'80s Movie Montage
Breaking down our favorite decade of flicks. Hosted by Anna Keizer and Derek Dehanke.
'80s Movie Montage
Return to Oz
In this episode, Anna and Derek chat about the ethics of giving a ten-year-old electroshock therapy, just how annoying a talking chicken can be, and much more during their discussion of the fever dream cult classic Return to Oz (1985).
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Anna Keizer and Derek Dehanke are the co-hosts of ‘80s Movie Montage. The idea for the podcast came when they realized just how much they talk – a lot – when watching films from their favorite cinematic era. Their wedding theme was “a light nod to the ‘80s,” so there’s that, too. Both hail from the Midwest but have called Los Angeles home for several years now. Anna is a writer who received her B.A. in Film/Video from Columbia College Chicago and M.A. in Film Studies from Chapman University. Her dark comedy short She Had It Coming was an Official Selection of 25 film festivals with several awards won for it among them. Derek is an attorney who also likes movies. It is a point of pride that most of their podcast episodes are longer than the movies they cover.
Hello and welcome to eighties movie montage. This is Derek.
SPEAKER_01:And this is Anna.
SPEAKER_00:And that was Pons Marr as the Gnome Messenger and also Lead Wheeler talking to Nicole Williamson as the Gnome King and also Dr. Worley in 1985's Return to Oz.
SPEAKER_01:This was a fever dream of a film.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:I had not seen it before. I had heard of it, and I, like I said in the last episode, thought it would be kind of a fun way to come out of our Halloween series.
SPEAKER_00:It it hit harder horror-wise than Dreamscape, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, there are some truly horrific scenes in this film.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it starts with Dorothy basically being sent to uh electroshock therapy to prevent her from talking about Oz. And also, secondarily, maybe to help her sleep a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:But um yeah, yeah. There what I learned. The heads. The oh my god, the the heads.
SPEAKER_01:And it starts with before you even come across her, like seeing the stone statues without their heads, and you know something went down because we previously had seen stone statues with their heads. So to see stone statues without their heads was very troublesome.
SPEAKER_00:I think the most horrific thing was, and we're getting way ahead of a lot of things, but the you mentioned the heads and Princess Mombi.
SPEAKER_02:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00:Who was like the assistant Mombi? Mombi?
SPEAKER_01:Mombi?
SPEAKER_00:Mombi? Mombi? Mombi. Uh yeah, she had like 31 heads, I think, right? 30 some heads.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. At least 31.
SPEAKER_00:At least. And not like a Baskin Robbins thing. I don't think there's any connection there. But the specific head that she had to get the the key from, yeah. Get the uh life powder from corresponded with the room number that she was in in the like uh hospital at the beginning of the book.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but when she saw her, when she caught that, that she Dorothy was in there, and you just hear Dorothy Gail. Yeah. Holy shit.
SPEAKER_01:Good times. Okay, did you mention uh 1985?
SPEAKER_00:I did. Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So let's get into the writers. I mean, one of them is probably fairly well known. Um, and you know what? I'll start with him. Al Frank Baum.
SPEAKER_00:So he wrote all of all of it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I mean, it was his source material. People probably know okay, like look, I'm gonna be really honest. I've never read any of the Oz books.
SPEAKER_00:I haven't either.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, most people probably know him as the writer of The Wizard of Oz. What I I don't know, maybe I knew, but I don't know of them nearly on the scale of Wizard of Oz, and I don't know the book The Wizard of Oz that well. But he also, there's like an Oz series of books.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So this particular film is based on The Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz, which makes sense given one of the characters. So uh you know, Mom, he already passed away in 1919, so like this is um IP from like over a hundred years ago at this point.
SPEAKER_00:It's so interesting how it has it has lent itself to many very distinct interpretations. Yeah. And for as much of a fever dream as this movie is, all I can all I can like see when you're like trying to look up stuff about this movie is that this is perhaps one of the more faithful adaptations of his books.
SPEAKER_01:Which I really appreciate, and it's very unfair on my part because while I really don't know much about the book The W The Wizard of Oz, I love the movie The Wizard of Oz. And so it's almost impossible to disassociate from the 1939 film watching this, and this is such a dramatic departure from the tone of that. Yes. And we brought that up a lot while we were watching this, and I know it's not fair. I think I think it's incredible what they did in this movie. And we'll like as we go through everybody, you'll see just like how much fucking work they did to to pull this off. But it's just hard because like I wasn't jiving with the depictions of like the new characters. Okay, they're new characters to me, so there's more latitude in terms of the way that they were depicted, but like seeing the representations of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow, I was like, eh.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they um I mean they weren't just like actors with paint and stuff. They were they they went towards like uh more of a imagined, like practical effect kind of version.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and that's amazing what they were able to do. And it's again not fair. It's just that like my literally my entire life, I've known the Tin Man and Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow to look a certain way. So it was just really jarring for me to see those depictions.
SPEAKER_00:It was the scarecrow that that like fell the flattest for me. And that's because they just ran out of money. They were supposed to have a more elaborate setup for the for like the face for the all supposed to be a little bit more involved, like the original. Yeah, they just ran out of time and money, and then Disney's like, we don't think this is going anywhere. So they didn't really market it that much.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there was yeah, we'll get into that too once we get to another one of the writers slash director of this. But so what's interesting is that, you know, given that Bomb has been passed for over a hundred years, his works have been hugely popular. I mean, the second the sequel to Wicked is coming out in a couple weeks, so it's like the life has continued well beyond his own. And he, as of right now, and I'm sure it will continue to grow, he has 175 writing credits on IMDB because his works have been adapted so much.
SPEAKER_00:Still working, still keeping busy.
SPEAKER_01:To still keep him busy in the afterlife. So um, okay. So now the two writers that actually put together this screenplay, one of them, I'm gonna kind of go in reverse order. Uh, Gil Dennis, he passed in 2015. Not a huge filmography as far as writing credits go, but we have an uncredited credit for the Black Stallion. Oh. Uh, and then three more films. On my own, Walk the Line.
SPEAKER_00:The uh Johnny Cash. Yeah. Biopic, nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And Forever. Okay. So that's Dennis. Then the last, the third writer credited for this is Walter Merch. I was shocked when I realized that this film was partially written and directed by Walter Merch because I know him in an entirely different way than this. So I was very, very surprised to learn this. Uh, but merch, so as far as his writing credits go, which I think it's not trying to be um insulting, I don't think people think of him for being a writer. And I'll get to that in a minute. But he does have some writing credits. One of them, this was interesting to me, THX 1138. So I did not realize that he co-wrote that with George Lucas.
SPEAKER_00:That yeah, no, that kind of um makes sense that there was a connection there. I don't know, when you if you get more into like Merch's journey and getting this movie made. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So he has that. I don't think at all that him and Dennis were like writing partners, but he also has an uncredited credit for the Blackstonian, which I think.
SPEAKER_00:Did anyone write that movie?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I did not look at who is actually credited for that. Uh he also has a writing credit for you would say coup, right? It's not coop. Like you don't say the P. Koo 53. Okay. And then I guess the film, her name was Moviola.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_01:It was his original idea. So he gets a credit for that.
SPEAKER_02:Alright.
