Return To Oz

When my children were very small, I convinced them that A) The ghost of Billy Joel lived under their beds, and B) That there's a chicken in every movie. Why would I do that? Even I'm not entirely sure, as neither of those two statements have much to do with reality, but then again, neither do I. However, right now you're checking to see if Billy Joel is actually dead and doing a brief mental inventory of all of the movies you've seen and trying to remember if in fact there was a chicken in them. That's not really important right now. Oldest Daughter Deathrage somehow got control of the television and forced us all to watch one of her favorite movies, Return To Oz. She gleefully went to bed about 15 minutes into the movie, and I had to watch it again. I guess that's pay-back for the Billy Joel thing.

Return To Oz is the story of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard Of Oz who returns to Oz, and by "Return To Oz" I think the film-makers meant to say Dorothy Gale develops a sleeping disorder, has a psychotic break, and gets threatened with electro-shock therapy and THEN returns to Oz. Can you imagine how that pitch went? One studio executive might have said to another, "Hey, let's update one of the most beloved movies of all time by replacing the dog with a chicken and make it completely bat-crap crazy.", and then the other executive probably just threw money at him.

Anyway, Dorothy hangs out with an irritating, complaining, and wise-cracking chicken, gets attacked by a group of wheeled ruffians who looks like the B-squad from a 1980s David Bowie music video, gets locked in an easily escaped room by a princess with a bitch-head and man-hands, and flies around on a couch with a talking moose-head. Return To Oz is dark, disturbing, and possibly Freudian. It may be terrifying for children and potentially psyche-scarring for adults. I watched Return To Oz on DVD. Here's a trailer: