Many are familiar with the stories L. Frank Baum created — a young girl from Kansas is whisked away in a tornado, accidentally killing a feared witch as she lands. When the witch’s sister discovers her murder, she vows to take action against the young girl. And her little dog, too. Befriending some odd characters, including a scarecrow, a tin lumberjack, and a lion, the girl finds the wizard of the land she’s fallen into — Oz.
While there is public knowledge of the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), fewer know about the five books that followed. Including the two used as the premise for 1985’s Return to Oz.
While not necessarily a sequel to the 1939 musical, the movie contains content from books two (The Marvelous Land of Oz, 1904) and three (Ozma of Oz, 1907) in the Oz series. Because book two centers around a different protagonist, a boy named Tip, it was adapted to fit the narrative around a continued story with Dorothy, played by then-10-year-old Fairuza Balk. There’s also some content in the book that didn’t age well, even for 1985 (let’s just say there’s a gender role reversal).
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The movie itself starts with Dorothy’s life in Kansas after her trip to Oz. Her claims are so fanciful that it’s brought concern to her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. She is taken to a mental hospital where the doctor in charge of her care demonstrates that they are in a new day and age. The age of electricity (the characters reveal they are only a few short months away from the year 1900). And, with this new technology comes new opportunities for treatment. Including electroshock therapy.
Before Dorothy receives any such treatment, the power goes out, and an unknown girl comes into free Dorothy from her restraints. They escape the hospital, and Dorothy jumps on a makeshift raft to escape down the river next to the facility. After falling asleep, she wakes to find herself in a strange land. Also, her chicken from home is with her, Billina, and can talk.

The cast of characters that everyone knows from the original story is frozen in stone, a consequence of the tyrannical rule by the Nome King and an evil witch named Mombi. Much like the flying monkeys in the original, there are hordes of minions that do the bidding of their overseers. The Wheelers are characters who get around by wheels attached where their hands and feet would normally be.
The sound of the wheelers still haunts our dreams to this day.
While there are new villains, there are also plenty of new allies in this story as well. Tik-Tok, a royal guardian who can only function if the wind-up keys on his back are turned enough, is ever-loyal to Dorothy and the crew. Jack Pumpkinhead is more-or-less a scarecrow with a pumpkin for a head and the bravery of a five-year-old. There is also the Gump, a horrific creation with a mounted moose head, fans for wings, and the body of a sofa.
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The story, in its theatrical version, was meant as a warning against loving or relying too much on technology. Even at the end of the film, as Dorothy is discovered on a river bank, her family reveals that her doctor died in a fire while trying to “save his machines.” There are also multiple struggles with the Gump in keeping his parts together and his own self-reported satisfaction with remaining a head on a wall rather than an assembly of parts one could find in their garage.
Return to Oz is dark and eerie; the mood is a marked shift from the sunshine and rainbows of its Judy Garland-starring predecessor. Questions of mental health, the public’s fear of electroshock therapy, the squeaking wheels of the henchmen, and a villain who can swap heads (heads, it should be noted, that are all autonomous and can interact with people who admire them), and music scored by David Shire (Apocalypse Now, Zodiac, Short Circuit), all make for a moody, cryptic take on the stories. One that appears closer to Baum’s vision than previous iterations.