Nitpick Archive 11

I was originally going to tear down Jeff the Killer, but one thing stopped me. Today's date. Today, the day this was posted, is June 12, 2020. Monday, the 15th, will mark the 35th anniversary of my favorite movie Return to Oz.

You may or may not have heard of Return to Oz. If you have heard of it, you probably heard a lot of negative things about it like how it's supposedly "scary" or some shit. If you haven't watched it, I suggest you do so. Despite what many people say, this is actually a good movie.

The reason people seem to hate this movie is because it takes after the Grimm fairy tales styled atmosphere the books had, instead of being a technicolor, diabetes inducing kiddy movie musical like the The Wizard of Oz (1939). I want to point out that I like the Wizard of Oz, but as an adult it's just too sweet for me and Return to Oz is more suitable.

If you watch this movie with an opened mind and don't try to compare it to the Wizard of Oz, then you'll probably think that it's at least decent.

And in case anyone is wondering, yes Return to Oz IS a real movie, it was not manufactured just for this shitty story.

DA SHITPAWSTA
In 1985, the Disney film ’Return to Oz’ was released in cinemas,

Where it unfortunately flopped because HOW DARE OZ NOT BE MUSICAL, TECHNICOLOR DIABETES!

and a few years later made its way onto home VHS.

Actually, it was only mere months, but sure, why not?

I can’t remember how old I was at the time I seen it,

It's not that hard to do math, son.

'''perhaps five years old at most. I knew right away that there was something unusual about the film, something especially disturbing.'''

"MUH SCURY HEADLESS WOMMIN AN MUH WEEELEEERS!"

I remember that the first time I seen it, I cried.

So did everyone else who was "heartbroken" over this not being an overly sweet musical. But then again, they still seem to be crying over it.

I remember watching the film, glued in place in front of the television, not out of involvement but out of terror.

I "like" how almost everyone thinks this movie is SOOPR SPOOPY!

Truth be told, it is a bloody scary film.

No, it actually isn't. Like I said (by sarcastically saying I liked it), everyone acts like this is some kind of ultimate horror film. God help these poor cowards if they ever see anything that is ACTUALLY scary!

'''Now before you groan and go to read something else, don’t worry, this isn’t a story of a haunted video tape. The film itself played out perfectly normally, as much as possible. Dorothy didn’t turn to the camera and start screaming while blood poured from her eyes, or anything stupid like that. I’m not interested in telling you stupid stories like you’ve read a hundred times before.'''

HURR DURR DIS NOT CLICHE PAWSTA, READ MY PAWSTA! Seriously though, I fucking hate when people wedge "THIS ISN'T A CLICHE STORY!" shit into their stories like we're going to go "OOH! This person is avoiding cliches! This is going to be a great story!". Fucking ass! Most of the time when someone spouts this BS, they're lying and their story turns out to be cliche shit.

It’s a strange story and I really wonder quite what the producer, Paul Maslansky, was thinking at the time.

"Oh yeah, it's like a real life version of Squidward's Suicide" I say sarcastically.

I know that the power behind the film didn’t really rest with him; instead it rested with the film’s director, Walter Murch.

Who did a DAMN GOOD job on the film, by the way! Walter Murch rocks! No pun intended with the word "rocks".

'''Murch worked on editing for films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, but Return to Oz was his only venture into directing. I keep thinking that something may have happened to him during production of this film, maybe something that put him off directing any films from then onwards. But that’s just a guess.'''

From what I heard, he refused to do more movies because this movie was unfortunately a flop.

'''My mother got a copy of the film on VHS. I remember distinctly, because she also had a copy of the old Judy Garland musical version. She loved that film.'''

Did she too shit her pants when she found out that this wasn't a technicolor nightmare, filled with hammy acting and simplistic songs like everyone else? Also, that's how you remember her having a copy? Because she also has a kiddy movie?

'''I was somewhat less impressed with it. The sepia opening, for a child who was used to colour television, seemed boring to me. I didn’t care for the dancing and the witch didn’t impress me. All the sets looked just too false, and I found myself not appreciating the film.'''

It's like this entire story is centered around shitting on good movies!

'''My mother, though, loved it. When I was an adult'''

Oh honey, that's not going to be for a good many years.

'''she told me about Judy Garland’s drug addiction and her gradual fall from Hollywood grace, a story that felt equally tragic to anything on the silver screen. Return to Oz, however, wasn’t a sequel. In fact, the only thing that connected it to the musical version was the presence of Ruby Slippers, which were silver in the original book. But my mother was still excited to see it, so she had asked a friend to find her a copy of the film, and we had watched it.'''

I feel like the inclusion of the ruby slippers was a no-win situation. If they would have made them silver like they were in the book, people would be complaining bUt DoRoThY's SlIpPeRs ArE rUbY!

The film tells the story of Dorothy’s return to the wonderful Land of Oz.

The Wonderful Land of Oz? Now that movie was crap! It was so bad that Rifftrax (aka MST3K's successor which included its cast and most of its crew) tore it up.

Or at least, it should be wonderful, but it really isn’t.

DUH! She has to save it, you twit!

'''But she’s desperate to go back, and when we first meet her in the film she is very depressed, miserable and lonely. The very first image we have in the film is her staring sadly into a dirty mirror, and before long her family take her to a hospital.'''

Oh God, he's going to summarize it!

At the hospital, which it transpires is more of an asylum;

Duh, genius, it's a mental hospital!

'''Dorothy is introduced to a doctor. Keen to try out the newly-invented electric healing machine, the doctor introduces Dorothy to it, pointing out the machine’s features. ”Here,” he explains, pointing to the voltage meter ”Is its mouth. And here,” he explains, pointing to the switch that will send crackling shocks of electricity searing through the young girl’s skull, ”is his nose.”'''

