Hey everybody, I totally forgot to put the music in the credits for this one so I'm going to pin that here. Thanks for watching and I hope you all have a great weekend. th-cam.com/video/tDkxghI4-3o/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/W6ZmbQ_FInM/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/7FIZU5nvzrg/w-d-xo.html
It was a metaphor. As a child of the '80s, we knew all too well what serious punishment was. It was like being dropped in Hell, itself, and tormented. Physically tormented. Just being threatened with a spanking was enough to give you whiplash. Father knew how to deliver torment with great efficiency, and he did it with great enjoyment. I'll always hate him for that. We didn't learn how to behave ourselves. We only learned how to avoid pissing him off, and the older we got, the less we cared about doing that. We just wanted to get away from him.
I think Over the Garden Wall is the closest a recent piece of media has come to capturing the vibes of these older pieces of media, or at least American ones.
I watched that for the first time this fall and you are on point, it's a fascinating work of art that I am surprised came from a place like cartoon network.
I think the Gnome King isn’t just shapeshifting. It seems more like as he turns more of Dorothy’s friends into ornaments he becomes more human like. Which always struck me as odd, was his intention to turn all of the characters into inanimate objects so that he himself could become fully human?
@@linziRyan1965 I don't like Coraline either. I really don't think it hearkens to Oz or anything particularly 80s. If anything the movie itself reminds me of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas schlock.
I never knew the Oz books were that dark. I always thought it was just this movie that took an uncanny turn for seemingly no reason. To think, Return to Oz is actually the most faithful adaptation...
They aren't dark. Truth be told, nor is this movie; while it has scary elements, it is ultimately about restoring light and order, and defeating darkness and chaos.
I guess after 1939, the year the live-action adaptation of Wizard of Oz was released, everyone somehow forgets the other sequels to the original tale, and only the first book gets adapted many, many times and then watered-down to become incredibly kid friendly.
@@Isaac-gh5ku The first live-action movie of _Wizard_ was in 1910 and the second in 1925. The book and its 39 sequels are all very much kid friendly; good thing too, as they are children's books. There have been two live-action screen adaptations of the second book, _The Marvelous Land of Oz._ One was made for T.V. in 1961 and starred Shirley Temple as Princess Ozma, Agnes Moorehead as Mombi, and Sterling Holloway as Jack Pumpkinhead. The second was released as a kiddie matinee in movie houses in 1969 and was not brilliant, but the script and the costumes were very good. Mike Thomas, who played the Scarecrow and did all the make-up for the movie, went on to be make-up man for Michael Jackson when he played the Scarecrow in _The Wiz!_ There was also an excellent stage production which was broadcast on cable T.V. and released to home video in 1988 (or thereabouts). In 1914, L. Frank Baum himself produced a movie of the seventh Oz book, _The Patchwork Girl of Oz,_ starring French acrobat Pierre Couderc in the title role.
This movie scared the hell out of me as a kid. But I was completely addicted to the characters so I just traumatized myself over and over lol. I watched it more than Wizard of Oz
Any good fantasy tale has scary moments, but what on earth did you see as in any way "traumatic," especially on repeat viewings when you knew what was going to happen?
I *LOVED* movies like that. Such as Labyrinth that weren't necessarily intended to be a bit spooky/eerie, but also unintentionally did or did on some lower level. It might be why I loved horror movies as a kid.
@@MaskedMan66 The evil queen with all the severed heads was pretty creepy. I was freaked out by the Roller things and was terrified of being turned to stone. I completely relate to @queenofanon9972
@@scarletros Mombi had (illegitimately) adopted the title of Princess, not Queen, and the heads were restored to their alive and well owners after Dorothy used the ruby slippers. The Wheelers were shown to be comical cowards in pretty short order once Tik-Tok walloped them and their leader. As for being afraid, yeesh, have some faith in Dorothy, willya? ;-)
The most terrifying parts of the Oz books to me was the fact that no matter what pain or "death" the creatures were subjected to, no one can really die in the land of Oz. So they just go on in torment forever from what I could gather from reading them. Not sure what happened to the ones who were eating or melted down.
I remember a line that said something along the lines that one can become “destroyed” but not die. Did anyone see Torchwood Miracle Day? This is also why the Tin Woodman is the Tin Woodman. If anyone is interested you should look up his origins as well as the Tin Soldier. What really takes the cake is what happens with their severed body parts.
The fact that _Return To Oz_ was closer to the original than its predecessor is yet another reason that the “Too dark and scary” criticisms it got were complete malarkey.
I agree with the too dark is malarkey tidbit, good examples of that are the US remakes of the Korean thriller Oldboy and French horror Martyrs both films had US remakes that absolutely butchered what made the originals great cause they were seen as too dark I still pick return to oz and even the wiz over the wizard of oz, the dark undertones add to the charm of those films
Return to Oz took the second and third Oz books by L. Frank Baum, put them in a blender, and then picked out whatever they didn't like and put in their own ideas. It has some good ideas in it and the first performance by the worst actor in cinema history, Jim Carrey.
I actually grew to not like the Judy Garland version because of how different it was from the book. I would love for them to do a Chronicles of Narnia on this and come out with something more truer to the book rather than a "remake" of the original movie. People seem to think the book and the original movie are one in the same and there's clearly so much more to the book that we never got to see live-action onscreen. There's a real epic adventure there and all people think when they think of the Wizard of Oz in general are ruby slippers and Over the Rainbow.
"Too dark and too scary" is not a criticism. I got my little brother into Dark Souls, and I was enamored by the Legacy of Kain series when I was a kid, where its literally a soul devouring, vampiric kind of wraith going out into a 3d world and killing monstrous abominations.
How in the world do you figure they hated children, especially when the lead character was played by a child-- who was loved by all in the cast and crew-- and all the incidents, bar the asylum scenes, were straight from L. Frank Baum's books?
On a more serious note, this movie was pitched more along the lines of the 1939 musical, but changed tone during production without Disney execs being told about it. This is one of a collection of reasons Disney became hesitant about finishing production on the movie in the end, or at least under Murch's direction.
@@eastlynburkholder3559 To expand on both: The Scarecrow describes slowly coming to life. Namely being blind until eyes were drawn on him, and being deaf until his creator gave him ears. As for the Tin Man, he used to be human. He was a woodcutter that fell for a munchkin woman. Her mother didn’t approve and cursed him. Every time he swung at a tree, the axe would fly off and sever one of his limbs. Luckily, he knew someone that could replace his body parts with metal so they wouldn’t be chopped off immediately. Unfortunately he didn’t give up his job and it got to the point of him being completely metal...
And in a later book in the series, he meets Chopfyt, who is made from his old human parts, and the human parts of another tin man, sewn together Frankenstein style.
@@wildchildlikeu unfortunately she just remembers "Standing in a cabinet and screaming" I tried to locate her in the scene clips but the quality and the fact the camera doesn't hover on each face means I can't find her. I'll ask her to give me a general area hah
It would be an incredible feat to see the team behind “Over The Garden Wall” adapt the entire collection of L. Frank Baum’s original “Oz” book series into a multi-season, 2D animated series!
Return to Oz is one of my favourite childhood films - I LOVED the different character designs, and Mombi was such a good villain who just went around switching heads. Perhaps it is a generational thing, I watched the original Wizard of Oz on TNT and I thought it was pretty good as a kid, but as I got older and learnt more about how it was behind the scenes it left me feeling uncomfortable. I don’t watch the original anymore, but I can still watch Return to Oz anytime. There’s also something hilarious about Return to Oz just removing anything whimsical and rolling with the “you’re insane, you’re getting electroshock therapy” storyline
If by the "original" you mean the MGM movie (which in reality is the third big-screen version of "Wizard" and the eighth Oz movie), be very careful who you listen to. No movie is easy to make, and yes, there were injuries, but everyone came out of the experience alive (which is more than can be said for actors and crew on other movies and T.V. shows), and everyone involved was very proud of their accomplishment. Judy Garland and Margaret Hamilton especially would tell you to enjoy it. 🙂
When I hear the name J.B. Whirley, I cant help but think of J.D. Rockefeller... think of it the nome king is made of stone... HE'S LITERALLY A ROCK FELLER
I think it's a reach myself, only one initial matches, lots of letters rhyme with D, Whirley isn't close at all and his life in Kansas in no way seems a caricature of a tycoon. Good pun though Robert!
I remember two different elementary school teachers I had taking the class to the school's library to watch LionWitchWardrobe and walking away both times feeling like a fever dream. What's worse is we never even got to finish it either time!
@@sambaxter7035 I hate you in a very passionate and specific way I'm sure you're a nice guy, but due to the cursed knowledge you have unintentionally bestowed upon me and for this very reason alone , I despise your very being
What's even worse is shirley temple was meant to be Dorothy (which would have made more sense as younger than judy) but in the talks to the directors she was nearly molested
@@mrhalloween1152 Even though Judy Garland as Dorothy was much too old for a faithful book adaptation I think it was more successful than Shirley Temple as Dorothy would have been. It would have been known as a Shirley Temple movie (suffused with her impish cuteness). It might would have been more monetarily successful at the time but would not be the classic we have today
Don't feel too bad. She maybe had to eat alot of chicken soup, but she genuinely had a good time making the film. She cracks up in some of the scenes if you look close. She made history with her song and endeared herself to everyone forever. Time or nothing else can change it.
@@sandyschipper155 hope that's sarcasm 😂 she was only allowed to eat chicken soup, smoke packets a day and was on fat burning tablets, she wore a corset to push her boobs down to make her look somewhat younger, the other actors didn't want to know her or stick up for her because they purely didn't care, she was sexually harassed by some of the people who played the munchkins and they even had security stalk her to make sure she did everything on point and kept to her "diet plan"
The moment in the movie where princess Mombie sits up from her bed without her head, I vividly remember where I was and how old I was when I saw that scene. Even being an avid horror fan today has not changed the fact that that single scene with Mombie alone still scares me more than any other horror movie scene. I The stinging, orchestral music, the horrible shadow outline, her deep croaking voice, and just enough budget to make it look real. The wheelers were creepy and The Gnome King was pretty sketchy but I still can't watch the bedroom scene without shivers up my body
I loved this movie as a kid, Kids love to be scared, it's what made Doctor Who so popular. It's been generations of igonrance at Disney that everything needs to be saccrin, more to appease a generation of ignorant parents who were fed the same narrative.
80s movies for kids unfailingly had some element in it that was absolutely terrifying, and they should bring that back. Kids love scary media. Return to Oz is so striking in its visual designs that it's hard to forget, and it frightens adults who've never seen it before. Great vid.
@@AngelichuXD Scary stories books and "are you afraid of the dark" kept up the horror for kids genre into the 90s. It's enduringly popular. It's good to see there's still media like that.
I've always said it best us Gen Xer's grew up in times where we had some the best fantasy films ever made. Films that not only freaked us out but challenged our mind sets and got us out of our comfort zones.
Well, I think the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" book is considered to be meant for children, yet the illustrations of charcoal and ink is downright terrifying and it's great. This is basically the creepypasta before the Internet.
You're good, but this was outstanding even by your standards. As a teacher, I always say that we should give kids media which makes them think because they often think in more open ways than we do. This video really dug into those ideas, and would be a great way to remind parents of the ability kids can show to tackle issues oft thought too complex for them.
Thank you very much that really does mean a ton to me. And I absolutely agree, all of my favorite things when I was very young had a lot of things hidden underneath their surface.
@@Bell_Matt That's not remotely true. The environment kids are being molded by isn't particularly friendly towards their true natures, nor humanity as a whole. Young people are naturally inquisitive and aren't clad with the layers of sophistication and self-deception like we are, and are great observers of what actually is, as opposed to what one wishes things to be.
@@Bell_Matt I'm glad I didn't turn into the kind of adult you are. I never talk to children in a patronizing way but rather the same way I would talk to an adult. The know more than you think even if they don't express it the way you can understand. Let them think for themselves and they will.
I remember finding an old VHS tape and find it weird that the actress name is same as mine. bcuz of that I end up watching this film almost every week, basically obsessed. Later I found out my parents had named me after the actress, because of this film. I would assume my love for dark, horror, fantasy genre came from it. I remember being obsessed trying to figure out if Gump or Tik-Tok is an actual robot or if actual person in there somewhere. I mean, the practical effects from this film still holds up to this day. Absolute flawless. I would recommend young gen should at least have seen this film once. Iconic!
I don't think anyone of the newer generations will ever want to watch this movie, or read the book. As someone born in 87, this looks like garbage. That's coming form a person who liked Never ending story, so the kids today will never be able to watch this or read it. They would find it boring or completely out of the wheel house that they would feel like you're punishing them. I know I would and I am 35 now. This whole world is creepy and the fuel of Nightmares for little children. Times have changed dude, the only kid now, that would watch this, is someone who has had a really messed up life.
@@ravinraven6913i’m 21, i haven’t read the books but growing up i LOVED the wizard of oz. the wiz and return to oz are actually 2 of my favorite movies bc i love the creepiness and overall aesthetic of those 2 movies specifically. i intend to pass a lot of my love for things like this on
I LOVE "Return to Oz." I always thought it was a brilliant interpretation of how nightmarish Oz really is. Even the movie poster haunted me as a kid when it came out.
@@MaskedMan66 Thank you. Oz in many ways is like our world. They are many pleasant things to explore and love and also a lot of horrific and dark things that's scary to come across.
@@brandonspain12345 The charm of Oz-- and for that matter Narnia and parts of Middle-earth-- is that you find things there that are very familiar. The agriculture and food of Oz are very similar to those of our world, and the language is the same. So Dorothy was in familiar, if spectacularly beautiful and colorful, surroundings when she first went to Oz.
@@MaskedMan66 yeah it has some macabre ideas and characters at times like Mombi or the gnome king but it's more exciting than terrifying. I loved visiting Oz as a kid and still like to go down the nostalgia tunnel time to time. Hell I'm 43 and my Dad got me the first five books in one for Christmas. Anyway high five fellow OZ lover.
@@RemoWilliams1227 High five back! :-) Mombi might be classed as macabre in RtO, but in the books, she's really more of a meddlesome old woman with dangerous powers. As for the Nome King, he's a pretty typical Baum villain; take away his powers (as Dorothy did when she stole his magic belt) and his forces, and he's really not much to write home about. Of course, if he gets his hands on some powerful magic he can use, watch out! He was the closest thing to a regular villain in the Oz series. Have you read the entire Famous Forty?
@@valerievargas1548 And Sally is very similar in some regards to Scraps the Patchwork Girl. Scraps was sewn together and brought to life by artificial means, though instead of being a corpse she was made from a quilt and scraps of material.
I do believe he worked on this film. The fact that Jack Skelington rides into town dressed up as Jack Pumpkinhead on a wooden horse not dissimilar to the saw horse really shows his inspiration
Disney kind of experimented with children's horror for a little while. Watcher in the Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I don't think they were financially successful. So, they never really tried again.
Along with Return to Oz, I watched those two religiously as well. I really wish Disney would have stuck with it. Children's horror is still one of my favorite genres and I'm 25. Nothing really creepys me out in the same way.
@@CheshirePhrog They did excise some pretty great scares from the book, and that awesome moment when the kids elderly father kills the witch with a wax bullet with his smile etched on it, after showing her he did that. For those who didn’t read it, it wasn’t the bullet that killed her, it was the fear of the power a man who doesn’t fear her and how he just laughs at how ridiculous she is in his eyes now, she herself was so overcome with fear of him that she had a heart attack.
