelers. All we could
Speaker 1: tell the Wheelers were bad news, So any bad things
Speaker 1: that happened to the Wheelers are somewhat justified.
Speaker 3: But as soon as Dorothy wakes up in the deadly desert,
Speaker 3: her chicken friend Billina is there with her, and Billina
Speaker 3: can talk. Now, remember by the mechanism we discussed earlier,
Speaker 3: you know, you're an animal, you're in Oz. Now you're
Speaker 3: a talking animal. And it turns out all along, if
Speaker 3: Billina could talk, we would have noticed that she has
Speaker 3: like a sassy, old prairie grandma tude.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was full of fun one liners as well,
Speaker 1: and occasionally has information and advice.
Speaker 3: So they're going around, they're checking out Oz. They're like,
Speaker 3: what's up in Oz? And uh oh, everything is wrecked.
Speaker 3: Nothing's good anymore. The yellow brick road is all torn up,
Speaker 3: Munchkin Village is gone. I think Emerald City is in ruins.
Speaker 3: We see it in the distance and it looks like
Speaker 3: it has been shelled. Yeah, and we gather that when
Speaker 3: Dorothy last left, the Scarecrow had been crowned King of
Speaker 3: Oz in the Emerald City. And I think there's an
Speaker 3: understanding that Scarecrow is going to be a good and
Speaker 3: just ruler. Scarecrow is kind, Scarecrow is thoughtful. You know,
Speaker 3: he wouldn't do he wouldn't be a bad king. But
Speaker 3: in the meantime, something has gone terribly wrong, and I
Speaker 3: was immediately tempted to think how different the story would
Speaker 3: be if it had been like George R. R. Martin's
Speaker 3: Return to Oz, where the friendly Scarecrow has a heel turn.
Speaker 3: As soon as Dorothy leaves, he's corrupted by power. He
Speaker 3: immediately institutes, you know, Tonyan repression, purges of his perceived enemies.
Speaker 3: He sends ten man to prison, He's got dungeons in
Speaker 3: the Emerald City. That would have been a way to go.
Speaker 3: But no, it's not that the Scarecrow had a heel turned. Instead,
Speaker 3: what happened is that the Scarecrow has been deposed and
Speaker 3: someone else has taken over someone bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that have been a good twist. What if the
Speaker 3: Scarecrow was the villain of the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it would have been. It would have been
Speaker 1: nice and twisty. It seems like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: they would do today if they were to make return
Speaker 1: to Oz, though this film does have some neat twists
Speaker 1: concerning what exactly happened.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Dorothy and Billina investigate everywhere there are statues
Speaker 3: of human forms, and in the ruins of the Emerald
Speaker 3: City they find a creepy graffito on a wall that says,
Speaker 3: beware the Wheelers.
Speaker 1: Yes, written in red. I don't think it's written in blood,
Speaker 1: but who can say for certain.
Speaker 3: It looks like it's written in red colored pencil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they didn't have a lot of blood. It's
Speaker 1: not drippy blood, but it's like, we're not not going
Speaker 1: to really just layer it on. We only have so
Speaker 1: much blood to work with here. I'm just saying it
Speaker 1: could be blood. It could be blood.
Speaker 3: I think blood is a scarce resource in Oz now
Speaker 3: because most human bodies have been turned into stone from
Speaker 3: what we can see. And in the ruins of the city,
Speaker 3: Dorothy and Billina get attacked by these horrible creatures called
Speaker 3: wheelers we've already talked about. They got wheels instead of
Speaker 3: hands and feet, and Dorothy uses her special key. I
Speaker 3: think this is the oz key that she found on
Speaker 3: the farm in Kansas. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yep?
Speaker 3: He uses that to open a door inside a secret room.
Speaker 3: There she finds this bulbous mechanical man and this is
Speaker 3: one of our heroes, TikTok. I loved TikTok. He is
Speaker 3: like a wind up copper Ronan. He is a mechanical
Speaker 3: warrior whose master has been deposed and now he's in
Speaker 3: the service of Dorothy.