They forgot the plotpoint where Dorothy sees Ozma in one of the windows, but whatever. This won't be the only plotpoint their half-assed summary forgets, either.

'''She is escorted down into the bowels of the hospital, through tall and towering hallways, and locked within a barren, empty cell. That night, she is strapped to a hospital bed and, whilst the screams of other inmates echo through the hospital, is secured to the electric machine.'''

This is one of the "scary" scenes everyone bitches about.

'''A storm rages outside, and soon it knocks out the hospital’s power, during which Dorothy is rescued by another young girl. Together they flee into the river at the banks of the hospital, where they…'''

They drown.

No they don't!

'''I mean, Dorothy returns to the Land of Oz. She journeys there in the ruins of an old crate, floating down the river. That’s the way the story goes. But that’s not all that happens.'''

Then why did you say it, dumbass?

'''In the old Wizard of Oz film, the one with Judy Garland, Dorothy’s house is plucked out of the farm by a hurricane. We all know that hurricanes don’t move people from one location and drop them, gently and carefully'''

It didn't even set her down gently! Don't you remember that "OH!" she lets out when it plops to the ground?

If she had been a real person, caught in a small wooden farmhouse in the winds of a hurricane, Dorothy would have died.

You were trying to tell us this "scary" story about Return to Oz, and then you got sidetracked and started telling us this shit about "If this was real life...". Also, does anyone else hate that? When you're watching a movie and some asshole comes along and says "If this were real life..."

And maybe she did, and all the rest of the film was simply a hallucination within her fevered and frantic brain.

The ending shows that it was all a dream, so that theory is as dumb as you are, ShittyMainCharacter

'''No, that’s just a theory. In this film, in Return to Oz, Dorothy falls into the churning waters of the river, struggling to stay above its surface, her arms splashing, her mouth gasping for air. And then…'''

Then she’s in Oz.

Yeah, and I'm in Hell because I have to read this shitty story.

'''And for a few moments, everything seems fine. Everything seems quite happy. She finds a talking chicken called Billina, who offers to travel with her on the way to the Emerald City. Along the way, she finds a tree which distributes lunchboxes, filled with ready-made sandwiches. It’s almost like everything may turn out alright once they get to the Emerald City, because then she’ll be able to get back to her farm.'''

Oh, so he's continuing his summary of the movie after this bullshit about "IF DIS WERE REAL LIFE!"

'''Her farm. Where she sat staring into the dirty mirror, her eyes heavy with despair. David Kehr of the Chicago Reader described this film as ’Bleak, creepy, and occasionally terrifying’. You don’t want Dorothy to go home, not to the world full of doctors who want to rip the happiness from her, from the nurses who tie her down, from the towering hallways and electric machines with wide grinning mouths.'''

David Kehr is full of shit!

Down the River

What the fuck is this, some sort of chapter?

'''Soon, Dorothy finds her old farm house, the one which she crashed in her previous visit to Oz. It sits in an overgrown forest. No cheery, dancing munchkins to be found here, only wild vines and twisted trees.'''

You say that like it's a bad thing. I also want to point out that the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, mostly consisted of Dorothy and her friends trekking through a forest.

'''Dorothy wipes the dust that has etched its way over the windows, trying to see inside. Then she finds the yellow brick road, only to realise that it has been uprooted, its bricks broken and shattered. The land she wanted to get back to is twisted, nightmarish and hostile.'''

SUPR SCURY!

'''The old farm house. I grew up in a small village in the rural areas of Cornwall.'''

And he puts the summary on hold for some other stupid shit!

'''We had farms around the landscape, and I could climb up one of the small gently sloping hills and look out into the horizon and see only fields of wheat for as far as it went. That was my Kansas.'''

I don't give a shit!

'''I think it was late summer when I found the old farm house. I’d gone out to explore, despite my father’s instruction to stay in our house’s garden. I’d hiked my way over the old crumbling stone wall that bordered our garden, and made my way into the fields, venturing as far as I could before the sun would set. I avoided the fields with the cows,'''

Why? You obviously have nothing against cow shit or else you wouldn't have written this poopy story.

'''great towering things, and the clouds above gradually began to grow dark and pendulous. I’d gone further than I had before, keen to examine a small copse of trees in the distance that I’d never been to before. It was there, down near the foot of the hill, that I’d seen the old farm house for the first time.'''

GOD, THIS IS BORING!

'''I’d hurried down to the house and ran up to the windows. They were etched with dirt; I could barely see anything through them. I stood up on my tip-toes, trying to look into them, and could only make out a brownish haze. I scrubbed the windows, and soon I was able to make out the inside of the house.'''

And it's at this moment you, the reader, realize that his dumbass story mirrors Return to Oz. "Not cliched" my ass!

'''It was in disarray, chairs tipped over and a table lying broken in the corner. I could make out a doorway leading into another room, but whatever lay through there was out of sight. It wasn’t the same house, the layout was different and the ruins inside it were different, but in and of itself the house was almost a perfect fit. It was like my own version of Dorothy’s ruined farmhouse, transported here not far from my home.'''

Apparently you liked the movie, or you wouldn't be finding tidbits of it in your real life.

'''I wanted to get inside. I don’t know why, perhaps simply because it was there or perhaps because I wanted to get further than Dorothy ever did in the film. I pried the window open, and'''

under the house, the witch lies dead

Great formatting, dipshit!

'''crawled inside. It felt warm, as if the air itself was hot. There was a soft hum in the air, which I soon realised were coming from a few buzzing insects. It felt stuffy, as if the summer heat was magnified and made heavy. There were no lights, or if there were, the lights would not come on. The room was dyed a soft reddish-brown from the dust on the windows. I crept across the'''

the house stands atop the dead witch as she rots beneath

Is he... is he synchronizing this story to a song? That's another thing I hate, when people give their stories "soundtracks".

