How Return to Ouncesbecame one of many darkest youngsters’s movies ever made

Again within the Eighties, Disney commissioned a sequel to The Wizard of Ounceswhich was as scary because it was unconventional. Launched 40 years in the past this week, it was a field workplace failure, however has since grow to be a cult basic.

The movies we watch as youngsters usually depart the deepest marks. Walter Murch’s Return to Oz (1985) has a repute as being one of many scariest youngsters’s movies of the Eighties. A sequel to the beloved 1939 musical starring Judy Garland, which was launched within the US 40 years in the past this week, it’s infamous for traumatising younger audiences and is jam-packed with creepy photographs, from Dorothy Gale getting trapped inside villainess Princess Mombi’s chamber of disembodied heads  to the Wheelers, a pack of cackling creatures with wheels for toes – and that is simply the Ouncesscenes. Shockingly, the opening sequence has younger Dorothy being despatched to a psychiatric clinic to have her reminiscences of Ouncesobliterated by a sinister physician. Whereas the preliminary important reception was combined, and the movie flopped on the field workplace, it has grow to be a cult favorite through the years, arguably due to this surfeit of nightmare gas.

An Academy award-winning sound designer and revered editor, Murch had labored on a few of the most notable movies of the Seventies together with THX 1138, which he co-wrote with George Lucas, American Graffiti, The Dialog and Apocalypse Now, however had but to direct his personal characteristic, when Disney – which was present process vital adjustments in administration within the Eighties – approached him to make one thing with them.

Murch already had an concept in thoughts: a sequel to the MGM basic The Wizard of Oz, however yet one more trustworthy to L Frank Baum’s books. Murch had grown up on the Ouncesbooks. His mom liked them, and so they had been the primary novels he can keep in mind studying. Disney, it transpired, had the rights to them, which got here as a shock to Murch – however they expired in 5 years, which meant they wanted to maneuver shortly.

The script, which Murch co-wrote with Gil Dennis, is a composite of two of Baum’s books, Ozma of Ouncesand The Magical Land of Oz. As an alternative of 16-year-old Garland, they solid the nine-year outdated Fairuza Balk – who as an grownup would go on to star within the likes of The Craft and American Historical past X; she was the identical age as Dorothy within the books. The movie wouldn’t have the vaudevillian sheen of the unique. Crucially, it might not be a musical, however somewhat one thing extra grounded. The look of Dorothy’s well-known travelling companions the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion, who spend many of the film turned to stone till they’re introduced again to life on the finish,  is impressed by the unique illustrations somewhat than the 1939 movie, whereas the one notable holdover from that manufacturing can be Dorothy’s iconic ruby slippers – the slippers are silver within the books – which they needed to pay for the rights to make use of. “In fact, I knew this was a dangerous endeavour, as a result of individuals had such a robust feeling about that movie,” Murch tells the BBC. “I did not wish to tread on its toes. Once you say, here is a sequel to that movie, sure expectations pop up.”

A lot has been made through the years of the movie’s darkness. Murch combines components of Nineteenth-Century fairy tales with a extra sensible imaginative and prescient of life in rural Kansas in 1890 – although as he factors out, when you strip away the songs from the unique, it is fairly darkish in itself. For a time, Murch was in dialog with Maurice Sendak, creator and illustrator of The place the Wild Issues Are, to do the manufacturing design for Return to Ouncesand Sendak talked about how the Thirties movie terrified him as a toddler.

The movie picks up the place the unique left off. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry try to restore the injury the twister did to their farm, whereas Dorothy has grow to be an insomniac who retains speaking about her journey to Oz. 

