Shownotes
Return to Oz is a horror movie wearing Mick Mouse ears. Among the many Disney movies to traumatize small children, this one is a masterpiece of weird starring a ten year old Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. We take a deep dive into legendary editor Walter Murch's only outing in the director's chair.
"Bring your children. Let them scream." -Harlan Ellison's Review of Return to Oz
Return to Oz is available to stream on Disney+
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- Return to Oz (1985) - IMDb
Transcripts
Return to Oz
Frank: [:Scott: Hollywood and the independent video
Frank: store over. But searching the shelves for that special overlooked movie will never end the one that really sticks with you forever. Let's drown ourselves in a sead streaming services.
And ask the question, what the fuck is that? Does this hold up? And just, what the hell is a good movie? Anyway, I'm Frank Roll. I'm Scott Moran and we are the last video
Scott: store clerks, , what
I down the majority of that fucking bottle in about 45 minutes. How much puke was on the driveway before? Didn't you skip school to take care of me the next day with my mom? I think I did. I think you did. Yeah. I think you skipped school and I missed school because I was fucking hung over.
Frank: It was better in school.
what'd you watch this week?
Scott: Oh man. Uh, I watched Sleepy Hollow.
Frank: Oh, really? Yes. It's been a
Scott: long [:Frank: time of year once I actually, I may have only seen that once. Oh, get outta here. Yeah. I think I owned it on VHS at one time, but I think that was also the first time I watched it.
I like
Scott: it better than, uh, from hell, you know, he did the more serious, That's a weird comparison, but Yeah. Well, they came out about the same time, I feel like. Yeah, they were around the same. And Christina Richie, you know. Oh, Christina Richie was blonde and, Oh, she's
Frank: more grown. Another look. That was one of, Did you ever watch the brothers?
Scott: Yes. Uh, only once or twice. I don't remember that one. The way that I know
Frank: Sleepy Hollow, I saw that in the theater and I was like, this, I wanna go home. , like it was just so long. And, uh, but I watched. In the last couple years. And I was like, That's not that bad. It's just really long. I have not watched it recently.
Tara Gillum. That's a long movie. Every time . Well, when I rewatch Fear in Love in Las Vegas, like, I'm like, God damn, this fucking movie is long. That one goes long. Even like Baron Munn and stuff like that. Time Bandit says it, it's perfect. .
Scott: Um, but then I [:I was like, Hey, it's really good. They did. Uh, if you watch the, the great, the Gatsby with. De capo. It's, you know, it takes place in that time period, but they would mix in modern music to the soundtrack. They did that a couple times in this Elvis movie. And man, it hit hard because, I mean, like, they would drop some bass on some like Elvis scenes and it was like, Whoa.
That's,
Frank: Oh, that's cool. It was, it gave me, Yeah. Music back then wasn't mixed the same, so it, it never hits that. Like you couldn't even record to make things sound. I didn't
Scott: know a lot about Elvis, so I fact checked as I watched lots of cool little tidbits that were, you know, based on actual things that I had never heard of before.
But then there was some of it that was deeply exaggerated for film, which is of course, but some of it was, I couldn't hope it to think, Come on, you gave me some really cool things. How are you gonna fudge this hard on such an intense
Frank: moment of the movie? That one's gonna have to wait. Biopic wise, blonde.
Is your next one? Yes,
minute run time, [:Frank: afternoon. That's what keeps me from watching those kind of movies a lot of the time, is I'm like, Yeah, this is really
Scott: long. You called me out for putting off movies.
Well, it's hard for, So it
Frank: went through my head. I know that like the goal with a movie like that is you have to find the story in someone's life. That's the same with a good memoir, memoir, memoir,
Scott: memoir, memoir.
Frank: John Malcovich. I'm going to write a memoir. .
Scott: Okay, sorry.
Frank: You have to find the story in your life or people are gonna lose interest in it.
So Malkovich, Malcovich, it doesn't always happen and I fucking get bummed out. Yeah, I'll be watching one. I'll be like, God damn, I wanna leave. And
Scott: the other cool thing that I watched was, uh, I talked to Olympia and she had no idea what I was talking about. So I found an episode of Shop Till You Drop on YouTube.
de of Shop Till You Drop From:Frank: I shit you not two, three months ago. Mm-hmm. . It was like three in the morning and I [00:04:00] wasn't ready to go to sleep. And I watched several episodes singled out. Nice. Yeah,
Scott: dude.
Frank: Uh, did you not?
Uh, Carbon electro error. It was McCarthy.
Scott: Okay. That's, that was my
Frank: next question. It was back then with the tongue and everything, man. Chris Hardwick, Chris fucking hard, a boyish fella
Scott: then it's, everything's a little fuzzy this evening and I couldn't even fucking remember if I brought the trashcan
Frank: in. I may have missed cycling.