'''wooden floorboards, and sure enough they creaked beneath me. I looked into the doorway to the other room, and found it lead into a kitchen. Several items lay in the sink, cutlery and sharp edges. I started to feel sick. I didn’t want to be here.'''

Then leave, stupid!

'''The air tasted wrong. There was a smell, something I’d never smelt before but I knew it was bad. I turned to leave and wanted to run, but I heard a heavy sound at the doorway and knew it was a footstep. The figure stood in the doorway, a man'''

the house is marked with death it sours it from below the witch was left her body broken

You know your narrator is a "genius" when they interrupt a "scary" scene with a fucking song!

'''stood blocking out the sunlight. He wore a thick heavy brown coat, the kind most farmers in the area would wear, but his beard was thick and mottled like wire wool. His hair hung in dense clumps and he stared at me with his eyes, sharp and brutal eyes with utterly intense hatred. He towered above me, a small child of about six years, this giant of a figure.'''

I swear to God if this ends in rape...

He was holding something in his right hand, I couldn’t see what, only that it was sharp and pointed and stained with mud, had to be mud.

No, it was BLUUUUUUD! SUPR SCURY BLUD! BLUD MAEKS IT SCURY, GUIZE!

The man opened his mouth and roared at me, his teeth crooked behind his mane-like beard, releasing every echo of the old broken house with his words, GET OUT!!

We have this "threatening" villain, who doesn't do anything except yell. He has, what is most likely, a murder weapon in his hands, but all he does is shout? Fucking lame, man!

I ran.

Iran is a country.

'''I turned and ran out of the house, charging through the kitchen and pulling myself through the window and out into the field, I didn’t slow down for a second, I tripped and fell into the mud at the base of the window but I didn’t stop, I kept running. I didn’t look back,'''

Why, he obviously isn't chasing you.

'''I ran over the field and through the trees, I was gasping for air and my legs hurt but I didn’t stop running, not until I got home. I didn’t notice it was dark and that the sun had set and that the dark of night had covered the village.'''

How the Hell do you not notice a difference as big as day and night?

I slammed the door shut, blocking out the man and the broken farmhouse forever.

My father came downstairs when he heard me slam the door, and demanded to know where I had been and what I had been doing.

It was at that moment little Timmy wished he would have let the "villain" guy kill him so he would not have to face his drunken father's wrath.

'''I didn’t want to explain, I didn’t want to tell him, and so I lied. He demanded to know more ardently, telling me that it was late and that he knew I was lying. When I eventually did tell him, he marched me up to my bedroom and ordered me to lower my pants and lay over my bed,'''

No, this doesn't sound like some sort of deranged rape fantasy!

where he removed his belt and thrashed my butt until I was screaming and crying rampantly.

This makes it sound even more perverted! Was he your dad, or your "daddy"?

'''He made me promise, on threat of the same punishment being delivered again, that I would not sneak into people’s houses again. I was still sore for most of the next day, and I had no idea until years later as to why he had grown so angry with me.'''

Because you trespassed and could have been killed, Einstein!

'''When I did find out, it was in my teenage years. Our family had moved away from the village, into a small house in a large city. The change had been considerable, not just in terms of the building, but of the new lifestyle. It became impossible to avoid hearing about the world around us,'''

"Oh, yeah," I say sarcastically "Them farm-folk sure are stupid and disconnected from the world!" It's like the author wants to prove with every sentence that he is clueless.

and I no longer had my parent’s continual presence to shelter me from the information that you could find on the newspapers or the internet.

What the Hell kind of parents did you have?

It was on the evening news that I had seen the photograph of the man in the old farmhouse.

The reporter explained that he had died in prison, serving his life sentence for the murder of four young children, all aged between four and nine years old.

He probably didn't murder them, he probably shouted "GIT OUTTA HERE!" and they tripped over their own feet and killed themselves in some sort of comedic fashion.

He had been arrested a month after my dad had taken his belt

That's an odd way of remembering something.

'''In prison, he had committed suicide. The news didn’t say how. I later learned that he had broken off a sharp edge of his toothbrush and swallowed it, slicing open his throat.'''

Okay...

He choked to death on his own blood.

tHiS sToRy Is NoT cLiChE!

'''Dorothy continued her journey down the broken ruins of the yellow brick road. So did I.'''

I don't give a fuck what you did.

The Gale

Next "chapter".

'''When Dorothy arrived at the Emerald City, she finds all her friends. But they have been turned to stone.'''

No, not all of her friends. If you recall, the Scarecrow was missing as he had been kidnapped by the Nome King.

'''They stand around the ruins of the Emerald City, their bodies lifeless. The city is abandoned, with only their bodies left grey and stoic. The Emerald City is a mausoleum.'''

'''But it’s not unoccupied. In one of the most terrifying moments of the film,'''

Apparently, it's one that everyone keeps bitching about!

'''we meet the living occupants of the city. It tumbles into view, moving on four legs, each leg ending in a screeching rusty wheel. At first we see its face as a black twisted mass of tissue and muscle, corrupted into a maniacal grimace, eyes peering out with a cold biting glare.'''

THEY WERE WEARING MASKS, YOU FOOL! Jesus Christ, man, if you want to make an ass of yourself, find a less cringe-worthy way to do so!

Then it lifts its head up, revealing that the previous face was simply a false one,

Christ!

'''its true face hiding beneath. It laughs, ”Come here!” it rasps in a guttural scream. It laughs, and laughs. More of them appear. Three, four, a whole gang. Dorothy flees, and I would clutch my hands to my eyes, hoping to block them out and just make the nightmarish creatures go away.'''

You were probably also crying, screeching, and shitting your pants.

Dorothy finds, locked in an old chamber in the Emerald City, a mechanical guardian called Tic-Tok

THAT'S TIK-TOK, YOU DUMB FUCK! CHRIST MAN, IF YOU WANTED TO MAKE AN ASS OF YOURSELF, WHY DON'T YOU MAKE A RECOLORING OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG AND USE IT TO MAKE A LOLCOW OUT OF YOURSELF?!

'''who offers to protect her from the wheeled monsters. This creature has its own mechanical face, much like the one on the electric shock machine back in the hospital in Kansas. But it is Dorothy’s friend, and it fights off the wheelers and discovers that the City has been taken over by an evil witch called Mombi.'''

Tic-Tok isn’t terrifying.

TIK-TOK, STUPID! Christ, man! He probably doesn't know how to spell anything, his mommy is probably typing this up for him!

'''He’s a friendly, amicable character. The same cannot be said for all of Dorothy’s friends, but we’ll get to that.'''

What the fuck are you talking about, they were all likeable?!

'''First we need to talk about Mombi. I didn’t recognise her as a child, when I first watched the film, but Mombi was played by Jean Marsh,'''

She also had other actresses who played the different heads, but by saying this I feel like I'm splitting hairs.

'''who also played the nurse that strapped Dorothy into her hospital bed at the start of the film, and who chased Dorothy into the river to meet her fate. She was, for five years, married to Jon Pertwee,'''

This is almost completely off-topic, but whatever! It's your time you're wasting, so I'm not going to stop you!

'''the actor who famously portrayed the third incarnation of Doctor Who. And, perhaps more relevant to this story, played the character of Worzel Gummidge, a scarecrow who was brought to life.'''

Oh yeah, it's a real mind screw!

'''I mention the scarecrow, because Dorothy’s other companion is a prisoner of Mombi’s. When Mombi traps Dorothy in her tower, the young girl from Kansas meets one of Mombi’s failed experiments, Jack Pumpkinhead.'''

NO! He was not a "failed experiment", he was brought to life to test the Powder of Life, like he says, you fool!

Jack is a terrifying creature,

NO, HE ACTUALLY ISN'T, YOU COWARD WHO WRITES EROTIC SPANK-FICS ABOUT HIS OWN FATHER!

taller than any adult actor in this film, with stick-thin limbs which seem to go on forever.

Oh yeah, he's a prototype for Slender Man!

'''It stands unsteadily on elongated legs, wearing a tattered old discoloured coat, its fingers ending in long reaching branches. Atop its neck sits a pumpkin in the place of a head. When the creature moves, it does so in sharp and sudden jerks, pulling its hands along as if they were alien parts of its body.'''

Duh, he's made of wood!

Its voice is sickly sweet,

Says the dumbass who just told us how "scary" he was!

'''provided by Brian Henson. Brian Henson is the son of the famous Jim Henson, and is now chairman of the Jim Henson Company. His voice is certainly the softest part of an otherwise terrifying creature.'''

HE IS NOT TERRIFYING! He is friendly, childlike, and cute! Seriously, all the capslocks in the world can't express my rage!

If you’ve ever seen The Nightmare before Christmas, you may find some very interesting similarities with the film’s lead character.

Yes, a lot of people point out the similarities!

And at several points throughout the film, Jack’s limbs will break and fall apart, having to be bound back in place with rope.

Well that Jack Skellington comparison didn't last long...

'''Dorothy’s only way to escape from Mombi’s tower is to steal the powder of life, which the witch used to bring the pumpkin-headed creature to life. She stores the powder in a glass cabinet, along with her spare heads.'''

Actually the heads are in different cabinets, the one behind the glass is Mombi's original head, but I shouldn't expect accuracy in this shitfest.

'''Yes, Mombi has a collection of heads. She changes them to fit her mood. They sit in the cabinets, looking for all purpose to be asleep, but each head is very much alive.'''

This is something else that gets THIS MOOOVEEE SOOO SCURY!!! from the cowardly pissantses!

That night, when Dorothy attempts to steal the powder of life from the cabinet, she accidently awakens one of the disembodied heads.

Mombi's original head, by the way!

'''Its eyes snap awake, and in a raspy voice it screams the girl’s name, DOROTHY GALE The other heads awake and start to scream. They scream, and screamed, and screamed. Their echoing cries woke the witch herself, who rose from her bed, nightgown flowing like a spectre, the space on her shoulders where her head should be utterly vacant, a headless figure stumbling towards the young girl, arms outstretched, all the while her heads screamed in terrible unison.'''

And the main character cuts the summary off again to tell us some dumb, boring shit about his life.

'''We’d been in the city for a year. I’d been enrolled in a new school. It was far larger than I was accustomed to, and some of the boys at the start of the year had been brutally mocking. I was labelled as a farm boy, and treated as an outsider.'''

Trust me, buddy, them picking on you has nothing to do with your farmer upbringing! It has to do with the fact that you're a dumbass who probably had to go to the special needs classes.

Over the course of the months, though, they had forgotten about my difference, and soon I was simply one of the other school kids.

Riding the short bus...

'''I’d seen him in the school yard. I didn’t know his name, but he was a bright kid with a splash of sunlight blonde hair.'''

He was your first crush.

'''I think he must have been about eleven years old, but to my young eyes he could have been older by an infinite number of years. He was a Big Kid. As a Big Kid, I tried to avoid him,'''

Because you blushed and giggled like a girl around him.

'''because he and his friends were loud and boisterous. He was in the upper years of school, and as a result he didn’t have to wear his uniform. None of the upper years did, and so the Big Kid would wear whatever he wanted, usually a white t-shirt and jeans. I don’t think he’d ever spoken to me.'''

Why the fuck would a "big kid" want to talk to a baby from the special needs classes?

'''I barely even noticed him. But because of what happened, I remembered him.'''

??????

'''It was summer. I was off school, during the start of the summer holidays. It couldn’t have been more than a week since school had stopped, and it was still a few more weeks before we were due to head away to the seaside to spend our holiday in the sun.'''

Like many other sections of this story, there was more detail and elaboration than necessary.

It was already a nice enough day, the sun was warm and there was a cool wind (DOROTHY GALE) in the air.

If you would have just said Gale that would have been more subtle and cool (COOL LIKE THE BREEZE).

'''My mother had taken me into the city centre earlier that day, as she had wanted to pick up a few items from the large post office, where packages were sorted. I was feeling rather sour, as my mother’s venture out to do the daily shopping had interrupted my time for watching morning cartoons.'''

Don't worry, buddy, you were nowhere near as bored as I was reading this story!

Nevertheless I had trudged along, on the promise that if I behaved we could rent out a film from the video rental store that evening.

I could tell you were poor, as you had to rent movies instead of buying them. To be fair though, when Return to Oz was first released on VHS and Betamax, it cost $79.99.

It had been a long time since we had rented out Return To Oz, and the film had faded from my memory.

Apparently not, or you wouldn't be comparing your every day life to it.

'''I was excited. I was keen to see what we could find in the dark little video rental store.'''

So there were no Blockbusters in England, then?

'''My mother was already certain that she wanted to rent out the Judy Garland musical version of Wizard of Oz, and relive her love of the classic. This was years before Blockbusters came here to England'''

Well, shoot, that answers my question.

and video rental stores were still small little stores owned by enterprising individuals looking to break into a new market.

I could go on about how home video has, by technicality, been around since the 1920s, but I'm not going to because I don't want to be like the author, and pull the readers away from the story with some stupid marginal shit.

'''My mother parked the car just a few yards from the store, and we got out. The wind (DOROTHY GALE) was starting to pick up, and it was starting to feel a little cold. I grabbed my coat from the back seat of the car, and pulled it on.'''

I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FREAKIN' COAT! JUST GET ON WITH THE STORY, AND STOP WITH THE MARGINAL SHIT!

'''My mother looked over to me, and said ”I’m going to pop into the bakery for a moment”. The bakery, I should mention, was on the street corner'''

You wanna know why your mama went to the street corner? Because that's where she worked as a prostitute!

'''two stores from the video rental shop, with a small barber shop between the two. ”Wait here”. She indicated to the front of the video store. I waited. I wasn’t going to argue, and I certainly wasn’t going to disobey. The promise of watching a new film that evening was enough to ensure that.'''

> Says he is sure his mother is going to rent The Wizard of Oz. > Talks as if he is going to see something new.

Umm, nope...

'''I waited for what felt like an age, but I’m sure was no more than a minute, when I heard the shouts from the other side of the street. I looked over. It was the Big Kid, in his white t-shirt and jeans, his bright blonde hair shining especially bright in the summer sun. He was on a bicycle, along with three other friends. I recognised all of them from school, but just like the Big Kid, I didn’t know their names.'''

Then make some up, you dolt!

'''They were shouting to each other, circling around on their bikes, doing small tricks. One of the Big Kid’s friends would make his bike hop, back and forth. Another would swerve his front wheel, standing up tall on the peddles.'''

lIkE tEh WhEeLeRz!

'''The road was quiet. After about a minute, the group moved into the road, riding around the parked cars. It was a peaceful morning, about eleven o’clock, and the boys were cheering. One of them made his bike hop up onto the pavement, spinning the handlebars around as he did so. Not a single other sound broke the summer day.'''

Filler, filler, filler.

'''I watched the Big Kid and his friend doing their tricks for a moment, and then turned to look at the window of the video rental store. The window was full of posters, and I was curious to see what films they were advertising.'''

Porn and shit that would bore a child.

'''I looked from one to another, barely noticing when the sunlight dimmed somewhat as a cloud passed in front of the sun. The next light brush of wind (DOROTHY GALE)'''

Is he implying Dorothy's spirit is the wind, or some shit?

felt a bit colder, so I wrapped my arms around myself and waited for my mother, when I heard one of the Big Kids friends cry out.

The truck must have taken the turn on the road too fast.

LOL XD

'''I didn’t see it turn, but when I heard the cry I turned to look and seen it tearing down the road. It was a huge truck, massive, towering and ferocious. Its carriage smashed into one of the cars on the far side of the road. The boys in the street started to turn and run, panic in their steps.'''

Aww, I was hoping one of the kids got hit!

One dropped his bike and ran on his feet instead, the scream of the truck’s brakes suffocating his own scream.

'''The Big Kid didn’t move. I don’t know why he didn’t move at the time, I realise now that he was rooted to his spot by fear. His shirt whistled around him as he stared at the truck, eyes wide, mouth open, a scream echoing from his mouth.'''

I like how the author hastily summarizes Return to Oz, yet goes into an obsessive amount of detail over marginal shit that bores us! You know what, fuck it, I'm skipping some of this shit, because I don't want to bore you, the reader, or myself anymore than I have to.

'''[...] I felt the air hit me in a hard gust (DOROTHY GALE) as it charged down on the Big Kid. The truck didn’t even collide with him, it simply poured over where he stood, his body buckling underneath it [...] There wasn’t much blood, but the force of the truck colliding with the Big Kid ripped the boy’s head from his shoulders and sent it hurtling across the road. The Big Kid’s head struck the road, and suddenly it was nothing more than a hunk of meat, like a prop in a movie.'''

DED KIDZ AN POINTLESS VIOLENCE AN BLUD IS NOT CLICHE! MY STOREE NOT CLICHE!

