Return To Oz

[Magical Realist]

The dark sequel to the Wizard of Oz that traumatized kids and became a cult classic..

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/2025...-ever-made

"The films we watch as children often leave the deepest marks. Walter Murch's Return to Oz (1985) has a reputation as being one of the scariest children's films of the 1980s. A sequel to the beloved 1939 musical starring Judy Garland, which was released in the US 40 years ago this week, it is notorious for traumatising young audiences and is jam-packed with creepy images, from Dorothy Gale getting trapped inside villainess Princess Mombi's chamber of disembodied heads to the Wheelers, a pack of cackling creatures with wheels for feet – and that's just the Oz scenes. Shockingly, the opening sequence has young Dorothy being sent to a psychiatric clinic to have her memories of Oz obliterated by a sinister doctor. While the initial critical reception was mixed, and the film flopped at the box office, it has become a cult favourite over the years, arguably because of this surfeit of nightmare fuel."

[C C]

I tried to watch it once. At least made it to the "Wheelers" and probably beyond. But the confusion of it muddling elements of the two books together just got to be too much. I'd rather have seen The Marvelous Land of Oz standing on its own with just the story of the Gump, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Sawhorse, and the round trip sexual identity transition of Ozma to Tip back to Ozma.