Return to Oz Is Dark Wizard of Oz Done Right

Thanks to the release of Wicked: For Good, thousands of moviegoers are learning what Broadway fans have long known and book readers have known even longer: Wicked is an incredibly dark take on The Wizard of Oz. Starting with Gregory Maguire’s 1995 revisionist novel, continuing through the smash hit musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, and now to the pair of films directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked builds sympathy for the Wicked Witch Elphaba (until it suddenly doesn’t) by making Glinda a shallow backstabber, the Wizard an autocrat, and Dorothy’s friends victims of body horror.

Wicked is hardly the first or last story to cast a shadow of the world of Oz, as even Baum’s work had darker tones than anything in the 1939 musical. But few have done it better than 1985’s Return to Oz, the infamous Wizard of Oz sequel that scarred an entire generation of ’80s kids. Return to Oz often feels more like horror than it does a MGM musical, which is ironic since the ’85 film was produced by Disney during a low point, but the follow-up nonetheless achieves that tone without ever sacrificing the fundamental decency of its main characters.

A Worthy Return

The sole directorial credit for legendary editor Walter Murch, who worked on The Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now for Francis Ford Coppola, Return to Oz stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale, who once returned to 1930s Kansas cannot stop talking about her adventures in Oz. Worried that the cyclone left her delusional, Auntie Em (Piper Laurie of Carrie and Twin Peaks fame) and Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) send Dorothy to an institution for a little “helpful” electroshock therapy, but a fellow patient helps the child escape via the random chicken coop floating on a nearby river.

Dorothy wakes from this unlikely respite back in an Oz that has been changed for the worse. Not only have her friends the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion been turn to stone, but the Emerald City is in shambles and the Scarecrow has been captured. With the help of the robotic Tik-Tok (voiced by Sean Barrett and performed by Timothy D. Rose and Michael Sundin) and the valiant Jack Pumpkinhead (Brian Henson), Dorothy escapes the clutches of a dastardly gang of Wheelers and evades the wicked Princess Mombi (Jean Marsh) to confront the Nome King (Nicol Williamson). All this to save the Scarecrow and restore Oz.

Anyone who has never seen Return to Oz will read that synopsis and imagine a rousing adventure, which it certainly is. While Murch and his producers convinced Disney to pay MGM for the rights to use the iconic ruby slippers, a new creation for The Wizard of Oz and thus not available to those with rights to just the Baum novels, very few of the production or character designs resembled the 1939 movie. As a result, even familiar characters like the Scarecrow received new and vibrant looks.

Moreover, new heroes like Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok benefited from state-of-the-art special effects, at least for 1985, immersing the viewer in a totally new world of fantasy. Of particular note is the Gump, a moose head creature mixed with random pieces of furniture and given sentience by the magical Powder of Life that Dorothy frees from Mombi. Thanks to these characters, much of Return to Oz feels like the stuff of childhood fantasies.

The Wonderful Nightmares

Wonderful as those moments are, the rest of Return to Oz feels like it sprung from children’s nightmares. There’s always been a scary side to The Wizard of Oz, most famously the flying monkeys or the surly trees who punish Dorothy for picking their apples. But even Baum’s novels contained moments of peril, as befitting the story of a little girl constantly beset by threats.

Between Murch’s direction, the excellent character designs, and the film’s high-quality special effects, even the most outlandish figure from Baum’s imagination comes to life on the screen in Return. In theory, the Wheelers shouldn’t be so scary; they’re people who ride around with skates on their hands and feet, and masks on the tops of their heads. In practice, the Wheelers are uncanny to a disturbing degree, their inefficient mode of transportation making them all the creepier.

Even the Gump, who is a lovable figure, is terrifying when you stop to think about it. Why does furniture have life all of a sudden? What goes through its mind when it realizes that its head has no real connection to its body?

Easily the worst of them all is Mombi, the primary antagonist of the film. Mombi is a vain woman who cuts off the heads of women who are more beautiful than her and, using the Powder of Life, replaces her head with theirs. That’s troubling enough, especially when she decides that Dorothy—looking far more vulnerable than her 1939 predecessor, as Balk was younger than Judy Garland when she wore the ruby slippers—will provide her next head. And the scene in which Mombi demonstrates to Dorothy and the viewers how she replaces heads is utterly terrifying.

But the worst of all is the reprise when Dorothy returns to the head closet to steal the Powder of Life. A wide shot captures Dorothy as she walks into the closet, the sounds of the snoring heads filling the soundtrack. A sharp music sting overtakes the snores when Dorothy opens the central cupboard to reveal not just the bottle of Powder, but also one of the heads sleeping next to it. Dorothy reaches for the bottle but knocks over another in the process, waking up the head in the process.

“Dorothy Gale!” shouts the head, and the others all awaken too, screaming and calling her name. As Dorothy runs from the cabinet and out of the closet, Mombi’s headless body arises and lumbers toward her at the command of the still screaming severed heads.

It’s absolutely horrifying stuff, and so bad that every Millennial who read the above will have nightmares tonight. And yet, at the end of the movie, Dorothy’s safe and sound, her old friends the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion are restored, and she has new friends like Tik-Tok and Jack Pumpkinhead. Everything is right.

Scary, Not Wicked

Return to Oz works better than Wicked because it highlights the darkness present in the world but it doesn’t embrace that darkness. Like countless comic books of the 1980s and ’90s, which reimagined four-color characters created for kids as murderous psychopaths in an empty bid for sophistication, Wicked refuses to let a children’s story be a children’s story. Its cynical worldview insists that Dorothy must be a dupe, the Tin Man must do a hate crime, and the only moral act is perpetuating a convenient lie.

Return to Oz is scary, as outlined above. But it remains fundamentally for children. It doesn’t snatch away the fantasy that Dorothy’s a good kid who can save the world with the help of her friends. It doesn’t need to wedge ill-conceived and poorly understood political theories in the hopes of achieving relevancy. Return to Oz frightens kids, but does so in a way that empowers them to face the worst parts of the real world. And for that reason, it remains far more powerful than any modern attempts to make The Wizard of Oz cool by going for empty provocation.