For a lot of viewers, the early scenes, during which Dorothy is taken to a clinic to obtain electroconvulsive remedy from the sinister Dr Worley, performed by famend Shakespearean actor Nicol Williamson, are probably the most disturbing. Murch was impressed by the Eighteen Nineties mania for electro-therapies. On the cusp of the twentieth Century, electrical energy was remodeling the way in which individuals lived. It was a supply of awe – and quackery – with the newspapers filled with adverts for electrical corsets and electrical belts promising to alleviate all method of illnesses and restore the wearer’s vigour. Baum was additionally fascinated with electrical energy, says Murch, “so all of it match collectively”. Nevertheless, the remedy Dorothy is about to obtain, as she is strapped to a gurney whereas “broken sufferers” will be heard screaming within the basement, feels extra like one thing out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

For British actor Sophie Ward, who performed one of many incarnations of head-switching witch Princess Mombi alongside Jean Marsh and Fiona Victory, the facility of those scenes lies within the reality they’re attempting to silence Dorothy, to obliterate her reminiscences of Oz. “Culturally, that basically strikes a chord, about remedies being misused and misapplied, and girls not being believed.” The creepiness of the scene is amplified by the truth that Aunt Em, saddled together with her personal troubles, leaves Dorothy behind with out wanting again, tapping into each kid’s concern of abandonment, explains Murch. “Generally even probably the most well-meaning of oldsters, for their very own causes, make decisions that put their children in jeopardy, and it’s a must to make your personal associates and discover your personal manner. That is what occurs in life.”

Escaping throughout a thunderstorm, Dorothy floats down a river and wakes up in Oz, solely to search out the Emerald Metropolis destroyed and her outdated associates turned to stone. She does not even have Toto for firm. Regularly, she items collectively a discovered household made up of Billina the speaking rooster, spherical robotic soldier Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, a determine with picket limbs and a carved jack-o’-lantern head, and The Gump, who consists of a moose-head which Dorothy reanimates with magic powder after which ropes to a settee to create a somewhat ungainly flying machine.  

“These themes of reminiscence erasure and attempting to carry on to the reminiscences that you’ve got run all through the guide,” says Murch, “and we emphasise these within the movie.” All the characters Dorothy encounters are “beneath the gun not directly”. Bellina’s life will probably be in jeopardy if she does not lay an egg, Jack worries about his head spoiling, and if Tik-Tok is not usually wound up, his speech, motion and even his capability to suppose can all wind down. The Gump is held along with twine and in fixed hazard of coming aside.

The movie abounds with creative visible results. Claymation is used to convey the Nome King, the tyrannical rock monster who has taken over the Emerald Metropolis, to life. Murch and his younger household had been followers of Sesame Avenue, and a younger Brian Henson, son of the present’s puppet maestro Jim Henson, is each the lead puppeteer and voice of the gangly Jack Pumpkinhead, whereas Michael Sundin, a British trampolining champion and Blue Peter presenter, had the unenviable activity of bringing Tik-Tok to life. To do that he needed to be strapped into the shell of the costume along with his head between his legs, bent double and dealing with backwards. A small monitor allowed him to see the place he was going. There was additionally restricted air, explains Murch. “As soon as he was clamped inside Tik-Tok, he had two minutes and 45 seconds earlier than we needed to say lower.” Regardless of this, he was in a position to grasp this “unbelievably difficult geometric re-constitution” to the purpose that Tik-Tok was in a position to stroll up and down stairs. 

In contrast to Garland within the authentic, Balk was usually interacting with puppets or individuals encased in costumes somewhat than human beings, making her efficiency of quiet resilience all of the extra spectacular.

It was not a straightforward manufacturing course of. There was preliminary friction between authentic producer Gary Kurtz and Disney relating to the finances. Kurtz ended up being promoted to an govt position, primarily taking him off the movie, and Paul Maslansky was assigned in his place. Murch was advised he wanted to chop $5 million (£3.7m) from the finances for the movie to go forward. “I made a type of selections that you simply make when issues are existentially on the road. I buckled down for 2 weeks and produced a screenplay that was 15 pages shorter.”