Man, the sets from this movie are gorgeous. Crazy that the visuals (mostly) hold up today. You can really see the skill and love everyone involved put into this project.
I showed my daughter this movie at 2 maybe 3 years old and she was pretty unaware of the creepiness. Now she is almost 11 and we just watched it again yesterday and she is completely OBSESSED now!!!
I think it's important to be conscious that a child reading these books now is viewing these books through a modern lens. A child's life now is very different than it would be in 1900. I mean, if kids today find these books to be horrific, but we know that children of that time found those books to be lighthearted, fun, and cheerful, it's a clue that the rest of these children's lives outside the books was so much more horrible. At that time, children were working in factories, and disciplinary violence against children was almost universally considered "good parenting". A tin man chopping off heads of wolves would seem like nothing at all to a child who regularly experienced all kinds of violence.
I totally get what you’re saying. I am a child of the 1980s, (not that ago, I realize!) but when I read the Baum books, I found them to be absolutely “lighthearted, fun, & cheerful.” I have the whole facsimile collection, & they are still whimsical mind candy to me. I love characters like the Woggle Bug, the Sawhorse, and the Glass Cat. I didn’t think of them as even remotely dark, so it’s interesting to hear other perspectives!
I guess it's not much a matter of experienced violence, it's more like a culture thing. Chopping off heads of rabbid animals that attack humans (or in this era, men) "for no reason" or are considered pests is normal, children working in dire smog-filled workstations for 12 hours a day to feed their families is normal, having sex with little girls that are passed down between the the males in the family, then "gifted" to a man of other family for the sake of updating a family's status is also normal. But chopping off heads of pests, working grueling hours in smog for half a day and being passed down to be used since early age have always been perceived as bad stuff. Though back then these were just "necessary evils" or "just life". Kids could perceive the badness even then. Besides, the ones saying the books were "light" were adults which, historically, tend to be completely detached from the "kid's world" and have their own brand of what a kid should be
@Angelo Griffith Not sure if it's a joke, but just in case you are serious, I mentioned references to real life, mostly culture characteristics from the time Alice was written. During the industrial revolution, kids were sent to work in factories, dealing with dangerous and heavy machinery and materials, like uranium, asbestos, coal, petroleum, etc. They worked almost the entire day, surrounded by thick clouds of smog and were paid almost nothing, like adults. They had to work because social inequalities increased, the poor getting poorer, to the point of absolute misery, so any able-bodied person should help keep the family (barely) alive. Fun fact, these are the conditions that lead us to have worker laws today. During medieval times to even today, in the western, christian world, it have always been a common practice to have sex with and marry female kids. Basically the only type of person that could not be f*cked are toddlers. Also, the christian traditions say the female should bow down to the male superiority and be his property, having all aspects of her life controlled by the men responsible to her, be it brother, father, priest, husband or what not. Also, her job in society is to keep her "preciousness of purity" (virginity) to be gifted to another man by her father. Also, marrying was always a job more than a dream, it never was for love, it was for status or tradition. The concept of having a life together with someone you actually love and do not casue your demise is fairly new. This all culminates in it being normal to opress women, and a girl having to endure sexual violence, since formatie years, for her whole life. Fun fact, the idea the female should not control her own body is the reason christians make a big deal out of abortion. The point is not to save the baby, is to take away the female's freeedom, as she should have none, and give the "divine right" of controlling when the couple breeds back to the rightful owner, the male.
@Angelo Griffith Also, forgot to mention that animals' rights are a new concept, and gratuitous violence towards "sub-human creatures", especially to "pests" was normal. That being one of the reasons hunting for sport was, and still is, a thing. Even christian traditions say the animals were created to serve men, as god made them to keep company to Adam in Paradise, and are to be made sacrifices in god's name, or used for food. Coexistence with nature is a new concept. Fun fact, the difference between a "normal animal" and a "pest" is the animal's economic and social importance. If it cause profit or no economical change, and if it's socially symbolic or protected, then it's an animal. If it causes economical decline, spoiling products or getting in the way of production, and if it is hated or nobody cares, then it's a pest. Wolfs were considered pests for quite a while. Another fun fact. The closest we got of coexisting with nature while part of mainstream society was by "controlling" nature and make it blend with urban spaces. That conept is where gardens, lawns, plant pots and neatly planting trees in important buildings' entrances come from. The concept of just letting nature do it's own thing, giving space to nature and allowing it in our lives as it is, is an absurdly new idea
Since I had never read these before, I started reading them to my daughter. We're on the fifth one now. One of my favorite parts is that the Emerald City isn't even actually green, and that whenever anyone enters it they have to put on those green goggles to just make it look like it's all green. That was a nice touch.
@@OikPoinFive I mean forty. :-) L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz books, and after he died (in fact, his last book was published posthumously), his wife Maud gave her blessing to the publishers to continue the series, which was taken over by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote nineteen books. John R. Neill, who illustrated most of the Oz books, wrote three, Jack Snow wrote two, Rachel Cosgrove wrote one, and the final book, "Merry Go Round in Oz," published in 1963, was written by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and her daughter Lauren.
Return To Oz is a film I watched as a kid and I remember loving it but feeing conflicted at the time. I loved the story, but when you realise that all the main characters she meets are reflections of the abuse she has lived in childhood makes you realise this no ordinary film! I still turn to this film today. It is a brilliant film in all sense of the words, it’s harrowing, thought provoking and mind bending
Dorothy has received no "abuse." The closest she got (in Kansas) was when she almost had to go through shock therapy. You have to understand that despite the ill-advised MGM-type framework story, the Oz in this movie is no dream, but quite real. Dr. Worley was not the Nome King's inspiration, he was the Nome King's agent. The blonde girl who rescued Dorothy after the power went out really was Ozma, not just what became Ozma. I was around when this movie came out, and both the press for the movie and the novelization made it clear that Oz was real.
@@MaskedMan66Just because Oz is real doesn't mean it's not based off something. A lot of media have real fairy or fantasy lands that also serve as a look into the mind of the main character. Kind of like Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And Dorothy was a child during the Great Depression living with her aunt and uncle. Although she may not have been abused by her guardians, she was definitely abused by her environment, feeling the effects of neglect, starvation, overworking, isolation, and eventually her time in the asylum. I'm certain she was able to latch on to some scary looking people in Oz *because* of how much she could relate to them through her own traumas. They may be real, but they are also very representative of the things Dorothy has to deal with every day.
@@uafgames9061 Your first statement makes no sense. Oz existed for centuries before Dorothy ever went there, even before the Wizard did. In fact, one of the first outsiders to enter Oz was a knight of Merrie England. The Great Depression began in 1929; Dorothy's first trip to Oz was in 1900, or as RtO has it, 1899. All Dorothy had to "deal with" were the necessary hardships of farm life, but she was not one to give in to bad feelings; quite the contrary, she was very bright and curious, and she always had Toto there to make her laugh. And of course eventually, Dorothy and her aunt and uncle moved to Oz full time after her fifth time visiting there.
Damn those clueless dunderheads at Netflix for cancelling The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. They buy the rights to make it because they wanted to make a niche, cult hit to bring in subscribers, then get upset that it was a cult hit with little mainstream appeal!? *THAT* *JUST* *MAKES* *THEM* *LOOK* *FLAKEY* *AND* *UNRELIABLE* !! Who the hell would want to work for a company that cancels you after you get an *Emmy!!*
@@Popcultureguy3000 I agree I view A0R cancellation as the dumbest move ever, but it is becoming a theme on Netflix they only keep a show going for 1/2 seasons and if its lucky if it gets 3. The fall out from this is lack of trust in the platform.
@@whitewolf1743 Netflix claims to have cancelled it because it cost way too much to produce it. Which yeah I get it but they could of at least given us 1 more season considering how excellent the first season was
I believe the Gnome King was shifting his looks based on how many people from Oz he had captured. If you watch, each time he transforms one into an object in his room, he become more human like. And he becomes less human like as they transform back.
Dustin Chlystek that's exactly right. There was one point where he tells Mombi that he will be completely human the second Dorothy failed at her attempt and be transformed into an ornament.
@@melissacooper4282 @Dustin Chylstek Yep, at 1:27:10 in the movie he says "Soon they'll be no one left who remembers Oz, and I will be completely human." In reference to Dorothy being the only one left in the ornament room to have any remaining guesses (and at that point, she only has one guess left).
@@VueFromTheTop I think its suppose to be about the doctor being a monster for what he does but wont be once Dorothy dies since presumably its because of her escaping that the police come and sentence him to death if the whole real world to oz counterparts are 100% true. The Nome King looks more human when her friends get transformed because the doctor was friendly to Dorothy and tried to make her less scared, then when she escaped he became the doctor became less friendly so the Nome King was less human. Though Oz has this weird real world base, personally i think the Nome King becoming human was just about the doctors being seen as good and being turned into ornaments was the electrotherapy. Also the Nome King had the ruby slippers and if i remember right, they had many different powers so i don't know how or why he needed oz to be forgotten to become "completely human".
Yes Dustin I noticed that the first time I watched the film. He would have become the Doctor from the asylum after all of them were captured. At least they tried to have some characters from Dorothy's real world as Oz characters (like the nurse).
The scariest thing about the “Bumpy man” is Neurofibromatosis is a very real disease. And while the disease is mostly benign, the tumors can grow on the outside of the the body.
That's not at all what he had; that was just how he looked. Or do you think the Frogman suffered from some horrible ailment that turns people into frogs? ;-)
@@MaskedMan66 I'm somewhat surprised to hear people considered the OZ books horrific. As a kid, and even now, the descriptions of the characters make me laugh. The vibe I always got was something like vaudeville or Loony Toons, where these broad archetypes feign injury or suffering for our amusement. The Hungry Tiger wanting to eat babies is really, really funny. We know, and the characters know, that he won't ever do that; it's a farcical character quirk. The ending of the first Oz story, where the Wizard is revealed to be all bluster, really sets the tone. It says not to take any of what follows too seriously because it's all a show.
@@episodenull Exactly, and it's worth noting that the Wizard eventually came back, and learned real magic from Glinda and Ozma, and became a bona fide Wizard. :-) Baum wrote a short story featuring the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger in which they finally made up their minds to assert themselves as wild beasts and do what they claimed to want to do. So off they went into the Emerald City to find a fat baby for the Tiger to eat and an adult for the Lion to tear to pieces. Instead, they ended up taking pity on a lost baby and his mother by reuniting them!
One detail I liked in the book was that it specifically say everyone needs to wear green tinted glasses when entering the Emerald city, it means the city might not be green at all. Return to Oz was my favorite movie as a child, and the only one we actually owned an original copy of, specifically because it scared me. I was the type of child who liked to challenge my fears. I didn't watch the other movie until more recently and I was quite disappointed, it's cute but there are so many songs there isn't much space left for actual plot.
@@NuvolaRoss It isn't a sequel. Frankly, I've always said that using the ruby slippers was Walter Murch's only mistake in making RtO. He should have used the silver shoes or the Nome King's magic belt, and just let the movie be its own entity.
@@LAdivad That she did! I loved how she interacted with her companions as if they were just people. Her best scene was when she comforted Tik-Tok, wiped away his oily tears, and gave him that wonderful smile of hers-- which she still has, and which always, even now, turns her back into Dorothy whenever she flashes it. 🙂
"when I found them, sitting alone, covered in dust, in some dark corner of my library, I felt like I had recovered some lost treasure..." My jaw is on the floor, I had the exact same experience! It was also an early experience of the cognitive dissonance of liking both a movie and its source material even when they're different.
That's hardly dissonance; even L. Frank Baum himself liked to change things up a bit. He co-created a stage musical of "Wizard" in 1902 which was vastly different from the book. He also made some silent films, one of which was a mashup of "Wizard" and "The Scarecrow of Oz."
Problem not a second thought was given, I work with substance abuse patients and we accept/appreciate donations when we can them. Once, we received a book that was heavily suggesting drugs are the only way for some people. Not the best book for addicts.
My daughter loved the Return to Oz movie, and she was 8 when we watched it. Needless to say she LOVES horror. I actually know a guy who is covered in "bumps", it's not cancer, it's a skin condition, and he's one of the sweetest guys I've ever met.
@@MaskedMan66 RtO is for sure a horror. I literally have memories of this film where I think my imagination is fucking with me, only to realize "Nope. That shit was real." The existential dread when you realize that all the old characters are dead and anything that still is, does not look as it once did; subtle commentary on age and mortality of everything you love, including the parental figure of Oz himself.
@@kiandocherty3589 No, it's a fantasy adventure film, and no fantasy adventure is complete without a few scares, especially when the scares usually end up coming from ultimately harmless beings, like the Wheelers. Nobody died; they were turned to stone by an enchantment, as you'll remember. In actual fact, nobody can die in Oz.
@@MaskedMan66 It does not need characters to die to be horror. Return To Oz is categorized as "dark fantasy" which is basically fantasy mixed with horror.
@@TOMNICE I don't know who categorizes it like that; in all the places where I've seen it catalogued (such as the book store where I work), it's either been among the regular, non-"dark" fantasy movies or in with the other family films.
Return to OZ is extremely underrated. The overall tone, mood, visuals, def left a lasting impression on me. Always loved the room at the end of the film with all of the ornaments Dorthy has to touch/guess.
You and me both! So many people get it wrong: "Why did they make Oz so dark?" they wail. "'They' didn't," sez I, "the Nome King and Mombi did, and Dorothy came back to put things right. By the end, we see Oz as it should be."
My guess lots of people grew up with the 1939 film, and somehow lots of people forgotten about the other sequels to the first book. And then people started making many adaptations of the first book, and only the first book, in which all the dark elements of the first book are heavily removed so that their kids will only read the very kid-friendly version of Wizard of Oz.
@@Isaac-gh5ku The books are all kid-friendly-- they're children's books, after all! But you're right about the MGM movie becoming all that people knew of Oz after a while. Practically every adaptation of the story for a long time was based, not on the book, but on the Judy Garland film.
@TheMaidofMiddleEarth Indeed! I thought she was an excellent Dorothy. I've been meaning to write her a fan letter for decades; I really must get cracking on that!
@@PrincessMavenKittyDarkholme Those wonderful movies are still out there! Besides RtO, look especially for _The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Last Unicorn, The NeverEnding Story, Willow,_ and _My Neighbor Totoro._ :-)
18:44 "the scariest film that everyone collectively experienced in their childhood" is pretty accurate, though I always loved it as a kid. The one film that really did my head in as a child was The Peanut Butter Solution.
@@Not_Always Oh yes. That one. But Disney facing the darkness, as another commentator posted, only came *after* their Bowdlerization of The Fox and the Hound.
The movie was shot more for the tone of the actual storyline. Disney didn’t want this and that is why they fired the guy in the first place. The Disney touch is usually heart filled and a clear divide of good and bad. The books were more about human nature and how it’s not always pretty. It also shows there is not always clear line of good and bad. If you are familiar with black cauldron, the black hole and watcher in the woods you will see why they wanted to avoid that tone. It wasn’t a hit and it wasn’t marketable for any other projects like rides.