Because Kelly's outta town. No, you didn't have your reminder. You know, I get mad at her for saying things like, You should drink some water. Have you eaten today? And I'm like, Ah, I'm a grown man. Leave me alone. But then when she's gone I'm like, I think I have muha in by proxy . Like I stop remembering those things cuz I'm like, Ash, she'll tell me.
Anyway. It's been
Scott: ingrained me in . You've been
Frank: marked this this week. Uh, we watched, This is the. Which you also watch. I also watch
Scott: that. Sorry, left off my list. So we watched it in the same week.
movies that are universally [:Scott: Those pants are awfully tied with the cup.
Frank: Yeah. This a shit
It was really good.
Scott: No, it's great that guys, um, with that presence in Hollywood can just get together.
Frank: When Jay Burch shell. Jay Bruce Shell, he's so on point, , they wedge him in things sometimes as the Jesse Eisenberg. Michael Sarah character. Oh, Michael, Sarah. That movie was fucking amazing. Holy shit. The whole movie.
That's embarrassing. Emma Watson. It's so fucking funny.
Scott: Um, no. So many good things in that
Frank: movie. And then I watched all of Kenobi in a single day, Man, you're loving the Disney Plus. Dude, I, I went hard. We're more than halfway through. She Hulk Kelly watched that with me. I could get her to watch that one.
ere Barbara is not a scream. [:Again. Yeah. I, It was the second time I've ever seen it.
Scott: Only seen it once. You told me to watch it again. I should. It didn't
Frank: freak me out as bad. That mirror thing freaks me out. Like, for some reason mirrors, but, Oh, Katie sack off just eating that fucking glass. What the fuck, man? I don't even remember that.
Oh yeah, it was traumatizing. Damn it.
Scott: nothing but the rain. Sorry.
Frank: Spoilers,
Uh, what else? Uh, that was really it. I started, uh, The Scarlet Witch Show. What is it? One division. There you go. I started one division. Okay. Yeah. I'm saving that one. And I was really enjoying it. Uh, I just, uh, I was like, I'm gonna go Star Wars for a little bit. And then I watched all of Kenobi, which it was, uh, more like the prequels than I wanted it to be.
ny Star Wars property is top [:Scott: hopefully NBC would pick it up again.
Maybe not sci-fi.
Frank: I don't think they, if they did a reboot. Yeah. But they were like flirting with making a movie at one point and I was like, Don't do it. No, not with the people. Like they were gonna just start with new people and make a movie. I think Brian Singer was gonna do it. The Xmen guy,
Scott: Something would be nice.
They're getting older. I mean, nobody's getting any
Frank: younger Well, I don't mean with the same people. I would be
Scott: okay to, I got re No, I took off in the wrong direction.
Frank: I mean, well like one day they'll start from scratch and do that over again. You know, they will. Will be old and annoyed. But, uh, I'm gonna, I would like to see fucking galacia look like a star warship.
You know, if
you think that they would go [:Frank: in Galactic's history? I, I would hope that, uh, the writer would not do it exactly the same , and I know that that's not what most people feel about anything like that.
But I would be okay if, uh, there was a fresh. Storyline and it was just the base thing. Sometimes. That's good. I mean, Battle Star was a fucking remake of Battlestar Gala.
Scott: That's what was gonna say. They call it a
Frank: reimagining, Correct. Yeah. And it was so good. There's no reason to think that that couldn't happen again.
Mm-hmm. . But you know, it just doesn't all the time. , we need to stop. Who knows? I haven't watched that Quantum Leap show yet. Who It might be great.
Scott: I that it, it offended
Frank: me. It's unnecessary. I'm just saying they did that
Scott: with MacGyver too. I wanna be clear. This isn't because of like the choice of the actor.
Nothing. It just, I feel like certain series had their time.
Frank: It was so silly though. Man, it like it. It's fine. Go for it. But that was
Scott: its place. That's its place in
ory and the way it looks and [:Scott: didn't they try, They tried MacGyver.
Frank: It ran for a long time. The new one? Yeah. It might still
Scott: be on for all I know. That's what I, I, I should have checked on MacGyver before that left my mouth, but things like that, I don't know. Some of them,
Frank: yes. Was that, is that CBS is doing that one? I believe so. Okay. Yeah, this, it's on Paramount probably.
CBS is a weird network, man. Like on the one hand you have Star Trek and on the other hand you have all those fucking sitcoms and the ,
Scott: What did they end on? Like three csis? Wasn't that cbs ? Yeah,
Frank: probably NCIS N css. Is this all that stuff? All the N css. Rush Q 9 1 1. was on cbs.
Scott: With William Sha on her ,
Frank: that offends me.
Scott: Hey man, be sure if you have a six pack with the plastic rings, cut 'em so they don't get stuck on the ducks and the sea life. Okay, I learned that from Rescue 9
I learned not to stick your [:Scott: freezer. Oh yeah. Hey, when reenactments were
Frank: cool. Reenactments are still cool. Anytime I'm in a hotel room, man, I watch true TV and shit like that the whole time.
