Director: Walter Murch
Writers: Walter Murch, Gill Dennis
Stars: Fairuza Balk, Nicol Williamson, Jean Marsh
1 Hour, 53 Minutes
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2ImD9eW
Synopsis
Dorothy has trouble sleeping, and her uncle pulls out an advertisement for a doctor who can do “electric healing.” It’s been six months since the tornado, and she’s not quite right. All she talks about is people who can’t exist. Her aunt thinks the kid is mental.
Dorothy is out picking up eggs and finds a key with the letters O and Z on it. The delusional child thinks her imaginary friends sent her the key on a shooting star. Her aunt is not amused; the new house isn’t finished and winter is coming. Uncle Henry’s broken leg (from the tornado) is long since fixed, but now he’s a lazy alcoholic.
They go to see Dr. Worley, who promises that he can use his machine to “cure” Dorothy with electroconvulsive therapy. As it starts to storm outside, she plays with a little jack-o-lantern on the desk in the room she’s given. The head nurse comes for Dorothy, and the little girl is terrified of the upcoming procedure. They tie her down to the gurney, and Dr. Worley gets his machine ready. They place the electrodes on her head and the machine powers up. He puts his finger on the switch and…
The power goes out, and the doctor has to find the problem. There’s moaning and wailing coming from the rest of the hospital. Another little girl comes in and releases Dorothy, and the two of them run outside into the woods. They jump into a raging river to escape Nurse Wilson. She climbs into a floating box, passes out, and is carried out to sea.
The next morning, she wakes up on land. Billina, her talking chicken, is with her. Dorothy explains that they’re in the deadly desert, and they cannot touch the sand. The rocks see her and report her presence to someone evil offscreen. She finds her old, wrecked house, but there are no munchkins and the yellow brick road has been destroyed. They quickly arrive in the Emerald City, but all the people are turned to stone. “Beware the Wheelers” says a bit of graffiti. The Tin Woodsman and Cowardly Lion have been stoned as well.
The Wheelers attack. They’re tall men whose hands and feet are wheels. It’s an interesting costume, but I’m not sure it’s exactly terrifying. She hides from them and finds a clockwork man. She winds him up, and he says his name is Tik-Tok. They walk outside, and Tik-Tok beats up and tortures one of the Wheelers. They are told that the Nome king stole all the emeralds and turned everyone to the stone. The only person who knows where King Scarecrow is is Princess Mombi. The Wheeler takes them to Mombi’s tower.
The woman they meet inside decides to change her head, and she has a room full of them. She wants to take Dorothy’s head to add to her collection. Dorothy gets locked in a room in the palace for storage. She runs into Jack Pumpkinhead in there. He was built to scare Mombi, but she got angry and tore him up. Mombi used the powder of life to awaken him. She keeps it in room 31 with her original head.
Jack’s long arms reach through a window and open the door, and they get out. They reactivate Tik-Tok. Dorothy goes after the powder of life to bring back the statues of her friends. She finds it, but all the heads and the headless body wake up. They throw together a bunch of furniture and make a Gump, a weird moose-headed creature that helps them escape. They fly toward the Nome King’s mountain with the Wheelers in pursuit, at least until they hit the deadly desert.
Meanwhile, Mombi talks to Ozma, a ghostly creature that appears to be a prisoner.
The Gump starts to fall apart, and Jack loses his head. Everyone lands safely in the snow. The Nome King introduces himself.
The Nome King claims that all the emeralds in Emerald City belonged to him in the first place, and he was just taking them back. He blames the Scarecrow for stealing all the emeralds. He has turned the Scarecrow into an ornament. They have to figure out which ornament is the Scarecrow or risk becoming ornaments themselves. First, the Gump, then Pumpkinhead, then Tik-Tok fail at the game. The Nome King mentions that he now owns the ruby slippers; they were what allowed him to conquer the Emerald City. It’s Dorothy’s turn, and she enters a room full of treasures and trinkets. It turns out that Tik-Tok didn’t really run out of power, he wants to show Dorothy what his guess is to give her a boost. She figures it out and releases the Scarecrow. Nome King gets angry and puts Mombi in a cage.
The rocks themselves come alive and roar and tear at them as they try to run outside. The Nome King eats the Gump alive. He starts to eat pumpkinhead, but Billina, who had set up a nest in Pumpkinhead’s head, lays an egg down his throat instead. It poisons him. Eggs are poison to nomes, so he crumples to a pile of rocks. Dorothy grabs the ruby slippers and turns everything back the way it used to be.
The Ozians throw a parade, and everyone gets their reward. Dorothy is made the Queen of Oz, but she wants to go back home. She wishes she could be in both places at the same time and her shoes glow. Ozma, the real Queen of Oz, shows up and sends Dorothy home.
Uncle Henry and Toto find her on the bank of the river and take her home. The clinic was hit by lightning and everyone was saved but the doctor.
Later on, the house is fully rebuilt and now Dorothy can see Ozma in the reflection in the mirror. Everyone still thinks Dorothy is crazy, but that’s OK now for some reason.
Commentary
It’s certainly not the classic that the original was. The Wheelers are definitely no flying monkeys. The Claymation of the King is pretty dated.
Still, I’ve read dozens of accounts of children saying this movie still haunts the memories of their childhoods thirty years later. The mental hospital and shock therapy are creepy enough, especially if you’re old enough to understand what’s really going on. The talking rock faces are a bit disturbing. The headless woman and the room of a hundred heads would scare most kids. I found the whole film pretty boring, but there are a lot of elements in this that would give kids nightmares, that’s for sure.
I definitely don’t recommend it for adults, but if you have a kid that’s looking for something “scary,” this could be a good starting place.