SPEAKER_01:Now you just alluded to it. Uh I I have mentioned that he is the director of the film, and you alluded to kind of the challenge that this eventually presented for him as a director. I feel kind of badly because I don't know if everything that went on with this film is the reason why this is the only feature film that he has directed. He has one other directing credit. It's uh for the TV series of Star Wars The Clone Wars.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, animated. Right? Yeah. So it's a little different, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The reason why I was saying earlier, I was like, wait, what? Walter merch is because he is incredibly well known as like a multi-academy award-winning sound editor and editor.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I was like, and and we've seen this from time to time. I mean, right away when I realized who directed this, it made me think of Stan Winston and Pumpkinhead. Oh, yeah. Because he was known for an entirely different part of the filmmaking process. And I think Pumpkin Head might have been, was that his only feature film directing credit?
SPEAKER_00:So possibly every once in a while, these these individuals and like But that makes a little bit more sense to like, hey, why don't you just direct this Pumpkinhead movie as opposed to why don't you direct what's gonna be like essentially the sequel to The Wizard of Oz?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he had some really big shoes to fill. And so it was gonna be kind of unfair from the jump. I mean, do you do you want to talk about since you brought it up first?
SPEAKER_00:Well, they just like they weren't happy with like the pace at which they were filming and what was coming in. So he um he actually reached out to his friends to get some support. Yeah, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And they all like lobbied Disney to like rehire him because I guess he actually was like fired from the project until he was brought back in, and then he ultimately did like meet the schedule, but it sounds, it seems like there were like other schedule and the budget. Yeah, but the budget should have been or could have been bigger, a little bit more, and maybe that wouldn't have impacted like the things that were so jarring as far as like the tone, but if he was able to do more with that, you know, that still would have been a better movie.
SPEAKER_01:It I I feel like I don't I don't know. I don't know if he's like, hey, I have like a couple Academy Awards in my in my house. I'll make this sequel with I can make this movie. Or or if like they're like, okay, you want to direct a movie, here's what we got for you. And he didn't maybe have much choice in the matter. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:It doesn't feel like it'd be that it's it's such an interesting, like, I yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because this isn't even just even if you look at like and I I really wanted to give him um acknowledgement for for all his accomplishments in the industry because I don't know if we're really gonna get to him ever again. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm gonna go through some of his credits in a second, but this feels like uh Disney's version of cats only only this has become a cult favorite, and I don't know that that will ever happen with the cats.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, God bless the people who have made this a cult favorite. But okay, so let's go some of over some of his other credits. Now I want to be clear that none of these have to do with direction or well, we'll go through it.
SPEAKER_00:Sounds yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I am specifically listing all the films that he was a part of that had Oscar attention. So he's done way more than this, even. But because none of these categories relate to how he participated in this film, I wanted to kind of keep it somewhat concise.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, some of them we some of them may reference back to other films we've already covered, in fact.
SPEAKER_01:Uh none of the ones that I've listed because none of those had Oscar attention.
SPEAKER_00:He he worked on the um sound a bit in Dragonslayer.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, there you go.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, okay, here are all his nominations slash wins. So he got a best sound Oscar nomination for the conversation. So apt, I'm kind of shocked he didn't win for that. He had a best film editing Oscar nom for Julia. I also found this really interesting because if you look at when he had kind of his heyday in the industry, there's so much overlap between him working on a film as an editor, like cutting the picture versus being a sound editor. And now I feel like those two categories are much more specialized, and you, I don't think you see as much crossover anymore. That's just my opinion on it. But uh, so he worked on Apocalypse Now. He did both sound and film editing on that film. So that's why Copel is one of his buds. Uh, he got an Oscar nom for the film editing. He got the Oscar win for best sound on Apocalypse Now.
SPEAKER_00:That's uh that's impressive.
SPEAKER_01:Extremely impressive. So there's that. Uh I feel like that's well warranted. He got another best film editing Oscar nomination for Godfather Part Three. So here it works again with it. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00:I'm so I'm so glad you'd uh you'd uh I had to say it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I was looking at it on the credits and I'm like, I wonder if that got some. Oh, you can't.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not gonna uh not say it because it was one of his nominations. So but yeah, it's not it's not something I'm interested in. So he got another best film editing, Oscar Nam for Ghost. Now listen to this. This is so, so, so impressive.
SPEAKER_00:I'm listening.
SPEAKER_01:Double wins. He got best film editing and best sound for the English patient.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:How fucking incredible is that I've never seen that to pull double duty on that film and you won Oscars for both of them.
SPEAKER_00:Has I mean, how often does that happen?
SPEAKER_01:Not often.
SPEAKER_00:Has it happened more than just this one time?
SPEAKER_01:That's actually a really great question. I don't know if he's the only guy to have pulled that feat.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I guess if it happened, it would probably be like a writer-director thing.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, sure, sure, sure. I I was uh I thought you meant specifically these categories.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, no. Tons of times there's been best writer, best I think it just happened.
SPEAKER_00:That kind of yeah, that I could imagine. But like this type of like more specialized.
SPEAKER_01:It happens quite a bit with writing directing or writing producing, because a lot of directors now will produce on their own films.
SPEAKER_00:But not sound and editing.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Uh and then his last last nomination as of right now, best film editing for Cold Mountain. Okay. Cinematography. So this is an interesting category as well, because we have two people credited. The first person, uh well, they're credited on IMDB. Freddie Francis is not credited in the film.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:He has passed. He passed in 2007. The reason why he's uncredited is he quit the film because he was having like so. I think I'm not gonna go ahead and say that.
SPEAKER_00:He wanted a darker look.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not gonna say that everything was filmed in chronological order, but it sounds like they did start with the Kansas scenes and he quit after the Kansas scenes.
SPEAKER_00:So Oh, interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Then yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So there was already, you know, a a chunk of the film done. So I I don't know if he had a falling out with merch, what happened there, but he was an Oscar-winning cinematographer. They a lot of the people on this film behind the scenes were very highly regarded uh technicians and and creatives.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this movie did win, or at least was nominated for an award, right? For effects.
SPEAKER_01:I'm so glad you brought that up. Yeah. Thank you for saying that, because that would not have been a category would have gone over. So, yes, exactly. It had one Oscar nomination for best effects, visual effects.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think I think that's warranted for like a lot of it was like jarring, but it was pretty effective. Like a lot of the effects for the for like the gnome, even yeah, like the gnome messenger, the gnome king from the very intro clip, it was like pretty well done for for back then.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think for back then it was extremely I mean, this is now a 40-year-old film.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Uh probably pretty impressive. I think my favorite part of any kind of effects, which kind of goes out of this a tiny bit and probably into makeup, but the way that the Gnome King went from being kind of strictly animated in a manner to becoming a real person. Because he thought that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:Literally part of the mountain at first. And you could see like this really cool animated face talking to Dorothy, and then as other characters were guessing incorrectly and getting, I don't know, what they're turned into green things, turned into ornaments, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, which really they were knickknacks, they weren't ornaments, but whatever. But yeah, like you notice that, and I'm like, yeah, he is. Like he was slowly becoming more human.
SPEAKER_01:That I was like, wait a minute, are they changing the look of him? And then once I had that realization, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00:And then they say it after you like kind of realize it, and you're like, oh, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So Francis, uh, his career, incredible films that he was a part of, very early in his career, he had a best cinematography, black and white, because they used to have separate categories. Uh, Oscar Wynne for Sons and Lovers. He worked on The Innocence, The Elephant Man, The French Lieutenant's Woman, 1984's Dune. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:That's yeah, that's cool.