Speaker 1: Great design, great effects with this being the like a
Speaker 1: lot of it is puppetry, but also it's clearly a
Speaker 1: person in a suit, and it's they're able to pull
Speaker 1: off this wonderful gait, this wonderful walking style of of
Speaker 1: of TikTok. It's it's, it's it's absolutely wonderful. He was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of the whole film.
Speaker 3: He's sort of a little bit teddy roosevelt Ish, but
Speaker 3: other elements too, like he's blustery and headstrong and has
Speaker 3: a big walrus mustache, a metal one, of course. But
Speaker 3: I thought a really interesting recurring theme is that we
Speaker 3: are frequently reminded throughout the movie that TikTok is not alive,
Speaker 3: Like when Dorothy first finds him, there are instructions on
Speaker 3: his back for how to wind him up and make
Speaker 3: him work. But U and one of the things the
Speaker 3: instruction says is like that, you know, the TikTok, the
Speaker 3: mechanical man, does everything but live. Yes, but what does
Speaker 3: that mean? So TikTok clearly has a mind, he has
Speaker 3: a personality, and he even has preferences in the ability
Speaker 3: to take a fence like. There's a scene later when
Speaker 3: Jack Pumpkinhead suggests throwing TikTok out of the gump aircraft
Speaker 3: because he's the heaviest of them, and TikTok clearly takes
Speaker 3: a front like he is annoyed by this suggestion. Yes,
Speaker 3: and yet there are other times where TikTok seems to
Speaker 3: reference the fact that he is not alive as a
Speaker 3: reason for not being concerned about something. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't really worry about getting turned into an inanimate
Speaker 3: object because I'm not alive anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, in Oz, being a non living entity, I think
Speaker 1: you have a lot of company. It's not one of
Speaker 1: these stories where oh, I am the lonely being that
Speaker 1: is a machine and not a human but has feelings.
Speaker 1: In Oz, everywhere you look there's some sort of reanimated form.
Speaker 1: There's there a machine people all over the place.
Speaker 3: They just different varieties I think Return to Oz explores
Speaker 3: some of the same thematic territory as Terminator too. Can
Speaker 3: this machine be a good parent? Does this machine know?
Speaker 3: Does it understand why we cry? Even if it's something
Speaker 3: it can never do? Yeah, so anyway, I thought that
Speaker 3: might This is like a kind of a thoughtful movie
Speaker 3: for kids. It planned some interesting philosophical ideas in their mind.
Speaker 3: But what does it mean to be alive? But also
Speaker 3: I like the wind up and wind down dynamic with TikTok.
Speaker 3: So TikTok has winding keys for three different things, thought, speech,
Speaker 3: and action, and at various times throughout the movie, one
Speaker 3: of the three but not the other two, will wind down,
Speaker 3: including a very funny scene where they're trying where all
Speaker 3: the good characters are trying to like work on a
Speaker 3: project together, but TikTok's thought runs down while his speech
Speaker 3: and action are still active.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love this as well, the three wind up
Speaker 1: wind down dynamics, because on one level, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's a good way to get kids potentially thinking about
Speaker 1: like what what what the human experience is, you know,
Speaker 1: like thinking of our of our own mental facult faculties,
Speaker 1: not as a single entity, but this thing that sort
Speaker 1: of emerges out of out of out of different things
Speaker 1: and different stimuli and different processes. So, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting way to look at a in this case
Speaker 1: of fantastic being, but also to sort of turn that
Speaker 1: reflection back on yourself at times.
Speaker 3: But so we said the TikTok he's a soldier, right,
Speaker 3: he's a warrior for the Scarecrow, and he's been left
Speaker 3: behind by the Scarecrow. I think to wait for Dorothy.
Speaker 3: So here's Dorothy and now they're teaming up. So right
Speaker 3: from the outset, TikTok is ready to beat up some wheelers.
Speaker 3: He like walks out. Oh there's a fight scene that
Speaker 3: you could regard as underwhelming because TikTok is just basically
Speaker 3: spinning around in a circle whacking wheelers, But I don't.