Actually, the good and the bad were always clearly delineated; as it says in the first book: "The leader of the Winged Monkeys flew up to her, his long, hairy arms stretched out and his ugly face grinning terribly; but he saw the mark of the Good Witch’s kiss upon her forehead and stopped short, motioning the others not to touch her. “'We dare not harm this little girl,” he said to them, “for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil.'" Some villains, such as Ugu the Shoemaker and Queen Coo-Ee-Oh, were reformed after being transformed (in both their cases, into birds), but no villain's actions were ever motivated by altruism; they were always after being cruel and selfish.
The scene when Mombi woke up headless while simultaneously calling out Dorothy's name from another room freaked me out as a child. Over time I bought the movie on VHS, DVD, and eventually blu ray cause I still loved it.
I think the fact of all these specific fears being represented in Return to Oz was part of why I loved it when I was 4 and wore the VHS out. Dorothy shows so much courage and gets through every single one of these horrors intact. Something about her unchanging face, like unlike Judy Garland even when she's scared she shows it in a very real way rather than an over the top camp way. And very few times in Return to Oz does Dorothy smile. My favourite line is "It can't be helped now Jack." That rather traditional attitude of courage and cool headedness was what made her such a great role model to me.
She smiled a lot, actually, did Fairuza, and in my estimation, she is probably just about the best portrayer of Baum's Dorothy; innocent, matter-of-fact, practical, loving, unflappable, and sweet as pie.
Will Vinton and his crew made their sequences while simultaneously creating the absolutely beautiful feature The Adventures of Mark Twain. 1985 was probably the greatest year in cinema history
That's kind of like what Kraft services feels like on a movie set, the bell rings someone yells "lunch!" And instantly you're in front of a long table filled with deliciousness and a cook to make your food the way you want it served. It was one of my favorite parts of Hollywood.
This was a fantastic analysis, bravo sir!! I loved your take on it, very perceptive. I loved the 1939 Oz flick and the Return to Oz movie. Very dark, eerie and non pandering to children in a whimsical format, more a dark showcase that lives long within the psyche. I first seen this film in 1988, it still hits me the same way today. A 42 year old man still haunted by that movie, in a good way. Perfect sequel. Perfect review. Kudos to you sir.
I’ma (80s baby) big fan of the Dark Crystal (1982) & I recently had my kids watch the new Dark Crystal Age of Resistance (2019) show on Netflix which takes place before the mass Gelfling genocide. We really loved it (& we very much love the dark stuff especially stop motion like Coraline) Lore & mother Augera are two of our favorite characters & we really liked that we learned about all the different Gelfling tribes & how some of Thra’s creatures came to be but it’s really the new Skeksis characters that make the show worth watching, & they get way darker with all the characters & their archs. And if the show isn’t enough for you, we have found that there’s even literature like graphic novels about the Dark Crystal & Thra😉
@@soflovixen The T.V. show is so full of inconsistencies as regards the movie that I can't even consider it as being anything other than an alternate universe. Right off the bat, they've got the urRu and the Skeksis already being around *before* the Crystal got cracked; the movie said explicitly, and several times, that it was after the Crystal cracked that the two races appeared.
There was a time when Disney didn't shy away from the darkness. Remember a little movie called 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'? Now, the company is in a different kind of darkness with no end in sight.
I saw this movie in the theater at the age of 5 when it was released. It definitely had a lasting effect on me. The Wheelers horrified me. The queen with all her heads was deeply unsettling. The desert gave me genuine fear, and the townspeople turned to stone mortified me. I remember being very quiet after the movie instead of the usual chatterbox about what I saw. It wasn't until years later doing some research on my own that I found your conclusions about it having the most accurate tone of all the movies to be correct, and it put my overall view on the franchise in a completely different light. I WILL say though, that to this day I still say, "...and then my thought wound down" when I'm tired and my brain doesn't work so well anymore, and it makes me grin a little.
Yes. I saw this in theaters as a young girl in Germany. I am nearing forty, and I am still afraid of the wheelers. They have never stopped terrifying me.
25:00 See, I always thought his appearance shifted because of the characters getting turned into ornaments, like, their life force was giving him more power, or something. With each one that gets turned, he becomes more and more human, but when Dorothy guesses correctly and releases the Scarecrow and then the others in kind, he turns back into a rock monster.
Makes me wonder, where was he, and Ozma during the story of the Original Wizard of Oz. The Gnome King explained, Emerald City stole the emeralds from him.
@@Joe_334 recovering from their loss, in the books at least, this is a whole bustling economy in the nome kingdom, so, they had more important things to do, but when the emerald city was at its weakest, in a transition of power, the nome king decided to strike on a people that had long since forgotten of the tension
@@Joe_334 It's Nome King, and as is shown in the movie, his realm is across the desert from Oz. It is located under the neighboring land of Ev, which featured in "Ozma of Oz," the third Oz book, and the one in which the Nome King made his debut.
Dude, the Nome king isn't becoming more human to suit the mood of the scene. He's becoming more human because people are failing to guess what ornament the scarecrow is and becoming ornaments themselves. Every time that happens he gets a little more human. He even says that's his goal.
Is there anything that explains why he wants to become human? Aside from possibly ridding himself of his weakness to eggs, I can't find anything in the text stating why this is his goal. Although the process of removing anyone with memory of Oz puts me in mind of things like Neverending Story or American Mcgee's Alice: Madness Returns. Just something I have been puzzling over for the past 30 years or so.
@@EmerySea maybe emeralds were like a power source to him and when all of the other characters turned into them he got more power. It could explain why he was so bent on having emeralds
@@motorwayt-s628 I think the emeralds were more about him attempting to retrieve stolen property. When Dorothy is falling through the mountain, you can see he has no shortage of the things. If the emeralds are connected to memories, all that would be forgotten would be the Emerald City. What happened to the rest of Oz? Where are the good witches of the North and South? What happened to the cities the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion ruled over?
@@sheeplehunter9651 I don't really think it's necessary to be so pedantic about the spelling but, since you brought it up, it is spelled "Nome King" in the books.
The animated Disney movie of Alice still terrified me as a child. I actually used to cry around rabbits because I thought they’d trap me in a tea themed hellscape.
I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with my 4th grade class. It's perfect for them. They love the violence and the silliness and the weirdness. They start to understand that the characters are more than just song and dance opportunities.
Violence and silliness coalesce into one of the bits that made me laugh as a child, and that's when, in describing how his enchanted axe cut him to bits, the Tin Woodman says, "The Wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, and at first I thought that was the end of me." LOL
I read the OZ books starting in the early 1960s. My dad brought me his own childhood edition of The Silver Princess in OZ when I was eight years old, in bed with the flu. He had collected a shit ton of OZ books when he was a kid, and now at age 68, I have them all with me still. I LOVED Return to OZ. I thought, "Holy shit, this movie gets it." It felt dark throughout...really disturbing, as you have noted. It surprises the hell out of me that Disney even MADE a movie like this, cuz this is so atypical of the usual Disney sugary dreck. I love your nuanced and detailed analysis. REALLY insightful, considerably researched. Thank you for this.
Keep them safe and pass them onto those you know who will also treasure those rare books and pass them on into further generations. I wish I still had those books from when I was younger. My yellow brick road forked into 10 different paths and we could only take what we could physically carry. Which turned out to be our clothes and enough supplies to keep us warm for the winter. Sadly the books got left behind.
@@OldieWan That's a shame. Sometimes tornadoes disrupt our lives, and the only path forward is to let go of our former expectations. Best wishes to you.
Disney had a dark period. I'd say from about the time Walt Disney died up until Beauty and the Beast, they made stuff like Newsies and The Black Cauldron and Return to Oz and had very much lost sight of their brand as competition like Jim Henson caught up. These movies feel very off brand for Disney now.
Except that it didn't "feel dark throughout." There were dark deeds underway, but only by the villains. Dorothy was all about light and hope, which she restored to Oz.
I come back and rewatch your older videos every month and I love them every time. No other channel is like that for me and you have gotten me through some hard times. Thank you
When I was a kid I loved both this and Labyrinth with David Bowie in it. But I had both on unlabelled (or messily-scribble labelled) tapes, recorded off the TV, so my mind always mixed them together. I wondered if there were more films like them, but I had no idea how to even describe the genre. "Fantasy" to me was knights and dragons, it certainly didn't have robots!
This fantasy had a robot, or rather, a clockwork man (and truth be told, the "Star Wars" movies are classed as space fantasy rather than science fiction). And there has never been a decade more blessed in its fantasy films than the 1980's. Along with RtO and "Labyrinth," there was "The Dark Crystal," "Dream Child," "The Neverending Story," "Dragonslayer," "Legend," and a host of others. :-)
Yes Labyrinth is a film I watched obsessively as a kid but was also terrified by! The Last Unicorn I feel also falls into this nightmarish children’s film category, the harpy still scares me
Although not intended to be a faithful adaptation of the original books, I feel that 1978’s The Wiz is a scarier film than Return to Oz. Just like with Return to Oz, The Wiz is set in a seemingly desolate and abandoned land which gives an overall sense of uneasiness. It also has some legitimately scary scenes which are sure to stick with the viewer.
I think some of the desolation was unintentional with the low budget feel the movie had (I checked the budget and wow they spent 24 mill. and got back 21
I do agree it’s very difficult to capture that dark fantasy, yet whimsical tone, especially in Hollywood now, so I think the 80s was probably the best time for the movie to come out when dark fantasy was more prevalent in Hollywood cinema.
I remember seeing this movie as a child, and not having previously read the books, really fell in love with the movie. To this day, the ending has left a faint, but vain hope within me, that I might look into the mirror and find Ozma looking back at me.
The Nome King wasn't going from stop motion to live actor to be more personable to Dorothy, but rather his transformations were tied to gaining new ornaments in his collection. Losing those ornaments turned him back, as well, which is why he got mad and stopped the game. He was literally gaining the life force of the people he trapped as ornaments. That's why he didn't transform any more when Tik Tok was transformed, because Tik Tok was never alive.
@@whitedragoness23 The only dark thing about the story is the pall that the Nome King has cast over Oz, but the *point* of the story is that it has to be dispelled, and that is what Dorothy, bearing the light of her optimism, has come to do. It's also neither twisted nor complicated; it's a pretty straightforward story, really. :-)
Where was the Nome King and Princess Ozma, when Dorothy came through the first time trying to get home? Is that ever explained...? I understand that he claims Emerald City stole his emeralds, and well the Ruby Slippers just fell out of the sky.
@@Joe_334 it was barely touched on in the movie, but that Deadly Desert separated the land of Oz from the other magical lands. It also separates the magical lands from the rest of the world. Ozma's father was deposed and she cursed around the time the Wizard came to Oz. She may not have trusted Dorothy until after her adventures with the Witch, but then she quickly left Oz.
Have you ever seen “The Wiz” the one where Michael Jackson is the scarecrow? I remember that being super creepy and almost giving a dystopian feel with it being set in a urban oz with random destructed buildings.
I know a lot of people hated on that version but I LOVED it. It took well needed flavor, with some acid trip creations and made it a non stop vision to watch. Yes the storyline had issues, and yes the movie had continuity issues....but that subway scene still haunts me rent free.
@@CreativeCreatorCreates THE SUBWAY SCENE! Wow, I completely forgot about this movie, but now that I remember it, that was super freaky. I wish it got more attention, due to how unique it was.
One of my favorites as a kid! Movies for kids nowadays have nothing on what we had in the 80s. The Dark Crystal, The Secret of N.I.M.H., Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story...
neat, I actually had 2 people on different sides of my family who knew walt Disney, one played polo with him before he was famous and the other made billboards for him
My claim to fame is that my great grandma "Hoo-Hoo" sat next to Rube Goldberg in a restaurant and asked him to draw her a picture on the back of a paper placemat, and we have it hanging on our wall today
I just remembered “Dorothy Must Die” is a thing. I had only seen e wizard of oz movie before reading it and the tone difference hit me like a sledgehammer
That series is good. A lot of it didn't make much sense, but it was still a good adaption of the original book. I didnt like the side stories that linked into some of the other characters tho, I did like Dorothy's short story tho.
My favorite thing about the book is how Dorothy is played up like a vain, yet charismatic starlet from the golden age of Hollywood. especially how they described what she is wearing.
I used to think that this movie was actually a nightmare I had. Did I imagine an odd oz movie where there was an evil queen who wanted to steal the faces of beautiful young people? Or did I actually dream that one?
An evil princess, or false claimant to the title of Princess, more like. In the books, it was a vain princess named Langwidere, whose thirty heads were all her own.
This video is excellent I love it! and very personal to my own experiences as a kid. Especially when you mentioned finding these books amongst others as I had, when I found an old paperback Grimm's fairytales and was immediately gripped but their strangeness. The return to Oz is one of my favourite films of all time alongside other classics like the witches and Labyrinth. These really influenced my taste in fantasy films, even though a lot of the time I found them scary, I couldn't help but be gripped by the storylines. Great that you mentioned the BBC adaption of LTW&W I will forever be afraid of that damn wolf!!!
Thank you for this, I live in France and had only seen the Judy Garland adaptation when I was younger. I had no idea the world of OZ expanded this much and was this complex, since it has never been a cultural stake where I live. I will definitely check the books
out of curiosity: is 'neverending story' like 'oz' in france? i know it was a hit in germany (at least upon its release in the 80s), but is that the case in other european countries, or is there a different film every kid grows up with in france (not talking about the big modern blockbusters, but like something our parents/grandparents watched that just every kid sees)?
Vous allez lire une traduction française? Cela m'intéresserait de savoir si une traduction pourra garder le ton sombre de la version originale. Je crois qu'il faudrait un traducteur très sensible.
“Some people might argue that these stories shouldn’t be adapted based on the opinions of the writer.” *sweats nervously looking at my Lovecraft collection*
I mean, maybe with authors who are still alive and can still profit, but these guys have been dead for ages. They don't care if you make a movie, they don't know what movies are. They're preoccupied with their dirt naps. 😂
@@killjoyneonashes5736 are you so fragile that you have to target people's livelihoods because you're afraid of their own personal opinions? When you enter that territory it becomes dangerous because then anyone can be targeted for wrongthink. It all depends on what is considered wrongthink. What is acceptable today may not be tomorrow.
@@dibdap2373 Yeah... We aren't talking about someone having a bad opinion. We are talking about someone being discriminatory or predatory. Just because it was accepted to be a racist back then doesn't mean it was ever good. You can have a bad opinion, as long as you aren't hurting anyone.
90% of the Cthulhu Mythos as it's known today was developed by people that took inspiration from Lovecraft's works more than Lovecraft himself, so I think we're in the clear on that one. Also most people know Lovecraft's bad dated white guy opinions through memes, where as literally until this video I had no idea Baum was a pretty questionable racist himself (though he did live on the frontier), and I bet most other people don't know that either.
I've never been much of a Book reader but back in 1986 when I was 9 years old I read the Wizard of Oz book because I loved the movie so much. I was stunned by how much more detail and story there was not anywhere in the movie! I recall like it was yesterday laying on the top bunk of our bunk beds reading that paperback from cover to cover. I talked to my dad about how much more stuff was in the book and he told me 99% of the time the Books are better than the movies that are made about them. I had a Library card and I wish I used it more often to read all these other Oz Books I didn't know even existed!
I just love how the gnome king tells mombi to bow, lower, then lower even though shes fully prostate on the floor. It shows alot of his mad capped nature behind the cool.
I vividly recall watching return to oz as a child and having nightmares afterwards, but looking back the movie so wonderfully walks that line between childlike imagination and genuine terror. Its like watching a dream shift back and forth from fun childish fantasy into horrific nightmare yet it never strays too far in either direction leaving a sense of unease and curiosity that I still feel even just remembering it.
I wasn't allowed to watch the Wizard of Oz as a kid, but I remember stumbling across the book in a Church library of all places. I couldn't read all that well at the time, and I'm honestly not sure WHICH Wizard of Oz book it was, but I was both terrified of it and immensely intrigued, additionally afraid that my parents might walk in on me trying to read it. The art especially captured my imagination. I don't think I ever finished it. Some time before I'd found the book, my grandparents (against my parents' wishes) showed me Return to Oz. That terrifying movie was my first exposure to that world. I hated it so much at the time, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
@@knightonart8886 Very little, wasn't even allowed to watch Disney for a while because of "magic", even got rid of our TV entirely at one point. Had a particularly traumatic experience having to throw away all my evil Star Wars toys. Twice. :v My parents got less strict as time went on, though. My dad's pretty ashamed about it in hindsight, so I try not to give him shit about it.
@@koolgool im more in awe of how your grandparents were lenient about that stuff, considering they were the parents of your parents.... were they ashamed of tbe monsters they created?
This movie is oddly more spooky to me now as an adult than it was when I watched it as a kid. I was just fascinated by it then, especially the rollers. And omg the scene of Dorothy finding the right items gave me SUCH anxiety as a kid. I was so scared of putting myself in her place, thinking "how would I know which were the right ones?!?!"
Well im a few years ahead of you, saw it. Never recalled any drama issues. Nothing like the "death of optimus prime" which is cried alot about. I was 5 or 6. If you take the reference to the tin man and everyone which is what a few scenes. It really does feel like a alternate reality not a sequel. N Dorothy was half her age in a sequel? That was the real stretch
@@icebearforpresident6566 I admit, I haven't seen it, but it is on my list of movies to watch; correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it by the same people who made "Song of the Sea?" I've seen that one, and enjoyed it.
@@MaskedMan66 over the garden wall is a tv series! And song of the sea is a different studio :) can't remember the studio's name right now but it's the same studio that made wolfwalkers!
@@薔薇園-f7s Fair enough; we have a DVD of it in the bookstore where I work, and I made the incorrect conclusion that it was a movie. Cartoon Saloon is the company that made "Song" and "Wolfwalkers." To my eyes, anyway, there's a stylistic similarity with "Garden Wall," which was the cause of my mistake.
This was a great video, and some really first-rate analysis - particularly about the complex politics of the Nome King. I was also very into the Oz books when I was young, and similarly fascinated by them. I also, for a time, was quite defensive of "Return to Oz" over the MGM film for being "truer" to the source material. However, with time, I've come to think that "Return to Oz" actually kind of gets the theme wrong, as well. It is far too dark, and too bleak. When you read Baum's commentary on his own books in his introductions - such as the one you read in this video - he makes it clear that his readership is mostly young kids, especially young girls. He often writes about his audience in a very paternal and even saccharine way that suggests to me he never really thought of his books as being much beyond innocent childhood entertainment. The books themselves do contain lots of weird monsters and body horror and violence, but also endless detailed descriptions of how beautiful the characters' clothing is, or how delicious the food is, and how perfectly utopian Oz is (some of which you quoted in this video) and lots of other super cozy, comforting stuff. Indeed, I would argue a lot of the Oz books actually suffer from low stakes, since Baum establishes early that in his universe that no one can ever die, magic can basically solve all problems, and Dorothy and her friends are basically sinless, perfect people. But what about the monsters and all that? Well, I think we have to remember the context of the time. There were simply not a lot of kids' stories in the early 20th century, which is partially why Baum was such an important innovator. Of the kids stories that did exist, they were often European fairy tales, which of course have tons of violence and murder and disturbing scenarios. The point is that kids of that time were simply much more used to this kind of stuff being in "their" literature, and the concept of kids' media being squeaky clean hadn't yet been established in the broader culture. I'm not exactly sure when that happened - even early Mickey Mouse cartoons often seem quite dark by today's standards. The problem with "Return to Oz" is that I think it ignores the cultural context of Baum's stories in favor of taking them in this very literal way - "a young girl comes to a world full of bizarre creatures." The joy, and low stakes of Oz is stripped away in favor of a focus on emphasizing the weirdness, and how a modern child pulled from our world would react to it (most vividly embodied by the whole "Dorothy's parents think she's mentally ill" framing, which is a very bleak, late-20th century take). I think a better film would have kept all the same characters and settings and scenarios, but treated them in a vastly more playful, absurdist way. The film should have a lot more color, a lot more music, and a lot more humor. I actually think the 1951 Disney version of "Alice in Wonderland" is a good model; it tells a story that's full of weird characters and cruel villains, but it's more of a surrealist dream and less of a nightmare. I don't think Oz was ever intended to be a nightmare.
Teaching sometimes there is pain in life,but wow Glenda's the good witch that teaches to throw acid water on someone, plus did y'all ever think maybe Dorothy and friends we're not to be going where they were going
Having seen Return to Oz, but never having read any of the books, thanks for this comment! I loved the video (and still do), but I also love this critique and this alternate perspective. Y'all are wrinkling my brain.
You say the Nome King shifts between stop motion and human, but that's not true - he becomes more human as each of Dorothy's companions become ornaments and brags when Dorothy is left that soon he will be completely human. He only shifts back to stop motion when Dorothy restores the companions. It's implied he's taking some kind of form the more companions he turns into ornaments, and becomes less human as the ornaments are restored into their original bodies
I am proud to say that my husband purchased the omnibus, fully-illustrated edition of the Oz books for my son, who devoured them all once he began to read.
These are easily some of the most well written, engaging and well thought out videos on YT. You hit hugely well known series with takes, information, breakdowns and theories that I've hardly if at all seen discussed outside of forums for big nerds. I love it. I can't wait for your next video. I hope 2021 is great for you!
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Hey everybody, I totally forgot to put the music in the credits for this one so I'm going to pin that here. Thanks for watching and I hope you all have a great weekend.
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Which adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is that at 32:55 ?
I've just purchased the full collection of books for kindle with the illustrations because of your great video.
Strange that you compare the enemies of the Gnome King to British imperialists, rather than American imperialists.
Also also I had no idea Tik Tok was so hot.
This video makes so much sense to me! I am going to enjoy this. Thank you, love your content.
"Being punished by my father" *shows someone being devoured by a mountain*
Was your dad Cronus?
I laughed at that too!
Took the words out of my mouth.
He insulted the mountains. Thus angered his father who punished him severely.
"...his father, who punished him severely"
It was a metaphor. As a child of the '80s, we knew all too well what serious punishment was. It was like being dropped in Hell, itself, and tormented. Physically tormented. Just being threatened with a spanking was enough to give you whiplash. Father knew how to deliver torment with great efficiency, and he did it with great enjoyment. I'll always hate him for that. We didn't learn how to behave ourselves. We only learned how to avoid pissing him off, and the older we got, the less we cared about doing that. We just wanted to get away from him.
I think Over the Garden Wall is the closest a recent piece of media has come to capturing the vibes of these older pieces of media, or at least American ones.
I watched that for the first time this fall and you are on point, it's a fascinating work of art that I am surprised came from a place like cartoon network.
Over the Garden Wall is a true American tale
I got Otgw vibes watching Return to oz.
Rock Fact
I'm glad I'm not the only one who got OtGW vibes from this, I might look into the original Oz books and Return to Oz after this video.
The Fact that the Nome King was wearing the ruby slippers all the time is such a power move
Only real men wear sparkly, hot red heels
And that is the Gnome King
@@drawnwithlove3499 He could have perfectly hide them in his cloak but he put them on just to mess with Dorothy, *WHAT A MAN!*
YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS KWEEN!!! WERK!
@@RowdyBoy82 no
@@drawnwithlove3499 So, Is that can be described as "Gnome king got a drip" ? Don't really know English term that much, just asking
I think the Gnome King isn’t just shapeshifting. It seems more like as he turns more of Dorothy’s friends into ornaments he becomes more human like. Which always struck me as odd, was his intention to turn all of the characters into inanimate objects so that he himself could become fully human?
It's Nome King, and he says quite plainly in the movie that his aim is to become human.
That's exactly what he was doing
Nailed it.
@@MaskedMan66shut up
@@MaskedMan66shut up
As much as Return to Oz is like a hot fever dream on bath salts, I always did love the tin man's swanky metal mustache
That was Tik-Tok, the wind-up mechanical man.
It's not Tin Man, just like Chris said. That's completely different character named Tik-Tok.
Yea, TikTok isn't the same character as Tinman but he did have a swanky stache tho!
@@ChrisMaxfieldActs no thats the guy that dances for 3 seconds to one minute
Very well said 😂
Coraline is one of the rare modern films that comes very close to nailing that Return to Oz/80’s Fantasy sense of danger and horror.
My three year old loves Coraline so much that she dressed up as her for Halloween. I think she has watched that movie 2 dozen times!
I love the creepy 80’s fantasy stuff but I don’t care for Coraline.
@@linziRyan1965 I don't like Coraline either. I really don't think it hearkens to Oz or anything particularly 80s.
If anything the movie itself reminds me of Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas schlock.
Oh god, movie snobs.
Do you know who the old man next to tommy quickstep is? Is he even the wizard of oz? & Please suport the Zpoz and Portal campaign?
I never knew the Oz books were that dark. I always thought it was just this movie that took an uncanny turn for seemingly no reason. To think, Return to Oz is actually the most faithful adaptation...
They aren't dark. Truth be told, nor is this movie; while it has scary elements, it is ultimately about restoring light and order, and defeating darkness and chaos.
I guess after 1939, the year the live-action adaptation of Wizard of Oz was released, everyone somehow forgets the other sequels to the original tale, and only the first book gets adapted many, many times and then watered-down to become incredibly kid friendly.
@@Isaac-gh5ku The first live-action movie of _Wizard_ was in 1910 and the second in 1925. The book and its 39 sequels are all very much kid friendly; good thing too, as they are children's books.
There have been two live-action screen adaptations of the second book, _The Marvelous Land of Oz._ One was made for T.V. in 1961 and starred Shirley Temple as Princess Ozma, Agnes Moorehead as Mombi, and Sterling Holloway as Jack Pumpkinhead. The second was released as a kiddie matinee in movie houses in 1969 and was not brilliant, but the script and the costumes were very good. Mike Thomas, who played the Scarecrow and did all the make-up for the movie, went on to be make-up man for Michael Jackson when he played the Scarecrow in _The Wiz!_
There was also an excellent stage production which was broadcast on cable T.V. and released to home video in 1988 (or thereabouts).
In 1914, L. Frank Baum himself produced a movie of the seventh Oz book, _The Patchwork Girl of Oz,_ starring French acrobat Pierre Couderc in the title role.
@@MaskedMan66 They aren't dark, they only have dancers getting beheaded to be used by some headless witch and a gnome who tried to eat a child
Reminds me of the 2003 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
This movie scared the hell out of me as a kid. But I was completely addicted to the characters so I just traumatized myself over and over lol. I watched it more than Wizard of Oz
Any good fantasy tale has scary moments, but what on earth did you see as in any way "traumatic," especially on repeat viewings when you knew what was going to happen?
@@MaskedMan66”as a kid” 💡
I *LOVED* movies like that. Such as Labyrinth that weren't necessarily intended to be a bit spooky/eerie, but also unintentionally did or did on some lower level. It might be why I loved horror movies as a kid.
@@MaskedMan66 The evil queen with all the severed heads was pretty creepy. I was freaked out by the Roller things and was terrified of being turned to stone. I completely relate to @queenofanon9972
@@scarletros Mombi had (illegitimately) adopted the title of Princess, not Queen, and the heads were restored to their alive and well owners after Dorothy used the ruby slippers. The Wheelers were shown to be comical cowards in pretty short order once Tik-Tok walloped them and their leader. As for being afraid, yeesh, have some faith in Dorothy, willya? ;-)
The most terrifying parts of the Oz books to me was the fact that no matter what pain or "death" the creatures were subjected to, no one can really die in the land of Oz. So they just go on in torment forever from what I could gather from reading them. Not sure what happened to the ones who were eating or melted down.
They became sentient fat on the body of their devourers.
And yes, there is a fetish for that. Rule 34 HAS ALL THE THINGS!!!
@@Alondro77 eww
I remember a line that said something along the lines that one can become “destroyed” but not die. Did anyone see Torchwood Miracle Day? This is also why the Tin Woodman is the Tin Woodman. If anyone is interested you should look up his origins as well as the Tin Soldier. What really takes the cake is what happens with their severed body parts.
@@Alondro77 unlike most instances of Rule 34, I have literally zero interest in satisfying any curiosity, morbid or otherwise.
@@Alondro77 That's horrifying
The fact that _Return To Oz_ was closer to the original than its predecessor is yet another reason that the “Too dark and scary” criticisms it got were complete malarkey.
I agree with the too dark is malarkey tidbit, good examples of that are the US remakes of the Korean thriller Oldboy and French horror Martyrs both films had US remakes that absolutely butchered what made the originals great cause they were seen as too dark I still pick return to oz and even the wiz over the wizard of oz, the dark undertones add to the charm of those films
Return to Oz took the second and third Oz books by L. Frank Baum, put them in a blender, and then picked out whatever they didn't like and put in their own ideas. It has some good ideas in it and the first performance by the worst actor in cinema history, Jim Carrey.
@@caseypride why is he the worst?
I actually grew to not like the Judy Garland version because of how different it was from the book. I would love for them to do a Chronicles of Narnia on this and come out with something more truer to the book rather than a "remake" of the original movie. People seem to think the book and the original movie are one in the same and there's clearly so much more to the book that we never got to see live-action onscreen. There's a real epic adventure there and all people think when they think of the Wizard of Oz in general are ruby slippers and Over the Rainbow.
"Too dark and too scary" is not a criticism. I got my little brother into Dark Souls, and I was enamored by the Legacy of Kain series when I was a kid, where its literally a soul devouring, vampiric kind of wraith going out into a 3d world and killing monstrous abominations.
‘So, how’d you pitch your Return to Oz sequel?’
‘Well, I’d like to start off with saying that I hate children...’
As someone who will probably write books for children.
I care about their culture and future.
No one should let me babysit ever.
How in the world do you figure they hated children, especially when the lead character was played by a child-- who was loved by all in the cast and crew-- and all the incidents, bar the asylum scenes, were straight from L. Frank Baum's books?
Pitch meeting should make one on this movie wow wow wow wow wow
On a more serious note, this movie was pitched more along the lines of the 1939 musical, but changed tone during production without Disney execs being told about it. This is one of a collection of reasons Disney became hesitant about finishing production on the movie in the end, or at least under Murch's direction.
@@gerbendekker3273 I never heard about that at the time. I'd heard from the start that it would be different.
When the Nome King ate the egg and all the other Nomes went "POISON" I always lost it. Now I need an audio clip of the Nome chorus saying "POISON."
Same.
Everyone always forgets the unnerving description the Scarecrow gives about his “birth” and that the Tin man hacked himself to pieces...
Can give more details?
@@eastlynburkholder3559 To expand on both:
The Scarecrow describes slowly coming to life. Namely being blind until eyes were drawn on him, and being deaf until his creator gave him ears.