SPEAKER_01:He won his second Oscar Wynn was best cinematography. At this point, there's no separate categories. For Glory.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So maybe we'll bring him up again, but I'm gonna have to really like get myself together if we're gonna cover that film because I will just be sobbing into the mic talking about that movie. Uh he also shot Cape Fear, like the De Niro.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, the De Niro, okay.
SPEAKER_01:School Ties and The Straight Story, which I've never seen, but I've always really wanted to because um I love that actor. And and actually, Francis did a fair bit of directing work as well. So he pulled he pulled double duty himself. Okay, so the credited uh cinematographer is David Watkin. He too has passed. He passed a year after Francis in 2008. Also part of some pretty incredible films, was also an Oscar winner. So he worked on Help, exclamation point, the Beatles.
SPEAKER_00:The Beatles, okay, Chariots of Fire.
SPEAKER_01:I'm kind of surprised there was no, because that film cleaned up at the Oscars. So I'm kind of surprised he didn't uh have best cinematography for that. Yentel. He got his Oscar win, best cinematography for Out of Africa.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We have brought him up because he was the DP on Moonstruck. Oh, really? Yeah. So he did that. He did the 1990 Hamlet.
SPEAKER_00:Is that Mel Gibson?
SPEAKER_01:It is, which I hate to say is a good Hamlet film.
SPEAKER_00:Bad people can be good actors, I suppose. I'm not saying that about anyone in particular. I'm just saying that generally.
SPEAKER_01:He shot This Boy's Life and Night Falls on Manhattan.
SPEAKER_00:Is that the one with uh Voorhees? No.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Jason takes Manhattan. My my apologies.
SPEAKER_01:Man, that'd be an amazing crossover. Okay. So music. David Shire. Right? Shire?
SPEAKER_00:Shire?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_00:If you say so.
SPEAKER_01:So he has he come up for us? No. I mean, he possibly will come up in the future. I would say the music in this was very, to me, subtle. I didn't really clock it too much throughout the course of the film.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I clocked it in the head scene where like all the heads were screaming. Sure, sure, sure. That makes yeah. Literally like a horror movie with the the way that they like built up the music for that. And also at the very end, when spoilers, the Gnome King is killed by a chicken egg, which is poison to them, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well uh I mean We knew the chicken was gonna matter.
SPEAKER_00:The chicken you said from that first scene, I'm like, this chicken is gonna solve all their problems.
SPEAKER_01:Because I was like, I don't know if this film's gonna pull together something that they which is kind of funny because it's like I wouldn't call it an Easter egg, but it's just funny that they um yeah, they they were so so it was so prominent in the beg the very, very beginning of the film. More than once.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They kept on was up with the chicken. Yeah. A chicken. But it never like I feel like there should have been a couple more hints along the way of why the chicken was going to matter, because it went from like them all being up in arms about a chicken in the first, like, I don't know, 20 minutes of the film when we first get to Oz, to literally the last couple minutes of the film where he ingests an egg and dies from it. And it's like nowhere in the middle two hours of the film does that like get hinted again.
SPEAKER_00:And we know that uh the chicken was not laying eggs.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I can't I can't recall the chicken's name. I feel like Belina. Belina, yeah. So Belina was not laying any eggs, and Dorothy jokes about like Aunt M's just gonna like cook you up.
SPEAKER_01:Which you know what basically that chicken was like kind of annoying. So I was like, someone can eat the chicken, it's okay.
SPEAKER_00:But Belina was was hiding at that point in the empty head space of uh Jack Pumpkinhead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So when the Gnome King is just like about to eat Jack, he's like holding him by his feet, just holding him over, and that's when Belina was just out of pure terror. Laid an egg laid an egg that dropped through that that jack-o'-lantern mask right down into the gnome king, who at that point was back into his like solid rock animated kind of form, and he just like deteriorated in a way that was like kind of dissolved, yeah. It was not too dissimilar from the people melting at the end of Raiders.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:I mean in his own way, in a rock kind of way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I could see that. So David Shire, uh amazing career, and some really it it's interesting the swings that people take throughout the course of their career because he composed for The Conversation. He also composed for the 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham 123. He also worked on All the President's Men. All of them? He so this is so interesting to me. He has a best music original song, Oscar Wyn, for the film The Promise, but he is uncredited on the project. So we've had that a couple times before. I don't quite know how that shakes out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But he has an Oscar win for a film that he is technically not credited for. So he has another Oscar win. He is credited for the film. Again, best music original song for Normal Ray.
SPEAKER_00:I definitely thought you were gonna say Saturday Night Fever.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, he worked on The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, which I've said I'd like to cover at some point. Short Circuit. So this is what I mean. Like it's like you worked on All the President's Men and Short Circuit.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that movie has its issues, but it was a good movie.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, sure does. Vice versa. But then later on, he works on Zodiac, which is actually a really good movie. Brighton Beach, and then he's also worked on a fair amount of TV movies, I noticed in his filmography. Okay, moving on to film editing, Leslie Hodgson.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_01:So she passed in 2003 just two editing credits. We don't have a lot. Um I think because mostly they did sound work. So, which again, as we've talked about, that can be crossed over.
SPEAKER_00:Is this just an entire movie made from people that did sound work that decided where to make it interesting?
SPEAKER_01:And and when we get to the people in front of the screen, you'll see also this is a one of those films where like there's just these people who were involved that had like so many different kinds of talents in the industry. Like they're just talented people, really talented people. Um so here again, mostly sound work. And so the only other credit I have is a TV movie called Mr. Corbett's Ghost.
SPEAKER_00:Never heard of it.
SPEAKER_01:That's it. So okay, we are at the stars of this film. We are going to start with Faruza Bulk.
SPEAKER_00:So I mean, I think I did see this at some point, but I I didn't make that connection that it was her. Yeah, her from like The Craft or from the Water Bottle, like from all those other movies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So she was extremely young. We talked about this when we were watching it. So Judy Garland was about 16 years old when she did the original Wizard of Oz, and they e even tried to like age her down. Uh, I if you look at screen tests of how they had her made up earlier, she looked a little bit older. They were trying to really make her look younger for the film.
SPEAKER_00:Because Dorothy should have been like between eight and ten years old, I think. Which is what Bulk was.
SPEAKER_01:She was about ten years old when she filmed this.
SPEAKER_00:And because that's the first confusing thing when the movie starts and you're like, wait a second. And it's supposed to take place like six months or so after she came back after the first movie.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So so there's that. Um yeah, sorry, I was just thinking, I was just thinking about I don't want to go in a whole jag about Judy Garland, but like all the things that they did to try to get her to look younger.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a lot to talk about between that and just like this um franchise, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Which I like I I feel like I'm right on the cusp of like just we could talk, we could like talk for probably multiple episodes about all the shenanigans associated with all these different like interpretations.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, as far as Bulk was concerned, also because she was so young, they had a really strict uh filming schedule because she could, I think I read she was a child actor. Yeah, so there are strict rules around that, and she could only work, I think, between like 9 30 and 3 30 every day. And that also included like the schooling that she needed to have.
SPEAKER_00:So apparently there were not strict rules for climate control because in one of the scenes it was so hot that she just passed out.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, geez, I didn't read that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, but this was her first feature film, and she yeah, has steadily been working ever since. So some of I have almost all films for her. She earlier in her career worked on The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:It's a fun title. Uh two like pretty well-known early 90s, indies, gas food lodging, as well as things to do in Denver when you're dead.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think probably a fair amount of people of a certain generation know her very well for her role in the craft.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's definitely I don't even know if I'd call that a cult hit. I think it has wider appeal than what you would call a cult classic.
