Return to Oz
 

Back when I was a wee lass, I had two favorite movies, that I watched on a pretty much constant repeat. You know, like your little brother or sister does with Finding Nemo. :lol: Those movies were The Nightmare Before Christmas (my grandmother threatens violence if she ever has to hear the songs from that again :lol: ) and Return to Oz. Oddly, I had never seen The Wizard of Oz (though I was fairly familiar with the story. I might have had a children's book of it, maybe?), but I watched Return to Oz constantly. I recently remembered it and planned on looking it up again, and then one of my favorite bands made me nostalgic for it so I finally got around to watching it again, and I was really impressed. Also shocked. I didn't remember it being so dark and... scary. :lol: It's a pretty freaky movie!
You can read the plot synopsis here.

So, is any else here a fan of this dark fantasy?

AAH!

First off, it should come as no surprise that I've seen this. :roll:
My favorite movies as a kid were The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, and Return to Oz. :rofl:

...And probably The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins, but that's irrelevant!

I broke down and watched Return to Oz online a few months ago. :D I had the most incredible urge to see it, since it's the only Oz movie that I haven't seen in quite some time... As in, probably since we'd rented it when I was, oh, five? Six?

Needless to say, I've always been obsessed with Mombi and her head collection! It actually inspired an unsuccessful, never-executed RP character of mine... :P

Anyway, there are such mystical, amazing parts of this movie. Very underrated in terms of being labeled a "disappointing sequel" or whatever.

Fun facts: Piper Laurie plays Aunt Em! She was Sissy Spacek's mom in Carrie, and I just looove Piper Laurie. :drool: I've seen her in a lot of stuff lately - old stuff, mind you, but stuff nonetheless! :lol:
Also, those are the ORIGINAL ruby slippers from the 1939 original film! They apparently had to pay a pretty penny for the rights to them, but... they managed!

...Oh, and Fairuza, the girl who played Dorothy, was in The Waterboy with Adam Sandler! :P

There was a song in the '80s made for the movie, but I don't think it was ever used in conjunction with it. I forget who wrote it, too, for that matter.

Also, Mombi is actually a combination of more than one of L. Frank Baum's characters (aka the guy who wrote the Oz books). I believe Mombi is actually some old lady of some sort who had the head collection... And some other pretty Princess who doesn't jump out as being very memorable to me was also included in making the movie-version of Mombi.

Anyway, um, yeah. I'm nuts. :roll: Shoot me if my Oz lore memory banks are falsified! :gonk:

I actually thought the part where Mombi's headless body awakes is a lot scarier than the wheelers. :gonk: Just my opinion, though! :P

Found the '80s song I was talking about! ... Thought it was more '80s, but turns out it's actually more easy on the ears than I thought. :rofl:

It definitely would've made the movie a bit chintzier in that '80s overly-ritzy kinda way. :lol:

http://www.waltdisneysreturntooz.com/ST_Wood.mp3

(Btw, really interesting, informative fan site for all things Return to Oz... Found it when I'd wanted to learn more about the film those few months ago. :P Return to Oz Unoffical Site )

i LOVE return to oz <3 the little girl who played dorithy was in the waterboy (the chick who sandler gets with).

The part where all the heads wake up and start screaming definitely is freaky, but the wheelers scared me more when I was a wee one. After all, the heads need a body to chase you, and there's only one body, so only one person chasing you. There are lots of wheelers. :gonk:

Cherry, your reasoning scares the crap outta me. :roll:

Good thing you weren't in this movie, otherwise it would've bombed! :gonk:

I read that Mombi's throne room cost over $300,000 to make... :shock:

Oh, and correction: those weren't the original ruby slippers... But they DID have to buy the rights to include ruby slippers at all, since they weren't the property of L. Frank Baum. In the books, the slippers were silver... Since Baum's Oz books are in the public domain, it wouldn't have cost them a thing to just switch the shoes to silver. :roll:

Blah blah blah? Blah blah!

Didn't they make them red for the original movie because color movies were so new that they just wanted to make everything colorful? :lol: Or is that a myth?

Yep, you're right! :D

I looked it up just to make sure. :ninja: Wasn't sure if it was just a myth myself either. :P

Article: The Ruby Slippers--Inventing an American Icon :: Smithsonian Lemelson Center

TV shows are kind of doing that now with HD. I'm seeing a lot more shows where the colors are skewed a little bit to somehow make them look more "real" and crisp on HD. :lol:
Rescue Me is a good example. That show is green. House gets some oddly colored lighting pretty frequently too, but not as bad as Rescue Me. :lol: