TOTAL RECALL
This is the only Tik-Tok you crazy young kids need!
Mention the cult live-action Disney movie Return To Oz and people will inevitably tell you how it terrified them as a child – sometimes also as an adult. Not me; I was absolutely captivated by it, an early indication that I would turn to the dark side where entertainment was concerned. It was a gateway drug, if you will, to the world of horror and heroines.
I saw it with my Nana at the Odeon Cinema (now, sadly, a gym) at the end of her street in Aberdeen. I was nine, so had probably seen the original The Wizard Of Oz. But that doesn’t really matter, because I’ve always preferred the sequel (and yes, it is a sequel). Where Wizard dabbles momentarily with the dark – the
Wicked Witch of the West is an iconic cinematic villain, after all – Return seems to throw safety to the wind.
A witch that changes her head, cackling madmen hunched over on wheels, twisted-face Nomes that travel through rocks, all that’s good destroyed or turned to stone – why, it appears I was in my element!
Dorothy’s band of misfits aren’t exactly cuddly either: mechanical man Tik-Tok, who represents the entire Royal Army of Oz, is a precursor of 2020’s moody online personas (“I have always valued my lifelessness”); Jack Pumpkinhead is a Frankenstein’s monster intended to be child-friendly; and the Gump is a decapitated hybrid.
Meanwhile, Billina, the “spunky, sassy and talkative chicken”, ultimately ends up being the hen harbinger of death, causing the Nome King – shortly after his Drag Race-worthy Ruby Slippers reveal – to liquidate in gruesome fashion. Let’s not forget that it’s Billina’s fault that Dorothy ends up being sent to an asylum for electrotherapy in the first place. Fun for all the family!
Suffering at the hands of management changes at the studio, the film – put together because Disney was about to lose the rights to Oz books, acquired in 1954 – was largely side-stepped, despite being nominated for an Oscar (no, not Best Supporting Fowl). But I’ll forever be grateful that somehow it slipped through the cracks of a broken yellow brick and left us with something darkly magical.
Darren longs for a pet back-chatting chicken.