I was eight years old the first time Return to Oz clawed its way into my skull and took a shit on everything I thought I knew about childhood wonder. You think you're about to get a cozy follow-up to the 1939 classic with dancing munchkins, technicolor singalongs, cute little slippers, etc… Instead, you’re served electroshock therapy, decapitated women, screaming mutants with wheels for limbs, and a Dorothy who looks like she’s been on a heroin binge for a month.
The movie starts with Dorothy locked in a Victorian asylum that makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look like Sesame Street Live. She’s strapped down in a cold room while some dead-eyed doctor wheels in a fucking machine, a giant metal face with lightning bolts for “therapy.” Like, "Sorry sweetie, maybe stop hallucinating about flying monkeys and magical shoes and we'll let you keep your frontal lobe."
And then, by divine intervention or maybe Satan himself, a lightning storm busts her out, and boom we’re in Oz again. Except it’s not Oz. It’s a nuclear wasteland. The Yellow Brick Road’s been smashed to hell like someone went at it with a jackhammer and a personal vendetta. The Emerald City’s now the Green Meth Trailer Park, and there are statues of tortured people frozen in agony littered all over the place. The Scarecrow? Gone. Tin Man? Missing. Cowardly Lion? Turned to stone like he blinked at Medusa.
And then, as if the acid hadn’t kicked in yet, the Wheelers show up. Jesus Christ. These fuckers haunted my dreams for years! Seven-foot-tall creeps with wheels instead of hands and feet, cackling and screeching like coked-up demons in a Chuck E. Cheese parking lot. They don’t walk, they glide and spin. They chase Dorothy through shattered streets like rejected Cirque du Soleil performers on bath salts. And when they catch her, you just know they're gonna do things Disney never intended.
Next up is Princess Mombi, the reason I still avoid antique doll stores. She’s a woman with a walk-in closet full of heads. Actual human heads she just pops on and off depending on her mood like some kind of serial killer Barbie. One minute she’s sultry evil stepmom, the next she’s banshee warlord screaming through a castle full of mirrors. And she keeps Dorothy locked in a room like she’s saving her head for spring.
Jack Pumpkinhead fucked me up, too. He’s this janky-ass Frankenstein built from sticks, wearing a pumpkin for a head and calling Dorothy “Mommy.” Imagine if the Great Pumpkin had abandonment issues and a voice like he’s been sobbing since the Victoria Era. I felt bad for him. That’s how twisted this movie is, it makes you feel sympathy for a decaying vegetable.
By the time we meet the Nome King, a talking rock demon with a fetish for stealing souls and swallowing emeralds, I’m hiding behind a couch cushion, whispering Hail Mary’s even though I only went to Catholic school in kindergarten. And the climax? Dorothy feeds the villain a chicken egg. That’s it. No laser beam. No epic battle. Just a scrambled breakfast surprise to the face. Apparently, eggs are toxic to rock demons. Who knew?
When the credits finally roll and we’re dumped back into Kansas, Mom turns to me and says, “Wasn’t that cute?”
Cute?
Lady, you just watched your kid get emotionally waterboarded by a Disney film. I saw madness, mutilation, and poultry-based exorcism. That movie didn’t entertain me, it rewired me. My dreams? Broken. My trust in sequels? Dead. Every time I hear wheels on pavement now, I brace for shrieking and severed heads. But the sickest part? I watched it again. Over and over. Because once you’ve been kicked in the psyche by Return to Oz, regular movies feel like baby food. That film messed us up. And somewhere deep inside, we all still flinch when the closet door creaks, waiting for Mombi to whisper, “I want your head.”
It’s horror, really - as any good fairytale is at it’s core.
This movie totally messed with my head too! Only saw it once and I remember it vividly!