SPEAKER_00:I think so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And um, and it's just like an interesting film too, because it's like Nev Campbell and what's his face, like right on the cusp of Scream becoming super popular. This is like just preceding that. So anyway, she's in that. The Island of Dr. Moreau.
SPEAKER_00:Not great. That's the one with uh Val Kilmer, right?
SPEAKER_01:Also not great. I mean, it is it is it is an amazing film, but a not great character in American History X.
SPEAKER_00:She is she is a bad person in American.
SPEAKER_01:She's a neo Nazi. She is his girlfriend, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Today, today she would just Be like an ice employee, likely.
SPEAKER_01:Correct.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:She you mentioned it. She was in The Water Boy. She's also fun. I do really love Almost Famous, and she has a really fun role in that. So uh all films, and then I have the one TV series Ray Donovan. She had a stint on. Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, moving on to you mentioned him as well in the opening, Nicole Williamson. So this is very similar to what they did in the original film where they had actors playing dual roles.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There are one person in Kansas and there are another person in Nas.
SPEAKER_00:I I honestly didn't realize that it was he was the same person.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I know, right? They did such a great job with like the makeup and everything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So in Kansas, he plays Dr. Worley, so he's the jerky doctor who wants to give this little child electro shock therapy. And then in Oz, he is the Gnome King who I guess, okay, so the stories that the Gnome King took over Oz.
SPEAKER_00:I think that um all the emerald that was used to create the Emerald City was stolen. Was taken from his mountain, from so he got mad about that.
SPEAKER_01:That's understanding.
SPEAKER_00:Somehow got the Ruby slippers when uh Dorothy lost them when she flew back to home, back to Kansas. Oh, okay. And then he used those to make his wishes. Yeah, to essentially conquer the Emerald City. Interestingly, Ruby Slippers, not part of the original like novels. Those were created for the first for the Because they needed a pop on the screen. Yeah, exactly. Because they they had planned on uh weren't they silver? They were like these magic silver slippers in the novel, and then he had like some other magic item, but they had to they had to get the rights to use the Ruby slippers for this one. Disney had to get those.
SPEAKER_01:Those Ruby slippers are always trouble. Like I did read that, like, so they did the whole like glue by hand, these like little crystals. And you know, with you mentioning her passing out from the heat, the heat also affected the shoes. Yeah. And so they were like, you can only wear these shoes when they're directly on camera because they kept getting messed up. And there's this really great podcast. It was a limited series, but it was about the original 1939. I think there were four sets of Ruby slippers, and one of them got stolen. And so it's this like really great podcast about like what happened to these shoes. So go, I don't remember the name of it, but I'm sure you can find it if you Google on the show.
SPEAKER_00:I saw some of them at the uh at the museum, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the museum has one pair.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So just to use like chat GPT or or perplexure. Don't you don't use, don't waste your time with Google. Come on.
SPEAKER_01:Are you getting paid by these? Still, it's still okay to Google stuff. Google stuff is just like a layman's verb for looking so anyway. Okay. So Nick uh Nickel, unfortunately, he's also passed. He passed in 2011. He had an incredible career as well. Some I was surprised about. So some of his roles, he was in the 1969 Hamlet. Oh, you always have to be real clear about the year with some of these like uh Hamlet public domain properties, Shakespeare, yeah. Shakespeare. He also was in Robin and Marion. He was in Excalibur. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:So I was he was Merlin, which I think, yeah, I could see him being a wizard. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I've wanted to cover this film, so this nothing to do with Marvel. Uh he was in 1981's Venom. Is that is that Marvel or is that DC?
SPEAKER_00:Uh no, that's Marvel because that's like the the evil symbiote. Symbiote. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:That's who Tom Harding recently was. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:He was like a Spider-Man in the Spider-Man.
SPEAKER_01:This is just literally about a uh venomous snake. Okay. So I kind of want to watch it. He we've brought this up before. He's also in the film I'm dancing as fast as I can. Can't dance any faster. Did not realize he is in The Exorcist 3. What?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I just watched that.
SPEAKER_01:I thought you would think that. Is he a priest?
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, that's uh Father Okay. Yeah. Yeah, he's the guy who gets like um man, at the end, the demon like uh shoves him up against the wall so hard that as he starts like rotating him off the wall, his skin sticks to the wall. Yeah. Ouch. Yeah, it's pretty tough.
SPEAKER_01:And he also was in spawn.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So moving on to Gene Marsh. So in Kansas, she is Nurse Wilson. She is arguably meaner, even than the doctor.
SPEAKER_00:And then she's much colder as the assistant in Kansas. Yes. Like you get the sense that she like I don't know if she enjoyed doing what she was doing, but she was wholly indifferent to the suffering she was causing.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, she didn't care at all. And then in Oz, she is, like you said, I think is it Mumbi? Mumbi.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's say, yeah. The the princess of 30 plus heads.
SPEAKER_01:I guess so. I don't know what really makes her a princess, but so she had been around for a while. I mean, a lot of these older actors were like her first uh credit was all the way back in 1947. So she'd been working for 40 years by the time this film came along. And actually, this is really sad. So we brought her up at the beginning of this year because she plays a very similar character in Willow. I don't know if they saw this preceded Willow, so I don't know if Ron Howard was like, that's who I want for the evil queen, but it's like kind of the same character. Uh, and no shade about that. She's really good at it.
SPEAKER_00:Um like so she was the actual queen, not like her daughter who kind of like turns to the to the good side. She was the actual okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And so when we covered Willow, that was I think the first episode of the season. So that was in January of 2025. She was still with us at that time. She just passed. Oh, wow. Just so she just passed away in April. Uh so she was, I think, 90, about 90 years old. So very, very recent. But she, as mentioned, had an incredible career. So going through some of her credits, I have like a little bit of a mix between film and television. She was in the film Cleopatra, Face of a Stranger, a TV series called The Informer. She was in the films Jane Eyre and The Eagle Has Landed. She was in the TV series of 9 to 5.
SPEAKER_00:Oh. I always forget that they made a TV series.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they kind of spun it off on into a show. She was, as mentioned, in the film Willow, that was at the beginning of the season, so go check that one out. She was for a while on the TV show Doctor Who.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I gotta figure out how to watch that again. It was all on uh Max and then Disney, and the Disney's no, whatever.
SPEAKER_01:And then Disney just cut ties with Doctor Who. I saw something in the news. I don't know. She also was on a TV series, The Ghost Hunter. She came back. There was a TV series for a short amount of time of Willow, and she reprised her role. And just in general, over the course of her career, she did a ton of other TV work as well. Okay, moving on to Piper Laurie. I was really surprised. Um I don't know if she just had an affinity for the material because she doesn't have a lot to do in this movie at all, and she was a huge star. So I don't know. I can't imagine that they cut down her role because she had to have known that Dorothy was not going to be spending most of her time in Kansas. So I found it really interesting that she was even in this movie in the first place. Uh, she too has passed, she passed in 2023. This is unfortunately one of those episodes where a lot of the main players have passed on. But and also it's wild to me because, like, okay, so we just got done with the Halloween series, and Halloween itself just concluded, had Carrie on a bazillion times over the last couple months, and she looks way younger in this movie than she did in Carrie, which is like 10 years earlier. It just was funny to me, but anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, she just got to be kind of mean to Dorothy at the beginning and then kind of pretended like she was happy she was back at the end. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And M, I don't know what to say, man. I don't think, I mean, I know children were treated a different way a hundred years ago, but not cool what you did to Dorothy.