I want investigation. I Id,
Scott: I want actual footage from surveillance cameras, not reenactments.
Frank: I like the old episodes of uh, Unsolved Mysteries. Unsolved Mysteries. I knew that's where year ago cuz they're on Peacock for free. Hulu too now I think. I just love Robert Stack's voice too. Yeah, I watched those new ones and we're in October now.
We are not. You are Woo
Scott: Uh, next week we'll be watching High Spirits with Steve Gutenberg . Oh yeah. No, sorry. We won't. I
have
Frank: seen that though. back when you watched everything. Yeah, just whatever was around fucking high spirits. . I've seen Howard the Duck a
ok, I took advice. I did not [:I found it once and I
Frank: started, I did it. I was so young when I saw Howard the Duck over and over again too. We used to rent videos at a gas station back then, and the grocery store sometimes, which had a better selection.
Scott: In East Austin, there was a place called Home Video. That was my first video store, was
Frank: a home video in that, in high school.
Did that IGA buy your house? Did that, uh, that have videos for rent?
Scott: Well, that's the thing is I was an East Side kid who used to fake a dress to go over there, so I didn't live in that neighborhood. I didn't live in that neighborhood until I was
Frank: 12. It was a weird time. You could rent videos all over the place they were ever.
Do you ever go to the beach when you were a kid?
even, you know, honeymoon in:And do you know what the first movie we rented was? It's a little movie called Pop Star. Oh God.
Frank: that, Was that the first time you saw it? That was the first time I saw it. So that was your honeymoon was where it all began.
Scott: That's where my , that's where my obsession started. Did you know that SEAL was in that movie?
Frank: So now that we're in October, this was one of my first horror movies. Yes. This was one of the first movies to ever scare the living shit out of me.
Scott: Now that I've watched it through, I saw parts of this as a kid, but because I was so, you know, just pounded with Return to Oz, I think that I didn't want to watch this
Frank: return to o.
Is one of those things where at the video store, I used to recommend it to people. Mm-hmm. . And I thought it was funny, , if there were especially, I was like, are they gonna rent this for their kid? It's some dark shit. Yeah. This is a PG movie from
Scott::Well, I
movie. Straight. That was a [:I believe so. Bunch of Jim Henson Creature Shop guys were in this. That Claymation? Yeah. Brian Henson is Jack's voice. Really? But I guess he was younger at that point. He was a kid then. Whoever
Scott: was in that costume was a tall, skinny man. Yeah. Uh, those legs, I don't know if you've saw, Okay. So they, they had the costume around the leg.
But that was not very big. And you knew that there was a leg in there. Yeah. And that's,
Frank: That's a very thin, long leg. This movie is credited as being Tim Burton's inspiration for Nightmare before Christmas. Makes perfect sense. That's exactly what he looked like. That's exactly what he looked like. Yeah.
ore cuz I don't care for the [:Scott: I watched The Nightmare before Christmas for the first time two years ago.
Frank: That was the first time two years ago.
What the fuck,
Scott: dude? Um, there was a kid in my fourth grade class who loved it so much. I didn't watch it and I, it was just, I, It stuck with me forever.
Frank: You're one of those people that hates universally loved movies. .
Scott: I'm not though. Coming from a guy who won't watch
Frank: Titanic. Yeah, but you get weird shit stuck in your head.
Now I don't need to watch Titanic cuz I've seen all of it in parts on TV all over the place. Like clips of it and stuff like that. I got it. I got
Scott: it. This movie, Fucking bangs. Like , this movie from the second I hit play after you made me watch that preview. I knew it was on from the first fucking minute.
Just I had that feeling in in. It's not even a weird opening. I just knew what was
tar thing, Shooting over the [:They would be like, Oh my God. As soon as this started, I realized I'd seen it before. That's the same shit I said, and that it was a traumatic memory.
Scott: See, it was too different for me to want to watch it as a child.
Frank: I remember because the Return to Oz was beloved to you.
Scott: It was just so nice and bubbly and colorful and
Frank: happy.
And I watched The Wizard of Oz at Christmas, but I was never a huge, like I would watch, uh, the, I would go do the like Pink Floyd Laser light show before I watched The Return to Oz at this point in my life.
Scott: That's so crazy because based on how the watching was then I feel like I should have been the one watching this one more.
I
Frank: watched Sound of Music a lot. It turns out that I just had a crush on the actress. Watched
Scott: that for the first time about a year ago.
Frank: Really? Did you live in a cave?
Chicago. I don't know why I [:They, they really, they really get me. You're
Frank: fucking weirdo. Yeah. . Um,
Scott: but, uh, I didn't do fucking Mary Poppins. I didn't do Chi Shitty Bang Bang.
Frank: Oh, I watched all the old Disney movies. I mean, every Disney movie was a fucking musical back then. Mm-hmm. , except for some of the really fucking scary ones. Did you ever see Watcher in the Woods?
