Summary
➡ The text discusses the movie “Return to Oz” and its connections to various themes such as theosophy, philosophy, and economics. The writer also compares it to other works like “Labyrinth” and discusses its status as a “dark Disney movie”. The text also explores the movie’s representation of characters and settings, and how they resonate with the writer’s personal experiences and dreams.
➡ The Gnome King, who rules an underground dimension, believes that all precious stones are made by his gnomes and belong to him. He accuses the people of the Emerald City of stealing his treasures without earning them through enlightenment. The Gnome King’s realm is compared to the world of the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, where the Morlocks do all the hard work underground while the Eloi enjoy themselves on the surface. The text also discusses the 1980s fantasy vibe in movies and the director’s use of sound design to create a disoriented world for Dorothy, the protagonist.
➡ The text discusses the filming process of a movie, focusing on the challenges faced due to limited working hours of child actors. It also talks about the visual effects, such as changes in color saturation and lightness, and the use of props. The text further delves into the character of Dorothy and her moral compass, and the potential of the character Tick Tock to be a killing machine. Lastly, it mentions a Santa Claus story written by Frank Baum, the author of the original Oz books, and speculates on a possible reference to this story in the movie.
➡ The speaker is preparing for a live show called Brohemian Grove featuring stand-up comics. They’re also launching new playsets, including a psychedelic Santa playset and a Terminator Abraham Lincoln set. They’re also adding 20 more cards to their project, conspiracycards.com, which features collectible cards of iconic figures. They also mention their podcast, Films and Filth, and another podcast, Time Enough Podcasts, which recently discussed the Twilight Zone.
➡ The speaker discusses their thoughts on a movie that reminds them of their dreams. They mention a character named Tick Tock, who they feel could have had his own film. They also discuss the character Bellini, a talking chicken, and the use of multiple trained chickens in the movie. The speaker also mentions the actress Faruza Balk, who they remember from other films, and the lack of big-name stars in the movie.
➡ The speaker shares their thoughts on a movie, discussing various actors and their roles, including Nicole Williamson as the Gnome King and Deep Roy as the Tin Man. They also speculate about the movie’s possible connections to economic concepts like Bitcoin and fiat currency. The speaker then talks about the movie’s setting in the early 20th century and its portrayal of societal attitudes towards mental health and electric healing. They also mention other movies and actors, including Judy Garland and her struggles with mental health.
➡ The text discusses a variety of topics, including a famous actress, Disney’s indifference towards the Return to Oz, and the music of the film. It also mentions the movie’s failure at the box office and a commentary track by Mickey Rooney. The conversation then shifts to the strange and memorable scenes in the film, and ends with a brief mention of the John Teeter time travel theory.
➡ The text discusses a movie set in the 1900s that appears to be filmed in the 1980s, with scenes that were supposed to be in Kansas actually shot in England for tax reasons. The movie’s plot involves a young girl who is perceived as crazy by her family and is sent for electroconvulsive therapy. The text also mentions the movie’s odd aesthetics, budget issues, and the challenges faced during filming. The discussion also touches on cultural differences in perceptions, such as how different cultures see images in the moon.
➡ The text discusses the contrast between a girl’s spiritual journey and her parents’ practical, farming lifestyle. It also explores the idea of enlightenment and its impact on one’s willingness to do mundane tasks. The text further delves into the social status of spiritual leaders in different cultures, comparing them to modern-day televangelists. Lastly, it mentions a surreal scene from a movie based on the original Oz books, where lunch pails grow on trees, and discusses the existence of a fan base for dark Disney movies.
➡ The text discusses various topics related to Halloween, including the Nightmare Experiment in Hong Kong Disneyland, the cultural differences in celebrating Halloween in Japan and America, and personal experiences with Halloween. It also mentions the movie ‘Return to Oz’ and its Halloween setting, and draws comparisons between characters from different movies.
➡ The movie discussed is designed to unsettle viewers with its creepy imagery and references to dark concepts. It features a character who collects decapitated heads, and another who replaces his body parts with tin. The story also touches on the dangers of trusting technology too much, as seen in the use of electroshock therapy. The movie suggests that the fantastical world of Oz could be a hallucination, but the reviewer prefers to see it as a real place.
➡ The text discusses a movie where a character named Dorothy navigates through various situations in a new world, similar to the Shogun series. The movie includes elements of magic, such as a talking goat head that helps characters travel through different dimensions. The text also mentions a scene where a decapitated moose head is brought to life using magic powder and specific words. The author suggests that the movie might be more enjoyable when watched under the influence of LSD due to its psychedelic elements.
Transcript
Captain Hooker. Lost Boy in Neverland saving kids from Peter Pesticides. Nero fails to survive a barracuda in Latin, nobody means no one. Snow White never took another breath. Her prince, the angel of death has come. Occult Disney. We go from real to real this day. As above so below I called Disney. Please enjoy the show. Disney. Welcome to the Occult Disney podcast, where we look at all the secrets behind the curtain and pay no attention to them. There I paraphrased. I got the real line, like, you know, right on my screen. But I was gonna. It’s.
It’s me here. It’s Matt. It’s evil mouse there. Thomas is the evil mouse for a little while, at least. That’s me. I thought was all I’m gonna give you. That’s all you’re gonna give. You’re just getting this tiny little taste and decided if you’re listening, you didn’t get to enjoy how creepy that was. Right? You can go on YouTube and it’s. It’s five seconds of creepiness. 25 if we’re being very. Or 22, probably for being very specific. But that’s where we are. It’s a return today. It is a return to Oz. We are ending October here.
We’re ending our dive into Dark Disney. So the question on everyone’s minds, is this actually the darkest one? How do you feel? Answer to that is no. No. Okay. All right. See you next time. Head full of rooms does a lot for me. Head full of rooms. Room full of heads. Room full of heads does a lot for me. That’s going to be in some nightmares, I’m sure. Fair point. I think I actually saw this one a few times as a kid. It didn’t really creep me out, but I do remember, like, oh, that’s where that weird nightmare came from.
It was like, oh, it was this movie. And I definitely remember, like, I remember Tick tock. A lot. And I. Let me just get this one out of the way because it’s been festering in the back of my head. But return to Oz, a story ahead of its time where a mentally challenged young girl with a decides that she’s gonna go to another land and invents Tick tock. Yes, Yes. I was definitely giggling every time they said tick tock. And then I looked up, oh, it is that spelling. So that’s. That is how you spell his name.
I’ve probably read the book. I actually did read like a good 5 or 6. There’s like 20 or 25 of the oz books. Right. I’ve read a good half dozen of them, I think. Yeah. And I guess this is worth stating up front here. This movie isn’t just some random, like, surreal fever dream that someone pieced together. This is arguably one of the more accurate adaptations of wizard of Oz and the. All the accompanying stories. Well, the second and third books, specifically OSM of Oz. And I forgot what the third one is because I’m not looking at it at the moment, but.
Oh, here we go. Well, just actually it says mainly Osma of Oz, but I think they, you know, through the looking glass style brought in some other stuff from the third book or something and tick tocks from a completely different book way later. So it’s a bit of a mischief. The Gnome King is an amalgamation of a bunch of different gnome kings because it’s like a title more so than a character where they kind of combined all the different gnome kings into this one guy. So when I was a kid, they showed the wizard of Oz.
Was it on Halloween? Maybe it was. The movie takes place on Halloween. They may. They specifically say within the movie it takes place on Halloween. So I assume that it’s kind of a Halloween movie. Well, I’m talking about the original wizard of Oz, the. The late 30s MGM wizard of Oz, I think on Atlanta stations at least, they were playing that every Halloween because I remember trick or treating. And then I went, oh, we want to go see the wizard of Oz too. Because Star Wars. Yeah, Star wars and wizard of Oz, they’d show on TV once a year.
And I’d always catch the showings until I was like 10 years old or something and, you know, had the videotape or whatever, you know, that. That said, the original wizard of Oz has way more opportunities to exploit and commercialize that for Halloween. This one seems like it has a limited amount of costumes compared to the first one. Like, there’s a lot of the characters in this one Would not have costumes unless you got very elaborate and big with them. Yeah. I think I avoided Return to Oz because as a kid it one I. I know as an adult it’s probably more accurate, but as a kid I’m like, this looks weird and off brand and I don’t like it.
You know, where’s the Tin Man? Why is this big fat weird thing here now? And it’s all brown in my Happy Meal toys. This 90, 90% of the movie is like, you know, rust brown and tin colored. You know, it’s right at the end. Oh, they actually can recreate the look of the original movie. They just didn’t bother until the last scene. Which I now I appreciate. That’s great. But as a kid that was like, I can’t do that. I’ll just watch the wizard of Oz. Yeah, it definitely does not have the same sort of dopamine hitting like sensation where you’re just constantly being amazed by all the colors and the song.
This one doesn’t have any songs either at all. Right? No. There’s no Merryman in their soul in this movie. It definitely feels like a completely different movie outside of the franchise you’d expect. I can only imagine how many people showed up to see this without having any background on the book or anything. And where Dorothy has been awake for weeks, she’s not singing. This is almost like a non musical Joker 2 in that regard. You’re like, wait a minute, what happened to the wizard of Oz movie? What is this? I guess we’ll lay down a little background that Disney got the rights for the wizard of oz in the 50s, which included all the books except for, I believe the first one.
I think they could not actually remake the wizard of Oz, but they’re like, we got 20 other books. So there’s actually video footage from the 50s from the Disneyland show of Disney on set with the Mouseketeers in costume for what was going to be the rainbow road to Oz that never materialized for whatever reason. So come 1980 they’re about to lose the rights. And William the director, William Murch, who this is the only film he directed. So he was a major sound designer. He did like the Godfather, American Graffiti. He won an Oscar for doing Apocalypse now, both versions.
So you know. But he came to Disney and proposed, hey, I want to make an Oz movie. And at the time, yes, make an Oz movie. We’re about to lose the rights. It’s like when Sony makes a Spider man movie now, you know, so that would be a great thing to have in your calendar to, like, know when all the rights are going to be given up on certain studios. So you could just, like, float that idea. Hey, just. By the way, I was thinking about making a movie on this thing. It’s about to expire. And then I guess they’re more inclined.
Now. One of the more expensive things they had to do here is they didn’t have to pay MGM because it’s, you know, I. I think, yeah, the books are. Maybe they’re in public domain or whatever by this point, which. Why would they need the rights? Sorry, I’m thinking out loud here, but there was a rights thing. They did have to buy the rights from MGM for apparently an undisclosed large sum for the ruby slippers, because that’s an MGM creation. In the book, they are silver slippers. Now, if I was a Disney exec, I’d probably be in the room being like, silver slippers more accurate, cost less do the silver.
Maybe that’s less fun. I don’t know. Unless I missed something. I’m searching my memory, which is not great these days. But they only seem to mention the ruby slippers in this movie. Do we actually see them at some point? Visually? Yeah. You get a shot of the gnome king wearing them, which is fantastic. And then at the end, Ozma is wearing them and clicks, dorothy home. Dorothy does not wear them in this movie. So Ozma and the gnome king do. But they’re quick shots. Maybe you are, you know, blinking money well spent. Yeah, yeah. You don’t even see him unless you’re like, ping.
Very close attention. I. I was paying close attention. I did not synchro view on this. I think I was mentioning you before you hit record. My folks are in town. We’ve been watching the. The New Shogun, and there’s nothing in common between Return to Oz and Shogun whatsoever. Okay, well, you have the British sailor in a strange land, but that’s. That’s really tenuous. And I’m. I mean that I’m not even willing to push that forward as an actual comparison. This one doesn’t need too much synchronicity to compare at least with something just because the writer, Frank Baum, he basically was a theosophist.