Speaker 3: Something about it is really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's intensely satisfying, in part because the wheelers have
Speaker 1: established themselves as a total menace and their acting is
Speaker 1: over the top. Here comes TikTok. He absolutely wails on them,
Speaker 1: and then he captures the lead wheeler, who is again
Speaker 1: the most animated and annoying of the wheelers, and begins
Speaker 1: to roughly interrogate him, and we were just cheering for
Speaker 1: TikTok during this scene. We're like, yeah, get him TikTok.
Speaker 3: It's great and of course under torture essentially no under threat.
Speaker 3: The lead Wheeler reveals that the Scarecrow has been overthrown
Speaker 3: and taken prisoner by the Gnome King, and to learn
Speaker 3: more about what's going on, they have to go and
Speaker 3: visit the castle of Princess Mamby. Yeah, so that's what
Speaker 3: happens next. The whole section in Momby's castle in the
Speaker 3: middle of the movie is just awesome. Where do you
Speaker 3: want to start here? So Mamby's palace is like in
Speaker 3: many ways it's made of mirrors, or at least sort of.
Speaker 3: The throne room is, which is very creepy, especially in
Speaker 3: scenes where like Dorothy's trying to find a door or
Speaker 3: figure out what to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, her whole palace is just, oh my goodness. The
Speaker 1: sets are amazing. Even sets, even parts of the palace
Speaker 1: that you don't really spend much time in just look incredible.
Speaker 1: Like they walk through a bedroom and nothing ever happens
Speaker 1: with the bedroom. You see it in the background as
Speaker 1: just stupendous. It's like this weird evil Princess Cathedral, and
Speaker 1: then you venture into this hall of heads. This is
Speaker 1: where Momby stores these various stolen female heads that she has,
Speaker 1: stores them alive, and we'll use them. We've mentioned this
Speaker 1: on the show before because somebody wrote in on listener
Speaker 1: mail about this. How curious it is that Momby is
Speaker 1: always the same Mamby. But Momby takes off her original
Speaker 1: head and puts on these other heads, and while she
Speaker 1: has these other heads on, she again is still Momby.
Speaker 1: But it also is stated in the film where it's
Speaker 1: sort of suggested in the film where it's hypothesized by
Speaker 1: one of the characters that if she does something with
Speaker 1: one head on and she switches to another head, she
Speaker 1: might not remember something she did previously, which just sends
Speaker 1: my head reeling trying to figure out how all of
Speaker 1: that works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her personality always seems to be the same, but
Speaker 3: I think it's Jack Pumpkinhead says that because Dorothy's about
Speaker 3: to meet him. He says that Momby locked him up
Speaker 3: in the tower, but then forgot he was in there
Speaker 3: because she switched heads and that Memby was in a
Speaker 3: different head. And when we first meet her, it's not
Speaker 3: Jean Marsh's head. So we don't you know, our guard
Speaker 3: is down. We're not seeing like, oh, that's the scary lady,
Speaker 3: remember her from the clinic. It's just some other lady.
Speaker 3: She looks nice and you know, she's sitting there playing
Speaker 3: a harp. And then she and Dorothy start talking. But
Speaker 3: then she's like, Dorothy, I'm gonna need to cut your
Speaker 3: head off and keep it in my keep it in
Speaker 3: my collection. But you're not old enough yet, So I
Speaker 3: got to lock you in a tower for a few years.
Speaker 3: Then your head will get bigger and then I'll cut
Speaker 3: it off and then I'll keep it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she realized is an investment. We're gonna wait for
Speaker 1: you to mature a bit. She didn't want to wear
Speaker 1: Little Girl for USA balk Head. She wants to wear
Speaker 1: the Craft for USA balk Head, and she doesn't have
Speaker 1: to wait a few years for that to happen. So
Speaker 1: off to the dungeon chamber with you, up to the
Speaker 1: locked room, and so she's thrown in there with Jack Pumpkinhead,
Speaker 1: who she meets. But also there are all these pieces
Speaker 1: that will eventually become the Gump because at this point
Speaker 1: we're dealing with an escape plan they find out about this.
Speaker 1: What is it the Is it the powder of animation
Speaker 1: or the powder of life?
Speaker 3: Powder of life? Yeah, it's a magical powder that Momby
Speaker 3: has that she sprinkles over inanimate objects to wake them up.
