I caught a few minutes of the second part of The Witches of Oz on an Encore channel the other day, where I saw a taxi floating in the air inside of a bubble while the wicked witch and her monkeys are causing chaos in the streets of New York. The scene caught my interest, but I had to leave at the time and the movie wasn’t going to be on again. Luckily, I happened to stumble upon it for under ten dollars and of course I had to buy it. Little did I know that the movie was 164 minutes! After a little googling, I found out it was original intended as a mini-series, but ended up being cut down to 100 minutes with 15 minutes of new special effects added and released to a limited (very limited) run in theaters earlier this year. Why in the world would they send the longer version to DVD and to Encore?The Witches of Oz is set in our time and involves twenty-something Dorothy Gale getting a publishing contract for her OZ children stories; therefore she leaves her family farm and heads to New York. As strange situations occur, Dorothy’s memory slowly returns and so do the evil Wicked Witch and her followers (Princess Langwidere, Nome King, an army of Winked Monkeys and a powerful dragon.). Soon Dorothy’s friends from Oz return too, including Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Frick & Frack, the good witches, and Oz himself, as they try to help her defeat the wicked witch once and for all.
The plot sounds interesting and with such talented actors as Billy Boyd, Jeffery Combs, Sean Austin, Ethan Embry, Mia Sara, Lance Henriksen and Christopher Lloyd, one would think this movie had a chance of being good. But after watching nearly three hours I was left with mixed feelings and some confusion. At times the movie would go dark more toward an adult theme, and then suddenly, with horrible dialogue, it would change into a campy kid’s movie. The actors tried to do their best with a confusing script, all except Dorothy played by Paulie Rojas who couldn’t act and was widely miscasted. The special effects were your typical low-budget, but I could see the director Leigh Scott tried to do his best with what little he had to work with. Younger kids will probably enjoy watching this new take, and somewhat of a sequel, to The Wizard of Oz, but most adults might find it painful to watch. The movie is not completely awful, there are moments, here and there, that are intriguing. In my opinion the Wicked Witch was the best part, and I liked the makeup that they used on her, I even liked the eye patch. The Witches of Oz is not a great movie, as I have seen far worse like the Syfy’s Tin Man that aired a few years ago. It’s a forgettable fluff, with cheesy 80’s special effects, dreadful dialogue, but with a few scenes of imagination.
You know what I hate!?! I hate when sequels come out where they bring back the villain that died in the first movie! The Wicked Witch is dead! There was a whole song about it! How can they bring her back for a sequel? That is just wrong!
ReplyDelete@Bittner
ReplyDeleteActually, and very briefly, they show how the wicked witch was destroyed, which is different from the old movie. But it is never explained how she came back.