He was all up in Madame Blavatsky. Maybe not literally, but at least the sort of the philosophy and, like, the occult teachings that she. You know, he was down when she unveiled isis, if you know what I’m saying. But I guess that a lot of the original premise and all this, that’s one of. I guess it’s one of the most obvious correlations is that all of this is about gaining consciousness and going through these different sort of levels and dimensions which we’ll get into. My favorite one that I have to always mention, which doesn’t apply to this movie as much, but it was the whole Federal Reserve aspect that the Yellow Road is the gold standard and that the Emerald City with the green and opium, opium of the masses is really greenbacks.
It’s this fiat currency that’s my favorite by far, always will be. Although this one definitely leans way more into theosophy and maybe like a. Like a more occult, rough around the edges. Rosicrucianism. Yeah, I read the books like really late, like around age 18 or 20, I think. I was actually in university or something when I read the Oz books and I was coming from the. Hey, he was actually making economic statements, you know, at age 18, 20. I hadn’t like. I hadn’t really worked out the whole theosophy angle yet. I was definitely not thinking about that, but I was thinking about the economics when I was reading Bohm’s book.
At least being aware that’s not just like some random fantasy, which is why I was reading several of them. That’s kind of according to Manly Palmer hall in Man, I’m Searching My Brain. I believe it’s called Occult Anatomy is the Book. But in that book he makes a really great case that really important works that stick around for a while and have like really long like centuries lasting staying power, they tend to be able to be read in at least seven different ways. So like his example is the Bible. But you can apply to a whole bunch of different examples of that.
But there’s some people that will read it as though it’s all geographic. The people that’ll read it as though it’s like anatomical. People read it as if it’s literal, metaphorical. Like if you can read something from seven different, completely different perspectives, then it has more staying power. And that’s a great example. Right. You can read wizard of Oz and it can be the children’s book. It can be theosophy, it can be philosophy, it can be, you know, financial sort of like fiat currency, deep esoteric talk. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why we still care about it.
Yeah, I would say the movies probably slim that down to about three or four different readings. You know, just absolutely. Because you can’t tap the details. Like I couldn’t work out them. But the books for sure also, like when you connect too much the movies connect way too much so that you don’t get to imagine that those flying monkeys might actually represent something else. Because they literally show you the flying monkeys. And in this one, even less so with the Wheelers. Yeah, in this one, there’s. Oh, the flying monkeys are over there, but we don’t see them.
The Wheelers are definitely, like, weird and punk rock and if you’re young ones or something. Yeah, yeah, but made me think of the young ones or something as well. Do you know that TV show with the. It’s the young British slackers living in a punk rock house in the early 80s. Great show. Oh, I can’t stand anything early in British. Oh, early 80s, 80s. This is new wave stuff. I don’t know how you feel about the new wave, which is pretty old at this point, but you want the clowns. Okay, I gotcha. I like it when Britain starts embracing US Culture more and more.
Okay, where’s punk rock fit into that? It’s got the Ramones, but then the British really ran with it, you know? I mean, if. If I just allowed a drought. You’re. You’re extracting some hot takes out of me here, but I don’t care about British punk, really. God Save the Queen. Great. Don’t care. Like, we stopped caring a while ago. That’s one of the biggest benefits of being here. Yeah, I’m more for the post punk myself. For me, I didn’t enjoy Division or Wire, but that’s near here. This is a return to Oz. They do not have any Joy Division songs.
But the Wheelers look like they could be playing a Joy Division song. That’s all I’m saying. Oh, no. 100%. And I had to look this one up because it almost was like, are they just ripping off Labyrinth? But no, Labyrinth was a year after this came out. And there’s so many scenes in this movie where I was like, damn, this looks like a scene that was cut out of Labyrinth. Well, all the hints and stuff. Brian, Jim Henson’s not involved with Return to Oz. He doesn’t get involved with Disney for another five years and it kills him.
Brian Henson is doing the puppeteering for the Pumpkin Jack. Pumpkin head. He’s doing the voice. I assume that there’s means there’s a fair amount of hints and creations here. But even if Jim wasn’t directly involved because he directed Labyrinth, so why would he want to deal with this stuff, you know? Well, like even. Even the set design and the way that the movie starts rolling out and the. The protagonist and I could be talking about either movie right now. I could either be talking about Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth or Fusa B and Return to Oz. Even though I think there’s like a eight year gap between the two of them.
But both of them, they slowly enter this kind of foreign world and are introduced to like sidekicks one at a time. Like you, you get one, you kind of figure out what their name, their ability is, what’s their thing, then you meet another one and that process kind of repeats a few times. And all of this takes place amongst almost like this fallen, dilapidated gothic architecture that also has 80s technology. And even though there’s no music in this one, it seems like there’s be like just the makeup that the Wheelers are wearing. Like I feel like they’re singing a mod song or it’s like a Devo video or something.
Yeah, someone must have reappropriated some of that footage for that sort of thing. There’s got to be an old MTV video that. You know, when rights were a little hazy still. Right? Because I mean, even Return to Oz, Disney put on video in the mid-80s, but then they like forgot about Anchor Bay, put all these dark Disney movies out from about 95 to 2005. And then Disney finally reclaimed their movies. But yeah, these dark Disney movies, Disney itself kind of just like dropped them for a while and let someone else deal with them. It is kind of weird that this one is a dark Disney movie.
I get it. I, I mean, it’s about a girl that goes to essentially like a early 1900s psychiatrist, I guess, late 1899 psychiatrist, and they’re going to do electroshock convulsive therapy on her to try and make her forget a very real experience that she had. So I mean, it already comes from a really dark place, but it is really just these, these wizard of Oz books. Right? It’s just remaking those. So if again, on the surface, without knowing what happens in the books, and you’re just like, oh, it’s the sequel, the wizard of Oz, you don’t necessarily expect this to be a dark Disney movie.
And I guess it would have to be if it was a direct adaptation. I don’t know how non creepy you really make this one. Although I assume that Frank Bomb didn’t have these Wheelers envisioned exactly like they show up in this movie. Okay, maybe this one is so resonant with me because this is my nightmare where I go to a city or a park or a theme park or something and it’s just completely dilapidated and it’s apocalyptic and I have trouble moving across the city. I keep getting stuck. Like, this movie is my more not quite nightmares, but more annoying dreams.
Like when I have annoying dreams similar to this movie. Top 5 Scariest Disney Movies for you then. Not scariest, but resonant. You know, as far as like, my actual dreams, like, are similar to this movie. Maybe that’s why I want to watch as a kid. Like, I see this stuff at night. I don’t need to see it during the day too. I mean, the thing that I related to the most that you said is that I had this off brand feel. And you’re like, ew, I don’t want to touch that. Like, I want the real one.
I kind of. I kind of remember that feeling specifically seeing Tick Tock. It was like, man, you’re kind of cool, but also you’re kind of Disney. And you’re not really what I was expecting. Like, Tick Tock could have just had his own movie. And I think I probably would have as a. I’m trying to tap into my child. Millions of his own movies. 30 seconds or less. Is that the Tick Tock length? I’m not quite sure. I’ve never used Tick Tock. It’s not on my phone or anything. I don’t even understand it. I’m the old fart that doesn’t understand Tick Tock.
I understand this robot guy better, this automaton, this golem better. Where’s the line between golem and atomic? Yeah, where’s the line between Gollum and automaton? Is there a line? Maybe there is no line. Yeah, because a golem, technically you still have. It’s still supernatural. Yeah. Can be totally science fiction. It doesn’t require supernatural to work. I guess the movie Hugo sort of explores that line. That’s the point of that movie. But. And I mean, I didn’t look into the production notes on this, but some of the movements on Tick Tock, I assume that’s a dude, which would make it a mechanical Turk more than anything.
Yeah. Who’s in the suit? Timothy B. Rose is the head operator. Michael Sunden is the in suit performer. Who is what? Okay, sorry. It’s. When I saw the picture of the guy in the Tick Tock suit, it was not what I expected. He looks like. Actually looks like an Aryan superstar or something. And you know, it looks like a poster boy for that sort of stuff. That’s who’s in TikTok at the time. Well, this is part of the retribution for World War II, I assume yeah, that’s right. We’ve demoted the lion to a chicken. I guess that I didn’t even know that I was watching the movie this week.
You know, I’m. I mean, you know, I’m trying to slot in like, this one’s this one. This one’s this one. Right. For who fits. Expand on that. What do you mean? That the lion. Tick tock is our Tin Man. Right. Jack Pumpkinhead is our scarecrow, which means that. Okay, yeah, the lion has been demoted to a chicken. Something I did like. And I would have hated it in the late 80s because it didn’t look like the characters from the original movie. Right. But now I love the designs when you do see the. The Tin man and the Scarecrow because they look so freaking weird in this movie.
I kind of hate the scarecrow. I’m not gonna lie about that. But. And also, I just gotta. If we’re comparing them one for one. Bellini, which is the name of the talking chicken. Now, I kind of assume that was Toto. Maybe a mix between. Yeah, yeah. Because Toto does only shows up at the. He doesn’t leave Kansas this time, does he? Right, but. But she keeps Bellini, like under her arm the entire time. And Bellini’s sort of her tag along from like. So you see Bellini before she goes to Oz and you see Bellini as soon as she gets to Oz.
So it feels like this constant thing that never left her, which is Toto. Oh, there is some chicken production notes on this that are a lot of fun. They had 40. They had about 40 chickens. They all died. No, but they had them in pens and each pen had a note like, this is the pecking chicken. This is the chicken that runs. This is the chicken that will attack the actors. This is the tiny chicken because Faruza balk. I’m not quite sure I’m saying her name right, but although she does have quite a career. But yeah, they had to give her a smaller one because she couldn’t hold a full size chicken.
There were a few mechanical chickens in certain scenes. So there’s. Once you include everything, there’s probably like 50 chickens in this movie. Yeah. And I have to assume that a non zero number of these did die because this was the 80s. Right. The production did not mention that. But reading I was like, how many stricken, retired or you know, or shortly after. If not in the, in the scene, you don’t want to be in that pen. These are the dying chickens. Like, wait, what? The dying chicken pen? Yes. And I avoid that One. But yeah, I did.
I was. You know, you never think about that. You’re like, oh, there, it’s all chicken. So they have a chicken, maybe two for the movie. Nah, they had 40 chickens. Very specifically trained chickens. Because you can only train a chicken to do like one thing if you’re going to train it. I guess. Yeah. I mean if, if you don’t want to give yourself a bad night, don’t look up at how many Milos and Otis’s there were in the ILO and mo. Milo and Modus. Yes. Milo and Ilo and Modus. Yeah. And yes, spoiler alert. It was not just one Milo or one Otis.
Bach claimed that she enjoyed working with all the chickens and they were sweet, but she was also an 11 year old girl and they might have told her to say that so. Because I think that’s from a at the time interview. Oh, that’s one thing I didn’t remember. I did not remember her as being in this movie. I could have sworn that I had only seen her in the Craft and then in Waterboy and then I think American History X. Unless I’m making. That’s correct. All of those are correct for me. Almost Famous always sticks in my mind.
She’s in Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call, New Orleans, which is an amazing movie. I don’t remember what she does in that one, but have you seen that? I don’t think so, no. The ones I just mentioned, the only ones that I actually remember seeing anyway, that’s just, that’s one of the best crazy Nick Cage movies. Which is. I’m giving that the high bar of crazy Nick Cage. So that and Color out of Space are my, my top crazy Nick Cage movies, so. Right. But I guess, I guess Color out of Space. I know that we’re on a tangent.
