Are you in the mood for some kiddie horror? I am. Presenting, then, 1985's Return to Oz, which has apparently terrified more kids than... y'know what? That simile can just remain incomplete for now. I hadn't seen the film in 30 years, give or take, but among my generation it tends to get mentioned whenever the conversation turns to childhood trauma. Oddly enough, while I remember being frightened by it as a child it's not one of the ones that really melted my brain - certain scenes have stuck with me, sure, but not to the point where I had to nerve myself to watch again.
To be honest, I haven't seen the original Wizard of Oz in around thirty years, so I can't really judge how much darker this semi-sequel is than the original. That said, it packs a whole lot of horror cliches into its 113-minute runtime, starting early on when Dorothy, after months of insomnia, is packed off to an asylum for a primitive version of electroconvulsive therapy. Whilst waiting for the treatment, she meets a mysterious blonde girl who appears to be the only friendly face about the place. Later, during a thunderstorm, the girl rescues her by untying her from the gurney to which she's been strapped, warning her that the screams she's been hearing are from other patients who've been damaged by the treatment. Pretty intense stuff, in other words, and that's only the beginning. After falling into a flooded river, Dorothy finds herself back in Oz, but not the Oz she remembers. The once-magnificent Emerald City has been reduced to ruins, and it's up to her to restore it to its former majesty. Standing in her way are some truly terrifying adversaries, but luckily, new and magical allies are close at hand.
What really struck me about this one was how incredibly good it looked. The costume design in particular was gorgeous - sure, shrieking baddies the wheelers scared me witless as a kid, but this time round I found myself squinting at the screen to try and get a closer look at the textures on the coats they wore. It was the same with villainous sorceress Mombi, she of the interchangeable heads, but also of the truly glorious wardrobe. Set and sound design receive similar attention to detail, with the latter perhaps accounting for the wheelers' power to terrify. There's also some flat-out nightmare fuel Claymation from technique pioneer Will Vinton, proving that rocks have not only ears but eyes, noses, teeth and a variety of facial expressions from sneaky to bloodthirsty.
As Dorothy, the then ten-year-old Fairuza Balk holds her own against the special effects, producing a brave and naturalistic performance that contrasts markedly with Judy Garland's more mannered interpretation. Support comes in the form of Piper Laurie's Aunt Em, whilst Nicol Williamson and Jean Marsh play the villains in both Oz and Kansas, harking back to the it was all a dream ending of the original film.
I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed this one. Disney films of the early-to-mid 80s often carry the faint whiff of desperation - profits were down during the period and they were fighting the belief that their output was just too cosy for modern audiences. Their response was to move darker, with the likes of this and Ray Bradbury adaptation Something Wicked This Way Comes. That was another film in search of an audience, I think, but its more literary and lyrical source material left me with a vague sense of irritation about how much seemed to have been left on the cutting room floor. Something Wicked was a failure, I think, if an interesting one, but Return to Oz succeeds thanks to a combination of great production values and a clear directorial vision. Recommended.
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