Speaker 3: And this is originally, I think where Jack pumpkinhead comes from.
Speaker 3: That's like he's made of sticks and a pumpkin. Though wait,
Speaker 3: I think he was originally a real boy. Maybe I'm
Speaker 3: not sure.
Speaker 1: He asks if he can call Dorothy mom and she
Speaker 1: allows it, which.
Speaker 3: Is a little creepy, but it's also kind of sweet
Speaker 3: at the same time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but any rate, they realize we got to get
Speaker 1: out of here. Well, we could fly out of here
Speaker 1: if only we had a winged mount. Well, we could
Speaker 1: make one out of this moose's head or Gump's head
Speaker 1: on the wall and this couch and we could use
Speaker 1: these pieces of this to make wings and this will
Speaker 1: somehow work. But we need that powder in order to
Speaker 1: bring all this to life and fly out the window.
Speaker 1: Where's the powder? Well, we find out it's stored with
Speaker 1: Momby's original head. So Dorothy is going to have to
Speaker 1: sneak out and make her way through that museum of
Speaker 1: heads and try and find the original head and steal
Speaker 1: the powder from that headlocker.
Speaker 3: It's a heist at the head repository.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is an amazing sequence and also just
Speaker 1: a wonderfully magical dark fantasy sequence because you know, it's
Speaker 1: the scene where Dorothy's creeping down the hallway. All these
Speaker 1: silent heads are in the are in their chambers, and
Speaker 1: then when she gets there she opens it up. There's
Speaker 1: Jeane Marsh's head and they're the original Mamby head. And
Speaker 1: of course it's not going to go without it without
Speaker 1: at least a single hiccup, because she ends up waking
Speaker 1: up the Momby head. All of the heads wake up,
Speaker 1: all of the heads are screaming, and then she takes
Speaker 1: off with the powder while Mombi's body is waking up
Speaker 1: from the bed. We do see something with the bedroom
Speaker 1: and that's right, and it's like walking around like a
Speaker 1: zombie with no head coming after. It's a wonderful nightmare.
Speaker 3: So with the gump aircraft they've put together again, it's
Speaker 3: like a moose type thing, a gump head that's mounted
Speaker 3: and then it goes with some couches and wings made
Speaker 3: out of plant leaves like I think palm leaves or something.
Speaker 3: They make this aircraft and they fly out to escape,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna fly to the Nome King's mountain. Though
Speaker 3: it's very funny because the Gump is like, I don't
Speaker 3: know how to fly. I'm just ahead. I never flew
Speaker 3: in life, so I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Gump is wonderful and has lots of little
Speaker 1: snide comments about how he liked it better when he
Speaker 1: was just ahead. This current life is a little more
Speaker 1: challenging than he likes a little more moving around, So.
Speaker 3: They fly over the deadly desert to get to the
Speaker 3: Nome King's mountain. He lives in a mountain, and ooh,
Speaker 3: the nome King. When they get there, I feel like
Speaker 3: here maybe we should start to describe in a little
Speaker 3: or in lighter detail. But warning, if you are going
Speaker 3: to watch the movie, you don't want anything about the ending.
Speaker 3: It all spoiled. Maybe maybe you can tune out here
Speaker 3: until you've seen it, because we will discuss a few things.