Color out of Space is like post awareness of Nick. Like Nick Cage being aware of his craziness and then like utilizing that versus it almost seemed like he was just like pointing around a loaded gun early on in his career without even really knowing. It was just Russia roulette for everyone involved. Bad Lieutenants, Port of Call, New Orleans. Sorry, you got to say the whole name a Werner Herzog film. So it’s not just a weird knockoff of Bad Lieutenants. Probably better than Bad Lieutenant. But yeah, that’s. That’s the magic spot where people were becoming fully aware that he was crazy Nick Cage and he was owning it.
So it’s like the sweet spot, you know. But Bach was in that in some role that I have forgotten because I usually just go back to the scene where Nick Cage is screaming at an old lady and I watch that one takes the tube out of her nose and start screaming at her to do something. I don’t even remember what it is. But I watch that scene on YouTube fairly regularly or show it to people. Otherwise there’s not like star power to speak of in here. Oh, okay. If I’m gonna have any synchro viewing anti M in this movie seems like way more evil than in the 38, 39 movie.
I need to look up which year that is. But that’s because I just saw her in Twin Peaks being a maniac, right, as Christine. And then she plays several episodes. Spoiler alert. As a large Japanese businessman in heavy makeup. That’s Twin Peaks. It’s weird. Yeah, yeah, it’s fun. I think they didn’t tell the other actors that that was her either. So it took them because she’s in such insane makeup. They’re like, why is Piper Laurie still in the credits but here, I mean, yeah, she makes it because of that M. Seems like extra intimidating in this movie to me because her actions are way more intimidating than an original.
I guess they make Dorothy want to run away, but yeah, you’re gonna give up the dog. But here it’s like we’re gonna. Jimmy gave me shock treatment, you know, that’s a little more hardcore than losing the dog. You, you mentioned like no real star power and I get. Yeah, I guess you’re right. They didn’t have any like big names or voices that would really pull you toward at least the. That I recognized for the time period. But that said, it’s actually a D for a movie that basically just stars like a, what, 9 to 11 year old girl? It’s actually not bad, like for kind of delivers in this movie, in my opinion.
It’s not like a cheesy kids Disney movie that I was going and expecting watching it as a 40 year old guy. Right. It totally worked. A couple small hits. If you know the English stage. Someone is screaming right now that I’m not mentioning. Nicole Williamson, who plays the gnome king in his full form, you know, legend on the British stage. But hey, I don’t know much about that. Right? So not a star to me. Sorry. What else do we have? Oh, oh, Deep Roy is the Tin Man. That’s kind of fun. He. He’s in the Tim Burton, Willy Wonka’s every Oompa Loompa.
He’s the Tin man here. But you can’t tell because he’s in a suit. Right. And the other people up for the Gnome King. Apparently Christopher Lloyd was up for that gnome king role, which, honestly, that would have been too much, I think, but it’s kind of fun to think about. Yeah, the. The Gnome king was an interesting one. I don’t know if it was supposed to be scary or good or bad. In the books, he’s essentially the big bad. He’s the. He’s the ultimate villain. But in this one, it. He almost seemed balanced and neutral. Like he.
He knew that this is how things kind of had to play out. I know he got angry about it, but he also kind of accepted it pretty quick. Yeah. Here he’s more like, I got a business here. Which, again, Vegas fits with the economic vibe of the bomb books. But, like, he’s not. He doesn’t seem. I mean, he’s getting a little aggressive, but he doesn’t seem to have, like, personal malice going on. It’s more like, don’t screw up my game. You know, it could. This movement, man, now I want to, like, start over. But maybe this movie was all about bitcoin.
The first one was about fiat currency. The second one is about bitcoin. I don’t know how I’m going to get there yet. I got. I would need time to work that in, but I feel like there might be a connection there. Could anyone conceive of Bitcoin? Maybe DARPA. But in general, could people conceive of Bitcoin in 1985? That’s an interesting thing to think about. It’s also one of my favorite reasons when I don’t. I don’t think that Art Bell or Coast to coast ever had an actual time traveler call in because not a single person was like, I’m calling from the future.
There’s this thing called decentralized ledgers and. And. And currency and crypto, and you just. Just get into it and then that they. It cuts out. But every time they just talk about other stuff that seems less consequential. Oh, I love that story, though. What was the guy’s name that called in? John Peter. Yeah. Yeah, I read that bizarre doc, like the entire diary document thing that’s on weird 19 late 90s Internet pages. I think we’ve already packed because he said that there was going to be World War Three. He called it. And I don’t think. I think we’re past it by now.
Are we having it now? Yeah. Oh, God. You could argue that just since America is not currently blowing up too hard at the moment. It doesn’t feel like it, but other places about. It’s about the friends you make along the way, though. Yes. I haven’t been to the other places. I don’t know. But yeah, obviously the, the news tells us it’s nasty, so that’s, you know, we’ll see. But what. But, yeah, you. Well, I’ve got my, my noise suppression on, so you can’t hear the mortar shells going off behind me. Okay. Because it is election season.
Zoom is getting good with this. Yeah. With cutting out all that noise and stuff. Well, ever since the Israel Palestine conflict bumped up, they were like, oh, let’s go ahead and add that extra filter. That is the thing. You look at something like Fox News or CNN and you’re like, are they making it look worse than it really is? Are they making it not look as bad as it really is? You know, it’s kind of hard to tell. Well, Wag the Dog now. Now you could actually have Disney do your Wag the Dog movies. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaking of movies that actually do have quite a bit of predictive power, if you go back, what is that, 1998 or 99? For WAG the Dog, it was during Clinton, I believe, because he was essentially the plot. It was post Lewinsky, because the plot point was that the President had some hanky panky that they were trying to cover up with a war along with like some other stuff. It’s a, it’s a great movie. And I think that maybe Return to Oz also had some sort of prophecy in it. But I’m still. I watched it under like a theosophical lens versus a John Teeter lens, which maybe was a grave mistake.
Yeah. Well, I’m trying to put the economic thing, the ending confrontation is go into a room full of knickknacks and touch the right one or become a knickknack yourself. Is that basically the vibe there? Guess that it’s like the end of Last Crusade. Right? Except yeah. I mean, she is going around. Oh, my God, you nailed it. Right. She’s going into her crypto wallet and she has to figure out the passcodes and then she’s converting that crypto back into fiat, therefore, physical, tangible items. So the whole end plot is her finding her crypto again. I should check crypto.
I think I bought a little bit of crypto like 5 years ago and forgot I did it, as many people do. But I don’t know if it’s worth it, honestly. Yeah, it was probably because that way your heart doesn’t race about Things you can’t control. So who knows? I should look it up. Maybe I have a ton of money and don’t know it. Probably not. I think you have to do it 10 years ago for that to really work. I’ve got a few different quotes in here that I’ll kind of get through organically. But first of all, the movie starts out and it shows that this family, and I guess by proxy, the rest of society is fully embracing this new 20th century.
Which is interesting to hear because I know that the movie, they got the rights in what, 50, like 50s or 60s. And then the movie didn’t come out the mid-80s. So at this point they know how dark, maybe the background of this, this premises. But for it to be taking place in the very early 1900s, late 1800s, and this like mechanical, sort of electro. Everything is the solution. So even the dad has got some issue going on, I think. But they’re looking in the paper about this electric healing device. And this is essentially what is supposed to fix their daughter Dorothy, because she’s been to Oz and it since it’s a sequel, right? She’s been Oz.
She comes back home and what we don’t get to see is that everyone around her is like, oh my God, like she’s got mental issues. She’s talking about this foreign land and all these people that she met. So you kind of. What you don’t see between these two movies is that the family is now concerned for Dorothy. They’re gonna bring her to a psychiatrist slash and sanitarium. Kind of like a sanitarium for kids, I guess. Yeah, they call it Electric Healing, which sounds like a 10 minute long prince track. Electric Healing. Oh, you froze. That’s what happened.
Snake oil. Now you’re back. Sorry. You froze. For a minute I thought that me bringing up Prince had silenced you, but that’s not what happened. Well, it was. It’s creepy because the advertisement for the Electric Healing, it’s in a paper along with a whole bunch of different classifieds where you’d see the snake oil, where you’d see all of like the scam stuff. So you kind of even realize like, oh, these poor people are about to get swindled out of money before you even actually see anything happen. Maybe this is. Maybe that’s a tribute to Judy Garland, who probably couldn’t sleep in the late 30s.
That’s all those amphetamines. Dark story, but yeah, that talked about childhood. So let’s at least look at that box. Seems to have had a nice, normal career as far as we can tell where, you know, Garland went off the rails pretty quickly. Her and Rooney Maniacs. Children maniacs of Hollywood. I don’t, I mean, yeah, I guess there wasn’t any huge blow ups that I remember growing up with, but she definitely had some of the more extremist roles for like large movies that came out, I guess Craft. But American History X in particular, she kind of plays like the hardcore racist, even more racist girlfriend in that movie.
Oh God. Yeah. Now see, I haven’t watched American History X for a while. Great movie. But yeah, now, now I’m. Now it’s popping in my brain. Okay, after American History acts and you’re freeze a bulk, you call up Disney again. You’re like, oh by the way, I’m totally available if you guys ever want to do something again. See I just think of Almost Famous where she’s the groupie that deflowers what’s his name, Cameron Crow. Stand in character. Yeah. If you’ve seen that movie. So. Oh, see, I didn’t even realize she was in that. Yeah. And, and I guess too, to be fair, maybe Disney wouldn’t care right after she comes off American History X because they’re like, hey, like Werner Von Braun’s in the next room.
So. Yeah, I don’t, I guess we don’t have that big of a problem. No. And that, that’s the period where Disney couldn’t care less about Return to Odds. Again, they didn’t even bother using their rights. They let run off with it. So that probably didn’t matter. But anyway, that just takes this the sting out of. Yeah, thinking about Judy Garland gets very dark this sorry super tangent. But it’s worth mentioning because it’s really funny. I do the Twilight Zones and there was one with Mickey Rooney, you know, Garland’s regular co star and he was, it had a commentary track for the episode the Last Night of a Jockey.
He’s the only actor in the episode has a commentary track. It seems it was recorded when he was like maybe 90 and it’s like the most antagonistic commentary track possible. He’s like what were you thinking? When I wasn’t thinking anything, they just paid me the money and I acted. And it’s like this for like the whole commentary, just like really antagonistic and it’s great. So I recommend anyone that can get hold of Blu Ray or find the commentary track online to do the Mickey Rooney commentary track for the Last Night of a Jockey if you want to hear a true 90 year old madman.
If I’m not mistaken. Mickey Rooney is kind of the inspiration for the Peter Griffin. You’re like, you know what really grinds my gears and he just starts ranting about something. That’s Mickey Rooney. Right? That was his role you might be complaining with. No, maybe that there is some. I think you might be thinking about Andy Rooney who was, I don’t think related but he was on 60 Minutes and he’d branch at the end. I am thinking. No, I am thinking of Andy Rooney. I mixed them up a ton when I was growing up. Who’s Mickey Rooney? Where would you know Mickey Rooney from bigger guys.
He’s just a bunch of films with Judy Garland basically. And they’re old timey films that people don’t tend to watch these days. So being on the spot, I’m having trouble just giving you a recall on that. Boys Night, something like that. Yeah. You know, musical films. I know why people generally don’t watch anymore. Boys. That’s it. Boys Town. I remember that one stuck in my mind because for. That doesn’t sound good. But yeah, that one’s memorable for even more horrible reasons than anything Judy Garland came up with. I just think of John de Camp and Franklin Scandal when someone sends boys down.
Yeah, I do want to. I just want to bring up a little more on what Disney was doing with this before. I have more specifics that once they get the rights in 54 for the remaining 13oz books. Excuse me, I said too many. When I said 20, it’s 14. The original plan was a two part episode based on the Patchwork Girl of Oz. It was too ambitious for television so they changed the name to a feature called the Rainbow Road to oz. They previewed three songs in 1957 with the Mouseketeers, then got rid of the film.
But they did put all of the music out in 1969 as the Cowardly lion of Oz. So you can jam out to the complete soundtrack of this unmade movie if you want to. If any of that made it the film for someone to just like leak that or for the vaults to open and we just get to see some of these like unfinished ideas. I almost feel like that would do really well. Just like a whole compilation of, you know, little bits and pieces of things that were never fully made. Oh yeah, yeah. I’m looking at the guy that did the music for Return to Oz.
It just made me start thinking about that. And it’s. It’s a bunch of films, right? Oh, those are great films. I can’t remember anything about what the music is like in those. Which is the taking of Pelham One Two Three, the Conversation, all the President’s Men, and parts of Saturday Night Fever that were not disco in this movie. That’s who did the music for this movie. I’m just saying those are his previous credit. Unlike none of the. All those. I’m like, oh, those are great movies. But none of. I don’t think Saturday Night Fever is a great movie, but it’s certainly a profound movie.
I gotta say, after all the different movies we’ve seen, even just in the dark Disney. This one had a fairly long run time. It was like an hour and 46 or something. But it went by because things were happening. It didn’t. Even though the. And maybe you have a different experience in this one. Even though the aesthetic was like, yeah, kind of washed out and bronze and rust and. And rocks and sand and it wasn’t really emerald and rainbows and gold, you know, paved anything, but it still moved along fairly well. And there was enough really strange things like, what the hell am I.
Look, did they just pull the head of a moose down off of a wall and they sprinkled it with life powder and they set a magical incantation and now it’s flying around with like palm fronds as wings. And you’re seeing all of this, like, yeah, I’m in for all of that. No, I agree. It moves. I mean, that was the big complaint at least I had. And I think you did too with the black hole. It’s like everything in this is cool, but the movie does not move. We’re here. It’s like, hey, you don’t like this room? Wait 30 seconds, we’ll be somewhere else, you know, 100%.
Yeah. Every. Every, like 30 seconds to a minute. If you don’t like the decapitated heads, then you get a room full of gold and jewels. If you don’t like that, then you get a big rock monster. If you don’t like that, well, now there’s like some weird inferno aspect. And then you get to see the weird labyrinth Wheeler guy. Honestly, the Wheelers are the coolest part of this movie. The more and more I think about it, for me, it’s a room full of heads. It’s going to stick in my. My head. But that’s the thing. There’s something that grabs everyone.
The Wheelers. Yeah. Again, I’m just thinking Pong. Is that you just tapping back into a frightened young Matt? Probably. I. I do remember one of. One of the most traumatizing cartoons I saw as A kid was Starblazer, which is the American version re edit of a Japanese show called Space Battleship Yamato. But there’s one thing where a robot, an Android has to like jettison his limbs and then he’s like just sitting on the side of a spaceship outside in space with no limbs. And that really freaked me out as a kid. So, yeah, I guess, I guess your thing is dismemberment.
That’s so. You know, this is so for me, Return to Oz is like David Cronenberg for children. You know, I mean, I’m. I’m searching my head. Was it Crimes of the Future or something? I remember the, the name of the movie. But there is a movie that in the future body modification is done as like an art form or something. And they do these like underground like, like black market meetings slash art shows where you just get surgery. They’ll just like remove an organ or something as performance art. And I feel like that would be a special kind of hell for you.
Yeah, yeah, probably. So let’s dive into some theosophy, I guess. Oh, the one, the last production. This is another flop. All the dark Disney movies are flops, by the way. So just, just before you get too theosophic, the budget 28 million made 11 so fell right on its face. That’s why we did not have a return to Return to Oz. If they had. Honestly, if they had added more color in music, I would have liked it less, but it probably would have been a bigger hit. So in case, in case you ever see John Teeter, you can tell him to pass that back again to the 80s.
Where would you rather have teeter’s car or the DeLorean? You just sit there and time moves around you time machine style, or you’re going to go 88 miles an hour? I think John Teeter was like a somewhat boring, less creative version of just fan fiction. Even back in the day, I was always like, this is kind of lame. Like, even if this were a guy from the future, he’s like bringing back the lamest information. Like, none of this is getting me excited whatsoever. That’s fine. Take care of myself as a kid. That’s what I do these days.
Yeah, the, the John Teeter thing, it was like a special moment in time, but it wouldn’t even went viral on Tick Tock at this point. No, I think the blandness of it all is what makes it somewhat convincing. You’re like, well, if it’s this kind of like, mundane, then it must be true, I guess. I mean, it takes a better story to kind of really sell it. It does, but that’s also part of the fascination that it is so thin and mundane that you’re like, well, why would someone make that up? It’s boring. So time travel might probably would be mundane and boring if you’re actually doing in certain ways.
So. And I know that this movie is supposed to take place in like the year 1900, just before October. October of 1899. But there’s so many shots even when they’re in the mundane world, that it totally looks like 1980. Like. Like there’s a driveway at some point. And even though there’s no cars in the driveway, it’s totally a drive. Like, all of the aesthetics on a lot of these shots, it just seemed like they didn’t go that extra mile. So, I mean, they were already over budget compared to how much money the movie ended up making.
So I guess it’s good. They didn’t go all out, but it was weird. It had a weird aesthetic. They wanted to shoot 75% of this in like, you know, Italy and Malta and places like this and get really fantastic looking places. And then in the end it’s like, nah, you’re gonna make all these. You’re gonna make Kansas like a valley in England. I guess it’s a small valley because they don’t really have mountains there. But is this another one of those movies they shot in England for tax reasons? Correct. They didn’t want to do a bunch of location for this one, but they were.
Yeah, they feel it. I don’t know what it is, man, but I. I can feel that, like, 80s English energy coming through a little bit. That’s a little bit of the part that made it not hit as hard as it could have. They had shot it in actual Kansas. I feel like there’s a je ne sais quoi, like a. Like a. Like a hard to explain essence that would have elevated this quite a bit. You can’t shoot a freaking movie about a Kansas family going through twisters and not actually do it. At least in the States.
I don’t know. Yeah, here we go. And it says here Kansas scenes were filmed at Salisbury Plain, which was described as a natural choice by the dp, I guess due to it being flat and within close proximity to London. So sorry, valley was the wrong term word used. The temperature during filming was described as freezing. Okay. The original cameraman quit after shooting all the Kansas scenes due to impatience with merch, who was fired at that point after the Kansas scenes. But Then he actually had Coppola and Lucas go to Batman for him and let those guys convince Disney to let him finish the film with Lucas saying I’ll come directed a few if he screws up again.
Which I guess he didn’t because it’s not a Lucas film. So but in that. Oh, now you’re like wait a minute, he did the sound for Apocalypse now and American Graffiti. That’s why. So it does make sense. So, so chronologically right, she. She’s making her friends and family think she’s crazy. So they’re saving up money to get her electro convulsive therapy, which is what any good family would have done to their young nine year old in the early 1900s. And they actually send her to a place called Cottonwood Falls. And that’s sort of like this. It’s a town.
I actually looked all this up. I don’t know why they went so specific. But there’s actually a town in Kansas called Cottonwood Falls. It was around during this time period and it was like one of these little stop off cities. But they actually bring her to there, that little sanitarium and they go inside and they also do like a weird thing. And the, the doctor is showing her this device that’s essentially going to give her this electro convulsive therapy. And he’s like look, it’s a face. Here’s the eyes and here’s the nose and here’s the mouth.
He’s. And there’s like a little dial that basically sets how much you want to shock them with like how many volts. He’s like this is its little tongue. And he’s like wiggling it back and forth like it’s this fun little thing. And you as the viewer, but also for fruze of all because like well aware that this thing is just a torture device which is kind of steampunk MK ultra machine I get. And it remind me a little bit too of the little quarter things that you like the sightseeing post that they’ll put on like a tall building or something.
You put the quarter in and it’s got like the two eyes and little nose. Mustachy thing. One thing. Yeah, one thing this movie does that, that he said it would put in harmony with the original was having Kansas actors also appear in Oz. So I was like, so is the MK automation, the electroshock machine, is that supposed to be tick tock? But now she gets to turn the knobs on tick tock instead and Oz kind of. I’ll get. I’LL get to that too. But she. There’s a weird part of that too, but yeah. So the pareidolia, that’s like where you see faces and everything, but when you point it out in the movie.
And I thought it was creepy. Yeah. Like, here’s your friendly MK Ultra electro convulsive therapy machine. And Disney technically could have came out with a little ip, right? You can. Little pin. Or like a stuffed animal. That would have been the face of this electro convulsive shock machine. Sell that at Target for Christmas. That sounds great. Speaking of seeing faces, though, because we all see the man in the moon, right? Are you sure? Are you familiar with what Japanese see in the moon? And I’ve lived here long enough, now I see it. The rabbit making rice cakes.
Yeah. Because we were in a museum last week and my dad’s like, why did the guy make this? Was he. I. I’m like, because if you don’t know it, it looks like. Why would you make that? I’m like, oh, that’s what they see in the moon. But maybe it’s high, right? I don’t know. He made. He made a lot of incense burners. So it was. It was steel. A metal work. A museum display. So do rabbits eat rice? Not that I know of. I don’t really know why the rabbits make emoji, now that you mention it, but that is how you would make cheese, because everyone knows cheese makes way more sense than rice.
Rabbits do not like carrots. Apparently a lot of pet rabbits have died because the owners kept trying to feed them carrots. And they don’t like carrots. They can’t process the carrots. Don’t give your rabbit a carrot. Where did that come from, though? I mean, they do like carrots, but they probably don’t like the carrot itself. They probably like the part that you don’t have to pull up out of the ground. It had something to do with. It’s something about World War II British propaganda, and I cannot remember the specifics. It always comes back to the freaking Brits, doesn’t it? But yeah, I believe that it was like in the 30s when that kind of come around and.
And then you got Bugs Bunny chomping on a carrot around that time too. Right. Maybe It’s World War I when the. With that propaganda then. But something about, yeah, eat your carrots and see sharp. Why would there be a rabbit? I don’t know. Did not prepare to explain that one for this podcast clearly, because why would I. Well, speak, I guess. Speaking of Farming and pulling up root vegetables. I thought that was a little bit interesting. Is that the real reason that they want to bring Dorothy to the sanitarium is. I guess it’s partly because they know that she’s talking about all this nonsense they don’t believe.
But it almost feels like they could have gotten over that, except she’s staying up all night. She won’t sleep. She’ll be up until like, 1 or 2am Maybe even the witching hour. And then in the morning, her mom specifically says that, like, you’re staying up late and you’re sleeping in and you can’t work on the farm like this. And it was kind of like, okay, now I understand the parents are willing to spend this money to send her off to get shocked into working better so that she’ll wake up earlier and actually do farm chores. So that feels like the actual motivation here.
See, I was thinking of Dorothy kind of being like the shaman that industrial society shuns, you know, because when people. Because she’s walking into other worlds, you know, like a. Like a shaman might do. Yeah. She’s the one that’s actually pursuing this, like, theosophical research and that her parents are stuck in the mundane. Her parents are both bumpkins because they only see the commercialization of energy and electricity and all this new technology. They just see it as ends to means. Like, it’s very utilitarian to them. And. And the parents are. Since they’re farmers, they’re obsessed with this mundane world.