'''I wasn’t screaming. I couldn’t. My throat simply wouldn’t make any sound, except for a series of wheezing gasps as I tried to pull enough air into my lungs. I couldn’t scream because I couldn’t breathe. But there was screaming in the air (DOROTHY GALE) and I couldn’t figure out who was screaming. Then I realised. It was the head. The Big Kit’s head, swaying lightly as it lay on the side of the road, in the gutter, emptying his last sounds from the ruin of his throat, an awful scream that rattled from the severed neck, just for a few short seconds. The truck had stopped where it was, its brakes bringing it to a stop all-too-late, but beneath its wheels the Big Kid’s body twitched for a few moments more, his arms playing out the last moments of his muscle memory as he tries to feel around in the empty air above his shoulders.'''

And after this boring STUFF THAT HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE HAPPEN IN MY REAL LIFE shit, the author goes on to tell us more about the movie.

'''The witch kept a collection of heads. She changed them and would wear a different one depending on her mood.'''

YOU ALREADY TOLD US ABOUT THIS!

And after a few short, terrible seconds the movements ceased, the screaming stopped.

Well that was short lived!

The Big Kid, who had less than a minute before been a living person, was rendered into pieces of unmoving matter.

Skipping back to the summary...

Dorothy, of course, had fled from the witch’s twitching,

She wasn't twitching, dude!

'''lurching body and her collection of screeching heads. She had run away and escaped the horrors. I wasn’t quite so lucky.'''

So a headless woman grabbed you? Yeah, I didn't think so.

'''Some things, I couldn’t escape from. They would hold me in place and exist in the space between the blinking of my eyes.'''

Poison

NEW CHAPTER!

With the powder of life, Dorothy was able to throw together a mass of assorted items in the witch’s tower,

No actually Tik-Tok and Jack were putting it together while Dorothy was stealing the Powder of Life.

'''a sofa and a moose’s head and other random junk, and brought it to life. Creating an assorted mish-mash of a creature. It was called the Gump and, like Jack Pumpkinhead, was a jumbled homunculus of items.'''

Actually it was called the Gump because it was given a stuffed gump's head, but whatever.

'''Dorothy flew away on the winged Gump, flying across the deadly desert. The deadly desert. A mass of sand at the border of Oz which, if you so much as touched the sand, would cause you to turn into sand yourself. Several of the wheelers pursued Dorothy, and when their wheels touched the sand, they collapsed. Their bodies yellowed, cracked and fell apart, their bodies sifting in the wind, the lines and curves of their faces shattering and breaking apart.'''

DIS PART SCURY!

The Gump rips apart in the air, its wings breaking and Dorothy and her friends crash-land onto the mountain of the Nome King.

I'm surprised you don't elaborate on how that would kill them if this were real life.

'''A sinister creature formed of living rock, the Nome King was played with austere and stern decorum by Nicol Williamson, a Scottish actor who forged his way through many respected Shakespeare roles on stage and screen, before his death in 2011. Williamson also played the doctor, from the hospital back in Kansas. That both the sinister doctor and his beastly assistant had been incarnated in Oz, actors and all, makes me all the more sure that the dark and sinister Oz of this film is but a flash in Dorothy’s memory as she drowns in the river during that storm.'''

You're a dumbass!

No. She doesn’t drown.

WE PASSED THIS PART OF THE MOVIE ALMOST AN HOUR AGO, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT AND GET ON WITH IT, FUCKTARD!

No matter how many times I try to remind myself of the story, I keep thinking that she drowned.

And you wonder why your classmates picked on you? Anyway, tl;dr he stupidly babbles about how DORFY DIDUNT DRAWN!

She goes into the Nome King’s treasure chamber,

You're cutting a small chunk out of the story, but whatever.

where he has turned all of her friends into ornaments, and she brings them back to life.

You don't even bother to explain how, you're too busy saving details for boring, marginal shit we don't care about.

She, little Fairuza Balk in her first film role (she didn’t drown she went on to be Stacey in American History X she didn’t drown)

First off, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT HER DROWNING, YOU SHITHEAD! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! YOU'RE LITERALLY OBSESSING WITH SOMETHING THAT DIDN'T EVEN HAPPEN!

Second, no, of course she didn't! She's a fucking actress! So what, you switched the character with her actress?

'''She brings them all back to the Emerald City. And the Nome King…'''

The Nome King dies.

Is this another "chapter" or an overly dramatized statement?

The evil witch, Mombi, she is captured by the heroes.

NO SHE FUCKING ISN'T! THE NOME KING USES HIS MAGIC TO PUT HER IN A CAGE, YOU FUCKER!

'''But the Nome King dies. Dorothy’s companion, the talking chicken called Billina, drops an egg into the Nome King’s mouth.'''

For those who haven't seen the movie and are wondering what the fuck is going on, let me explain because the author was apparently too lazy. Dorothy and her friends land on the Nome King's mountain where they meet the Nome King. Dorothy makes him laugh so hard (by calling Tik-Tok her "army") that the ground breaks and Dorothy falls through the cracks and lands in the Nome King's underground palace. She slides into the Scarecrow who the Nome King turns into an ornament.

Dorothy cries to the Nome King, who gives her and her friends a chance to free the Scarecrow. They must go into his ornament room, one by one, and they have three guesses which one is the Scarecrow. They must guess by putting their hands on the ornament of their choosing, and say "Oz". One by one Dorothy's friends lose and become ornaments. Tik-Tok pretends to wind down (yeah, he has to be wound up, something else the author was too lazy to tell us about) so Dorothy would have to come inside to wind him back up. Like I said, it is a plan so Dorothy can see what ornament he turns into.

As each of her friends become ornaments, the Nome King becomes more and more human (something else the author decided not to tell us about). Dorothy's third and final guess is correct, and the Scarecrow is restored. Angry, the Nome King blames Mombi (who has been pulled to the Nome King's palace by a chariot of Wheelers) for letting Dorothy escape, and puts her in a cage

The giant Nome King breaks through his ornament room, and tries to eat Dorothy's friends (all but Tik-Tok have been rescued). As he is about to eat Jack Pumpkinhead, the top of Jack's head comes off and Billina, who has been hiding in Jack's head because the Wheelers made it known that the Nome King hates chickens, lays an egg that falls down his throat.