As for the Tin Man, he used to be human. He was a woodcutter that fell for a munchkin woman. Her mother didn’t approve and cursed him. Every time he swung at a tree, the axe would fly off and sever one of his limbs.
Luckily, he knew someone that could replace his body parts with metal so they wouldn’t be chopped off immediately. Unfortunately he didn’t give up his job and it got to the point of him being completely metal...
And in a later book in the series, he meets Chopfyt, who is made from his old human parts, and the human parts of another tin man, sewn together Frankenstein style.
The Tin Man was our cyborg progenitor.
@@ERON616 what. That’s pure crazy. I like it.
I can’t believe I was watching this video when my mum just says “oh yeah, I played a head in that movie” EXCUSE ME MOTHER?!
So awesome!! I loved that scene as a kid. It was scary but cool. Which one was she by the way?
We must know
@@wildchildlikeu unfortunately she just remembers "Standing in a cabinet and screaming" I tried to locate her in the scene clips but the quality and the fact the camera doesn't hover on each face means I can't find her. I'll ask her to give me a general area hah
@@TinyLifeboat123 any info?
@@DisloyalGaming she said she was in the far right corner “2 o clock as Dorothy walks in” in her words
It would be an incredible feat to see the team behind “Over The Garden Wall” adapt the entire collection of L. Frank Baum’s original “Oz” book series into a multi-season, 2D animated series!
That would be so interesting
That seems like it would honestly be better than gravity falls
I wish they would do anything at all, that cartoon is amazing
I would prefer Studio Ponoc taking that on.
It NEEDS to happen
Return to Oz is one of my favourite childhood films - I LOVED the different character designs, and Mombi was such a good villain who just went around switching heads. Perhaps it is a generational thing, I watched the original Wizard of Oz on TNT and I thought it was pretty good as a kid, but as I got older and learnt more about how it was behind the scenes it left me feeling uncomfortable. I don’t watch the original anymore, but I can still watch Return to Oz anytime. There’s also something hilarious about Return to Oz just removing anything whimsical and rolling with the “you’re insane, you’re getting electroshock therapy” storyline
If by the "original" you mean the MGM movie (which in reality is the third big-screen version of "Wizard" and the eighth Oz movie), be very careful who you listen to. No movie is easy to make, and yes, there were injuries, but everyone came out of the experience alive (which is more than can be said for actors and crew on other movies and T.V. shows), and everyone involved was very proud of their accomplishment. Judy Garland and Margaret Hamilton especially would tell you to enjoy it. 🙂
When I hear the name J.B. Whirley, I cant help but think of J.D. Rockefeller... think of it the nome king is made of stone... HE'S LITERALLY A ROCK FELLER
I think it's a reach myself, only one initial matches, lots of letters rhyme with D, Whirley isn't close at all and his life in Kansas in no way seems a caricature of a tycoon. Good pun though Robert!
@@MagusMarquillin oh yeah, well, i think that's like, your opinion, dude
@@Gunth0r _...I am the walrus._
@@MagusMarquillin Beatles exist to be squashed.
The sass in this thread is to be envied. Color me green with it.
man, the BBC narnia movies are absolute gems for the uncanny
Dawn Treader and the Silver Chair are the best, Tom Baker as Puddleglum
@Dan Manno I guess you could say I’m a fan 😏
I remember two different elementary school teachers I had taking the class to the school's library to watch LionWitchWardrobe and walking away both times feeling like a fever dream. What's worse is we never even got to finish it either time!
@@sambaxter7035 BRO 💀
@@sambaxter7035 I hate you in a very passionate and specific way
I'm sure you're a nice guy, but due to the cursed knowledge you have unintentionally bestowed upon me and for this very reason alone , I despise your very being
I feel so bad for Judy. They starved her to make her look younger for that film. And as a kid I still thought she was supposed to be like, 16.
What's even worse is shirley temple was meant to be Dorothy (which would have made more sense as younger than judy) but in the talks to the directors she was nearly molested
@@mrhalloween1152 Even though Judy Garland as Dorothy was much too old for a faithful book adaptation I think it was more successful than Shirley Temple as Dorothy would have been. It would have been known as a Shirley Temple movie (suffused with her impish cuteness). It might would have been more monetarily successful at the time but would not be the classic we have today
@@hurdygurdyguy1 Yh true I mean the age more than the talent really but yh would have been more a Shirley film
Don't feel too bad. She maybe had to eat alot of chicken soup, but she genuinely had a good time making the film. She cracks up in some of the scenes if you look close. She made history with her song and endeared herself to everyone forever. Time or nothing else can change it.
@@sandyschipper155 hope that's sarcasm 😂 she was only allowed to eat chicken soup, smoke packets a day and was on fat burning tablets, she wore a corset to push her boobs down to make her look somewhat younger, the other actors didn't want to know her or stick up for her because they purely didn't care, she was sexually harassed by some of the people who played the munchkins and they even had security stalk her to make sure she did everything on point and kept to her "diet plan"
The moment in the movie where princess Mombie sits up from her bed without her head, I vividly remember where I was and how old I was when I saw that scene. Even being an avid horror fan today has not changed the fact that that single scene with Mombie alone still scares me more than any other horror movie scene. I The stinging, orchestral music, the horrible shadow outline, her deep croaking voice, and just enough budget to make it look real. The wheelers were creepy and The Gnome King was pretty sketchy but I still can't watch the bedroom scene without shivers up my body
Mombi. Nome King.
As if that scene wasn't scary enough, all her heads were screaming at the same time as well. How the hell did I not see this movie as a kid?
@@kira-dk2mx Were you around in 1985?
I loved this movie as a kid, Kids love to be scared, it's what made Doctor Who so popular. It's been generations of igonrance at Disney that everything needs to be saccrin, more to appease a generation of ignorant parents who were fed the same narrative.
WHY ARE YOU EVERYWHERE!!!
There's just no escaping you is there? 🤣
It's the same deal with shows like Goosebumps and Courage the Cowardly Dog
I take it you've never seen "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" or "Escape to Witch Mountain" or "The Black Hole."
I love when I see a comment from you on a youtuber I haven't been recommended before. I know I'm in for a good watch!
80s movies for kids unfailingly had some element in it that was absolutely terrifying, and they should bring that back. Kids love scary media. Return to Oz is so striking in its visual designs that it's hard to forget, and it frightens adults who've never seen it before. Great vid.
Kids do really love horror, or else fnaf wouldn’t have so much merch at target in the kids section of all places .
@@AngelichuXD Scary stories books and "are you afraid of the dark" kept up the horror for kids genre into the 90s. It's enduringly popular. It's good to see there's still media like that.
I've always said it best us Gen Xer's grew up in times where we had some the best fantasy films ever made. Films that not only freaked us out but challenged our mind sets and got us out of our comfort zones.
Yes!!! Like Jim Henson’s movies, like Labyrinth and especially the Dark Crystal!
Well, I think the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" book is considered to be meant for children, yet the illustrations of charcoal and ink is downright terrifying and it's great. This is basically the creepypasta before the Internet.
You're good, but this was outstanding even by your standards. As a teacher, I always say that we should give kids media which makes them think because they often think in more open ways than we do. This video really dug into those ideas, and would be a great way to remind parents of the ability kids can show to tackle issues oft thought too complex for them.
Thank you very much that really does mean a ton to me. And I absolutely agree, all of my favorite things when I was very young had a lot of things hidden underneath their surface.
Kids are too stupid and lazy to think for themselves these days.
@@Bell_Matt That's not remotely true. The environment kids are being molded by isn't particularly friendly towards their true natures, nor humanity as a whole. Young people are naturally inquisitive and aren't clad with the layers of sophistication and self-deception like we are, and are great observers of what actually is, as opposed to what one wishes things to be.
@@Bell_Matt because the cartoons they constantly watch treats them like idiots
@@Bell_Matt I'm glad I didn't turn into the kind of adult you are. I never talk to children in a patronizing way but rather the same way I would talk to an adult. The know more than you think even if they don't express it the way you can understand. Let them think for themselves and they will.
I remember finding an old VHS tape and find it weird that the actress name is same as mine. bcuz of that I end up watching this film almost every week, basically obsessed. Later I found out my parents had named me after the actress, because of this film. I would assume my love for dark, horror, fantasy genre came from it. I remember being obsessed trying to figure out if Gump or Tik-Tok is an actual robot or if actual person in there somewhere. I mean, the practical effects from this film still holds up to this day. Absolute flawless. I would recommend young gen should at least have seen this film once. Iconic!
Tik-Tok's head and arms were animatronic, but inside his body was an acrobat named Michael Sundin, who was bent double and walking backwards.
I don't think anyone of the newer generations will ever want to watch this movie, or read the book. As someone born in 87, this looks like garbage. That's coming form a person who liked Never ending story, so the kids today will never be able to watch this or read it. They would find it boring or completely out of the wheel house that they would feel like you're punishing them. I know I would and I am 35 now. This whole world is creepy and the fuel of Nightmares for little children.
Times have changed dude, the only kid now, that would watch this, is someone who has had a really messed up life.
@@ravinraven6913i’m 21, i haven’t read the books but growing up i LOVED the wizard of oz. the wiz and return to oz are actually 2 of my favorite movies bc i love the creepiness and overall aesthetic of those 2 movies specifically. i intend to pass a lot of my love for things like this on
@@riv3r_mcneil You should read the books; they are wild, full of imagination, and hilarious in parts (Baum especially loved puns).
@@ravinraven6913 Times never change that much. As long as imagination exists, there will be Oz.
I LOVE "Return to Oz." I always thought it was a brilliant interpretation of how nightmarish Oz really is. Even the movie poster haunted me as a kid when it came out.
Oz is not "nightmarish." If you've ever been there-- which is to say, read any of the books-- you know it's a very fun, exciting place to visit.
@@MaskedMan66 Thank you. Oz in many ways is like our world. They are many pleasant things to explore and love and also a lot of horrific and dark things that's scary to come across.
@@brandonspain12345 The charm of Oz-- and for that matter Narnia and parts of Middle-earth-- is that you find things there that are very familiar. The agriculture and food of Oz are very similar to those of our world, and the language is the same. So Dorothy was in familiar, if spectacularly beautiful and colorful, surroundings when she first went to Oz.
@@MaskedMan66 yeah it has some macabre ideas and characters at times like Mombi or the gnome king but it's more exciting than terrifying. I loved visiting Oz as a kid and still like to go down the nostalgia tunnel time to time. Hell I'm 43 and my Dad got me the first five books in one for Christmas. Anyway high five fellow OZ lover.
@@RemoWilliams1227 High five back! :-)
Mombi might be classed as macabre in RtO, but in the books, she's really more of a meddlesome old woman with dangerous powers. As for the Nome King, he's a pretty typical Baum villain; take away his powers (as Dorothy did when she stole his magic belt) and his forces, and he's really not much to write home about. Of course, if he gets his hands on some powerful magic he can use, watch out! He was the closest thing to a regular villain in the Oz series.
Have you read the entire Famous Forty?
Tim Burton has said he was inspired by the Oz books. He must have gotten a lot of inspiration from the drawings.
My first book collection.
Like Jack Pumpkinhead for Jack Skelington?
@@valerievargas1548 And Sally is very similar in some regards to Scraps the Patchwork Girl.
Scraps was sewn together and brought to life by artificial means, though instead of being a corpse she was made from a quilt and scraps of material.
@@saintfighteraqua Meaning she was a real doll like Raggy Anne.
I do believe he worked on this film. The fact that Jack Skelington rides into town dressed up as Jack Pumpkinhead on a wooden horse not dissimilar to the saw horse really shows his inspiration
You can certainly see it in his stop motion
Disney kind of experimented with children's horror for a little while. Watcher in the Woods, Something Wicked This Way Comes, but I don't think they were financially successful. So, they never really tried again.
Along with Return to Oz, I watched those two religiously as well. I really wish Disney would have stuck with it. Children's horror is still one of my favorite genres and I'm 25. Nothing really creepys me out in the same way.
I have never even heard of those titles.
The Black Hole also had some strong horror elements.
What they were thinking with Something Wicked I will never know. That book is terrifying and I still have nightmares about the tarantulas.
@@CheshirePhrog They did excise some pretty great scares from the book, and that awesome moment when the kids elderly father kills the witch with a wax bullet with his smile etched on it, after showing her he did that. For those who didn’t read it, it wasn’t the bullet that killed her, it was the fear of the power a man who doesn’t fear her and how he just laughs at how ridiculous she is in his eyes now, she herself was so overcome with fear of him that she had a heart attack.
Man, the sets from this movie are gorgeous. Crazy that the visuals (mostly) hold up today. You can really see the skill and love everyone involved put into this project.
I agree, I watched it the other day and I was still blown away
Return to Oz is a masterpiece.
Wtf I thought I was the only guitar gearhead watching this
@@mattgilbert7347 make that 3
th-cam.com/video/6nZWGoD4ANM/w-d-xo.html
I showed my daughter this movie at 2 maybe 3 years old and she was pretty unaware of the creepiness. Now she is almost 11 and we just watched it again yesterday and she is completely OBSESSED now!!!
EhhAaahgkkk
I think it's important to be conscious that a child reading these books now is viewing these books through a modern lens. A child's life now is very different than it would be in 1900. I mean, if kids today find these books to be horrific, but we know that children of that time found those books to be lighthearted, fun, and cheerful, it's a clue that the rest of these children's lives outside the books was so much more horrible. At that time, children were working in factories, and disciplinary violence against children was almost universally considered "good parenting". A tin man chopping off heads of wolves would seem like nothing at all to a child who regularly experienced all kinds of violence.
I totally get what you’re saying. I am a child of the 1980s, (not that ago, I realize!) but when I read the Baum books, I found them to be absolutely “lighthearted, fun, & cheerful.” I have the whole facsimile collection, & they are still whimsical mind candy to me. I love characters like the Woggle Bug, the Sawhorse, and the Glass Cat. I didn’t think of them as even remotely dark, so it’s interesting to hear other perspectives!
The books are actually a political metaphor about the gold standard.
I guess it's not much a matter of experienced violence, it's more like a culture thing. Chopping off heads of rabbid animals that attack humans (or in this era, men) "for no reason" or are considered pests is normal, children working in dire smog-filled workstations for 12 hours a day to feed their families is normal, having sex with little girls that are passed down between the the males in the family, then "gifted" to a man of other family for the sake of updating a family's status is also normal.
But chopping off heads of pests, working grueling hours in smog for half a day and being passed down to be used since early age have always been perceived as bad stuff. Though back then these were just "necessary evils" or "just life". Kids could perceive the badness even then.
Besides, the ones saying the books were "light" were adults which, historically, tend to be completely detached from the "kid's world" and have their own brand of what a kid should be
@Angelo Griffith Not sure if it's a joke, but just in case you are serious, I mentioned references to real life, mostly culture characteristics from the time Alice was written.
During the industrial revolution, kids were sent to work in factories, dealing with dangerous and heavy machinery and materials, like uranium, asbestos, coal, petroleum, etc. They worked almost the entire day, surrounded by thick clouds of smog and were paid almost nothing, like adults. They had to work because social inequalities increased, the poor getting poorer, to the point of absolute misery, so any able-bodied person should help keep the family (barely) alive.
Fun fact, these are the conditions that lead us to have worker laws today.