Their house got knocked down. They’re building a new house. They’re, like, just out getting up early and doing all the farm chores. And she wants none of that. She’s, like, very cerebral. So I think in this case, Dorothy kind of is your Madame Blavatsky in a way. Like, she. She’s the Frank bomb. She’s the spirit that’s going through all these different experiences seeking enlightenment. Her parents don’t care about enlightenment. If anything, the parents would pay money to have that enlightenment. Shock the hell out of your head. Because I’m pretty sure that once you become enlightened, there’s a direct correlation to the amount of farm work that you might be willing to do without more protest.
So that’s the issue, is that she’s enlightened. Well, I don’t know. You could be enlightened to do plenty of farm work. Right. It’s like, if there’s dishes girl coming right back from being enlightened. It’s not like, all right, let’s get back to these Chores. I’m thinking about my house, my, my in laws. They’re out of the house by 7am at the latest most days to go do farming. Right. So my daughter’s gone because it’s a school and my wife’s usually off with her sister by that point. And I’m, I’m dilettanting up and then doing a, called Disney podcast.
So yeah, no one’s. I’ll definitely say that there’s a very specific trend, especially in the early 1900s, but a lot of occultists, a lot of people that would find themselves in a theosophical society and talking about these things, they tended to be on the higher end of the class system because a, most people didn’t have time to sit around and just talk philosophy and esoteric wisdom. But also those books were really hard to come by. Like you had to kind of spend a little bit to get some of these grimoires, especially before anyone even knew what they were.
So I would just say like yeah, anyone that was like theosophical in the 1900s, they’re probably not on a farm. Yeah. I mean again, Crowley was 100, a trust fund kid, you know, have a large bank account. Bang his maid too when he was like too young. Really like 12 or something. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So yeah, but yeah, he had the super religious father. So how do you rebel? You become Aleister Crowley, I guess. Yeah, bang the maid. So, but yeah, so it’s, it’s very difficult to do that. But then in a, you know, in a past society that.
Yeah, I don’t know, there is no. What, what class is a shaman in a, you know, a aboriginal style society. I feel like shaman’s kind of like outside the whole system. Yeah, I wouldn’t really consider that like high or middle or low class. Like I mean financially, like from the economic standpoint, a shaman would still likely just be lower middle class. Like there’s not many cultures where the shaman has like more material wealth, but they might have sort of political capital. That doesn’t translate as well into like the western world where you know, the, the shaman can say something and everyone else will listen.
I guess closest thing would be like a pastor at like a church in a small town, like whatever power they wield. Although pastors also, maybe they drive a pretty nice Cadillac sometimes. Little private jet here and there. Well, you’re getting to power churches now. Mega churches. We’ve got it worked out again. America kind of improves everything so we don’t have any of those poor shaman here. We just Got rich televangelists. Before we move to Oz proper, I just have two things that I want to point out. One, should they have done it in black and white in Kansas? That would have made sense.
No. Can you just not shoot in the 80s Movies in black and white? I mean, obviously the color is nice, but I was like, maybe if it started. Yeah. Are you saying like it starts black and white and then it transitions the color the same way that the original one does? Yeah, that’s what I’m suggesting. Yeah. Oz has to be in color, even if it is just like burnt out brown for most of the time. Maybe. Actually, maybe that would have helped with the juxtaposition. So as you transitioned from sepia into mud with a little bit of green, maybe it would have popped a little bit more.
Yeah, maybe that’s why they didn’t do it. Because it’s not just Munchkin color blast. She’s even like, where are the munchkins? You know, they’re not here. They should be here. They’re all dead. Everyone, you know is dead. Right. Or turned to stone. Yes. So, I mean, same difference, right? It’s not. I. It’s not like any of these characters that got turned to stone necessarily come directly back. Some of them do, but we don’t see lion come back. There’s also a bunch of stone figures with their heads missing. That’s kind of implied now. The head’s missing. Yeah.
But I don’t know if they can reattach those because the heads are still alive in the headroom. But in the final scenes, you might have taken a little nap at the end of the movie because you do see everyone in the. In the Emerald City at the end. Oh, do they bring the lion back at the very end? Yeah, you see the line briefly. Again, it’s. It’s not long, but that’s why I think, oh, I like the designs of the original characters that are not at all like the original. Well, I really do. I don’t know.
They’re like the weird tsum Tsum versions. They’re like the Disney Tsum Tsum versions of the original characters. It seems to express and emote, though. Like, none of these characters could necessarily emote whatsoever. In fact, the scarecrow just has one face that’s kind of plastered on no matter what you’re doing. It look, it looked like an actual Halloween costume that he was wearing. And I guess the same exact thing. Even with the Tin man, even with Tik Tok, with all the characters. They’re just kind of stuck in these very specific poses. It’s. I don’t know, like this was books.
Makes more sight with the books though, Right? Makes sense. Excuse me. Because the books kind of are these totally bizarro friends she makes. You know, the. Her friends are as creepy as her enemies in the books, which this movie goes for, maybe more so. Yeah, yeah. The last thing I was going to say, were they about to electroshock her without putting anything in her mouth. She was about to lose a tongue. I mean, I mean, that’s just solving two problems at once. Okay, all right, Good point. Okay. But I noticed that. So I guess we should move on into Oz proper.
We’ve been talking about Kansas. Let’s talk about Oz some. Sure. She shows up in Oz and the first thing that she said, well, she shows up in like the desert of death. I think that’s what they call it. Or maybe it was the deadly desert. And if you touch the sand, you turn to sand. So it’s kind of one of those fun, like, don’t step on the cracks game at first. And then floor is lava. Yeah, the floor is lava. She comes up on a tree that is literally growing lunch pails and they have to pick like a red ripe one versus a green unripe one.
I wonder what would have been in one of those. But she picks a red lunch pail from the lunch pail tree and there’s a ham sandwich inside of it. I know this all seems like fever dreamish, but this comes directly out of the original Oz books. And in fact, there’s this whole entire faction of people that are all named like Bo Joe Egg and Joe Ham and Joe Sandwich and Joe Pale. And all of those people, whatever their last name is, they have a tree that grows those things. This is directly out of the ODD series.
Yeah, I think it’s an extra surrealism that does make this movie become like, creepy and fun for me. I’ve never had my lunch in a pail, by the way. That seems little weird. And if you want to experience this part of Oz, go visit the. The Oz village thing they built up in the mountains. I don’t know if it’s actually Georgia or North Carolina, but. You know about the abandoned Odds theme park? Yeah, I’ve heard about that. I heard. I mean, I heard it was not a great place to go even. Even after it opened and closed pretty quick.
And they’ve made like other models of that on the east coast and some theme parks, like little kids sections of that. Yeah, but you gotta go to the Old dilapidated one. If you’re a Return to Oz fan. Right? Are there lots of them out there? A lot of Return to Oz Die Hards out there. Oh, it’s the. All of these occult dark Disney. Excuse me, we do the occult Disney. All these dark Disney movies have ramped up a nice caught following Black Hole definitely has one. People are into Vincent. It’s not just you. Vincent is awesome.
Yeah. The Watcher in the woods is probably the one with the. The least, you know, caught status, but it still has not a movie with no villain. Doesn’t seem to stick. Oh, crazy. Something Wicked this Way Comes. It is a South park episode based on it. Right? Something Walmart this Way Comes. So that. That has some coattails. And. And this one does have one. I mean, come on, think of it. The. The early Hot Topic crowd would be into this. You know, the modern one, maybe not, but the 90s, when the hot Topic opened. This is the right vibe.
It’s. I mean, Nightmare Before Christmas was the perfect buy, but this is. This is 80. There we go. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a tick tock merch somewhere. Yeah. Jack Pumpkin Head. How far away is that from Jack Skellington? Right? He. He dies. He becomes Jack Skellington. That’s how it works. He. It looks. And he kind of has all the same mannerisms. Yeah. I was 100 getting Jack Skellington vibes from Jack Pumpkin Ed for some creepy Disney. I was just. I just learned about this. Are you familiar with. I mean, you know, haunts. Right. They got Universal Horror Nights, Fright Fest at Six Flags.
Disney doesn’t do it, but Hong Kong did for a couple years. Or they had the Nightmare experiment where the, the fiendish Dr. Professor Wu or something has brought the realities of Disney together. And you go rooms where it’s like a, A, A man Pinocchio, who’s chained to the wall at Stromboli’s. He’s been a slave for Stromboli for however many years. You go into a room, the Mad Hatter is there and pulls a plant. And the audience pulls him into his. His room. The lights gone. And it’s. It. He. It seems that he murders one of the guests who is a plant.
But yeah, it’s just like really, you know, that kind of stuff. So I’m like to return to Oz for that. Sure. Room full of heads. There we go. I’ll keep. Now Disney does have something. I. I don’t know if it’s a technicality. Doesn’t count, but it’s Mickey’s not so Scary Halloween. And yeah, the title makes it not count of it. Okay. I mean, but it is what you would expect. It is like everything gets themed a little bit differently. But yeah, they don’t, they don’t have people chasing and making children cry in the middle of the park.
It’s a little bit anti Disney brand. Right? So the nightmare experiment is them doing something a little. I don’t think it’s full on, like, you know, what you would get at Universal, but it’s way more there than what they typically do. It only ran for two years. And then maybe someone, you know, because Hong Kong Disney, I think, is still under more of like proper Disney jurisdiction and someone’s probably. Wait, what? You know, watching review time. Like what? No, stop this. I gotta say, Mad Hatter cannot be killing guests. This might sound a little bit weird, but I do feel that if I was one of those Imparc characters, I would have way more fun scaring Japanese kids than American kids.
Well, that’s what I’m doing this week because at my school it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s Halloween week so that sometimes I go into the ghost room so the kids come get candy. So I, you know, we got the black curtains, a weird like flickering red lamp thing. I put on one of the binaural beats, one of the creepier ones on my phone while I’m doing it. You know, I got the black robe and you know, I just a Cookie Monster voice. You will enter. And yeah, it’s really fun when you got the really aggressive six and seven year old boys and you make them cry and they won’t go in.
That’s a win. So, yes, what you’re saying is correct. That’s a win. I was depressed yesterday because we had two Halloween parties, right? And the first one I was not the ghost and that had the. I was like, I wanted to make those two boys like cry from fear of my ghost. Be a memorable experience. You’re just like, yeah, typical teacher. So yesterday I just got four kids that were, that, that were all pretty cool with it, even though I was trying to creep them out. And, and since this is a Halloween movie, Return to Oz is takes place at Halloween.
But I, I have to admit, like, this is an American Halloween, right? And almost all of these trends, this is my bias showing. But all of these like modern commercial trends and dressing up and throwing out candy, the way that it’s done now, that feels like a modern American invention. Like something that came out of the, the 20th century America, despite all of the European roots and all this. I feel like that was a completely. It wouldn’t even be recognizable compared to what we’ve got now. Yeah, it’s funny, especially in Japan, Halloween feels kind of like a new thing.
So when we do the Halloween quiz, it’s on a TV and I didn’t make the question, so I don’t know if this, I don’t think the censor sounds quite right, but it’s like, when did Halloween start? And the answers are 20 years ago, 200 years ago or 2,000 years ago. And the kids always usually choose B. I don’t think 2000 is actually correct, but that’s what’s in the quiz that someone made. Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s maybe like one of those technically correct things. Yeah, it’s, it’s fine enough. The point is, I guess to show the kids like this is actually quite old.
You know, a few of them choose 20 years old because in Japan that’s about correct. Japan didn’t really start doing Halloween until 20 years ago. The first couple years when I was working in Japan and I, we had a Halloween party at the English school. I had a lot of difficulty finding a costume, whereas now it’s quite easy, so. Well, you’re welcome. That is definitely the American portion of Halloween. Oh, it is, it is. It’s. It’s all just because people are like, what’s the point of Halloween? I’m like, I don’t know, it’s kind of, I mean, you know, I could sit there and start talking about like ancient rights and crap, but I’m just like, oh, it’s just a goofy fun holiday because I don’t really feel like getting into, you know, that stuff with a 10 year old Japanese kid.
