by Walter Murch, 1985.
Starring: Fairuza Balk, Sean Barret, Denise Bryer, Matt Clark, Lyle Conway, Piper Laurie, Pons Maar, Jean Marsh, Emma Ridley, and Nicol Williamson.
Rating: 8/10, 8/10.
Whoa. NOT what I was expecting. I’d heard this was much, much darker than the 1939 Wizard Of Oz, but...wow.
The film opens six months after the end of the first movie (or book, really...this is more a sequel to the book than to the first movie). The Gael family is still rebuilding their house after the cyclone that swept it away, and they’re in serious financial trouble. Dorothy (Balk) has an unhealthy obsession with this imaginary place called "Oz"; a concerned Auntie Em (Laurie, who has that golden glow all cast members of Twin Peaks have) and Uncle Henry (Clark) put her into a psychiatric institution where she is going to have to go through electroshock therapy, a new development that the doctors are all sure can heal all mental problems. In a ridiculously frightening sequence, Dorothy is strapped to a gurney during a lightning storm and is about to be subjected to the treatment when the power goes out. She escapes with the aid of a mysterious girl and is nearly drowned in a high-flowing river. When she wakes up, she’s back in Oz—but something is horribly wrong. She finds the ruin of her old house, the one that landed on the Wicked Witch of the West...but where is Munchkinland? She finds the Yellow Brick Road, but it’s all broken up and overgrown. So then she follows it to the Emerald City, which is in ruins, with all the citizens turned into stone. It turns out that the city was first destroyed by the Nome King, who believes that all the emerald that the city was made out of belonged to him, and then overrun by the Wheelers, the evil minions of the even more evil witch Princess Mombi. The Wheelers are some of the most truly creepy film villains I’ve ever seen—they’re people with wheels instead of hands and feet, who roll around on all fours wreaking havoc. Princess Mombi, who is also extremely frightening, keeps bunches of severed heads of women and changes her head as suits her fancy. The film traces Dorothy’s adventures setting things right in Oz.
There is very little about this film that isn’t incredible. The scene where Dorothy is running through the room where Mombi keeps all her heads, and they’re all screaming at her, is astounding and unforgettable. As are the special effects, mostly done with claymation. The use of claymation is the most amazing I’ve ever seen short of the creations of Nick Park and Peter Lord. This movie isn’t afraid to scare you, although apparently the studio limited the amount to which director Walter Murch was allowed to do this—which pretty clearly is the explanation for the few things that aren’t wonderful about the film, like Billina the horribly annoying talking chicken, who is there mostly to provide "comic" "relief." But we can overlook these few studio-induced flaws simply because everything else is so relentlessly fabulous.
One thing in particular that’s shockingly, relentlessly fabulous is Balk’s performance as Dorothy. She was only ten years old at the time, but her acting ability was on the level of any of the great adult actors of any era. There is not a single point where we stop to think, this is a small child, trying her best to do what the director told her to do. She IS Dorothy, at all times. The only film I can think of with child actors anywhere near her equal is Welcome To The Dollhouse, and all of those actors were several very significant years older than Balk was. Excellent.