There, I did the author's job by explaining things. There is a bunch of other shit he didn't mention, as well.

'''The Nome King, at this point in the film having become a gigantic creation of living rock, gags and chokes. He rasps the words ”Eggs… poison…”'''

No, his minions rasp them as they melt away. The Nome King explains that eggs are poisonous to nomes.

'''and crumbles. His entire body breaks apart, slowly. Chunks of rock falling away, taking his face with it. Eggs, poison.'''

'''Eggs, of course, are not poison. In the film, they are only poisonous to the Nome King. I never did understand why, and when I was a child I didn’t even realise that it was a condition purely to the Nome King and not something that would affect any of the other characters, human or otherwise.'''

"I CAN PUT A PEN IN MY PEE-HOLE, MOMMY!" says the main character to his special-ed teacher.

My mother served me a plate of scrambled eggs for lunch.

More boring shit!

'''This was two weeks before we moved to the city, away from our village home. I had lived in a small village for my entire life; we had no more than thirty buildings and a single main street with its local shop, pub, school house and church. Surrounded as we were by farmland, a large number of our local produce was agricultural. Local beef, pork, and eggs. I pushed the plate away. ”Not hungry?” asked my mother. I shook my head. Poison.'''

"DURR, NO MOMMY! EGGS R BAD! MOVIE SAY SO!"

'''I found the nest during summer. It was hidden in the roots of an old oak tree, near the back of the church hall. It had been built by some of the stray chickens, who had nestled down amongst the gnarled and twisted old roots of the rotting tree. I’d found it one morning, whilst on my way to school. It had been raining the night before, and my rubber wellington boots were flecked with mud.'''

You don't go into details about a good movie, but you sure as Hell pepper the shit out of boring stuff we don't care about!

'''It was the sound I heard first, a bleating cry. I stepped through the soggy grass and leaned closer, peering through the shadows of the old tree roots. The nest was wet and full of dirt. Two chicken eggs sat in the dirt, their surfaces glistening from the rain. The third egg lay in pieces. Bits of its shell hung like a deflated balloon. The infant chicken had been born too early, it was premature and half formed.'''

THIS ISN'T CREEPY, THIS IS SAD!

Also, to tl;dr this long, boring shit the author goes into detail about what it looked like, his school lunches (one of which is a ham sandwich, which the author neglects to mention was in Dorothy's lunchbox in the movie), him telling his friend about the premature chicken, and his friend choking on an egg salad sandwich.

'''Chris tried to stand up, but couldn’t, tripping as he did so. Josh rushed forward, trying to slap him on the back. ”Help!” he shouted. Chris was clasping at his throat now, his face flushing from a pale red to a deeper, more blood-like shade. He was growing frantic, and began to panic. He was wheezing for air [...] I knew what was killing him, it was the poison. The eggs in the sandwich [...] ”It’s the eggs” I said, insistently, my eyes stinging as I felt tears in them, ”The eggs. They’re poisoned.”'''

And just like that you were the only person ever to fail special-ed school!

'''Chris was taken to the local doctor’s clinic, where they found the obstruction in his throat. A large piece of egg shell, almost the size of a small coin, which had burrowed its sharp edge into the side of his throat.'''

I still don’t think the film is cursed.

DURRRRR! DIS NOT CLICHE STURY! Bullshit! Also, duh! It's a fucking movie, dipshit!

The whole cursed movie thing doesn’t work, not in reality.

I NOT CLICHE! So tl;dr he goes on a rant about how DIS MOVEEE NOT CURSEDEDED!

By the time she goes back to Kansas, Dorothy’s journey is over.

Well, that was redundant!

She has found the rightful heir to the throne of Oz, and helped her reclaim the world.

Ok, so I'm going to fill in the blanks. The Nome King, who the author forgot to mention was wearing the Ruby Slippers. As the palace crumbles, Dorothy wishes everyone back to Oz, which she wishes restored. The friends, and Mombi, transport to a field where Dorothy notices Tik-Tok is missing. Billina points out a medal on the Gump's antler and Dorothy touches it, saying "Oz". It turns into Tik-Tok, and the film cuts to the celebration in the Emerald City.

In a deleted coronation scene that survives in the leaked workprint of the movie, the Scarecrow says he no longer wants to be king because he has the brains for it, but not the heart. Dorothy's friends cheer her on to become queen, but she declines because she wants to go home to Kansas. Pointing at a mirror behind Dorothy, Billina shouts "Look, behind you in the mirror!" and Dorothy turns around to find the girl who rescued her from Worley's asylum, now wearing royal clothing, trapped in the mirror. The girl, Ozma, asks Dorothy to help her step through the glass. Dorothy grabs her hand and helps her step through the mirror.

I should also mention that Ozma also created Jack Pumpkinhead as a trick to scare Mombi, who enslaved her, and instead of destroying him like she initially planned, Mombi tested the powder of life. One of the formerly headless girls, whose heads were stolen by Mombi, exposites that after the Nome King promised Mombi thirty beautiful heads, she enchanted Ozma into a mirror. Mombi herself is still in the cage the Nome King put her in.

Dorothy gives Ozma the ruby slippers, and she wishes her home. Billina refuses to return to Kansas, calling it a "stupid, humdrum world".

There, I did the author's job once again. It kind of pisses me off that I have to summarize this movie, while he sits on his ass and goes into excessive detail about stupid shit!

'''We learn that the hospital burned to the ground during the storm. The doctor died in the fire. Burned to death. The Nome King died, so did the doctor.'''