During medieval times to even today, in the western, christian world, it have always been a common practice to have sex with and marry female kids. Basically the only type of person that could not be f*cked are toddlers. Also, the christian traditions say the female should bow down to the male superiority and be his property, having all aspects of her life controlled by the men responsible to her, be it brother, father, priest, husband or what not. Also, her job in society is to keep her "preciousness of purity" (virginity) to be gifted to another man by her father. Also, marrying was always a job more than a dream, it never was for love, it was for status or tradition. The concept of having a life together with someone you actually love and do not casue your demise is fairly new. This all culminates in it being normal to opress women, and a girl having to endure sexual violence, since formatie years, for her whole life.
Fun fact, the idea the female should not control her own body is the reason christians make a big deal out of abortion. The point is not to save the baby, is to take away the female's freeedom, as she should have none, and give the "divine right" of controlling when the couple breeds back to the rightful owner, the male.
@Angelo Griffith Also, forgot to mention that animals' rights are a new concept, and gratuitous violence towards "sub-human creatures", especially to "pests" was normal. That being one of the reasons hunting for sport was, and still is, a thing. Even christian traditions say the animals were created to serve men, as god made them to keep company to Adam in Paradise, and are to be made sacrifices in god's name, or used for food. Coexistence with nature is a new concept.
Fun fact, the difference between a "normal animal" and a "pest" is the animal's economic and social importance. If it cause profit or no economical change, and if it's socially symbolic or protected, then it's an animal. If it causes economical decline, spoiling products or getting in the way of production, and if it is hated or nobody cares, then it's a pest. Wolfs were considered pests for quite a while.
Another fun fact. The closest we got of coexisting with nature while part of mainstream society was by "controlling" nature and make it blend with urban spaces. That conept is where gardens, lawns, plant pots and neatly planting trees in important buildings' entrances come from. The concept of just letting nature do it's own thing, giving space to nature and allowing it in our lives as it is, is an absurdly new idea
Since I had never read these before, I started reading them to my daughter. We're on the fifth one now. One of my favorite parts is that the Emerald City isn't even actually green, and that whenever anyone enters it they have to put on those green goggles to just make it look like it's all green. That was a nice touch.
That was only in the first two books; after Ozma took the throne, the City became truly green. The books are excellent; do you plan to read all forty?
@@MaskedMan66 all FORTY? WTH? Really? Or u mean all 4 books?
@@OikPoinFive I mean forty. :-)
L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen Oz books, and after he died (in fact, his last book was published posthumously), his wife Maud gave her blessing to the publishers to continue the series, which was taken over by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote nineteen books. John R. Neill, who illustrated most of the Oz books, wrote three, Jack Snow wrote two, Rachel Cosgrove wrote one, and the final book, "Merry Go Round in Oz," published in 1963, was written by Eloise Jarvis McGraw and her daughter Lauren.
Return To Oz is a film I watched as a kid and I remember loving it but feeing conflicted at the time. I loved the story, but when you realise that all the main characters she meets are reflections of the abuse she has lived in childhood makes you realise this no ordinary film! I still turn to this film today. It is a brilliant film in all sense of the words, it’s harrowing, thought provoking and mind bending
Dorothy has received no "abuse." The closest she got (in Kansas) was when she almost had to go through shock therapy. You have to understand that despite the ill-advised MGM-type framework story, the Oz in this movie is no dream, but quite real. Dr. Worley was not the Nome King's inspiration, he was the Nome King's agent. The blonde girl who rescued Dorothy after the power went out really was Ozma, not just what became Ozma. I was around when this movie came out, and both the press for the movie and the novelization made it clear that Oz was real.
@@MaskedMan66Just because Oz is real doesn't mean it's not based off something. A lot of media have real fairy or fantasy lands that also serve as a look into the mind of the main character. Kind of like Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And Dorothy was a child during the Great Depression living with her aunt and uncle. Although she may not have been abused by her guardians, she was definitely abused by her environment, feeling the effects of neglect, starvation, overworking, isolation, and eventually her time in the asylum. I'm certain she was able to latch on to some scary looking people in Oz *because* of how much she could relate to them through her own traumas. They may be real, but they are also very representative of the things Dorothy has to deal with every day.
@@uafgames9061 Your first statement makes no sense. Oz existed for centuries before Dorothy ever went there, even before the Wizard did. In fact, one of the first outsiders to enter Oz was a knight of Merrie England.
The Great Depression began in 1929; Dorothy's first trip to Oz was in 1900, or as RtO has it, 1899. All Dorothy had to "deal with" were the necessary hardships of farm life, but she was not one to give in to bad feelings; quite the contrary, she was very bright and curious, and she always had Toto there to make her laugh.
And of course eventually, Dorothy and her aunt and uncle moved to Oz full time after her fifth time visiting there.
@@MaskedMan66 oh shoot, I didn't even know all that 😅 Thanks for educating me
@@uafgames9061 You're welcome! Thank you for being receptive!
I preferred Return to oz as it reminded of the dark crystal film which pulled no punches when it came to darker topics.
Damn those clueless dunderheads at Netflix for cancelling The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. They buy the rights to make it because they wanted to make a niche, cult hit to bring in subscribers, then get upset that it was a cult hit with little mainstream appeal!? *THAT* *JUST* *MAKES* *THEM* *LOOK* *FLAKEY* *AND* *UNRELIABLE* !! Who the hell would want to work for a company that cancels you after you get an *Emmy!!*
@@Popcultureguy3000 I agree I view A0R cancellation as the dumbest move ever, but it is becoming a theme on Netflix they only keep a show going for 1/2 seasons and if its lucky if it gets 3. The fall out from this is lack of trust in the platform.
@@Popcultureguy3000 wait they canceled it?! I loved that show and I saw it before the movie!
@@Explorerofshadows Right after it won the Daytime Emmy for *Best* *Children’s* *Program,* yes, really.
@@whitewolf1743 Netflix claims to have cancelled it because it cost way too much to produce it. Which yeah I get it but they could of at least given us 1 more season considering how excellent the first season was
I believe the Gnome King was shifting his looks based on how many people from Oz he had captured. If you watch, each time he transforms one into an object in his room, he become more human like. And he becomes less human like as they transform back.
Dustin Chlystek that's exactly right. There was one point where he tells Mombi that he will be completely human the second Dorothy failed at her attempt and be transformed into an ornament.
@@melissacooper4282 @Dustin Chylstek Yep, at 1:27:10 in the movie he says "Soon they'll be no one left who remembers Oz, and I will be completely human." In reference to Dorothy being the only one left in the ornament room to have any remaining guesses (and at that point, she only has one guess left).
@@VueFromTheTop I think its suppose to be about the doctor being a monster for what he does but wont be once Dorothy dies since presumably its because of her escaping that the police come and sentence him to death if the whole real world to oz counterparts are 100% true. The Nome King looks more human when her friends get transformed because the doctor was friendly to Dorothy and tried to make her less scared, then when she escaped he became the doctor became less friendly so the Nome King was less human. Though Oz has this weird real world base, personally i think the Nome King becoming human was just about the doctors being seen as good and being turned into ornaments was the electrotherapy. Also the Nome King had the ruby slippers and if i remember right, they had many different powers so i don't know how or why he needed oz to be forgotten to become "completely human".
@@melissacooper4282 Yep just rewatched and saw that. Never caught it before; just noticed the changes lol. Catch something new each run I suppose!
Yes Dustin I noticed that the first time I watched the film. He would have become the Doctor from the asylum after all of them were captured. At least they tried to have some characters from Dorothy's real world as Oz characters (like the nurse).
The scariest thing about the “Bumpy man” is Neurofibromatosis is a very real disease. And while the disease is mostly benign, the tumors can grow on the outside of the the body.
That's not at all what he had; that was just how he looked. Or do you think the Frogman suffered from some horrible ailment that turns people into frogs? ;-)
@@MaskedMan66 pretty sure she just means visually he reminds her of disease
@@MaskedMan66 I'm somewhat surprised to hear people considered the OZ books horrific. As a kid, and even now, the descriptions of the characters make me laugh. The vibe I always got was something like vaudeville or Loony Toons, where these broad archetypes feign injury or suffering for our amusement. The Hungry Tiger wanting to eat babies is really, really funny. We know, and the characters know, that he won't ever do that; it's a farcical character quirk.
The ending of the first Oz story, where the Wizard is revealed to be all bluster, really sets the tone. It says not to take any of what follows too seriously because it's all a show.
@@episodenull Exactly, and it's worth noting that the Wizard eventually came back, and learned real magic from Glinda and Ozma, and became a bona fide Wizard. :-)
Baum wrote a short story featuring the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger in which they finally made up their minds to assert themselves as wild beasts and do what they claimed to want to do. So off they went into the Emerald City to find a fat baby for the Tiger to eat and an adult for the Lion to tear to pieces.
Instead, they ended up taking pity on a lost baby and his mother by reuniting them!
@@Birdyboys Reminds me more of a man with balloons stuffed into his suit.
One detail I liked in the book was that it specifically say everyone needs to wear green tinted glasses when entering the Emerald city, it means the city might not be green at all. Return to Oz was my favorite movie as a child, and the only one we actually owned an original copy of, specifically because it scared me. I was the type of child who liked to challenge my fears. I didn't watch the other movie until more recently and I was quite disappointed, it's cute but there are so many songs there isn't much space left for actual plot.
Which "other movie?" There are nearly 20 Oz movies.
@@MaskedMan66 I meant the famous one from 1939. The movie Return to Oz was filmed as a sequel of it, they even paid the rights to use ruby slippers.
@@NuvolaRoss It isn't a sequel. Frankly, I've always said that using the ruby slippers was Walter Murch's only mistake in making RtO. He should have used the silver shoes or the Nome King's magic belt, and just let the movie be its own entity.
@@MaskedMan66 - Completely agree!! I was disappointed the silvers were ruby. But Fairuza Balk made an AWESOME Dorothy!
@@LAdivad That she did! I loved how she interacted with her companions as if they were just people. Her best scene was when she comforted Tik-Tok, wiped away his oily tears, and gave him that wonderful smile of hers-- which she still has, and which always, even now, turns her back into Dorothy whenever she flashes it. 🙂
"when I found them, sitting alone, covered in dust, in some dark corner of my library, I felt like I had recovered some lost treasure..." My jaw is on the floor, I had the exact same experience! It was also an early experience of the cognitive dissonance of liking both a movie and its source material even when they're different.
That's hardly dissonance; even L. Frank Baum himself liked to change things up a bit. He co-created a stage musical of "Wizard" in 1902 which was vastly different from the book. He also made some silent films, one of which was a mashup of "Wizard" and "The Scarecrow of Oz."
Problem not a second thought was given, I work with substance abuse patients and we accept/appreciate donations when we can them.
Once, we received a book that was heavily suggesting drugs are the only way for some people. Not the best book for addicts.
My daughter loved the Return to Oz movie, and she was 8 when we watched it. Needless to say she LOVES horror.
I actually know a guy who is covered in "bumps", it's not cancer, it's a skin condition, and he's one of the sweetest guys I've ever met.
RtO isn't a horror movie. And the Bumpy Man is just bumpy; he has no disease.
@@MaskedMan66 RtO is for sure a horror. I literally have memories of this film where I think my imagination is fucking with me, only to realize "Nope. That shit was real." The existential dread when you realize that all the old characters are dead and anything that still is, does not look as it once did; subtle commentary on age and mortality of everything you love, including the parental figure of Oz himself.
@@kiandocherty3589 No, it's a fantasy adventure film, and no fantasy adventure is complete without a few scares, especially when the scares usually end up coming from ultimately harmless beings, like the Wheelers.
Nobody died; they were turned to stone by an enchantment, as you'll remember. In actual fact, nobody can die in Oz.
@@MaskedMan66 It does not need characters to die to be horror. Return To Oz is categorized as "dark fantasy" which is basically fantasy mixed with horror.
@@TOMNICE I don't know who categorizes it like that; in all the places where I've seen it catalogued (such as the book store where I work), it's either been among the regular, non-"dark" fantasy movies or in with the other family films.
It's a real shame that outside of its cult following this movie is criminally underrated.
Don't worry, my son actually sat through this as his first live action film. The old movies will not be forgotten easily.
I will carry its legacy on
Tim Burtons hidden Gems
@@LEXICON-DEVIL Burton had nothing to do with this.
It's one of my all-time favorites 💙
Return to OZ is extremely underrated. The overall tone, mood, visuals, def left a lasting impression on me. Always loved the room at the end of the film with all of the ornaments Dorthy has to touch/guess.
You mean her bedroom? That's where she was at the end of the film, before running out into the barnyard to play with Toto.
I always think of that room when I enter an antique shop 💚
This vid made me want to read the Oz books
i did first. it is good.
Same
me too🐥
@Navarro Dodge Same, Books like that just sort of accumulate in schools, tucked back in dark corners of classrooms.
Pinocchio is also very similar. He actually murders a kid with a textbook in the original book.
Return to Oz is a complete masterpiece. It gets everything perfect. I wish it was better received.
You and me both! So many people get it wrong: "Why did they make Oz so dark?" they wail. "'They' didn't," sez I, "the Nome King and Mombi did, and Dorothy came back to put things right. By the end, we see Oz as it should be."
Totally and completely agreed
My guess lots of people grew up with the 1939 film, and somehow lots of people forgotten about the other sequels to the first book. And then people started making many adaptations of the first book, and only the first book, in which all the dark elements of the first book are heavily removed so that their kids will only read the very kid-friendly version of Wizard of Oz.
@@Isaac-gh5ku The books are all kid-friendly-- they're children's books, after all! But you're right about the MGM movie becoming all that people knew of Oz after a while. Practically every adaptation of the story for a long time was based, not on the book, but on the Judy Garland film.
@TheMaidofMiddleEarth Indeed! I thought she was an excellent Dorothy. I've been meaning to write her a fan letter for decades; I really must get cracking on that!
The 1980’s was an complete era of creepy children’s films and animation.
No, it wasn't! It was a time of high adventure and great fun!
I missed it
@@PrincessMavenKittyDarkholme Those wonderful movies are still out there! Besides RtO, look especially for _The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Last Unicorn, The NeverEnding Story, Willow,_ and _My Neighbor Totoro._ :-)
I wish our media was challenging again.
And I don't mean controversial.
a complete
18:44 "the scariest film that everyone collectively experienced in their childhood" is pretty accurate, though I always loved it as a kid. The one film that really did my head in as a child was The Peanut Butter Solution.
I am 39 and remember the Peanut Butter Solution. It took a lot of googling to figure out the name of it and yes it was freaky!
Watership down has entered the chat…
@@louannablackburn6958 I've never heard of it.
Has no one here ever seen Watership Down?
@@Not_Always Oh yes. That one. But Disney facing the darkness, as another commentator posted, only came *after* their Bowdlerization of The Fox and the Hound.
The movie was shot more for the tone of the actual storyline. Disney didn’t want this and that is why they fired the guy in the first place. The Disney touch is usually heart filled and a clear divide of good and bad. The books were more about human nature and how it’s not always pretty. It also shows there is not always clear line of good and bad.
If you are familiar with black cauldron, the black hole and watcher in the woods you will see why they wanted to avoid that tone. It wasn’t a hit and it wasn’t marketable for any other projects like rides.