SPEAKER_00:I guess, like, at least now she has the reflection of Ozma to tell her to like, hey, shut the fuck up about Oz.
SPEAKER_01:And also, if you ever have to escape again, she can.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, but yeah, they weren't too great to her. Anyway, as far as Piper Lori is concerned, she had an amazing career. She was a three-time Oscar-nominated actress, unfortunately, never won. Her first nomination was very early in her career. It was for Best Actress for the Hustler.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm not surprised. That character was um kind of an incredible character for like that movie, for when that movie was made.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. She, I'm fast-forwarding a bit, she gets her next Oscar nomination, Best Supporting for Carrie. Which she she is a fascinating character in that movie. I think when she I what I've read is that when she first read the script, she thought it was like a comedic, a character. And DePaul Mahina'd be like, no, no, no, you're playing this straight. Like, this is just who this character is. Because she's so outlandish in terms of her her religious her religiosity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And and the way she treats Carrie. And I mean, she totally fucking swings for the fences. I mean, she got an Oscar nomination for it. So she's she is so fun in that movie.
SPEAKER_00:In the remake, I feel like they go even harder, but but like too far in a direction where I'm like, I can't, I can't even watch this.
SPEAKER_01:I uh love her name's escaping me. Like, I love the actress who reprised Julian Moore? Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:She's she's phenomenal. She's obviously an amazing actress.
SPEAKER_00:She was like too convincing. I'm like, I can't watch this. It's making me too uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01:I need, I need like a little bit of a side of like some some kind of fun to it. She just played it so straight. She's like intense in the role. So um, I have never, I mean, we've said many times how we feel about remakes of classic films, whether they're from the 80s or earlier. So I'm not a huge fan of the remake, but it just actually happened to be on towards the end. And I'd never seen the ending of how they depict Carrie's meltdown.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It is kind of fun to see because they really amp up her powers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'd I'd watch it for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So she fucking goes full tilt on that school. Although the teacher who dies in the original, the the one sympathetic teacher, they she actually lets her live. Okay. In the sequel. So I thought that was interesting. But um, it's a little because it's a lot of her using her hands to move things.
SPEAKER_00:Like I feel like in the original it would just be it was just her using her eyes kind of basic like looking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I'm turning my head sharply.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of intense looking. Um, so there were some differences that were kind of interesting. Okay. Getting back to Piper Lori, so she was on the TV series Skag for a while. She also was part of the Thornbirds. That seems to be coming up a lot lately.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, it was huge.
SPEAKER_01:So it was huge. So she gets her third Oscar nomination, Best Supporting, for Children of a Lesser God. She was in the film I Didn't Know This Dream A Little Dream. I also didn't realize that she was part of the original Twin Peaks series.
SPEAKER_00:I did not either. I was still whenever I think of that, I just wonder like, did they ever like wrap that up again? Like, I know they like it came back, but does that mean that just like nothing ever? No resolution.
SPEAKER_01:Watch it, but she is super fun. I've brought this up a couple times, probably in part because of the Halloween series, but she is part of that huge, amazing ensemble cast in the faculty. Oh, yeah. And she's great in it. She's also uh was in the film Eulogy, and then I mean, this is just a fraction of what she did. She also did a lot of other TV work, a lot of other films. So okay, so now we're getting past like kind of the humans in this movie and moving on to all of these really talented people who either voiced the other characters or they were the puppeteers for these other characters.
SPEAKER_00:In other cases, they like walked on their hands upside down with their legs up in the air to walk. And in that case, crazy that that would be TikTok.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for leading me exactly to the next character. So TikTok has three people credited for this one character. So two people were credited with kind of the head slash body work.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And the first of them is Michael Sundon. So he was it was it TikTok where part of a or was it Pumpkin Head?
SPEAKER_00:Where it was it was uh TikTok. It was TikTok. And this is who it was, who's the gymnast who was like kind of walking upside down? Yeah, wow. Well, for part, you know, yeah, for the some of the walking bits.
SPEAKER_01:So Sundon, unfortunately, we have a very short filmography for him because he passed away in 1989. He was only 28 years old.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, just four years after this came out, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um he passed from complications of AIDS, so that's why he was so young. And not sure, you know, how much more we could have seen from him. But for the credits that he had, I have three films, Forever Young. Not not the Mel Gibson one, right? But because wasn't wasn't he in it, or was that just called Forever? What was it? I think that was Forever. Forever Young? I don't remember. Anyway, um, not that movie. So, but he was in a film called Forever Young, okay. Dream Child and Lionheart.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_01:So the other individual who also did the like the mechanics of TikTok was Tim Rose. So he's credited with like the headwork.
SPEAKER_00:Got it.
SPEAKER_01:So, and do I have it mixed up? No, I don't think I have it mixed up.
SPEAKER_00:That makes sense. Because then there's one more person for the voice.
SPEAKER_01:Correct. So Tim Rose, I mean, he has some really interesting credits. I I doubt we brought him up, but he did also. So there's a lot of crossover with these films from this era that had like similar aesthetics, um, namely The Dark Crystal, where you had a lot of like puppeteering work, yeah, a lot of voice work going on. So Tim Rose, he also worked on The Dark Crystal. This is super fun. So he's been part of the Star Wars franchise. So he first was uh like kind of the puppeteer for Admiral Akbar.
SPEAKER_00:That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Back in Return of the Jedi, yeah, and then he reprises Akbar for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
SPEAKER_00:That's super cool. Isn't that so cool? I that's I I wouldn't have guessed that connection in like watching last night's uh Return to Oz. That like, oh yeah, TikTok, he's the guy from uh from Return of the Jedi, and all the super cool.
SPEAKER_01:He also was Howard the Duck and Howard the Duck.
SPEAKER_00:I don't even know what to like we're probably gonna watch that at some point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's uh like we just watched Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and we saw the way that they handled that one actor. And there'd be there'd be some of that that we'd have to do if or when we cover Howard the Duck.
SPEAKER_01:Is he in that too?
SPEAKER_00:He's a pretty big part of it. Oh, is he?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. So he's in that, and then also, and a lot of these people, it's in here's what's super interesting to me. Like when I was talking about how there's so much crossover in terms of like what they are called to do in their line of work. A lot of these people, they're puppeteers, uh, they also do voice work, or they do one or the other. Like, there's a lot of crossover just with people in this world um working with these types of characters. And and almost all these people across the board showed that in their filmographies because he also did voice work for the TV series What's Up, Doc? So he's not-I mean, I don't even mean just a puppeteer. Puppeteering is very hard, very precise work. So that in itself is really impressive, but also a lot of these people who did puppeteering work also voice actors. So moving on to the voice of TikTok, Sean Barrett.
SPEAKER_00:Is it weird saying TikTok over and over again since it has such a different meaning in 2025?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I it made me think how did how did the platform TikTok get its name? I doubt it's from this film, but I was just curious.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So Sean Barrett, he has done a ton of voice work, um, and also like in front of the camera as himself as an actor. He was in the film War in Peace. He was in the 1958 version of Dunkirk. Did that.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't know that existed, but it makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:He was in the film Sons and Lovers, and then Samesy's, so he also played a part in The Dark Crystal. Um, he played Urza, which I think was that kind of witchy Am I thinking of the right character? It's been a minute.