No, I don't think so. Look it up. I bet you did. . Um, and
Scott: you buried it. Every time we talk about these old Disney movies, I remember this one with this kid whose hair wouldn't stop growing.
Frank: I remember that too. But what's the, Did they make fucking paint brushes out of his hair? I think so. It was really dark and then he painted another dimension.
Yeah, it was really
Scott: fucking weird. And his hair just kept growing. Was it
Frank: called like the peanut butter solution or some shit? That's the thing
Scott: to this. If you know the name of that
Frank: movie, let know. That's only sort of what I think. I'm looking it up when we're done.
Scott: Hey, check it out. I've looked several times in life that
e, I got fucking goose bones.[:That shit scared the fuck outta me, man.
Scott: So you talk about movies like that, that's what always pops in my head as that fucking movie, cuz I'm like, This kid's, was that a Disney movie? I feel like
Frank: it was a Disney movie. Oh, I just thought that was some weird seventies shit, man. Oh no. Ugh. That's
Scott: a real thing.
Oh, I'm shaking. Yeah, but so mine wasn't in as intense, but that's what happened here. It was on in the background. I'm sure I sat through
Frank: the whole thing. This was serious kinder trauma for me. .
Scott: Well, this movie, the thing that I do is I try and jump to, uh, conclusions as far as the plot goes. As soon as I started moving, I'm looking for the twist or looking for the
Frank: villain.
Did you find it? Well, I mean, it's a Return to Oz, so you know who the villain's gonna be. Yes, but you know what? Actor's gonna play the
Scott: villain, but as soon as they get her to the doctor, I was just really worried that the worst was gonna happen and that it was gonna be a north situation, . Do you know what I'm saying?
e and the week of Halloween. [:Dorothy Gale played by 10 year old favors. A bulk won't stop talking about Oz. So as good adoptive parents do, Auntie and Uncle Henry drop her off at a mental hospital. For electroconvulsive therapy. , it's I. That's what I was worried about, man. I thought they were gonna fucking shock her ass right there at the beginning, you know?
Yeah. . The facility is run by Dr. Worley, played by Nicole Williamson and Nurse Wilson, played by Gene Marsh, who will of course be our bad guys in Oz. But just before undergoing treatment, Dorothy is rescued by a patient of the same age and the two make their escape out into the stormy. Where Dorothy very nearly drowns in a flood and winds up surprise back in Oz.
cting young women's heads to [:Bitch has like a closet full of
Frank: heads. Man. Dude, that was the scariest shit to me when I was a kid. I got it. Came back to me too.
Scott: Well, that's another one of those fucked up things. Like these are fucking heads and cases in a fucking kid's movie. And, uh, but, but it really came around when she found out the sliced heads.
Mm-hmm. . I fucking, That was cool. That was cool. I liked how they tied that in there. Gathering allies as she does a robot bodyguard named TikTok. A pumpkinhead stick man and two couches with a green taxidermy. Moose head tied. She, it's, it's, uh, what do they call it? The, the alliance of the willing or the, what was that shit from the nine 11 days?
The Coalition of the Willing , um, Dorothy crosses the deadly desert to face the known King and Free The Scarecrow. Return to Oz is the only film ever directed by Walter
Frank: Merch. And Walter Merch wrote this, I believe too.
Scott: I like that. I, uh, when you told me to look him up last time, I spelled merch.
Merchandise, I should have assumed.
Frank: A you. The other [:Scott: So many movies. As
Frank: soon as he, he's won showed me that, showed 19 Academy Awards for Sound and he wasn't nominated for, He won them, he won them, and.
He's one of the only people in history and actually I couldn't find another one, so he might be the only one, Two win, two Academy Awards on the same fucking night. Really? Yeah. He won an Academy Award. Best sound and best, uh, editing. Fuck for the English patient. Yeah. Oh, the English patient. Yeah, he
Scott: fucking, I didn't even remember that from the list of shit that we saw.
I'm
Frank: gonna give you a rundown of everything Walter Merch has ever done. The Dickinson Experimental Sound film was his first movie to work on as sound editor, Touch of Evil, the Rain People, THX 1 1 38. He also wrote the screenplay, The Godfather American. The conversation, which was his first Oscar the Godfather, Part two.
Julia Apocalypse [:Tomorrow land and coup 50. Which brings us up to 2019. Walter Birch is a very old man now, but this fucking resume is crazy to, Yeah, that's
Scott: nuts. And just the number of Academy Award wins.
Frank: Yeah, and he was fired from this movie a week into shooting, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas got his job back.
Steven Spielberg agreed that if he didn't shoot the movie on time, mm-hmm. that he would direct it instead. Then if he fell off schedule again, badass. That was how he agreed to do this. That's fucking awesome. They. Fucking neck out for this dude. No, that's very awesome. Editors are filmmakers. I cannot stress that fucking enough.
editing anything [:love it. They're just shooting everything. Love it. Mo's ready to go. And I understand maybe a little bit why a studio would be like, Maybe not. Give him another one after that. We just Scared by America's Children to
Scott: Death. Far by far the Darkest Children's movie I've ever seen
Frank: this and Watcher in the Woods are, are both Super Watch in the Woods and Witches is up there like the the old one, The Angel Angelica,
Scott: Houston Witch.