Actually, the good and the bad were always clearly delineated; as it says in the first book:
"The leader of the Winged Monkeys flew up to her, his long, hairy arms stretched out and his ugly face grinning terribly; but he saw the mark of the Good Witch’s kiss upon her forehead and stopped short, motioning the others not to touch her.
“'We dare not harm this little girl,” he said to them, “for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil.'"
Some villains, such as Ugu the Shoemaker and Queen Coo-Ee-Oh, were reformed after being transformed (in both their cases, into birds), but no villain's actions were ever motivated by altruism; they were always after being cruel and selfish.
I mean, they were correct in their decision, as the tone of the movie led to a box office of half their budget.
Black cauldron was the first movie I saw in theaters at 3
The scene when Mombi woke up headless while simultaneously calling out Dorothy's name from another room freaked me out as a child. Over time I bought the movie on VHS, DVD, and eventually blu ray cause I still loved it.
Dude I couldn't sleep for a week!
The Wheelers scared the crap out of me. Followed closely by the headless Mombi waking up. And yes, love this movie to this day
I think the fact of all these specific fears being represented in Return to Oz was part of why I loved it when I was 4 and wore the VHS out. Dorothy shows so much courage and gets through every single one of these horrors intact. Something about her unchanging face, like unlike Judy Garland even when she's scared she shows it in a very real way rather than an over the top camp way. And very few times in Return to Oz does Dorothy smile. My favourite line is "It can't be helped now Jack." That rather traditional attitude of courage and cool headedness was what made her such a great role model to me.
She smiled a lot, actually, did Fairuza, and in my estimation, she is probably just about the best portrayer of Baum's Dorothy; innocent, matter-of-fact, practical, loving, unflappable, and sweet as pie.
Judy Garland, however, was not at all "camp" in any of her reactions. Whatever emotion she portrayed, she did it with total sincerity.
Judy showed emotion too
Will Vinton and his crew made their sequences while simultaneously creating the absolutely beautiful feature The Adventures of Mark Twain. 1985 was probably the greatest year in cinema history
That's pretty cool that Francis Coppola, Spielberg and Lucas stepped up to the plate for Murch.
Filmmakers were a real close-knit bunch in them days.
The scene of the queen waking up with the entire chamber with the heads screaming gave me nightmares
Yup...
DOROTHY GAYLE!!!!!!!!
@@Forgiven2007 Gale.
The fucking wheelers gave me nightmares those creepy fucks
@@widdershins5383 You're kidding, right? They were very shortly revealed as bullies and cowards, in the story for comic relief.
I always thought the lunch pails were the shit, imagine plucking a free ready-made meal from a tree
i always wanted one SO bad
That's kind of like what Kraft services feels like on a movie set, the bell rings someone yells "lunch!" And instantly you're in front of a long table filled with deliciousness and a cook to make your food the way you want it served. It was one of my favorite parts of Hollywood.
Agreed
@@emilyknight2435 I always wanted to try them. Sound so yummy.
This was a fantastic analysis, bravo sir!! I loved your take on it, very perceptive. I loved the 1939 Oz flick and the Return to Oz movie. Very dark, eerie and non pandering to children in a whimsical format, more a dark showcase that lives long within the psyche. I first seen this film in 1988, it still hits me the same way today. A 42 year old man still haunted by that movie, in a good way. Perfect sequel. Perfect review. Kudos to you sir.
It's not "dark." The whole point of the movie is Dorothy bearing the light of hope and restoration.
Agree
I think the Dark Crystal is pretty scary for kids. You know, genocide and all. I will rewatch Return to Oz as I haven’t seen that in decades. 😊
Yes!! The Skeksis AND Gelflings are terrifying.
@@nickperkins8477 Jen and Kira aren't even scary, let alone "terrifying." As a kid, I had a crush on Kira.
You did notice that the genocide was off camera and many trine in the past, right?
I’ma (80s baby) big fan of the Dark Crystal (1982) & I recently had my kids watch the new Dark Crystal Age of Resistance (2019) show on Netflix which takes place before the mass Gelfling genocide. We really loved it (& we very much love the dark stuff especially stop motion like Coraline) Lore & mother Augera are two of our favorite characters & we really liked that we learned about all the different Gelfling tribes & how some of Thra’s creatures came to be but it’s really the new Skeksis characters that make the show worth watching, & they get way darker with all the characters & their archs. And if the show isn’t enough for you, we have found that there’s even literature like graphic novels about the Dark Crystal & Thra😉
@@soflovixen The T.V. show is so full of inconsistencies as regards the movie that I can't even consider it as being anything other than an alternate universe.
Right off the bat, they've got the urRu and the Skeksis already being around *before* the Crystal got cracked; the movie said explicitly, and several times, that it was after the Crystal cracked that the two races appeared.
the wheelers used to scare the SHIT out of me as a kid, especially the scene when Dorothy looks through the key hole
But not after they were revealed as cowardly comic relief, right?
I never understood the fear of the wheelers, queen mombi was the one who scared the hell outta me as a kid
@@bezoticallyyours83 Princess Mombi, you mean, and it was an assumed title.
The crazy faces on top of their heads freaked me out as a kid! Plus the creepy squeaking sounds before you first see them in the movie.
@@hooksncrosses3419 Did you notice that it was the same noise as the wheels of the gurney that Dorothy rode in the asylum made?
Literally was just thinking "it's been awhile since I've seen a In Praise of Shadows vid". So I'm very happy now 😄
I can't handle him releasing videos more often, he keeps recommending great things that I don't have time to read/watch.
There was a time when Disney didn't shy away from the darkness. Remember a little movie called 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'? Now, the company is in a different kind of darkness with no end in sight.
A couple decades earlier, there was _The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh._
Watched something wicked this way comes a few months ago, it was such an amazing experience. Still can't believe it was made by Disney
I saw this movie in the theater at the age of 5 when it was released. It definitely had a lasting effect on me. The Wheelers horrified me. The queen with all her heads was deeply unsettling. The desert gave me genuine fear, and the townspeople turned to stone mortified me. I remember being very quiet after the movie instead of the usual chatterbox about what I saw. It wasn't until years later doing some research on my own that I found your conclusions about it having the most accurate tone of all the movies to be correct, and it put my overall view on the franchise in a completely different light. I WILL say though, that to this day I still say, "...and then my thought wound down" when I'm tired and my brain doesn't work so well anymore, and it makes me grin a little.
Mombi wasn't a queen.
same. this film was traumatizing
I saw it when I was five, in the theatre too and ran out of the movie, litterally screaming.
Yes. I saw this in theaters as a young girl in Germany. I am nearing forty, and I am still afraid of the wheelers. They have never stopped terrifying me.
@@MaskedMan66 I legiterally do not remember them being found out as stupid or useless or funny, I just remember being viscerally terrified of them.
25:00 See, I always thought his appearance shifted because of the characters getting turned into ornaments, like, their life force was giving him more power, or something. With each one that gets turned, he becomes more and more human, but when Dorothy guesses correctly and releases the Scarecrow and then the others in kind, he turns back into a rock monster.
That's made clear from his dialogue.
That's how I always understood it too.
Makes me wonder, where was he, and Ozma during the story of the Original Wizard of Oz. The Gnome King explained, Emerald City stole the emeralds from him.
@@Joe_334 recovering from their loss, in the books at least, this is a whole bustling economy in the nome kingdom, so, they had more important things to do, but when the emerald city was at its weakest, in a transition of power, the nome king decided to strike on a people that had long since forgotten of the tension
@@Joe_334 It's Nome King, and as is shown in the movie, his realm is across the desert from Oz. It is located under the neighboring land of Ev, which featured in "Ozma of Oz," the third Oz book, and the one in which the Nome King made his debut.
Dude, the Nome king isn't becoming more human to suit the mood of the scene. He's becoming more human because people are failing to guess what ornament the scarecrow is and becoming ornaments themselves. Every time that happens he gets a little more human. He even says that's his goal.
Is there anything that explains why he wants to become human? Aside from possibly ridding himself of his weakness to eggs, I can't find anything in the text stating why this is his goal. Although the process of removing anyone with memory of Oz puts me in mind of things like Neverending Story or American Mcgee's Alice: Madness Returns. Just something I have been puzzling over for the past 30 years or so.
@@EmerySea maybe emeralds were like a power source to him and when all of the other characters turned into them he got more power. It could explain why he was so bent on having emeralds
@@motorwayt-s628 I think the emeralds were more about him attempting to retrieve stolen property. When Dorothy is falling through the mountain, you can see he has no shortage of the things. If the emeralds are connected to memories, all that would be forgotten would be the Emerald City. What happened to the rest of Oz? Where are the good witches of the North and South? What happened to the cities the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion ruled over?
The Nome King doesn't have any motives, but your observation may be true about the Gnome King
@@sheeplehunter9651 I don't really think it's necessary to be so pedantic about the spelling but, since you brought it up, it is spelled "Nome King" in the books.
I saw this movie as a kid and will never forget that hall of heads. This movie is absolutely a nightmare and I love it!
It isn't a nightmare, it's just a fun fantasy flick with some scary bits.
The animated Disney movie of Alice still terrified me as a child. I actually used to cry around rabbits because I thought they’d trap me in a tea themed hellscape.
I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with my 4th grade class. It's perfect for them. They love the violence and the silliness and the weirdness. They start to understand that the characters are more than just song and dance opportunities.
Violence and silliness coalesce into one of the bits that made me laugh as a child, and that's when, in describing how his enchanted axe cut him to bits, the Tin Woodman says, "The Wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, and at first I thought that was the end of me." LOL
My 4th grade teacher read us much of the series, that was in 1960. I have loved it ever since, and shared it with my children and grandchildren.
@@bonniecandace Have you read the whole Famous Forty?
I read the OZ books starting in the early 1960s. My dad brought me his own childhood edition of The Silver Princess in OZ when I was eight years old, in bed with the flu. He had collected a shit ton of OZ books when he was a kid, and now at age 68, I have them all with me still.
I LOVED Return to OZ. I thought, "Holy shit, this movie gets it." It felt dark throughout...really disturbing, as you have noted. It surprises the hell out of me that Disney even MADE a movie like this, cuz this is so atypical of the usual Disney sugary dreck.
I love your nuanced and detailed analysis. REALLY insightful, considerably researched. Thank you for this.
Keep them safe and pass them onto those you know who will also treasure those rare books and pass them on into further generations.
I wish I still had those books from when I was younger. My yellow brick road forked into 10 different paths and we could only take what we could physically carry. Which turned out to be our clothes and enough supplies to keep us warm for the winter. Sadly the books got left behind.
@@OldieWan That's a shame. Sometimes tornadoes disrupt our lives, and the only path forward is to let go of our former expectations. Best wishes to you.
Disney had a dark period. I'd say from about the time Walt Disney died up until Beauty and the Beast, they made stuff like Newsies and The Black Cauldron and Return to Oz and had very much lost sight of their brand as competition like Jim Henson caught up. These movies feel very off brand for Disney now.
@@phoebexxlouise You think _The Little Mermaid_ was dark???
Except that it didn't "feel dark throughout." There were dark deeds underway, but only by the villains. Dorothy was all about light and hope, which she restored to Oz.
I come back and rewatch your older videos every month and I love them every time. No other channel is like that for me and you have gotten me through some hard times. Thank you
When I was a kid I loved both this and Labyrinth with David Bowie in it. But I had both on unlabelled (or messily-scribble labelled) tapes, recorded off the TV, so my mind always mixed them together. I wondered if there were more films like them, but I had no idea how to even describe the genre. "Fantasy" to me was knights and dragons, it certainly didn't have robots!
This fantasy had a robot, or rather, a clockwork man (and truth be told, the "Star Wars" movies are classed as space fantasy rather than science fiction). And there has never been a decade more blessed in its fantasy films than the 1980's. Along with RtO and "Labyrinth," there was "The Dark Crystal," "Dream Child," "The Neverending Story," "Dragonslayer," "Legend," and a host of others. :-)
Yes Labyrinth is a film I watched obsessively as a kid but was also terrified by! The Last Unicorn I feel also falls into this nightmarish children’s film category, the harpy still scares me
You should check out the Netflix Dark Crystal Age of Resistence.
Also another modern example of this could be Coraline.
@@MaskedMan66 Ladyhawke
@@couchpotato3197 That show was dreadful.
Although not intended to be a faithful adaptation of the original books, I feel that 1978’s The Wiz is a scarier film than Return to Oz. Just like with Return to Oz, The Wiz is set in a seemingly desolate and abandoned land which gives an overall sense of uneasiness. It also has some legitimately scary scenes which are sure to stick with the viewer.
The puppet in the Subway is what did it for me. Then the pillars coming to life was also terrifying. Evilene the witch was scary too.
@@Hervinbalfour scarier?
I think some of the desolation was unintentional with the low budget feel the movie had (I checked the budget and wow they spent 24 mill. and got back 21
..u said 'the wiz' and here im thinking seinfeld.. XD
I know it made me cry according to my mom lol The part with the flat ppl still creeps me out. I think it all just felt too real lol
The Wheelers were Truly frightening the moment they entered the screen.
Yes. Absolutely. Freddy has nothing on The Wheelers.
truly gave me the creeps just like the flying monkeys..and I saw it (return to oz) in 3d as a kid!
Boo!
Flying monkeys
~we are terror for kids~
Wheelers.
~hold our beer flying monkeys ~
That lady swapping her heads was a nightmare. Anyone making this film was on acid.
I do agree it’s very difficult to capture that dark fantasy, yet whimsical tone, especially in Hollywood now, so I think the 80s was probably the best time for the movie to come out when dark fantasy was more prevalent in Hollywood cinema.
I remember seeing this movie as a child, and not having previously read the books, really fell in love with the movie.
To this day, the ending has left a faint, but vain hope within me, that I might look into the mirror and find Ozma looking back at me.
Have you read the books since? Because you never know when she might be looking in on you via the Magic Picture. :-)
The Nome King wasn't going from stop motion to live actor to be more personable to Dorothy, but rather his transformations were tied to gaining new ornaments in his collection. Losing those ornaments turned him back, as well, which is why he got mad and stopped the game.
He was literally gaining the life force of the people he trapped as ornaments. That's why he didn't transform any more when Tik Tok was transformed, because Tik Tok was never alive.
@@gsesquire3441 IIRC he said, "Soon there'll be no-one left who remembers Oz, and I will be completely human."
@@MaskedMan66 the story sounds dark, twisted and complicated. Not a bad thing, I just forgot how interesting stories used to be.
@@whitedragoness23 The only dark thing about the story is the pall that the Nome King has cast over Oz, but the *point* of the story is that it has to be dispelled, and that is what Dorothy, bearing the light of her optimism, has come to do. It's also neither twisted nor complicated; it's a pretty straightforward story, really. :-)
Where was the Nome King and Princess Ozma, when Dorothy came through the first time trying to get home? Is that ever explained...? I understand that he claims Emerald City stole his emeralds, and well the Ruby Slippers just fell out of the sky.
@@Joe_334 it was barely touched on in the movie, but that Deadly Desert separated the land of Oz from the other magical lands. It also separates the magical lands from the rest of the world.
Ozma's father was deposed and she cursed around the time the Wizard came to Oz. She may not have trusted Dorothy until after her adventures with the Witch, but then she quickly left Oz.
Have you ever seen “The Wiz” the one where Michael Jackson is the scarecrow? I remember that being super creepy and almost giving a dystopian feel with it being set in a urban oz with random destructed buildings.
