Revisiting Childhood FavoritesLists that dissect and analyze (and possibly ruin) some of the movies and TV you watched over and over and over and over when you were a kid.
Updated November 12, 2019 34.3K votes 8.1K voters 788.6K views
Voting Rules
Vote up the parts of 'Return To Oz' that scared you.
Return to Oz, the sequel to Wizard of Oz, isn’t just odd. It’s also an often sad movie that attempts to look at the long-term effects of childhood trauma through the lens of a young girl trying to return to a fantasy world that’s been completely upended.
Many people think scary children's movies are a necessity; they prepare kids for the often dark world waiting for them upon entering adulthood and they help them understand that not everything has a happy ending. But Return to Oz remains pretty intense for young viewers all the same.
After escaping the Wheelers, Dorothy finds herself in the burned out ruins of the witch Mombi's castle where she hangs out playing the lute all day while swapping out heads.
There are two scenes where Dorothy is lead down a hallway of disembodied heads. The first is when it's revealed that Mombi is swapping heads in order to suit her moods. The heads are the imaginary counterparts to the disembodied voices living in the cellar of the insane asylum - each one calling out for something that they've lost.
Even if you only watched Return to Oz once, you remember the Wheelers. As an adult it's easy to appreciate Walter Murch (the film's director) teasing the Wheelers in the real world with the orderlies pushing squeaky hospital trollies, but once these creations start speeding around and howling at Dorothy all appreciation of semiotics and foreshadowing goes out the window.
Dorothy is brought to Dr. Worley's asylum in the first third of the film. Audiences soon realize that everyone and everything that they see in the asylum will make an appearance in the land of Oz.
Once locked in her chamber by Nurse Wilson, Dorothy stays herself while becoming a small blonde girl (later revealed to be Ozma) who only appears in the dark or in Dorothy's reflection. The scenes are also soundtracked with screams coming from the cellar.
Return to Oz climaxes with a clash between the Nome King and Dorothy. The Nome King ascends from a fiery pit, now fully stop motion and attempting to eat the characters alive. Stop motion demons claw their way out of the walls. The contort their faces and howl at the heroes. They threaten to consume everything around them.
Then, Billina lays an egg in the King's throat, causing his entire body to crumble.
Aside from his grotesque look and mannerisms, the Nome King's particular delight is sending people to their doom in a rather dark game. Basically a character has to walk into a room full of knick knacks and try to guess which one used to be someone from Oz. If they guess wrong that person is turned into a knick knack in a bright strobe light flash.
Return to Oz picks up a few months after Dorothy returns to Kansas, and she's incredibly depressed. Dorothy has been convinced by her Aunt Em that everything she experienced in Oz was a figment of her imagination, but the memories refuse to fade. Em believes that the only way to fix her is by sending the girl off to an asylum.