And I guess at a, at a deeper level, the real point of Halloween is it, it’s almost a purge in a way. Kind of like a, like a purgey feel where it’s your one time to maybe anonymously let that neighbor that everyone hates. Maybe a pumpkin just ends up on roof or maybe some, someone, someone is carrying Bellini and Bellini starts shooting eggs at your house. It wasn’t us. It was an accident. He was trying to take out the gnome king Bellini burst, that’s all. So no, I guess the Japanese equivalent is in August, which is the Bon Holiday, or you hear it, it’s Obon a lot, which, that one is where you’re supposed to go to the family house, you burn some straw in the driveway or whatever.
Set up the family shrine in the main area. And the idea is the ghosts of your ancestors will be visiting for these three days. And then you take it all down and you make little animals. You put sticks and eggplants and cucumbers to make like, cucumber horses and stuff and put it on the shrine. And I mean, it’s a kind of a serious holiday. I just made it sound a little silly with the vegetable animals, but it’s, you know, it doesn’t have any of the goofiness of Halloween because people are sometimes like, oh, well, Oban’s like the Japanese Halloween.
I’m like, well, kind of. But, you know, you don’t put on a dumb pumpkin helmet and run around scaring people. For Oban, I. And I. Just for the record, I have absolutely been terrified at Halloween. I remember growing, but it was more of direct threats of real danger as opposed to being scared of masks. Like, I remember that there was this group of teenagers that would hang out in the park and they would just be wearing just like normal teenager clothes, but then they all had Care Bear masks on, like the cheap Walmart ones. And they would literally chase down children and beat them up and steal their candy.
Like, this is what the teenagers preferred to do those nights. And that was absolutely terrifying, seeing them walking towards you. This is just for the YouTube crowd, if you can see it. But I do need to share this photo I just brought up of my 2017 Halloween ghost. I don’t. Yeah, it’s pretty terrifying. I don’t know if you can see that or not, but you’re wearing a hoodie and there’s a mask under it. But I can’t see what the mask is. It’s a pumpkin mask. But the way the photo exposed you, it. You can’t see the lines where my eyes are.
So it comes out, like, insanely creepy. Maybe I’ll put that in the Twitter feed or something for my scary Halloween ghost. But yeah, that, you know, that’s. This movie’s out to freak you out a little bit. Here’s another thing. This is another, like, only get some people. This movie has a lot of creepy shots of liminal spaces. I feel like a whole lot of liminal space shots that just feel awkward even then. And they keep sprinkling them in, too. Again, that’s one of the things that helps it keep moving is it’s like, oh, that’s unsettling. Oh, that’s unsettling too.
Like, it’s nonstop things that have, like, a slightly creepy. They don’t really jump out and scare you, but the whole movie definitely has. Does, like, an intentful way of making you feel unsettled. I mean, that’s what the Shining does, too. Merch, I don’t think is a level Kubrick level director, but that’s something Kubrick does a lot, too. Just sprinkle in those weird, unsettling, symmetrical shots of liminal spaces, you know, and it adds a very unsettling feeling in the Shining. And. And that might be part of what adds to this. It’s the scariest thing in the Shining, actually.
That kind of thing. You know, the unsettling parts that make the other parts feel creepier, and they make a few different references to dismemberment and some kind of, like, darker concepts, which I guess would make this fairly dark movie. You mentioned all of the decapitated heads that this lady is keeping in her room in the book. They actually have, like, numbers. You’re like, I’m gonna put on number 27 or, I’m gonna put on number 13. So it implies that she has got a massive collection of these heads. It’s not. They do that in this one, too.
She’s number 31. So she. It’s way more. Because she actually mentions in this movie, too, that the heads where we see when Dorothy first comes into Oz, and she’s like, oh, my God, everyone’s turned into a stone now. And there’s these six late, like, women that are kind of, like, playing Ring around the Rosie or something. One of them has fallen over, and all of them are missing their heads. And she notes that that’s where those six heads came from. But, yeah, if she’s got 30 plus, there’s a lot of gaps in exactly where all this came from.
And in the original Oz books, that was kind of a consistent theme, is that Frank Bomb would introduce all these different characters, but some of them, like, just would had not flesh their backstories out at all. It would make, like, these crazy claims about, like, where they were at in life and all these, like, things they’ve had overcome. But there’s no backstory that kind of lets the readers, I guess, fill that stuff in. There’s even a counterpart to Dorothy. I have to look her name up. But, like, for some sort of copyright or trademark reason, as he wanted to keep working, he wanted to keep the exact same story.
So then he makes a girl that has, like, a mule instead of Toto, and then she has all these ancillary friends, which explain when you were mentioning, like, oh, we’ve got a pumpkin guy and he’s the scarecrow. And this one is that. That was not just a Disney thing. That was a frank bomb thing. Trying to work around trademarks. Yeah. Oh, right. But I mean that. I think that’s the thing on a lot of media. Like, if you’re going to do something that feels like Scooby Doo, you need to have like every. You need to have five characters that are analogous to the Scooby Doo gang, right? And then people will subconsciously riff on that bit.
I mean, hey, Star Trek does that for every show, right? You’re always like, oh, this kind of fits this slot. This kind of fits this slot. There was one. And I don’t remember this from the original movie, but maybe it was in the original book. But she’s talking about how the Tin man kept cutting off parts of his body and replacing them with 10. He’d cut his arm off, replace with 10, cut the other arm off until it was basically nothing left except for, like, the one human part of him, like a Chipothesia style. But this also, since this is in the 1980s and they’re talking about electroshock therapy and sort of trusting technology too much, they’ve.
They even explained that this electric healing machine, that your brain produces excess energy and that just like any other machine, it malfunctions every once in a while. So you just got to kind of like bang it with some percussive, you know, maintenance, I guess. But that one of those things that Tin man keeps cutting himself up. This almost feels like a cybernetic, transhumanist vibe. Especially again, after you see the Wheelers coming in and off the scene. They talk about this guy, keep chopping them up and replacing them with metal. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s book only, by the way.
I do remember that being kind of shocking when I read down the book. So I don’t think. I think they just. He’s just a tin man, right? He was not, you know, not necessarily a person in the movie, so. But yeah, it’s a creepier one. It’s always replaced everything. Right. Is there a brain in there? He doesn’t have a heart. We know that. So got rid of. And also some of the more direct threats is that when Dorothy first goes to that sanitarium and they strap her down to a bed and you hear some, like, screaming in the background, and she sees Osma, I guess she’s got some weird telepathic connection with Osma, almost like Watcher in the woods style.
Like she’s got some connection with a girl from another realm that’s trying to like guide her through all this. And Osma’s telling her that those moans are coming from people that got damaged during electroshock therapy. And they just lock those people in the basement. And that’s where all these like, moans and these noises are coming from. I thought that was kind of creepy. I was probably like, the most real creepy thing is that, oh, the things I’m hearing right now are people that had their brains scrambled by this thing that they’re about to do to a nine year old.
Yeah. You get 50, 50 chance. It’s cool. I mean, there this is. I guess we have to say it or someone’s gonna be like, why didn’t you bring that up? You could posit that that it works and the whole Oz is a electroshock hallucination. But that’s not fun. I don’t actually like that theory on this movie. I’m like, nah, power went out, she went to Oz. And Oz is this freaky. Yeah, I guess I insist on Oz being a real place in this one. I agree on that. Because I also think Frank Baum would have written this differently if it was actually supposed to be taking place from con, like electroconvulsive therapy, because he goes to, to great lengths especially, and it comes across in this movie.
But talking about how they’re all trying to compare brains and machines, it’s. It’s antithetical to like the theosophical approach. I think the theosophical approach probably wouldn’t put as much stock in a machine being able to fix you and electricity itself being able to fix you, that these require these hero journeys. Right. And to like go through all these like transmutations and alchemically changing yourself and doing the whole ritual of creating gold. And I think that’s where it makes more sense where they go into the earth and they have to mine these minerals and even the minerals, the earth is like, you’re stealing these things from me.
And he’s the gnome king. And just like in Snow White, that again, this Rosicrucian aspect where the gnomes are earth elementals and that they have no spirit and that it’s humanity that we’re trading. We’re saying like, oh, I like that gem. And in exchange for that gem, I’ll give you a little glimpse of what consciousness looks like and what free will looks like. So I think that’s. That’s Dorothy. Like Dorothy is the free will in this whole entire thing. She also represents the feminine energy. And I’m not just saying that because she’s a girl. The best example of this is that the very end, when they take, when they basically bring down the gnome king, spoiler, they bring down the gnome king.
It’s because Bellini, the chicken shoots an egg down his throat like she, Dorothy’s holding the chicken. The chicken lays this egg, which is notable because they make a point earlier in the movie that Bellini’s not laying eggs. They’re like, oh, you know, mom’s gonna roast you if you can’t lay any eggs. She can’t talk at that point to have some snappy comeback. I imagine that she said something, we just didn’t hear it. But then as Dorothy’s holding Bellini in Oz the talking chicken now. And apparently this egg is the only weakness of the gnome king. The gnome king is basically made out of impenetrable.
But yeah, eggs are poisoned to the gnome king and lo and behold, Bellini shoots an egg. But the egg is the absolute symbol of like that feminine energy, the divine egg, the, this form of creation that the masculine can’t create on its own. So that would be the antidote to this like sort of earth elemental, like this pure masculine energy entity that acts as the ultra villain in this movie. Well, okay, I will try and tie in the 2024 Shogun series I’ve been watching because here Dorothy goes to Oz. She’s in a new world and if you want to quote the Bruce Lee line, which comes from something else I’m sure is be like water.
She just rolls with each situation and you know, with, with like kind of just like being a little more reactive to the situations around her, you know, feeling out what’s happening where in Shogun this guy ends up in Japan. And you know, he ends up in a reasonably decent situation, I guess. But despite himself, he’s belligerent and horrible and he almost, you know, destroys himself eight times or something, which he could have kept his mouth shut and rolled through it. I’m not opposed to a combination of these two. A return to Oz Shogun edition where Dorothy is basically a samurai and just chopping down flying monkeys.
That would be one of the cooler shows. Oh, there’s plenty of decapitations in that show too, by the way, so. And yeah, but it has to be done by a nine year old. A nine year old girl from the 1900s. That’s what really sells this. Yeah, okay, yeah, good point. So yeah, you can mash that stuff up. Hey, AI’s getting to the point of being able to do that. You can make that movie. They also have this. This one is weird. I could have sworn they said the head of a goat, but they were saying, I think saying the head of a gump and a gump is basically a moose, but a moose with a billy goat beard.
So technically it is a goat. So they have this magical talking goat head that helps them fly and traverse this alternate dimension, which, I mean, they’re. Let’s just call spade to spade. They’re worshiping Baphomet, right? This is the go to men. I was about to say. Are they riding around on Baphomet 100? Yeah, they’re. They’re sitting on Baphomet’s hermaphroditic lap and he’s break. He. She is showing them new dimensions that they didn’t know existed before. Is all. It’s all sex magic. I mean, that was the highest point of WTF for me in this movie when they fly off on that thing, right? I’m like, wait, what? Huh? Yeah.
Yeah, there’s so there’s a scene if you haven’t seen. And in the book it’s a saw horse. But in the movie, I think it’s like a couch or something. They basically affix this decapitated moose head, like one that’s hanging on the wall. They don’t just like, find like a random moose head, but a head that’s on the wall. It’s technically. It’s a gump. It’s a goat slash moose. And they attach that to, I want to say a love seat. And then they attach little plant palm fronds onto it. And then they sprinkle some sort of magic powder, I think it’s just called, like, powder of life onto it.
