Retrospective Film Review

Return to Oz (1985) • 35 Years Later

Dorothy is called back to Oz when a vain witch and the Nome King destroy everything that makes the magical land beautiful.

“Another Oz story” was Walter Murch’s answer to Disney when they asked what he’d like to see from them. A direct sequel to MGM’s iconic The Wizard of Oz (1939) might have sounded preposterous, but Murch caught the studio at the right time. Walt Disney Productions had been sitting on the rights to the remaining 13 Oz books by author L. Frank Baum. Purchased for TV’s Walt Disney’s Disneyland (1954–58) and a proposed live-action film called Rainbow Road to Oz (that never got made), the intellectual property wasn’t touched until Disney’s meeting with Murch just before the rights were due to expire. Five years later and Return to Oz premiered in 1985… and was anything but just another Oz story.

Separated by 46 years, we return to Kansas only six months after a tornado transported Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) to Oz, and she’s still talking about her magical friends, earning herself a trip to a mental hospital. Soon escaping…