Infamous ’80s Fantasy Sequel Is A Better Adaptation Than The Classic Original

The Wheelers—creepy weirdos with wheels for hands and feet—are responsible for putting more kids in therapy than Divorce. Their boss, Mombi—a witch who steals women’s heads so she can wear them—was even worse. Return to Oz might have been marketed as a family movie, but there are lots of different families.

This movie’s audience definitely skewed closer to the Manson Family than The Brady Bunch. You can scar your own children with it right now on Disney+.

But why would Disney put out a dour, grotesque sequel to one of the happiest movies ever made? Well, believe it or not, they wanted Return to Oz to be closer to the books. There’s no disputing that 1939’s The Wizard of Oz is a classic, but the film adapts its source material horribly.

There is a darkness to L. Frank Baum’s original Oz novels aren’t present in MGM’s technicolor musical. Take the casual violence inherent in the Tin Woodsman’s origin.

In the books, it’s explained that the Tin Man’s axe was cursed, causing him to accidentally chop off his limbs one by one. Each time he lost a limb, he would have a local tinsmith replace it with a metal one.

This gruesome tale, like much from the Oz books, is missing from the original film. Not so with Return to Oz. The film mainly adapts Baum’s second and third Oz books, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz—warts and all.

Return to Oz starts with Aunt Em taking Dorothy (10-year-old Fairuza Balk) to a sanatorium for insisting that Oz is real. She escapes with the help of a mysterious girl and eventually ends up back in Oz. This time, accompanied by a talking chicken named Billina.

Dorothy makes her way to the Emerald City, hoping to find her friend, the Scarecrow. Instead, she’s greeted by a broken-down wasteland where everyone has been turned to stone, including the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man.

From there, she goes on a grand adventure that includes creeps with wheels for hands and feet, an evil witch that wants Dorothy’s head for her head collection, and the evil subterranean Nome King.

Along the way, she picks up some new companions, including windup mechanical man Tik-Tok and Jack Pumpkinhead—a man made of sticks with a pumpkin for a head.

At one point, they create a creature called The Gump with the head of a moose, a body made of two couches, and palm fronds for wings. The entire movie is one long fever dream and I absolutely love it.

Writer and director Walter Murch started out as a sound editor on classic films like The Godfather Part II and American Graffiti before choosing Return to Oz as his directorial debut.

Making the film was such a harrowing experience, however, that he never made another film. Between budget cuts and pressure from the studio to make the film “lighter,” Murch almost didn’t finish the movie.

At one point, Disney was all set to replace him as director when George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg showed up to set to advocate for their friend. Lucas even offered to take over director duties if Murch completely broke down.

After that, there was no more talk of replacing Murch on Return to Oz.

I saw Return to Oz in the theater, and let me tell you, it left its mark on me. The freakish Wheelers and the Head-swapping witch Mombi scared the bejesus out of four-year-old me.

But Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok made an even bigger impression. They looked so cool compared to Dorothy’s earlier companions.

Even at four, I could tell that the creatures in Return to Oz weren’t just people in costumes. Instead, the beautifully bizarre characters were brought to life using puppetry, animatronics, and stop-motion. The result is a visual feast of ’80s practical effects.

Return to Oz did horribly at the box office, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. When it was released on June 21, 1985, the original Wizard of Oz had already been working its way into the public consciousness for 46 years. Audiences weren’t ready for a dark sequel with no songs.

GFR SCORE

Neither were critics. One critic chastised the movie for being too dark for kids, saying that they were “sure to be startled by its bleakness.” Another critic called the film’s main characters “too creepy and weird” for the audience to relate to or “sympathize with.”

Writers Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison, being more familiar with the Oz books the movie was based on, praised Return to Oz, with Gaiman even calling it one of the best fantasy films he’d ever seen.

If there was any justice in the world, Return to Oz would be held in the same regard as Labyrinth or The Nightmare Before Christmas. Instead, it enjoys a cult following that, while better than nothing, deserves to be much bigger, if only for the amazing visuals.

While it definitely wasn’t made for everyone, there is a certain type of kid who loves dabbling in the macabre, for whom Return to Oz is perfect. If you were, are still, or have one of these spooky youths, you owe it to yourself/them to watch Return to Oz on Disney+.