Speaker 3: But the Nome King is so cool. He is some
Speaker 3: kind of humanoid elemental being of mineral origin. He's a
Speaker 3: greedy but clever sorcerer of rocks. Yeah, and the claymation
Speaker 3: here is just wicked. So throughout the movie we've seen
Speaker 3: this like rock Face doing reports of what's happening to
Speaker 3: the Nome King, and that's all stop motion animation. That's
Speaker 3: very good. But here we start seeing claymation and general
Speaker 3: stop motion of the king himself and the sorcery that
Speaker 3: he casts. Like one of my favorite animations is that
Speaker 3: there's a that like Dorothy and her friends are in
Speaker 3: a cave with the Nome King, and occasionally the Nome
Speaker 3: King will open a portal to go into a into
Speaker 3: a palace with these halls, and the way the portal
Speaker 3: opens is the rock turns into many hands that starting
Speaker 3: the like pulling a hole open in the rock itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all of these effects, all of the effects they
Speaker 1: used to bring the Nome King to live, are amazing,
Speaker 1: and most of them are these kind of stop motion effects. Though,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, something is happening that makes the Nome
Speaker 1: King increasingly more human in form. So we eventually get
Speaker 1: Williamson himself there as the Nome King, but covered under
Speaker 1: a lot of rock makeup and like a rocky beard
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, So the Nome King has Dorothy and her friends
Speaker 3: play a guessing game where he says, oh, yes, I
Speaker 3: have the scarecrow captive, and I've turned him into an
Speaker 3: inanimate object, into an ornament. And if you can walk
Speaker 3: around my palace and guess which ornament is the scarecrow,
Speaker 3: then I'll let him go. But if you guess wrong
Speaker 3: three times in a row, I'm going to turn you
Speaker 3: into an ornament. Actually he doesn't tell them that at
Speaker 3: the beginning. It happens first to I think the Gump
Speaker 3: and then they're like, wait, you didn't say that was
Speaker 3: going to happen, and he's like, oh, you didn't ask.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's adding a lot of rules after the fact,
Speaker 1: though at the same time, our heroes are not really
Speaker 1: asking for a full breakdown of the terms ahead of
Speaker 1: time either.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So you get the sense that he is made
Speaker 3: of rock, but he sort of wants to become a
Speaker 3: human for some reason. And the more humans he absorbs
Speaker 3: and turns into inanimate objects are not necessarily humans living
Speaker 3: things he absorbs and turns into inanimate objects, the more
Speaker 3: he becomes a fleshly creature instead of a rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's not explained in the film why this is,
Speaker 1: and I kind of like that. I like anytime there's
Speaker 1: sort of grandiose evil magic going on in something, it's
Speaker 1: even more creepy if there's stuff going on that you
Speaker 1: don't fully understand. We don't know why he wants this
Speaker 1: transformation to occur or why it is occurring, but it
Speaker 1: is at least a byproduct of the evil that he
Speaker 1: is doing.
Speaker 3: Oh, we should say. The entire time they're with the
Speaker 3: Nome King and playing this guessing game, Billina, the chicken
Speaker 3: is hiding inside of Jack Pumpkinhead's pumpkin head. He's like, right,
Speaker 3: she's in the jack o lantern.
Speaker 1: Oh, so this is another important thing now that we've
Speaker 1: mentioned the chicken. It has been established a few different
Speaker 1: times that the chicken is noteworthy in Oz and that
Speaker 1: the Nome King will want to know about this chicken.
Speaker 1: And it's even implied that the chicken is really the
Speaker 1: most important member of this party. He is of the
Speaker 1: most interest to the Nome King. And Mamby realizes this,
Speaker 1: and Mamby is rushing to the Nome King's castle, I
Speaker 1: guess to warn him of the chicken, and she does so.
Speaker 1: Oh God, I love this sequence. She does so by
Speaker 1: getting all of her wheelers together and lashing them to
Speaker 1: a chariot and then climbing aboard the chariot and whipping
Speaker 1: them to get them to ride at top speed and
Speaker 1: take her to the Nome King's castle.
Speaker 3: It is t they're traveling through some kind of underground
Speaker 3: tunnel that cuts underneath the deadly desert.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it is. It's wonderful and eyebrow raising,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's tremendous.
Speaker 3: And she does get there, but I don't think she's
Speaker 3: able to really to warn him sufficiently, at least not
Speaker 3: enough to save him in the end. I don't remember
Speaker 3: what she says, but like when she gets there, he's
Speaker 3: very haughty. He's like bow bow lower.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he locks her in a cage.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah. Ultimately, it doesn't really make a
Speaker 1: huge difference that she made it there at all. But
Speaker 1: the Nome King here is becoming more and more humanoid
Speaker 1: in appearance, and more and more of Dorothy's friends are
Speaker 1: being turned into unknown ornaments in the room, and I
Speaker 1: think this is is this also where we find out
Speaker 1: how the Nome King was able to carry out this
Speaker 1: this attack on the Emerald City. Is this when he
Speaker 1: reveals his feet.