And they have to say three magic words. And this is totally. This is totally getting like actual theosophical at this point. And the words are we, og, treg, pog. And when you say those three words in that order and you’ve affixed the power of this powder of life, then whatever inanimate object you put it on comes to life, essentially. So even without the head, it still would have worked. But I guess you need something to talk to. Of course, if you’re in our realm, you’re gonna need a cake of light to make that happen. But that’s different.
Very early. Is that even Crowley, or is that pre Crowley? Oh, he definitely did it. Oh, yeah. 100. But. But I think cake of light, even if they didn’t have that term yet. That would have been one of the earlier black masses, because that’s just an inversion of the Holy Eucharist, where they do pro. Basically Limp Bizkit on a Eucharist. Right? That’s. That’s cake of life. Here’s everything with that scene earlier when Dorothy Ferts meets the pumpkin. He’s like, can I call you Mom? Which is a little creepy. And she says, yes. That scene is the only time when I think.
When he just calls her mom, like, just in general dialogue. And I could have sworn I had. It wasn’t. It wasn’t Princess Mommy. It sounds like Princess Mommy, but it’s Princess Mumby. But I almost feel like it was meant to sound like Mummy, maybe. Yeah, I. I didn’t. I didn’t make that. But maybe that’s because, again, I was doing my Halloween lesson yesterday. And Japanese kids cannot work out Mommy and Mummy. Like, they can’t figure out that that’s a different sound. So they’re very confused when the mummy showed up. And. And also to make this just even more Crowleyan and Theosophical in the book, there’s more specific instructions.
You can’t just read those words in the book. You have to raise your left hand with your little finger pointing upwards and say, we OG So I guess, like, you’re drinking tea or something. And then you have to raise your right hand with your thumb pointing upward and say, te OG and then you have to raise both hands with all your fingers and thumbs spread out and say, p. OG so by doing that, bong, Bong, bong. That’s what sort of enables this powdered life. And you need to do this every day in a highland shack for six months.
Right. And if another person that you come across is doing that, then you have to fight to the death. Because there can only be one. Yes. And that’s how the queen or the princess ends up getting all of her heads. Right. Right. Let’s see. I. I wrote. Damn. I think it. Oh, wait. I bet this movie really shines with some LSD in your bloodstream. And that’s when they had the going down the rabbit hole sort of Alice scene. You know, Willy Wonka river trip of. That, of course, was my favorite scene in the movie because it was heavily psychedelic.
So it was like I invoked that scene by writing should watch lsd. And then it just got extra trippy for two minutes. So I. I really appreciate that. That. That’s my favorite scene because I like flashing colors on my tv. That’s actually a good Question. If you had to take LSD and watch one of these Oz movies, would it be the original Oz or would it be Return to Oz? Which one of those would be a better LSD movie? Probably this one because it would be more confusing because I’ve only seen it once. Fair point. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer to that.
Yeah, the correct answer is that you watch Galaxy Quest with the Thermidian language track on which I did. What is that? Like a Klingon style language that they. Have you seen Galaxy Quest? I have. Just not on lsd, if you remember. Okay. If you remember, there’s the aliens, which mostly talk English, but everyone there is. On the dvd, at least the original dvd, there’s a language track where the Tim Allen is speaking that way, Alan Rickman is speaking that way. Everyone is going through the entire movie except when there’s a brand name or something. So it’ll be like Pepsi.
So. Oh man. I’m just trying to think of the. The other really realistic like drug scenes and movies. There was train spotting. Had one. Boogie Nights. Had one man. But there’s another one where this, this guy like passes out in a bathroom and he starts like seeing things. We’ll have to review that one. I’ll have to off to figure out what it is. We could just do like a drug induced movie. If you do. Go ahead. Do you remember what it is? No, I was just saying the Trip. Roger Corman’s A Trip is not entirely accurate, but it was made in 1967 and it’s just like ridiculously psychedelic.
It probably is the actual trip part a little wrong. It’s one of my favorite movies. I’ve seen Roger Corman’s the Trip like a good 20 times. Stars Peter Fonda, it has Dennis Hopper in it, Bruce Dern’s in it. Jack Nicholson is not in it, but he wrote the movie. So it’s kind of like a proto Easy Rider in a way. One of Disney’s best movies, I think. Easy Rider, that’s right. Yes, yes, yes. Dennis Hopper is very cuddly. There’s the part when they actually. We start actually hearing more about the gnome king. Because originally it’s just these weird rocks.
And this is also, I think gave me a little bit of Labyrinth vibes because there’s also like a rock character, I think in Labyrinth. But also it’s the never ending story. Also has like one of these big rock monsters that. Where it slowly will go from a shot of rock to like a claymation rock talking. And Then back again. It also reminded me of how in Labyrinth she falls down that big tunnel of all the hands and the hands turn in the faces and they start talking and then they go back into just hands again. The every time that you see all these rocks and it almost seems like this is the Gnome King kind of like, like a omnipresence throughout all of Oz now because he kind of runs this entire dimension and he goes on to a full blown rant.
And I’ll just give you the. The highlight of the rant, but it. The point he’s making. He says all the precious stones in the world are made here in my underground domains, all made for me by my gnomes. So imagine how I feel when someone from the world digs down and steals my treasure. All those emeralds and Emerald City belong to me and I’m just taking back what was mine to begin with. So that was his justification for taking back over this whole realm. And it does make sort of an interesting point where it’s. If you take this as that theosophical Rosicrucian aspect, you’re not supposed to, I guess, as a mundane human, extract this knowledge from the earth directly.
Because again, in Snow White she kind of employs the help of earth elementals and it’s the earth elementals that do all the mining and bring the emeralds directly to her in an even exchange. But in this case, the Gnome King and Oz is almost implying that there was no fair exchange here, that the, the Earth never got to. To like experience any sort of human consciousness. And therefore he kind of sees all of this as stealing, that everything that happened in the Emerald City was all stolen because they got all of that without reaching enlightenment and earning it.
Yeah, the quote I wrote down, which I guess is the chaser to what you read, is it’s your fault for not asking. So that certainly stood out to me. You know, like, I guess that’s how an elite would work, right? You didn’t. You didn’t ask. So we can do it. And in the book it makes it the Rosicrucian. And like the Theosophical aspect, it almost sounds alchemical, where Osma’s explaining more of this to Dorothy and one of the quotes is that under his rule are thousands of gnomes, queerly shaped but powerful sprites that labor at the furnaces and forges of their king, making gold and silver and other metals which they conceal in the crevices of the rocks, so that those living on the Earth’s surface can only find them with great Difficulty.
So it’s almost like they’re the ones that are producing. Like they are the underground alchemists that are doing all the hard work. And then when a person finds it, the person thinks that, you know, it was just always there, not realizing that there’s this. All this extra alchemical activity in order to produce that to get there. I mean, that’s kind of similar, time book wise, as H.G. wells time machine, where you got the Morlocks doing all the work and the Eloi just kind of like dilettanting around on the surface. But when the Morlocks get hungry, they’re perfectly fine to go and eat a few Eloid.
They’re easy to catch. I mean, it does make more sense that if you could just snack on your slaves in addition to them doing all the work. Well, the weird thing in Time Machine, the ELO aren’t really slaves, they’re just cattle. You know, that’s the. That’s humans enjoying themselves. But they could be eaten at any time. Morlocks are doing the hard work under the surface. They can’t really live on the surface anymore. So just. I’m just kind of like drawing line beams. I guess that’s kind of similar to this, you know, alchemical gnome king world versus the Emerald City.
Wait, and the gnome king. I think in the book this doesn’t come up in the movie, but they refer to everyone that’s living on the surface as the upstairs people. I thought that was kind of interesting, which it also was implying that aspect that they’re kind of the enlightened ones or they’re the ones that have this consciousness. One other thing, I was just. We’ve been talking a bit about Labyrinth a year later. I was just checking out the date on Neverending story, which is 84 a year earlier. Although the book was written in 79, so that’s a lot later.
But there is this really specific weird 80s fantasy vibe too. Willow has it, I would say legend. There’s a few more. But yeah, there’s. There was something in the water or something in this exact moment of special effects is probably more accurate. But it. It was LSD also. That was what was in the water some. Was that. Yeah, in the 80s. I think it was cocaine in the water. But yeah. And you could get MDMA at the gas station in the 80s, I think. Right. Well, I. I don’t know. But hey, maybe. I don’t know. Bump, though.
Yeah. Who knows? I don’t know if you notice this. I guess I have to point it out. And I don’t know if it was intentional, but at the very beginning of this movie, there’s a few times, even when Dorothy’s in Kansas, she’s talking, and there’s like a crazy echo, like a really strong delay. And I know it wasn’t my audio setup, and I even got a couple different versions that I watched, and both versions had this exact same echo effect. I don’t know if it was a product of ADR overdubbing or if it was intentionally trying to make some sort of point.
It didn’t seem like it was happening at any specific times. Did you hear that, too, or is it just me now you mention? I think I might have remember that the director, his main credit is as a sound designer. Apparently the term sound design was created for him when he did Apocalypse Now. So I would say that’s 100% adding a delay here and there, just like. Yeah, go ahead and crank up that reverb. Yeah. This is the guy that first used automatic mixing boards for mixes for some sound mixes of movies. He’s one. He’s. I think he’s the second guy to use Dolby.
He’s one of the first guys to do 5.1. So I’m gonna guess that was fully intentional. And if I were to guess why, I think it’s just supposed to make maybe Dorothy’s world seem a little more disoriented. Because she’s disoriented. She’s sleep deprived. Right. She’s a little nutty. So, I mean, even, you know, Oz. Oz is real in the world of this movie. But even then, she’s still a little nutty at the beginning because she has intense insomnia. You know, man. I mean, I assume that this is sort of flirting with public domain type stuff. I almost.
Now, I also want to see another sequel to this, but it’s the version in which Dorothy does get electro convulsive therapy and goes home. And now she’s even crazier than when she originally went there because she’s got these very real experiences, but they’ve also kind of been zapped out of her mind. And then you just have to follow her through Kansas. I assume she turns into a serial murderer at some point. Yeah. Hey, you could do that. These books, I mean, the rights thing’s not an issue anymore. These books are all in the public domain. As long as you do not put in ruby slippers, you should be fine.
There’s, I guess, one of the colorful scenes. There’s only a few. There’s a Very ending scene. And then there’s the scene when she goes into like the ornament room or the trophy room. And this falling down into that area into the Gnome Kings zone is just again, I love that psychedelic sequence. Well, yeah, you can see like all the little green emeralds and like there’s like a red light that’s kind of glowing. It’s very like a surreal aspect to it. But I was also wondering when she gets into this little trophy room there’s this one scene that really freaking stood out.
And, and they’re kind of implying that she’s winding Tik Tok back up. She’s standing behind him, but she’s like, I know where the freaking little crank is. And it’s nowhere near where her hand is. And she just sits there and her hand’s kind of obscured from the camera but she just keeps turning her hand like over and over again. And it seems like she’s going through the motion of I’m twisting this thing up by how fast she’s doing it, where her hand is at, the lack of any sound effects. It almost seemed like an oversight and someone was like, yeah, just, just, just keep that cut.
I don’t know. Did you notice that either? It was, it stood out so freaking much to me. I noticed the winding and it, I noticed it was too fast. I didn’t notice the sound in that case. And she wasn’t, it wasn’t connected to anything. She was like kind of had her hand like over its shoulder. But then when Tick Tock turns and like scurries away a little bit you can see that the, the only wind on his body would have been way down low. So if she were to be twisting it, you wouldn’t have seen it because it would ha.