Of course, I've seen that one a ton. Love that. I never watched the
Frank: new one. Transformation scene. Scared the fuck outta me when I was creepy as fuck, man. Also, I would argue that's a horror movie. Yeah,
s a whole growth. Fucked up, [:That was, it
Frank: was a bridge pretty far.
Scott: I try and jump to conclusions and try and nail the plot and I'm like, Oh fuck. They're gonna shock her. This whole adventure is gonna be her being. Fucked up and when she wakes up, she's gonna be fucking Jack Nicholson . You know? You know what I mean? That's not really
Frank: how electric convulsive therapy works.
And it does work on people. I should, Well, you know, should, should say. It's
Scott: not all bad. How accurate was that machine? Have you,
Frank: Was that Yeah, but we're talking 18 something like it's 19, nine, even the 19 hundreds
Scott: yet. Yeah. They were two months away from the, the new
Frank: millennium. And when she gets. She can hear the screams of the people locked in the basement that were victims of his machine as the blonde
Scott: girl says.
How about those creepy ass orderlies, man? With the dark eye circles? They were the wheelers bad ass. I, I see it. I see it. Okay. And
Frank: they, they pushing the gurney, the writing in this is really good. Well see, I
like when she's on the char. [:I didn't put together that the wheelers were the fucking
Frank: orderly though. Yeah. And you should have known that Anam was gonna take her to that fucking mental hospital when she was Carrie's fucking mom.
and Catherine from Twin Peaks, uh,
Scott: and the creepy ass teacher from the faculty. .
Frank: Yeah. And she was also Mr. Taja Mora. In Twin Peaks , she's stressed as an old Asian man for like several episodes of that
Scott: show, all those roles. She really found her niche in Hollywood, you know what I mean? Like
Frank: that was a good choice to play a and m.
It was if she was gonna jump her at a fucking mental hospital, with money, they didn't have
Scott: Henry Gayle and you like how they were living in the half houses They.
was in a hot air balloon and [:Wow. Which is a very like Oz thing cuz he shows up in the balloon Uhhuh Henry Gaye. Well the reason for that is because Lost is a giant dark tower reference and Dark Tower is a giant Wizard of Oz. Re. Stephen King is everywhere… and this is kind of a Stephen King movie of fucking Wizard of Oz movies.
It's crazy,
Scott: man. The costumes, the claymation, the stop motion. Really cool. The the rock faces. When I saw the first eyes. I thought, Oh shit, here it comes.
Frank: Apparently the Rock, who's a Nome, apparently. Mm-hmm. . According to , what I, I looked up, they were considering those noms, The one that goes and tells 'em stuff is also the head wheeler and the orderly at the mental hospital.
Mm. The wheeler scared the shit outta me when I was a kid and they were damn silly this time .
wn little like wheelie gang. [:And she has
Frank: a chicken in there with your chicken. There's no sign of the chicken. You knew that was the twist, right? The chicken was the
Scott: twist. Yeah. It, I made very few notes, but those notes included two chicken because it, I just, I simply put the fucking chicken and at one point they were like, There's no
Frank: sign of the chicken.
Yeah. I didn't take too many notes. I know this movie pretty well because it's scarred into my brain. So . Mm-hmm. , but. Mom be scene where she goes to her original head to get the key to get out. Oh. When she
Scott: goes and breaks it breaks the
Frank: glass to get to the, And all the fucking heads wake up. That shit still scares me.
Yeah, it it's a freaky fucking scene,
Scott: dude. Well, yeah, it's when, it's when Dorothy stealing the powder of life is when they wake up. That's right. Yeah. Because the original head screams and that's what sets off the other ones. But just the awakening of
Frank: them so she can make Gump .
w the body was panicking the.[:With the arms . Yeah. It had those like, Oh, I'm a headless body with panicky
Frank: arms. Yeah. It makes so much sense that that is Jack Skellington. Those
Scott: were the first words out of Olympia's mouth. She was like, Is that Jack
Frank: Skellington? That's, that's where Tim Burton got that design from. Perfect sense.
Scott: It's him.
Like we said, that's him.
Frank: He is that in the beginning of the movie, before the pumpkin. Bursts off his head. There's a skull underneath it. In this case there's a
Scott: chicken and then there's also the grungy aspect of it. You know, um,
Frank: Oz is demolished. I will point out that in the beginning she comes on her old house and realizes she's in the middle of the munchkin village.
Mm-hmm. , and then finds out the yellow brick road has been decimated. Or has just fallen apart.
Scott: It's like deteriorated beyond
Frank: belief when I was a kid that scared the shit outta me. That whole idea that you like the flight, the navigator thing, that time has passed while you were somewhere else, like a lot of time.