Actually, technically, the Nome King exploded, but whatever.

'''Both characters, both played by the same actor, met the same fate. But Dorothy was home, and she was wiser and more confident now, her sadness was gone. She could carry the memory of Oz with her forever.'''

Ozma also told her she would occasionally look in on her through her mirror, and that she could go back to Oz whenever she wanted.

'''I wonder if that was her curse as well. That poor little Dorothy Gale would forever return to Oz.'''

She loved going to Oz! In fact, in one of the books, she, Aunt Em, and Uncle Henry move there!

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

MUH CHAPTURZ!

'''I stood on the road where the truck had struck and killed the blonde-haired kid. This was about a month ago. I was in the city for business. I had just finished a new project, the shooting of a new film. When I was twelve, I watched a movie called Cinema Paradiso, a classic of modern Italian movies.'''

"IM 12 AND I WUZ IN MOVEE!" Bullshit!

It follows the story of a man

tl;dr he also says that Cinema Paradiso mirrors his life, like Return to Oz supposedly does. I'm cutting this shit out because no one cares. If lawyers didn't cost money, I'm sure dumb-dumb here would try to sue every movie company, claiming that EVERY movie is an unauthorized biopic of his life!

'''The video rental store was long since gone. The bakery was still there, though. The young man behind the counter told me that he couldn’t remember a video rental store being there on the street ever since he had moved to the city, some seven years ago. Time had changed. I had expected to still see the marks of the tires from the truck in the road. I didn’t. No black scorch of burned rubber, and no dash of blood in the gutter where the head had landed.'''

It would be irresponsible for them to let that stuff stay on the road, anyway.

'''My home village in Cornwall had changed perhaps more drastically. I drove there in my white Sedan, and when I pulled up into the village’s main street, I realised that time had ravaged the place far worse than any hurricane could. I was determined not to let the weight of time dissuade me from what I intended to do, though. I parked my car and looked around. I tasted the air, and looked around.'''

QUIT GOING INTO EXCESSIVE DETAILS ABOUT STUPID SHIT, YOU DUMBASS!

'''My Kansas was gone. The air tasted different. This, I thought, was my own return to Oz.'''

"My shitty little farm land is just like a magic fantasy land, guyz!"

'''The post office was shut; it had closed many years before. The small corner shop was now a Safeway, and even so it was a small one with only a single check-out. I went into the local pub, which I had never done when I was a child here. The man behind the bar barely took notice of me. All around me, the people seemed old, as if history had chewed on them and left their wrinkled faces gnawed.'''

That's because they're the only type of people who would stay in such a shithole!

'''The bartender told me that there weren’t really any young families around here anymore. [...] Being in the village was painful. I felt like a relic, something that the past had forgotten. [...] The school was the closest, so I went there first. It was a poor decision. The building itself was barren. The sign at the front, with the school’s name that had once been boldly etched on it, had been taken down. The building was abandoned.'''

I like to tell you boring shit, and go into excessive details about my boring, dumbass life, but will cut important plotpoints out of a movie!

'''Without children to teach, there was no use of the school any more. I learned from the man who owned the local pub that the hall, where Chris had choked on the broken piece of egg shell so many years before, was still occasionally used for village meetings.'''

AND WITCH TRIALS!

'''But the classrooms had long since been abandoned. [...] They were all barren, emptied of furniture. No desks, no chairs. One held an old blackboard, its surface covered with dust. [...] When I got to the church, I realised before I even before I stepped into the yard that the old oak tree was long gone. I found an old priest with a shock of dirty white hair tending the front of the church. When I asked him about the tree, he told me that it had caught a disease several years before and was cut down. [...] I found the patch of concrete, I half expected to find a small plaque as well. Perhaps a dedication to the four children who had been murdered and buried there. There wasn’t one. The concrete itself was cracked and old by then [...] I felt tired. The journey had been painful, bittersweet.'''

I have no comment on any of this, except "BORING!".

'''The sun was starting to set by the time I reached the river. [...] the sun starting to dye the sky red and slip down towards the horizon, made the undercurrents of the water look dark. [...] And that’s when I remembered. This is where she drowned."'''

Who? BEN? I didn't know he was a girl!

'''I didn’t remember it all at once. The images came first. Her face, with her eyes wide in terror, the water splashing [...] I was on the bank of the river. I was clasping onto her arm. [...] she kept slipping. I couldn’t hold on. [...] I was meant to look after her. She was my sister, and I was her big brother [...] She had fallen in and hit the water with a splash, and that splash was so loud that it had broken the world. [...] And I’d forgotten.'''

Dumbass!

Maybe not forgotten, I think my mind had forced the memory out.

No, you're just mentally instable and you probably forgot about your sister a day after she was buried.

'''This, I realised, was why I had come here. I needed to make myself remember.'''

This had literally NOTHING to do with Return to Oz, besides your acting stupid over DORFY DROWN! DORFY DROWN!

'''I had to find the source of my fear. Remember what it was that had kept this moment from my mind. She drowned. [...] Each time I thought of that damnable movie, each time I tried to remember Return to Oz, I remembered Dorothy Gale drowning in the river. But it wasn’t Dorothy, it had never been Dorothy. It had been my little sister.'''

"But it wasn'ta good story, it had never been a good story. It had been Return to Return to Oz."

And she was my ghost.

Apparently two people can have the same ghost.

'''That film was important to me, I knew it now. I’d never be free from it. Even when I tried to say goodbye, when I spoke my lost little sister’s name on that riverbank, I knew that she would follow me forever. I couldn’t leave her behind; I couldn’t lock her away again. Return to Oz bound us together forever. Because my mother, who had loved Judy Garland, had named my sister Dorothy.'''

Thank God this shit is over!

I will be tearing Jeff the Killer apart in my next edition.