SPEAKER_00:I don't remember. We'll have to we'll have to do some uh some research.
SPEAKER_01:He also participated in Labyrinth. He voiced a goblin.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Lots, just in general, like this is just really it's hard because I had to kind of condense some of these filmographies for characters we have multiple people to credit for that character. So I've had to kind of cut down on some of these filmographies, but lots of TV work and lots of video game work. In particular, he's done a ton of work with the video game. Do you know Dark Souls?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I know Dark Souls. You do? Yeah, there's several, there's like just like a Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, and then the company that makes those from software, they have a very similar aesthetic. So the one that uh George R. Martin basically like wrote a bunch for Elden Ring, those same people. Okay, there's like kind of like connection, similarities between the gameplay and the look and feel. So yeah, that's super cool.
unknown:Cool.
SPEAKER_00:Don't know what voices he would have worked because those games are famous for being almost incomprehensible story-wise. Oh, interesting. You get like little bits and pieces of information and yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Moving on to the chicken, Belina. So also have two people credited for Belina.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Uh the first is Mac Wilson. So the puppeteering work for which sometimes I think they just had a real chicken. And then sometimes they had because like there are scenes where clearly she's just holding a chicken.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:The chillest chicken ever. Probably multiple chickens that she used, uh, or that production used. But Mac Wilson, so he has done a ton of a ton of TV work, but he also, I doubt he was brought up when we covered this film, but he did help with Little Shop of Horrors. Okay. So that makes makes sense to me anyway, that he would have been part of that. Um, so he was part of, and then this is also another franchise that's gonna come up. It's not a franchise, a show that's gonna come up a couple times in the next few people. Dinosaurs. The TV show.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Makes sense. Yeah. A lot of puppeteers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:He also worked extensively with a TV series called Moppetop's Shop.
SPEAKER_00:Mopatops Shop.
SPEAKER_01:Don't know it.
SPEAKER_00:But he was on over, well, 260 episodes. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Mother Goose Stories and The Fur Chester Hotel.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Don't know it, but okay, so now moving on to the voice of Belina, Denise Breyer. She too has passed uh somewhat recently. She passed in 2021.
SPEAKER_00:Boy, did this chicken have a quip for everything?
SPEAKER_01:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:She had is that something that I just didn't realize about chickens? They said always have something to say.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I mean, I hate speaking ill of a person's performance because I think it takes a ton of work, uh, especially voice work. But boy, she was just kind of irritating.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think that, like, I don't blame her because like she did a great job. Yeah, she like someone should have said, like, maybe we don't have her respond to everything. Right. Yeah. So But she had the best one at the end when uh Dorothy asked her if she was coming back, and she was basically like, Hell no. Fuck no, I'm not going back to Kansas. Fuck that.
SPEAKER_01:That was a great response. I'm not gonna go. Yeah, exactly. And Briar, she did a ton. It seems like a lot of what she did over the course of her career was voice work specifically. Okay. So so many TV series. I have all TV series for her, although this is just a fraction of everything that she did.
SPEAKER_00:I got one other thing that wasn't a TV series.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, what's that?
SPEAKER_00:Uh she was the junk lady in Labyrinth.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thank you. Yeah. I must have missed that. That's okay. She uh for all of her voice work roles, she was on The Adventures of Naughty, The Adventures of Twiddle, a lot of adventures, a lot of adventures, Four Feather Falls, La Maison de Tutu. And then Tara Hawks.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So okay. Moving on to Jack Pumpkinhead, very familiar-looking character.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, you you even mentioned it, because I I said something about it looking like uh Nightmare Before Christmas, and you mentioned that uh Tim Burton has been pretty outspoken in this being an inspiration for the Jack Skellington character.
SPEAKER_01:Not shocking to me at all that Tim Burton would have found inspiration in this film. I could totally see that.
SPEAKER_00:So it's pretty dark and and it's it's like a weird dark kids dark fantasy kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah so right up a zale. And yeah, Jack Pumpkinhead. I mean, he looks a lot like Jack Skellington. So it's it's kind of funny. It's I'm not gonna say it's like a trademark infringement, but it's Disney, so the That's true. That's true. Good point. Uh yeah, that's actually really funny. So he was the the mechanics, the body, the puppeteering of Pumpkin Head was by Stuart Harvey Wilson. Not a ton of credits for him. Uh, I just have two other split second and the fifth element. Oh. He was part of, which makes sense. I mean, Jack, before we get to the voice, because the voice is somebody who's pretty well known. Uh Jack was like a sweet character. I didn't really understand why he wanted to call Dorothy mom. That was really weird to me.
SPEAKER_00:I think because Ozma was was his real mom, and by mom, it's just uh she used the life powder.
SPEAKER_01:And then why did she use the life powder on him again?
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:No idea.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Because when he faints at the end, because it's like, that's my real mom. I was like, what? How? Why? Like, why were you brought to life? I didn't understand.
SPEAKER_00:So Dorothy reminded him of Osma, I suppose, and that's why he was saying the mom thing, but why did why did Osma use life powder to make him like a real live thing? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:And also, I'm so glad you brought that up because that does beg the question of like, how does Osma work? Because she was able to materialize to Dorothy in Kansas.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. She saved her in Kansas, right? Got her out of there.
SPEAKER_01:How'd that happen? How was she able to like if she was trapped? How is she able to transport to Kansas?
SPEAKER_00:It's a good question.
SPEAKER_01:So, and and like I misspoke because when we were watching it, you had asked something, I was like, well, I think it's like a figment of her imagination. It wasn't, but I don't understand how she was able to do these things. And then I also was really confused because, like, towards the end of the movie, where Dorothy's like, I wish I could just be in two places at once. And and then Osma appears, which I was like, are you implying that there's like some kind of connection between you two where you're like obviously not the same person, but like it was a weird the timing was weird to me that she said that and then immediately Osma appeared. Was that just because Osma was then telling her you can come back here anytime you want?
SPEAKER_00:I feel like there might be some answers in the books. Sure. But I am not going to read them, probably. Only because, like, I I don't know, maybe maybe like uh older fan like older fantasy ages fairly well where it's not like because you you'll like read old uh sci-fi and you're like wow, this just doesn't make any sense like compared to like modern technology. But uh I'm still probably not gonna read it, but maybe the answers are there.
SPEAKER_01:And we will get to Osma. I just was curious, and yeah, Jack and so I guess Jack also doesn't need to sleep because this is a thing too. It was so funny to me that they were like in peril. And yes, they kind of got away for a little bit, but they were still over the what was it called, the deadly desert?
SPEAKER_00:Uh the deadly desert, yes, where when you make contact with the sand, you turn to sand.
SPEAKER_01:And Dorothy's like, I think I'm gonna take a nap.
SPEAKER_00:Like, I don't think I'd be able to sleep, but meanwhile, the flying couch is like, I don't know how to do this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And we'll get to we'll get to them as well. So the voice of Jack Pumpkinhead, Brian Henson. So very well known in this whole world of puppeteering on account of his dad. He pretty much grew up with it and went right into that career as well. And so his credits, uh very well known and makes sense kind of credits. So he also uh voiced a goblin in labyrinth. I doubt we brought him up though, maybe. Maybe. Of course, he's been part of Sesame Street. He also did a ton of voice work on dinosaurs.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And then here we go. He's done a ton. I mean, I'm just naming a few. Yeah, a ton of Muppets stuff. I mean, stuff where once he was an adult, he could be part of it because he was still probably fairly young.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, when the Muppets first started. But he did voice work for the TV series Muppets Tonight. He was in Muppets from Space. I really enjoy this movie. He voiced on the TV special Muppets Haunted Mansion. I thought that was a really fun version of it. He also voiced on a TV series called The Puppet Game Show. And then I remember when this came out and didn't go over too well. He was uh one of the voices in the Happy Time murders.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, it didn't. Yeah, I guess it just didn't catch.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, we're getting there. We're like almost done with all the characters. Okay. Um, that have two or more credits. Moving on to Gump, although in the film they keep saying the gump.