Speaker 3: Oh, no, explain that.
Speaker 1: Well, there's he reveals that it's mentioned earlier in the
Speaker 1: film that you know, I think it's an m asking. Well, Dorothy,
Speaker 1: if all this odd stuff is realed, and where are
Speaker 1: these ruby slippers that you speak of that gave you
Speaker 1: this power? And she's like, well, they fell off when
Speaker 1: I was returning to Earth. And they're like, okay, we'll
Speaker 1: see there's no proof. Well, the Nome King reveals that
Speaker 1: he is wearing the ruby slippers, but they basically fell
Speaker 1: into his lap, and he used the power of the
Speaker 1: ruby slippers to then overthrow the Scarecrow King. And so
Speaker 1: we see the see of the Nome King wearing the
Speaker 1: shiny ruby slippers.
Speaker 3: There great twist, and I think Dorothy tries to go
Speaker 3: for them, but he's like no, no, when he tucks
Speaker 3: them back under. Yeah, and in the end, how are
Speaker 3: they going to defeat the Nome King? I mean, the
Speaker 3: Nome King is so powerful? What kind of power do
Speaker 3: they have that could stand up against a creature of
Speaker 3: such such immense potency?
Speaker 1: Well, well, for starters, Dorothy is able to retrieve some
Speaker 1: of her friends from ornament transformation. But but This just
Speaker 1: makes the Nome King all the more enraged. He turns
Speaker 1: into this gigantic stone monster and he has decided he's
Speaker 1: going to eat them. He picks up the gump and
Speaker 1: like eats the gump's body and like the head falls off,
Speaker 1: and then he goes to eat Jack Pumpkinhead instead as well.
Speaker 1: But Billina the chicken is in Jack pumpkin Head's head
Speaker 1: and it is finally time for Billina to lay her egg.
Speaker 1: She lays the egg inside Jack Pumpkinhead's head. It rolls
Speaker 1: out of the pumpkin and goes down the Nome King's
Speaker 1: throat and then uh oh, the Nome King realizes that
Speaker 1: something has gone terribly wrong.
Speaker 3: Because the big twist is that eggs are poison to
Speaker 3: the Nome King.
Speaker 1: Right, we didn't know this until it is finally revealed.
Speaker 1: We knew that we kind of got the sense that
Speaker 1: the chicken was a threat, but we didn't know why
Speaker 1: the chicken was a threat to the Nome King's rule.
Speaker 1: Now it is revealed, the egg is It has terrible
Speaker 1: magic in it, the terri and does terrible things to
Speaker 1: the Nome King's power, which I guess is not I
Speaker 1: don't know I didn't do a lot of deep thinking
Speaker 1: about this, but eggs do factor into various magical rituals
Speaker 1: and so forth. There is something about the egg that
Speaker 1: is often seen as sacred, and somehow the egg is
Speaker 1: able to undo everything that the nome King is doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the egg symbolizes potential, symbolizes transformation. Yeah yeah, it
Speaker 3: has a lot of symbolic loading, so that makes sense.
Speaker 3: But of course, so, yeah, the nome King is defeated,
Speaker 3: and then Scarecrow, who has been restored from I think
Speaker 3: he had been turned into a like a just a
Speaker 3: big green gem. He's he's back into his form. Dorothy
Speaker 3: is able to restore everybody who got turned into an ornament,
Speaker 3: and then they all go back to the Emerald City,
Speaker 3: where the Scarecrow's back on the throne. Everybody's happy again.
Speaker 3: Momby is in a cage, and then they're like, they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know, she doesn't have powers anymore, so she'll be
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: I know. It's the Wheelers are also just hanging around
Speaker 1: at this point in the movie, and I was thinking, well, okay, cage.
Speaker 1: The Wheelers just yeah, they just get by with the
Speaker 1: sorry like they seem to be the scourge of the
Speaker 1: of the realm there for a while, but everything's forgiven.
Speaker 1: Everybody's happy again.