Scott: Oh yeah. It's like, um, like assuming this, this like deathly fear of being dead at nine
ad and immediately arrive in [:Scott: do you know with what you looked up, do you know how long that was supposed to be in Oz time?
From when she left? When she came
Frank: back? No, the only thing I could figure out was I was trying to determine when, Okay, if it's Halloween and the storms are getting bad, how long have they been rebuilding that house? It's months. It's half built. Yeah. And I even looked it up and I was like, First tornado season in Kansas is in May.
Mm-hmm. . So that would be like late spring or early summer. That's when the tornadoes are being Passy Franklin .
Scott: Fucking Little Dorothy. Little tiny far Aal is so weird. It was at the end. She wakes up and it's that close up on the eye. That was a beautiful scene. It was very brief. Oh, this movie
Frank: was fucking immaculately shot.
Uh, he didn't edit it, but it's perfectly edited.
Scott: Do you remember when she's laying on the, And it shows the close up of the eye. That was some shit that would fly today. You know, if you were to
print that. Yeah. That's how [:Scott: love that , God, and. Let's start talking about Pop Star way more than I already do.
every time you throw, every time you throw a lost one out there, ,
Frank: uh, you're not one to go for cheap jokes. You would still hold them for the right moment. Other things I had looked up. Li o Conway, the guy who does gum's voice. Uh, Jim Henson guy. Mm-hmm. and, uh, other than like, Brian, Is that the fucking moose?
Yeah, the, the moose. So
Scott: that's when I talk about grungy, those sofas, they were, they were like, Well, that
Frank: palace was fucked up. City is fucked up, and are those fucking headless ladies out in the courtyard?
Scott: You know that the people were turned to stone. Then she comes around this circle of like, women that were dancing with their heads sliced off.
Well, we find out who did that and where the heads, you know, went. Unlike Sleepy Hollow, the
Frank: heads weren't found. They're still out there. Grow a toing .
e in the tree roots with the [:Frank: God, that part of the country, man, that's that's a good shit. Yeah, that's a good lo. Tim Rose, who plays TikTok is Admiral Fucking Act Bar in Star Wars
Oh. To get him to walk though, apparently they had to stick a gymnast upside down in him and the guy would operate his legs. Oh, tiny gymnast. Boy. Is that
Scott: like a, is he up there with like the jockeys? Is it that size? The
Frank: jockeys. That's what I was thinking. That's a small, that's a, that's a, an R two D two situation if I ever seen one.
Mm-hmm. Wallic, Bud
Scott: Wallic in it. Um, I was wondering how they did TikTok. It was pretty smooth. His movements. It looked. It did that held up. That survived Time
ank: Scarecrows face. This is:Scott: can, I can see why they left out the Cowardly Lion a little bit
Frank: He was a
Scott: lion. [:Frank: wheels. A little person played the 10 man in this one. Yeah. Cuz he never walks. It's just, he just moves.
He only seen him for a couple minutes. Yeah. Apparently that was because they would've had to pay mgm fuck tons of money. No, they were supposed, they were gonna be more central in the plot origin.
Scott: It's like when you see a movie now with Chevy Chase on the cover and he is in it for five minutes is one character.
Yeah.
Frank: Just like that. Fucking hate it. .
Scott: You're like, I was on, I was on the edge about watching this fucking movie and then I watched it in fucking Chevy. Chase is in here for one fucking scene and he doesn't give a fuck. I felt like the movie that I'm talking about that I don't remember the name of, He was wearing his actual fucking glasses, you know what I mean?
Yeah. It looked like slapped on the cheapest suit that wasn't fitted, cuz he probably didn't show up
Frank: for a few like Donald Sutherland in moon fall.
Scott: Or a Nicholas fucking cage in Willie's Wonderland.
Frank: I don't think that's the same as having the Scarecrow in the tint band. .
Scott: No. Now we're just getting off to people.
fucking how much Matt Damon [:Frank: last one, How much do you think they paid him for? Thor Love and Thunder,
Scott: look up how much Vin Diesel got paid to do group Blow your fucking.
Frank: I'm sure it would. They paid the guy who did his body. Well, it's gun's brother. He's also like one of the guys and Oh, this was way off, up
It's fine, man. Not
Scott: for another day. We fucking, we're going to Oz, man. We're riding that
Frank: tornado. The fucking deadly desert was creepy.
Scott: Deadly desert was, and it took out a wheeler. It
Frank: just turned a sand. It was so simple. Instantly you touch, just
Scott: deadly does what you turn
Frank: to fucking sand. That's fucked up dude.
When she gets to the Nu King Uhhuh and he starts telling her why he did. Was because they took all the emeralds and the emeralds have like feelings and he's, we turned him all to fucking stone to teach him a lesson. And his tiny little.
Scott: The seriously. One of the other notes that I fucking had, um, , how did I put it?