As soon as capturing began, it shortly began falling behind. Whereas Murch places a few of this all the way down to his inexperience as a director, it was additionally a particularly difficult shoot, that includes puppetry and sophisticated visible results and a lead, who at 9 years of age, might solely work a set variety of hours a day. The unique director of images give up, and after 5 weeks Murch says he was knowledgeable by Disney that “we’re letting you go for the great of the movie and on your personal good”.

When George Lucas, who was in Japan on the time, heard about this, he flew straight to London, says Murch, and “used some form of Jedi thoughts trick to persuade them to rehire me”. Murch discovered himself reinstated. Even when he wasn’t on the set, he had maintained contact along with his affiliate producer, and when he got here again, he says “issues took off, and we truly completed on schedule”.

Regardless of all these points, Murch remained a peaceful presence on set, says Ward. “He and his unimaginable spouse, Aggie, had been so nurturing. Generally exterior pressures from the studio can not help however infiltrate the set, however it did not really feel like that in any respect, and that is testomony to them. They had been this massive coronary heart on the centre of issues.” 

Return to Ounceshad its world premiere in the USA on 21 June 1985. The important reception was decidedly combined, with well-known double-act reviewers Siskel and Ebert being notably sniffy about it, labelling it “trashy” and saying it was prone to terrify youngsters. Commercially, it was additionally a flop, grossing $11.1m domestically. In accordance with Aaron Pacentine, who authored the 2021 documentary Remembering Return to Oz, Disney did not actually know what to do with it or how one can promote it, though it did nicely in Japan. Murch attributes this preliminary response to the “sugar-salt phenomenon”. As in: if individuals count on a cup of candy tea and find yourself with one thing salty, they are going to recoil. After Return to Oz, Murch discovered himself in “Hollywood jail”, he says, and did not direct once more. 

Perhaps audiences on the time simply weren’t prepared for one thing that deviated so considerably from the unique. The urge for food for sequels, prequels, universe constructing and darkish re-imaginings wasn’t there but. “It was a lot forward of its time in that respect,” says Ward. “I feel individuals now are extra aware of the concept there are different interpretations [of classics].”

Since Return to Ounceswas launched there was a made-for-television Muppets’ Wizard of Ouncesand 2013’s Ouncesthe Nice and Highly effective, directed by Sam Raimi, to not point out Gregory Macguire’s prequel novel Depraved: The Life and Occasions of the Depraved Witch of the West, which has spawned successful stage present and a serious two-part movie adaption, the second a part of which is launched later this 12 months. Regardless of this, it is arduous to think about anybody making an Ouncesfilm – or any youngsters’s movie – fairly so wilfully unusual and darkish today. In that sense it stands aside, and Pacentine maintains that Disney nonetheless treats it just like the black sheep of the Ouncesuniverse. “They do not appear to care about sure movies, if they don’t seem to be field workplace successes in America.”

Nevertheless, for a lot of who watched it in childhood, the issues that bemused the critics – the bleakness and creepiness, the disembodied heads and watchful rocks – are precisely what made it lodge of their reminiscences. For Pacentine, the darkness is an integral a part of the movie’s enduring enchantment. “Lots of people examine Return to Ouncesto an precise horror movie,” he says, “and I feel it appeals in that approach to me.” The themes of the movie – the suppression of creativeness, the nervousness of being pressured to fend for your self on the earth – have clearly resonated with many.

Regardless of the bumpy manufacturing course of, Murch is pleased with the movie and the work that went into it. For him, all film-making is a product of collective intelligence, and the craft and care that went into the movie is without doubt one of the issues that has sustained it for 40 years. “Movies ought to be smarter than the individuals who make them,” Murch says, and collectively he and his solid and crew created a movie that has seeped into youngsters’s desires over the many years. If Return to Ounceshad been sunnier, smoother and safer, we would not be speaking about it at this time.

All of the sudden One thing Clicked: The Languages of Movie Modifying and Sound Design by Walter Murch is printed by Faber and Faber.