Speaker 3: How many denizens of Oz did they eat? Or whatever
Speaker 3: they do? But also we get another twist, which is
Speaker 3: that the blonde girl that Dorothy had seen several times
Speaker 3: already is her name is Ozma, and what is her role?
Speaker 3: She's like the rightful Princess of Oz or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like the Yeah, she's she's the good She's
Speaker 1: the good Witch of this movie basically, and she's been
Speaker 1: sort of in the background helping things move along the
Speaker 1: whole time. But then also there's this idea that like
Speaker 1: she is also connected to Dorothy, she is going to
Speaker 1: be She is like the way that Dorothy remains in
Speaker 1: Oz and in the Earth realm at the same time.
Speaker 3: She is Dorothy's counterpart, so Dorothy can be on both
Speaker 3: sides of the mirror. Dorothy can go back to Kansas
Speaker 3: and be home, but also stay in Oz in the
Speaker 3: form of this other girl and be the princess there.
Speaker 1: And Ozma's like, basically like, hey, you can still be
Speaker 1: in Oz all the time in your head. Just don't
Speaker 1: tell anni em about it. Just be quiet about it.
Speaker 1: And everything's fun, and then we.
Speaker 3: Get a very sweet reunion back in Kansas where Toto
Speaker 3: finds Dorothy washed up on a washed up on a
Speaker 3: grimy river shore. And then there's Uncle Henry and they
Speaker 3: all get back together again and it's very sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, though we do see mom Be's earthly counterpart,
Speaker 1: this would be Nurse Wilson. We see her being taken
Speaker 1: away in the back of a carriage that also kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a cage. Yeah. And then it's revealed
Speaker 1: that doctor Warley died in a fire because he had
Speaker 1: basically the clinic, the facilities there had been struck by
Speaker 1: lightning and he went back in to save his machine
Speaker 1: and died.
Speaker 3: He was too devoted to his machines and it killed him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so very very Frank Herbert kind of moment there where.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this character died off screen.
Speaker 3: So return to Oz. Deeply strange, fantastically imaginative, totally wonderful,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite new fantasy movies or kids movies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just a blast.
Speaker 1: I richly enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, parents will have
Speaker 1: to make their own decisions about films like this. I
Speaker 1: was researching it a little bit before we watched it.
Speaker 1: I went to the IMDb parental guidance area where the
Speaker 1: users submit stuff about films, and they did have the
Speaker 1: chicken lays an egg in the nome King's head as
Speaker 1: an example of violence in the picture. I didn't really
Speaker 1: think of it as violence per se, but it's certainly weird.
Speaker 3: It is an act of inadvertent poisoning, so I guess
Speaker 3: it would be like a scene where if a character
Speaker 3: accidentally put arsenic somebody else's sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, but anywright, Yes, Return to Oz. I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved it. I think it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: And I'd love to hear from folks out there though, because,
Speaker 1: like we've been saying, Joe and I only just watched
Speaker 1: this movie in full as adults. We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from folks who saw it back in the day. What
Speaker 1: was it like seeing Return to Oz on the big
Speaker 1: screen in nineteen eighty five or seeing it on VHS
Speaker 1: once it was available on home video? How did other
Speaker 1: people in your life present it or respond to it?
Speaker 1: Did you hear people saying, well, this is not what
Speaker 1: Oz is all about. What is this gump business? It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be the cowardly lion. Did you have to
Speaker 1: put up with all that? Was it effective? All of
Speaker 1: this is fair fair play. I'd love to hear from everyone.
Speaker 1: So that's it for this edition of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder, Weird House Cinema publishes every Friday in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed We are
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, but on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film.
Speaker 1: I blog about these episodes at Summuto music dot com
Speaker 1: and if you use letterboxed dot com that's l E
Speaker 1: T t e r box d dot com. You'll find
Speaker 1: us on there. Our username is weird house and we
Speaker 1: keep a Weird House Cinema episode list going there where
Speaker 1: you can see all the films that we've covered thus far.
Speaker 1: As of this episode, it is eighty two films that
Speaker 1: we've covered, and I'll often go ahead and add the
Speaker 1: next film on the list so you can sort of
Speaker 1: look ahead and see what we're talking about next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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