He was [:Frank: fucking believe that. I don't remember that. I watched this once when I worked at the video
Scott: store. It's this, it's this pretty serious moment. And then he is like, Are you missing these? Or however the fuck he says it, and this little red feet
Frank: come out. Well, I. Some of those books, I don't remember them.
Mm-hmm. When I was real young. And, uh, I remember there was a Nome King, but I think he ground her slippers down and made a belt out of them. Mm. So
Scott: they weren't like her shoes. Yeah. He wasn't on the like, ha.
Frank: Out from under his, his stone robes.
Scott: Hi
It was a little awkward when those popped out, man, cuz that's towards the end of the movie. I really enjoyed it, but it did make me sleepy. Just, I was watching it in the dark. I had my thing, I had to move a plant outta the fucking way of the tv. But it happened early so I didn't have to deal with it. But yeah, by the time I got there I was like, I was just chilling, you know?
ere. You like it, Finish it. [:Frank: out, . That's what kept me going.
Scott: Yeah, it really was. It got me through the end because I was like, You fucking kidding me? But I'm glad it worked out, . I'm glad all that was worth it the whole time, like I was so worried.
This was a North situation or this was a flight of the navigator? You know, this was a pass out. Something happens, but I thought it stemmed from
Frank: her. Oh, that getting fucked up. I read that Walter Merch wanted to bring this back to, this is not all necessarily all a dream. Mm-hmm. , but I mean, he seated the, She's fucking nuts.
Pretty hard. Yeah.
Scott: I mean, I thought in a sense it
Frank: was like she had depression, insomnia, all that stuff. Like kind of the things you would go get an electroconvulsive therapy
Scott: for. Well, yeah. I mean, I put it in alignment with being, uh,
Frank: lobotomized. Well, that's because of the lore about electroconvulsive therapy.
It's not like that anymore, but it was never as extreme as it is. But this is
Scott::Frank: [00:35:00] back then. Yeah, for sure. Because you think about shit like. How do you think they figured out how to do a c-section?
Scott: Yeah, I mean that's, you know, a trial and error, man, that shit is fucked up. If you look up how the so became invented.
It wasn't for trees or anything, man, just
Frank: for surgery. It was for cutting legs off. Probably. You have more reason to cut someone's leg off before you did, to cut trees down.
Scott: Uh, and, and don't quote me on the fucking saw thing. I just thought it was pretty fucking crazy . Um, but, but back to this fucking crazy dark shit, just all over the place, those costumes, the face.
The wheelers may have been a bit corny. Their faces
Frank: though, their faces, the makeup on their faces and the face on top of their head
Scott: looking like a Pharaoh from Stargate 94
No. Um, they really didn't, but kind of, I mean, it was a big apparatus on the
Frank: head. They were really good at riding around on those fucking wheels too. They were those, it was spooky, like the, basically on stilts with like
was one scene where I saw a [:Yeah, they were far away and he went back wheels only and did some uhuh and then went
Frank: back down. Yeah. But when they were doing those chasing, I was like, Holy fuck, that's creepiest fuck cuz it looked so natural on all of those guys. No wonder the scared the fuck outta me when I was a kid. Pumpkin
Scott: head, fucking Jack.
He's an ally, but he was creepy as.
Frank: Everything about it was like I, He's calling young Dorothy. Mom, can I call
Scott: you mom? And then when she's curled up and sleeping on the sleigh Yeah. He
Frank: puts his vest over her. Yeah. Goodnight
Scott: Mom. . I was like, Did he just fucking say it again? , like, Did he just say it again? Um, Ugh.
Ugh. That's so weird. Is this some issues there? I don. But then it turns out his mom was like 12 anyway, so it wasn't too
Frank: far off. That first Mumby head was like, it was creepy that she was so pretty and didn't really say anything. She
Scott: was like an eighties lilu multi pass to me.
Frank: Lilu, Multi pass . Yeah.
Scott: We're not using names here, dude.
We're [:Frank: Yeah. Future version of that means that the, uh, the therapist is the watcher guy from Spawn, . , not his most famous role, but the first thing I remembered,
Scott: you could see it in his eyes. Those eyes, you know. Yeah. You knew who that
Frank: dude was. He was nice enough when he was in there, but it was that old man doctor. Scary. This is the way I deal with children, eh? It's gonna be
Scott: okay. I hate that voice.
Frank: Yeah. But all the little. Is she crazy? Yeah. You know, cause it's the same as like all of the characters were played
Scott: by when they're putting out on the gurney.
Why are you strapping me in so you don't fall off? I rode the buggy on the way here and I didn't
Frank: fall off. that. Yeah. That's fucking, What did your auntie tell, tell you? Legit logic for little kid to be like, And it was
Scott: stuff like that where I'm thinking, okay, she's not fucking crazy. This movie had me think.
Dorothy fucking took a knock [:Frank: Oh, like you thought they were gonna be like, And you're all done . Yeah. Like
Scott: they were like fucked up ending. No, that's what I have here is alternate ending.
They put the headset on her, the power goes out. And everything's fine. She goes on the adventure and then she wakes up and she's still on the gurney and she's, you know, over the cuckoo nest. That would've been awesome, man, I'm telling you. But that's that dark shit that I was scared of the whole time I was watching the movie.
Am I watching this weird fantasy that's in this poor little girl's head who's just been, had this shit shocked out of her multiple times,
Frank: which is done in a light way in the wizard of. Mm, you know, bump on the head, wake up, and it was all just a dream. It made me, uh, it's been way too long. But, uh, at the end she wakes up at home, doesn't she?
And everybody's happy.
Scott: And you were there.
uild that shit from scratch. [:Scott: Yeah, but he's got mad skills though. Runs a farm wife. He can take over the farm while he's rebuilding the the house.
Man, somebody's gotta put a
Frank: roof on his, I mean, good. Good for anm for taking her to get what Help She really couldn't afford to do and she didn't like lock her in the closet like she did to carry back
Scott: then people were buying the snake oil. That's what the wagons were for. The cocaine . When your tooth hurts ,
Frank: or you need energy , or you happen to get a beans stuck in your nose, or you want a soda , I just want a cold pop.
And then I'm gonna be
Scott: up for like four hours. Uh, No, I've seen those old antique cookbooks like at antique shops. It's, it's funny man. Every other fucking thing that's in there, eh da, you know, Little bit of
was, but I remember I put on [:Mm-hmm. and stuck it just my leg into the. With just a high heel on my nude leg from behind the door, and he was like, La La . And then I stepped out and he was real mad at me. I think he thought I was his girlfriend. Maybe it was his girlfriend's shoe. Maybe he thought it was Fred roommate. Or a really good one.
Scott: Oh man. Did you get him some chicks from the special house? . What Third stringers Man. Third stringers come at a discounted
Frank: rate, but egg allergies are a real thing and they shouldn't be joked about cuz they could kill. Unknown
Scott: king, this motherfucker's made outta rocks can transform control shit. Take over whole kingdoms.
This guy would definitely be in the gluten free line.
Frank: These days. Kind of seemed like all the noms were part of his body, like he was legion of No. Did you
Scott: like how they were just rocks, but then at the end they turned into like Demonn Gargo? Yeah. I liked it. It was cool. They
Frank: were, There's [:Mm-hmm. legend and stuff like that. That is so scary. Why can't we get fantasy movies that are scary? Anyway, when's the last
Scott: time you watched lab?
Frank: It's been a long time, but, uh, I remember all the song,
Scott: Oh, sorry. When's the last time you saw David Bow's? Puffy Cock , his cod piece. Even as a child, I was like, Why is that so big right there?
Like, why is it so awkward? It was just there. It's like the leotard for modern problems, man, where he just, Chevy Chase keeps blowing his cheeks and the crotch juice keeps blowing up on the leotard. love modern problems. I need to find that one. That's a good Chevy Chase. I mentioned Chevy Chase, so I feel Yeah, you're I was
Frank: about to say he's running around in my head now Is in you?
Yeah, he is. It's cuz I sent you that trailer or that IMDB thing for cocaine Bear.
Scott: Probably . Yeah. You know Chevy Chase partied. And back to the
Frank: Chevy Chase plays the bear . No, I was really
cond. I was like, we did the [:Frank: The fucking dog runs away in funny Farm is one of my favorite moments. Yeah,
Scott: he's comedy. Just like off in the distance.
Frank: Dude, I'd like to thank my parents for showing me all those movies when
Scott: I was a kid. Yeah man. I mean, I still wanna visit the Town of Red Bud. This one
Frank: too. I think I probably rented it cuz I was like, Holy shit, there's a sequel to The Wizard of Oz.
ere, it. Forza Balk from like:Scott: the VHS tape. No way. Olympia didn't even recognize her at first. I started naming movies and the only one she recognized was The Craft.
Typical, I
Frank: guess, American History X
Scott: I threw out American History X and the Water Boy, I, I did those three because I thought one of those hit Oh right. The
Frank: Water boy. Yeah, man. We are way into this and we haven't picked a movie. Oh wait, we did pick a
Scott: movie. [:Frank: Oh shit. It's Halloween.
Scott: Eric Stoltz bitches. Eric Stolts there. Eric STTs is not in that movie. I just wanted to get a reaction out of you that's like, Wait,
Frank: are we gonna watch Mask ?
Scott: Hey, that's, uh, you know, he turned on back to the future for a reason. Right? Gypsies? . I'm glad that I can just say a random fucking name instead of Tim Robinson.
We can start a whole conversation about it. That's why we're friends. Thanks everyone for joining us. For the last Video Store Clerks podcast, be sure to leave a rating and subscribe. You can find us on Twitter at Last Clerks Instagram at the last video store clerks, and you can find Scott at dispatchesfromthepit.com.