SPEAKER_00:They do. The gump. They say that constantly. Every single time.
SPEAKER_01:But in the credits, it's just gump.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So gump is apparently kind of the head of what like a moose?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it looks like a the head of a moose that died because it was hunted and killed. Because it literally says, like, I was just walking through the forest, and the last thing I remember is hearing a loud bang. I'm like, holy shit. Isn't that so fucking dark?
SPEAKER_01:Like, it was I don't know. And I think we're joking that like he probably would have rather just stayed dead, like with what he was asked to do sometimes. Like it was it was a crazy character.
SPEAKER_00:I think he may have chosen death over being stuck to a couch with some palm fronds that were supposed to work as wings so that he could fly these people over a deadly dungeon.
SPEAKER_01:I knew fucking fever dream of a movie. It was just wild.
SPEAKER_00:But you convinced me. I might read the books.
SPEAKER_01:And this is what is so funny to me. So, as far as the the mechanics of Gump, the person behind him, again, not known for this stuff at all, which is kind of more impressive that he was able to do it. Steve Norrington. So, not really so much an actor. Yes, he has a couple credits, but you'll understand why in a minute. So, some of his other acting credits were for Death Machine. He plays one of the Vampires in Blade.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:He also was in a film called The Last Minute. The reason why he's in all these films is because he's really a director. He directed Death Machine. He directed Blade. Oh, really? Okay. He directed The Last Minute and also he. He directed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, well, that that movie had some promise, but did not deliver. But you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_01:But just wild that he was part of this movie.
SPEAKER_00:And he's the Gump.
SPEAKER_01:In that regard. Yeah. So as far as the voice goes of Gump, Lyle Conway. Do not have a ton of credits for him. Uh as far as acting credits go. I have two, the Dark Crystal. Um I I feel like I've already always said it incorrectly. Erskath Erskys?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, just the Skexies. The Skexies. Yeah. They're the Skexies. The the um Am I saying it right though?
SPEAKER_01:Is it the right character? U R S K E K-S.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, Erskex? I don't huh.
SPEAKER_01:Something different, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because the well.
SPEAKER_01:So I just was saying it right.
SPEAKER_00:No, you were saying, yeah. I don't know. Is Erskex an actual Skexy? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. And then also So you're saying it right the whole time.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. Well, thank you. All right. Moving on to our final character that we are going to cover for this film. I'm sorry to Uncle, is it Uncle Henry? He's barely in it. So I only mention mentioned Aunt M. But we also have, she was talked about a couple minutes ago, Ozma, played by Emma Ridley, so fairly young and not a huge acting career. I think she just kind of pivoted out of the world. So I only have three credits. Uh a film called The World is Full of Married Men. Okay. Mm-hmm. And then she was on the TV series Hammer House of Horror. And she was on one episode of Boy Meets World.
SPEAKER_00:That's kind of fun. Yeah. I think I read somewhere that they um dubbed out her voice because it was too British.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, interesting. They couldn't shake that. I guess not. It probably is hard as a child actor to do that. Film synopsis.
SPEAKER_00:Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:What Dorothy, saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl, is somehow called back to Oz when a vain witch and the Gnome King destroy everything that makes the land beautiful. The magical land beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I guess I guess that witch was vain. She had like all those different heads, faces. I'm sure that had something to do with it.
SPEAKER_01:But it's worded a little uh imprecisely because it almost saves or it saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl almost sounds like the girl was trying to conduct the experiment. So Yeah, my yeah. Saved by a mysterious girl from a psychiatric experiment.
SPEAKER_00:My favorite um my favorite piece of trivia is that is like the most obvious thing I've seen if you've watched the movie, because the the trivia piece is Dr. Worley seems to be preparing Dorothy for electroconvulsive therapy. Yeah, it did seem that way because he was.
SPEAKER_01:Because he was. Yeah. Oh, speaking of electricity, the flashlight. Yeah. That was one of the funniest things to me in this film is that so the Kansas scenes are set, I want to say, around like 1890.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Around then.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:And the nurse, so Dorothy escapes with Osma. It's like a trenchal downpour. The nurse is going after them, and she has a flashlight that looks like it's straight out of 1985.
SPEAKER_00:She looks like she looks like she's got like a big mag light from working security somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:She sure does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's working really well in very wet conditions.
SPEAKER_00:I uh the timing does not line up. And they made a reference to like getting the generators set up, and I'm like, I'm not sure about that.
SPEAKER_01:Were there generators in the 1890s? I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe, but if they if they existed then, I don't know that this facility would have had them.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:I think just have her, you know, we see Dorothy showing up in a like little rampshackle horse-drawn carriage thing. Just have her come out with like a lantern. That would have been fun.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah, it was really funny. I think you even looked up when was the first flashlight made.
SPEAKER_00:I did, and I'm like, well, it could kind of, but I don't think they have one.
SPEAKER_01:It was like 1899, I think you said. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some funny little things about that. I mean, overall, I think Bulk did a great job as Dorothy, especially you made a really good point.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're that's a tough job for like your first big acting job because you're acting against like a couch and a bunch of fake things.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And that was a really good call that you made to point that out. Like it wasn't just a very young actor, it was a very young actor against like inanimate kind of objects.
SPEAKER_00:And it wasn't like I I don't I don't know. Like I feel like even nowadays you hear actors complain about like when they're in the Marvel franchise or superhero movies where they're just acting in a green screen or like the whole time they're just doing like green screen green screen stuff. But it seems like because there's more of that, maybe there's like um a sensibility or familiarity with that sure that probably wouldn't have been there for someone doing like their first thing where it's a good thing. And she's just 10. Like she doesn't have much experience with anything, so like given all that, I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of weird things in the movie, but like her performance was was totally fine. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, I mean, I this I I tend to say this after a film that I haven't seen before that we do for the show. I'm glad I saw it. It is a fever dream. I do kind of understand, um, you know, if Disney was getting frustrated with the pacing, I was getting a little frustrated with the pacing.
SPEAKER_00:There are times where it just like it it doesn't need to be as long as it is, and if it's gonna be that long, there should have been more of uh other stuff just in like holding on and dragging out some shots where the first two hours and it felt a lot longer, and that's even longer than it, like you said, should have been. It spent too much time in Kansas and it didn't spend that much, but it spent like time to have these like beautiful shots of them crossing fields to get to like the hospital or whatever, wherever that was. It just um yeah, it it had had a few issues, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:So I didn't bring up Scarecrow or Cowardly Lion or Tin Man. They show up Scarecrow's more prominent, but they all three of them kind of just show up right at the tail end of the film.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So wasn't gonna do that. And also the Wheelers, oh, were they annoying? That's why I brought up Ponz Mar. Thank you. I appreciate that you did that to give do.
SPEAKER_00:But also from we we've mentioned him before because he was in um The Golden Child.