I know a lot of people hated on that version but I LOVED it. It took well needed flavor, with some acid trip creations and made it a non stop vision to watch. Yes the storyline had issues, and yes the movie had continuity issues....but that subway scene still haunts me rent free.
I was searching for this comment, that movie was my return to oz. it’s still super creepy.
@@CreativeCreatorCreates THE SUBWAY SCENE! Wow, I completely forgot about this movie, but now that I remember it, that was super freaky. I wish it got more attention, due to how unique it was.
I was surprised The Wiz wasn't even mentioned...
Ease on Down the Road
One of my favorites as a kid! Movies for kids nowadays have nothing on what we had in the 80s. The Dark Crystal, The Secret of N.I.M.H., Labyrinth, The NeverEnding Story...
What about willow?
My grandma’s cousin was jack haley, tin man, so that’s my claim to fame
Very stellar claim !!!!! Wonderful!
neat, I actually had 2 people on different sides of my family who knew walt Disney, one played polo with him before he was famous and the other made billboards for him
Nice to meet you!
My claim to fame is that my great grandma "Hoo-Hoo" sat next to Rube Goldberg in a restaurant and asked him to draw her a picture on the back of a paper placemat, and we have it hanging on our wall today
What was her name?
I just remembered “Dorothy Must Die” is a thing. I had only seen e wizard of oz movie before reading it and the tone difference hit me like a sledgehammer
That series is good. A lot of it didn't make much sense, but it was still a good adaption of the original book. I didnt like the side stories that linked into some of the other characters tho, I did like Dorothy's short story tho.
@@gravityfalls1826 It's a mockery of the book, no better than that "Wicked" rubbish.
Same! It hit me right in the middle of the video. I really liked that book!
@@ArtByTrahnay *smh*
My favorite thing about the book is how Dorothy is played up like a vain, yet charismatic starlet from the golden age of Hollywood. especially how they described what she is wearing.
I used to think that this movie was actually a nightmare I had. Did I imagine an odd oz movie where there was an evil queen who wanted to steal the faces of beautiful young people? Or did I actually dream that one?
An evil princess, or false claimant to the title of Princess, more like. In the books, it was a vain princess named Langwidere, whose thirty heads were all her own.
I thought it was a dream too
This video is excellent I love it! and very personal to my own experiences as a kid. Especially when you mentioned finding these books amongst others as I had, when I found an old paperback Grimm's fairytales and was immediately gripped but their strangeness. The return to Oz is one of my favourite films of all time alongside other classics like the witches and Labyrinth. These really influenced my taste in fantasy films, even though a lot of the time I found them scary, I couldn't help but be gripped by the storylines. Great that you mentioned the BBC adaption of LTW&W I will forever be afraid of that damn wolf!!!
Just FYI, the abbreviation among Narnia bibliophiles is LWW. ;-) What particularly scared you about Maugrim?
I loved return to oz as a kid but could never rent it because someone just never returned it
it's on Disney+
Return to Blockbuster it was not.
I mean, can you blame em?
My bad man.
I think that was me.
Next time someone asks me why I'm crushing people under my great weight, my excuse will be that I have a "bad disposition".
Return to Oz is a beautiful, haunting dream! Not a nightmare. It’s been one of me favorites since childhood. 💖
One of my favorites. Even my kids watch it.
Isn’t it interesting! 20 years after watching this movie I still think about it, but I don’t ever remember being afraid.
XD The Nome King and Mumbi scared the shit out of me as a kid. ESPECIALLY the Nome King.
Tell me, how do you think the weelers aren’t scary?
@@Geraldkviewsyearsago Because they are very shortly revealed to be bullies and cowards. From then on, they're pretty much comic relief.
Charles Dodgson being Alice’s abuser is an urban legend. There is absolutely no proof of this.
The glass cat was always one of my favorite characters. I still love her endlessly and her beautiful pink brains
She loves herself too.
You can see 'em work!
Thank you for this, I live in France and had only seen the Judy Garland adaptation when I was younger. I had no idea the world of OZ expanded this much and was this complex, since it has never been a cultural stake where I live. I will definitely check the books
out of curiosity: is 'neverending story' like 'oz' in france? i know it was a hit in germany (at least upon its release in the 80s), but is that the case in other european countries, or is there a different film every kid grows up with in france (not talking about the big modern blockbusters, but like something our parents/grandparents watched that just every kid sees)?
Vous allez lire une traduction française? Cela m'intéresserait de savoir si une traduction pourra garder le ton sombre de la version originale. Je crois qu'il faudrait un traducteur très sensible.
“Some people might argue that these stories shouldn’t be adapted based on the opinions of the writer.”
*sweats nervously looking at my Lovecraft collection*
I mean, maybe with authors who are still alive and can still profit, but these guys have been dead for ages. They don't care if you make a movie, they don't know what movies are. They're preoccupied with their dirt naps. 😂
@@killjoyneonashes5736 are you so fragile that you have to target people's livelihoods because you're afraid of their own personal opinions? When you enter that territory it becomes dangerous because then anyone can be targeted for wrongthink. It all depends on what is considered wrongthink. What is acceptable today may not be tomorrow.
@@dibdap2373 Yeah... We aren't talking about someone having a bad opinion. We are talking about someone being discriminatory or predatory. Just because it was accepted to be a racist back then doesn't mean it was ever good. You can have a bad opinion, as long as you aren't hurting anyone.
90% of the Cthulhu Mythos as it's known today was developed by people that took inspiration from Lovecraft's works more than Lovecraft himself, so I think we're in the clear on that one.
Also most people know Lovecraft's bad dated white guy opinions through memes, where as literally until this video I had no idea Baum was a pretty questionable racist himself (though he did live on the frontier), and I bet most other people don't know that either.
@ElyC West Dang, you gotta be bad when the other racists tell you you're taking it too far. 😬
I've never been much of a Book reader but back in 1986 when I was 9 years old I read the Wizard of Oz book because I loved the movie so much. I was stunned by how much more detail and story there was not anywhere in the movie! I recall like it was yesterday laying on the top bunk of our bunk beds reading that paperback from cover to cover. I talked to my dad about how much more stuff was in the book and he told me 99% of the time the Books are better than the movies that are made about them. I had a Library card and I wish I used it more often to read all these other Oz Books I didn't know even existed!
There are forty in all!
@@MaskedMan66 the power of being broke. Most of those books Baum didn't even author.
@@Not_Always He created Oz and wrote the first fourteen books, creating dozens of characters. All the following authors gave him props.
I just love how the gnome king tells mombi to bow, lower, then lower even though shes fully prostate on the floor. It shows alot of his mad capped nature behind the cool.
Nome.
Someone contact Netflix and tell them to make the books into a series.
netflix is too unpredictable. look what happened to the winx live action
Every episode can have the Scarecrow turning to the camera and making a joke about Netflix.
@@toxoplasmagondi fr, every Netflix adaptation seems to be based on "dark and edgy and/or not at all subtle mommy issues"
@@toxoplasmagondi I refuse to watch that out of sheer principle. Too many TV shows have been ruined by "adaptations" and "reboots."
I think it would be good as an animated series. Castlevania and Devilman were great
Oz in the books: SCP hell
Oz in the movies: *I'ma dancin'!*
?????????
@@MaskedMan66 look up the SCP foundation. It's amazing!
@@madisons9783 Looked it up; sounds a little too involved. Also sounds like whoever created it can't handle fantasy.
They’re groovin
SCP Foundation is a bit like if Men In Black was more like X-files.
I vividly recall watching return to oz as a child and having nightmares afterwards, but looking back the movie so wonderfully walks that line between childlike imagination and genuine terror. Its like watching a dream shift back and forth from fun childish fantasy into horrific nightmare yet it never strays too far in either direction leaving a sense of unease and curiosity that I still feel even just remembering it.
I wasn't allowed to watch the Wizard of Oz as a kid, but I remember stumbling across the book in a Church library of all places. I couldn't read all that well at the time, and I'm honestly not sure WHICH Wizard of Oz book it was, but I was both terrified of it and immensely intrigued, additionally afraid that my parents might walk in on me trying to read it. The art especially captured my imagination. I don't think I ever finished it.
Some time before I'd found the book, my grandparents (against my parents' wishes) showed me Return to Oz. That terrifying movie was my first exposure to that world. I hated it so much at the time, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
What were you allowed to watch?
@@knightonart8886 Bibleman? Veggie tales?
@@knightonart8886 Very little, wasn't even allowed to watch Disney for a while because of "magic", even got rid of our TV entirely at one point. Had a particularly traumatic experience having to throw away all my evil Star Wars toys. Twice. :v
My parents got less strict as time went on, though. My dad's pretty ashamed about it in hindsight, so I try not to give him shit about it.
@@yukikanegawa7470 lol, basically
@@koolgool im more in awe of how your grandparents were lenient about that stuff, considering they were the parents of your parents.... were they ashamed of tbe monsters they created?
This movie is oddly more spooky to me now as an adult than it was when I watched it as a kid. I was just fascinated by it then, especially the rollers. And omg the scene of Dorothy finding the right items gave me SUCH anxiety as a kid. I was so scared of putting myself in her place, thinking "how would I know which were the right ones?!?!"
Rollers?
@@MaskedMan66 I think they're actually called the wheelers but I didn't know that when I made my comment
@@AquilaCat I thought you said you'd seen the movie.
@@MaskedMan66 yeah, years ago. If you can remember everything from movies you've seen over the years then that's cool, but I can't
@@AquilaCat It's certainly no feat to remember a name.
I saw this movie in the early 90s as a 7yr old. The movie scared the living HELL out of me. I still haven't rewatched it
Well im a few years ahead of you, saw it. Never recalled any drama issues. Nothing like the "death of optimus prime" which is cried alot about. I was 5 or 6. If you take the reference to the tin man and everyone which is what a few scenes. It really does feel like a alternate reality not a sequel. N Dorothy was half her age in a sequel? That was the real stretch
hey, I just want to mention that I appreciate the obvious time put into making and editing this video
I feel like over the garden wall is the perfect portrayal of an OZ book
Except that it isn't an Oz book.
@@MaskedMan66 your right it just takes a lot of influence from them
@@icebearforpresident6566 I admit, I haven't seen it, but it is on my list of movies to watch; correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it by the same people who made "Song of the Sea?" I've seen that one, and enjoyed it.
@@MaskedMan66 over the garden wall is a tv series! And song of the sea is a different studio :) can't remember the studio's name right now but it's the same studio that made wolfwalkers!
@@薔薇園-f7s Fair enough; we have a DVD of it in the bookstore where I work, and I made the incorrect conclusion that it was a movie. Cartoon Saloon is the company that made "Song" and "Wolfwalkers." To my eyes, anyway, there's a stylistic similarity with "Garden Wall," which was the cause of my mistake.
I feel like American Mcgee alice is the best fever Nightmare fairy tale or any of the Grimm brothers stories
Damn. I remember the game. It was definitely dark and twisted.
@@Hervinbalfour American McGee is working on a third Alice game fyi
@@ayajade6683 I cannot WAIT! Didn't know anything about it til the second came out. Once I played it I immediately started a second game.
This was a great video, and some really first-rate analysis - particularly about the complex politics of the Nome King. I was also very into the Oz books when I was young, and similarly fascinated by them. I also, for a time, was quite defensive of "Return to Oz" over the MGM film for being "truer" to the source material.
However, with time, I've come to think that "Return to Oz" actually kind of gets the theme wrong, as well. It is far too dark, and too bleak. When you read Baum's commentary on his own books in his introductions - such as the one you read in this video - he makes it clear that his readership is mostly young kids, especially young girls. He often writes about his audience in a very paternal and even saccharine way that suggests to me he never really thought of his books as being much beyond innocent childhood entertainment. The books themselves do contain lots of weird monsters and body horror and violence, but also endless detailed descriptions of how beautiful the characters' clothing is, or how delicious the food is, and how perfectly utopian Oz is (some of which you quoted in this video) and lots of other super cozy, comforting stuff. Indeed, I would argue a lot of the Oz books actually suffer from low stakes, since Baum establishes early that in his universe that no one can ever die, magic can basically solve all problems, and Dorothy and her friends are basically sinless, perfect people.
But what about the monsters and all that? Well, I think we have to remember the context of the time. There were simply not a lot of kids' stories in the early 20th century, which is partially why Baum was such an important innovator. Of the kids stories that did exist, they were often European fairy tales, which of course have tons of violence and murder and disturbing scenarios. The point is that kids of that time were simply much more used to this kind of stuff being in "their" literature, and the concept of kids' media being squeaky clean hadn't yet been established in the broader culture. I'm not exactly sure when that happened - even early Mickey Mouse cartoons often seem quite dark by today's standards.
The problem with "Return to Oz" is that I think it ignores the cultural context of Baum's stories in favor of taking them in this very literal way - "a young girl comes to a world full of bizarre creatures." The joy, and low stakes of Oz is stripped away in favor of a focus on emphasizing the weirdness, and how a modern child pulled from our world would react to it (most vividly embodied by the whole "Dorothy's parents think she's mentally ill" framing, which is a very bleak, late-20th century take). I think a better film would have kept all the same characters and settings and scenarios, but treated them in a vastly more playful, absurdist way. The film should have a lot more color, a lot more music, and a lot more humor. I actually think the 1951 Disney version of "Alice in Wonderland" is a good model; it tells a story that's full of weird characters and cruel villains, but it's more of a surrealist dream and less of a nightmare. I don't think Oz was ever intended to be a nightmare.
Great reply. Grimms fairy tales are sort of known for being sanitized, but I guess not Baum.
Teaching sometimes there is pain in life,but wow Glenda's the good witch that teaches to throw acid water on someone, plus did y'all ever think maybe Dorothy and friends we're not to be going where they were going
Having seen Return to Oz, but never having read any of the books, thanks for this comment! I loved the video (and still do), but I also love this critique and this alternate perspective. Y'all are wrinkling my brain.
@@dianheffernan3436 Glinda (not "Glenda") never taught anyone any such thing; what the heck are you talking about?
@@mg7977 Read the books! They're grand fun, full of high adventure and wonderful puns.
You say the Nome King shifts between stop motion and human, but that's not true - he becomes more human as each of Dorothy's companions become ornaments and brags when Dorothy is left that soon he will be completely human. He only shifts back to stop motion when Dorothy restores the companions. It's implied he's taking some kind of form the more companions he turns into ornaments, and becomes less human as the ornaments are restored into their original bodies
I am proud to say that my husband purchased the omnibus, fully-illustrated edition of the Oz books for my son, who devoured them all once he began to read.
Well I didn't think your son would favor quilted paper over food but to each their own.
@@artdecotimes2942 well at least he got his fiber.
@@TheRealNormanBates one form of achieving education
My uncle bought me all of them when I was a kid. I couldn't get enough of them. I told my parents that I wanted to be called Trot.
@@artdecotimes2942 *to eat their own. (Hahaha)
I loved the “pooisonnnnn poisonnnnn” when they get hit by the sun. That’s how I feel with allergies
These are easily some of the most well written, engaging and well thought out videos on YT. You hit hugely well known series with takes, information, breakdowns and theories that I've hardly if at all seen discussed outside of forums for big nerds. I love it. I can't wait for your next video. I hope 2021 is great for you!
Thank you very much I’m really glad you like them, I hope you have a good year too!