It would have been cropped off by the shot. So I mean, I understand functionally why they might have. And maybe like, ah, no one will ever see this. What it’s, it’s like this is going to be in high definition or anything at any time. I’m going to read a bit of the production stuff that’s here on Wiki that says Balkan. Ridley, who played Asthma, the only two child actors on set, had limited working hours each day. Bach, who was in around 98 of all scenes, was permitted to work no more than three and a half hours a day, restricted to between 9:30am and 4:30pm which included breaks and private educational tuition.
So if it’s a scene specifically with her, like you’re describing, that might be. It’s like we got 10 minutes to finish this. Push, push, push. Just kind of wiggle your arm around, honey. We’ll get it. We’ll figure it out. Like, maybe the prop was broken, right? And they’re like, just. Just look. Make it look like you’re doing it. And maybe hand acting is not her forte, so could be something like that. And there was one other weird thing that I got, so that. The hand thing, the weird echo that I guess seems like it might have been intentional now.
And also at the very end, they show it, like, the color changes completely. Right. You even made that point. The rest of the movie is kind of muted tones, very dark. This last scene, it’s like, oh, they do know how to make that same look that the original one had. Except she says something like, oh, it’s. It’s getting so bright. She makes this point, and all of a sudden you see the saturation and the lightness. It just like. They just boost the gamma or something, and it kind of like, washes out. But the first scene when they show her, it’s already washed out.
The light is already, like, really high. And then they cut, and it’s back to, like, a normal level. And then she talks about it getting bright, and it slowly gets back up to where it started right there. So I don’t know if that was a weird edit thing where they had the treated scene and it was already bright, but they put it before it starts getting bright, or if that was again, like another intentional thing where it’s like, we’re gonna show a glimpse of her, I guess, going back to this other dimension and then mute it back down again.
Yeah, I don’t know. At that point, we’ve seen so many psychedelics. Like, yeah, show me something trippy and let’s move on. Right? So I was probably, like, cool. And then, you know, I do remember the brightening part, though, for sure. But I guess it’s. It’s kind of like, here’s where we’re going, and now let’s start over. I don’t know. Something like that. It has, like, a Technicolor feel, like a classic Technicolor. Oh, yeah, that. That. I love that last scene where it’s weird. Diffused color and light, very direct, you know, old. Like, someone was. Definitely knew how to light it.
Like 1939. They just didn’t do it for 90% of the movie because they want Oz to look disturbing and dilapidated, which it does. So there. But that’s kind of like, hey, look, folks, we can do this if we want to. But we’re trying to do something different. This is a different movie. I guess that’s kind of how I read that scene. Like, we can do it, we’re just not. I might have fell into a weird time hole because I don’t even remember the lion being in that scene. But I do remember that whole final scene that we’re talking about maybe lasted a minute.
Like, it was very quick, like a very quick resolution. Why is Dorothy want to go home in this movie, by the way? She might as well stay in Oz. In the original, it kind of made sense. And this one’s like, stay in Oz, lady. You know, you don’t want to. Well, I mean, this Oz is kind of a crappier Oz. It’s definitely. There’s a lot of cleanup. This is like post World War II oz. But you have to like build everything back up from scratch. But also Toto. She doesn’t get Toto in this one. So, I mean, that seems like that would be the main reason to go back.
I guess. So. Speaking of which, Toto did the. The soundtrack for 1984’s Dune. They should have gotten Toto do a soundtrack for this. What were they thinking? That would have made sense. The other point I wanted to make. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So Dorothy seems to be relatively, you know, morally okay, but you could have. Tick Tock could easily be a killing machine with no remorse. If you’re just like, we need to take out, you can see that with the Wheelers, like, given a little time, you might have started like, ripping them into pieces, you know.
But if you told Tick Tock, I want you to be a relentless killing machine against the gnomes forces, he’s gonna go do that. He doesn’t care. Again, in the theosophical approach, Tick Tock, I think he represents that machine that was gonna shock Dorothy. Like, he is the face, you know, when the. When they make the point, like, oh, look, here’s the eyes, here’s the nose. That’s. That’s Tick Tock in the alternate dimension. So I guess Dorothy ends up using this technology for the forces of good. But theosophically, it’s still just this dumb machine that has no morals.
So, yeah, absolutely could have been a killing machine. But Dorothy is the one that represents this good natured consciousness of humanity. So when she interacts with it, it only works for good. Right? Because even near the end, when it sheds a tear, it says right on him that there is. He cannot do life. So that’s just a show of like, this is Maybe what you expect. So I’m going to give it to you. I wonder what would happen if she put the powder of life on him and did the little special little magic incantation. Because I mean, is a, is a wind up robot considered an inanimate object? I assume inanimate just means anything that doesn’t have like animus, like an actual spirit.
Not just that it animates and it moves around. So technically, yeah, he would be an inanimate object. I, I think maybe I’ve never read that book, but I do wonder if the book itself has a little more thought on that, because that seems like something Bomb would have been thinking about and it’s certainly good for a few paragraphs in your book. Well, it makes me think too of Pinocchio because technically when the fairy godmother, maybe it’s not a fairy godmother, but when the blue fairy comes down and brings Pinocchio to life, there is like stardust. So maybe that she’s actually using the powder of life from bombs books and that that’s all it is, is just this magical incantation along with the powder that brings inanimate objects to life.
Yeah, I mean there’s, you know, obviously there’s analogies to that. You can go many centuries back and it’s just a different name. Right. Is there always magic powder involved though? Okay, maybe not the powder, but some substance. There’s often like this substance must be involved. You know, that’s when you’re making your homunculus, you get some weird substances. Right. I. I prefer powder to drink a chrome. All things being equal. Yes, yes. What do you have else in your notes? Those are pretty much the last of things I wanted to shout out. The last one that I had.
It was kind of outside of the scope of this movie, but when I was looking more into the origin of these Wheelers characters and that there’s a scene and I don’t know if this was intentional, I assume that it was some like a nod to this. But Frank Baum also wrote a weird Santa Claus story that kind of takes place in this tangential like post Oz world that we’re experiencing now, but that Santa Claus was given his power and immortality from the gnome king, and that Santa’s sleigh and all the reindeer were replaced with these, these wheelmen, these wheelers.
And there’s even a scene in this movie when you see like a, like an actual sleigh being pulled by the Wheelers. So I almost felt like that was a nod to the existence of this weird Santa Claus book that didn’t make it in the canon. They don’t say Santa Claus, but they 100 have a large wooden sleigh being pulled by these wheelers. Is he buff? Is it like buff Santa Claus? I always love it when people do buff Santa Claus. And he’s got the beard, but he’s. It’s kind of like a mix between Poseidon and Santa Claus.
You know, you look up buff Santa Claus if you want. He’s out there. But always I’ve seen yeah above Santa Claus on a crucifix before. Like a ripped Jesus Santa. Yeah, yeah, that’s my favorite Santa. Okay, if that’s your last note, I guess we’ll wind this one down and you know, head back for Kansas. I’ve never been to Kansas, but whatever. We’re winding Tick tock back down. The guy could have gotten Kansas to do the soundtrack. They were still rocking in 85. What are you rocking at the end of October here? Well, I’m actually getting prepped to go and do a live show, but it would have already have happened by the time that this is airing anywhere because it’s happening tomorrow.
But something called Brohemian Grove, it’s gonna a whole bunch of live stand up comics and stuff. I’ll probably post some videos of it for anyone that misses it. I’ll be launching a few new cool playsets and products and stuff. I’m hoping. I’m doing everything that I can to try and get a psychedelic Santa playset out. I don’t know if I mentioned this the last time we were talking. I’ve got a prototype. It’s not super pretty yet just because I don’t have the full backing made. And there’s like little lights that go on here. But if you can see it close enough, there is like a tripping Santa Claus in the background of the backer card.
And the items here is reindeer pee, a Santa with a little bag, a reindeer and an amanita muscaria mushroom in the corner there. And it lights up and it’s got like some fake snow in it and stuff. But yeah, the psychedelic Santa play set. And I’ve also been working on one. I don’t think I have the. The prototype in front of me, but it’s in Terminator Abraham Lincoln that I’m calling a Ibrahim Lincoln. And he’s fighting a whole bunch of Civil War guys. Like he’s fighting Southern Civil War soldiers, but he’s from the future. So that’s.
That’s another fun one that I got coming out. If you want to look at those, you can see them on paranoidamerican.com hopefully now or in the near future. And my other huge project that’s been going really well, I’m going to add another 20 cards to it by the end of this year is conspiracy cards.com which are basically collectible cards that look just like the. The most iconic designs from the 80s and 90s. Don Russ score Upper deck tops. All of those designs have kind of re adapted them but now you’re gonna get a Alex Jones or an Isaac Cappy or if you’re really lucky you’ll get a Werner von Braun with like a little pirates outfit.
It looks just like, like a Barry Bonds rookie card. But it’s Warner Von Braun, the guy that didn’t do steroids. If you don’t know who that is. I got the bomb bronze down. Yeah, I was sorry. It’s actually formulating my pitch in your mind when you were saying the last part, I was just thinking of all the 80s fantasy movies I have done podcasts for before. If you head for what is currently Films and filth on any of your podcatchers, I know in that feed you will find us talking about the Never Ending Story. The Never Ending Story 3 Legend is in there trying to remember if there’s any other good weird 80s fantasy we did.
There might be another one or two. I’m just forgetting because we’ve now been doing that podcast for five years. So you know, you forget what you did after a while. But that’s films and Filth. I mentioned the Twilight Zone. If you want to hear me trying to do Mickey Rooney commentary impressions. That was last week’s episode and that is time enough podcasts. So that seems just for the record that this concludes at least this year’s Dark Disney. But that means that it. From the 1930s through the 1980s we’ve seen the scariest things that Disney has had to produce so far.
Right. And I didn’t. If you didn’t include any touchstone movies, look at Fuzz Bucket. That might disturb you. Fuzz Bucket. Yeah, Fuzz Bucket. That’s for the listener too. Look up Fuzz Bucket. It’ll disturb you. It was a 50 minute Disney Channel movie and Fuzz Bucket is, is pretty disturbing from the 80s or earlier. It’s. It’s like 85 technically. We could go one more but I, I think we’re gonna take a short break because I’m not gonna make you podcast on Halloween night. And we’ll be back in two weeks at least. Recording time with a Poo’s Heffalumph movie, which I guess is a different kind of nightmare.
I’ve got you. I’ve got some good notes on that one. We’re. We’re going right back into MK Ultra all over again. All right. Just like today a little bit. Look, you’re gonna have to move fast. Conspiracy cards from Paranoid American are here. What’s next move fake we flex flex six foot in the woods stay lying that’s facts, facts MK auto no cap every y’all 51 is a trap Roswell crash what’s that? They hide the truth conspiracy C flipping what’s the deal Conspiracy. Cause with that paranoid sale I can un stack stack slip 1, flip 2 get a few packs that’s right.
Conspiracy cards from Paranoid American. A set of over 200 cards featuring legendary conspiracy theorists, cult leaders, esoteric secrets and more. For more details, visit conspiracycards.com today. Yo I scribble my life away driven the right to page will it light to bring give you the flight McPlane paper the highs ablaze some water of an amazing feel when it’s real to real you will engage it your favorite of course the lord of interrangement I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hey maybe your language a game how they playing it well without Lakers evade them whatever the course they are to shapeshift snakes get decapitated met is the apex execution of flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see max them out that I like my trees blow it off in the face you’re despising me for what? Though calculated and rather cutthroat Paranoid American must be all the blood smoke for real Lord give me your day your way vacate they wait around they hate whatever they say man is not in the least bit.
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