SPEAKER_01:I will say though, that the Wheelers, the actual performers, that was impressive what they had to do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So wheels for hands and wheels for feet.
SPEAKER_01:As annoying as they were in terms of very, very impressed by what they had to accomplish.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love when when they first get to uh the Emerald City and you see the sign beware the wheelers, and I'm like, oh, I wonder what that is. And they start like screaming around a corner, like they need to tone it down a little.
SPEAKER_01:Take down just a notch.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just a bit.
SPEAKER_01:So would you watch this film again?
SPEAKER_00:I I might, just because it's so it's so bizarre. If I I feel like if I watch this movie again, you would not be sober. Okay, so two things. If I watch this again, one, probably, yeah. But two, I'm probably gonna like catch or see things that like if I watch this a few times, I'm gonna like notice things that I was just so shocked by like one piece of the film that I didn't even notice anything for like five minutes where I'm like, what I will say that with this like first viewing, I was concentrating really hard on trying to follow the plot.
SPEAKER_01:Like, why were why were they doing what they were doing?
SPEAKER_00:Because you don't really find out until like I I think it takes a while to understand that like the Gnome King got these things from when she went back, and that's why he it caused all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of things were kind of buried in terms of like explaining plot, yeah. And so I was just watching the film confused most of the time. Yeah. All that said, glad I saw it. I don't know if I would sit down to watch it again or it's easy enough.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it's just on Disney Plus, so it's easy enough to watch like some movies that have been harder to uh find. Sure. I probably wouldn't go through that much effort to find it, but if it's as simple as just like clicking into an app and watching it, then yeah, I might.
SPEAKER_01:So, call to action. I'm very curious who's I I know that this happens a lot when I haven't seen a film, but I am very curious who has watched this film before and like what their thoughts are of it. How well they think it's connected to the 1939 film. If they like it more than the 1939 film, that's fair too. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I'm just kind of curious where it sits with people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm curious what what is everyone's preferred interpretation of like the source material. Because at this point, like the play, the play itself, like Wicked and Wicked for Good coming out uh soon, that's all based off of some other books that were based off of the originals. So there are so many interpretations of the world of Oz. I'm just curious what people's uh preferences. I kind of like the the world, like the world in Wicked is interesting just in the way that they've like turned everything around, like the the animals talking and how um yeah, just the the wizard not being just like kind of a uh idiot, but kind of like a bad guy.
SPEAKER_01:Subverting expectations in terms of like what you think you know about the characters.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So I I I like that actually like that that world feels much more closely tied to the original movie than what we just saw last night in Return of Oz.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, this is all like when you look at the three, okay, so there's been more than three, but if you look at the 1939 Wizard of Oz, then you look at this film, then you look at the first Wicked film, yeah. The thing that actually I come away with the most is just like the really different looks of all three films. Like putting aside story, it because like that's something that came up when we were watching it. Like, I'm again, I'm very impressed with like what they're able to accomplish with like production design. And there's even though they got a nomination for visual effects, there's so much practical, yeah. And and very, very impressed by it all, but it felt like it wasn't as grand of a scale as the original film.
SPEAKER_00:Are you talking about like the the wicked?
SPEAKER_01:Uh the 1985 1985 versus 1939.
SPEAKER_00:Got it.
SPEAKER_01:And so, like to bring up those two first, like 1939, even at the end, um, I clocked it that when in the 85 film, when Dorothy is saying her goodbyes to everybody, like if you look at the extras, the background actors, I don't know, maybe there's a couple dozen, but in the original Wizard of Oz, there's hundreds.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so they like really went for it with that film. And then when you look at Wicked, I think it's a masterpiece, but also it's so heavy on CGI that it like it's there's nothing there there for the most part.
SPEAKER_00:Like obviously it's this like mesh of There's a fair amount there, but it's it's like a it's blended in a way where you could easily believe that it's all just CGI. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so it's just hard because like it doesn't feel grounded. And I'm not, I'm not like calling out just that movie. That that's across the board with like any film that's come out the last 20 years. Yeah. So it it's hard for me to really get a sense of awe in the same way. I can be really impressed by like what I know they had to do effects-wise, but it doesn't feel like a real world to me in the same way that the 39 film does. There's just something about it, maybe I'm too attached to like nostalgia, but I that will probably always be my favorite.
SPEAKER_00:I think like the more recent Wicked movies get a lot closer to just like the the pop of color and the in the target. Very much so. Um and yeah, it it's that makes me just wonder like what what is the place? Like, where does where does this 1985 version like sit? Yeah, because it kind of feels like it will forever just be like this like standalone thing that was an attempt, yeah that just did not pan out the way they wanted it to.
SPEAKER_01:But they all have their pros. Yeah, they all have their own thing that that makes it special.
SPEAKER_00:I'm glad for as bizarre as it is to watch, particularly after only having seen the original movie. I'm glad that it's out there that like for people that appreciate that this is like more faithful to the stories that maybe they grew up with or that they really enjoyed, that it's there. But I don't I don't know like which one I would like lean towards.
SPEAKER_01:Same. So if you want to get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out through Facebook, Instagram, or Blue Sky. It's the same handle at all three. It is at 80smontage pod, and 80s is 80S. Sneak peek. You're rubbing your temples.
SPEAKER_00:Trying to think.
SPEAKER_01:Trying to think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I got nothing.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think I need to like drop some clues because I don't think I've been very good about that lately.
SPEAKER_00:Um Well, I I failed on this one miserably. So I'm just I'm trying to avoid a a repeat.
SPEAKER_01:There was a clue earlier when we were talking about the different actors. Oh specifically all the all the like dozen actors we brought up. Piper Lori.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So I'll narrow it down to her, and it was one of her Oscar nominations. So narrow it down further. So one of those Oscar nominations is a clue for this film.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. Whew.
SPEAKER_01:So I got And it's not children of a lesser God. And it's not Carrie. It's not the faculty because that's Did she get an Oscar nomination for the faculty?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think so, right?
SPEAKER_01:No. Did she not? No. Really? Go to the You can literally look at just the Oscar nominations for an actor if they have them. Are we doing McBeth? Look at the Oscar nominations for Piper Laurie.
SPEAKER_00:I don't I don't know where to find those.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So the Oscar nomination that I am referring to is for the hustler.
SPEAKER_00:Oh. Wait, really? Cracked. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We're not doing the hustler.
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, that was that's not new. So we're doing the color of money.
SPEAKER_01:Cracks.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, I got there.
SPEAKER_01:You got there.
SPEAKER_00:Woo. Oh my God. I need a nap.
SPEAKER_01:So I've been wanting to cover this one for a while. I don't this will be the first time we've brought up Paul Newman. I think. I don't think we've covered a Paul Newman film. And I don't think there are going to be many from the 80s that we do. So I'm really looking forward to covering this film. I've seen The Hustler. I have not seen Color of Money. So I'm extremely curious about how he and Tom Cruise play off each other. We should watch The Hustler first. Do we have to watch? It's such a downer of a film. It's a great movie, but all right. We'll see. We'll talk about that. But in the meantime, thank you to everyone for hanging with us. We really appreciate all the options that you have out there that you have chosen to spend some time with us. And we will talk to you. Yes. You're gonna say something.
SPEAKER_00:Are there are there that many options though? I think thousands. I think millions. I think there are fewer options than you think. I think just stick with us.
SPEAKER_01:Just stick with us, and we will talk to you in two weeks' time.