Return to Oz
It has been some time since Dorothy (Fairuza Balk) returned home to Kansas from her first trip to Oz , but she is constantly thinking of the place to the point that it is keeping her up at night. One day while out in her yard she discovers a key which has the OZ emblem on it. Thinking it was there as a message from Oz she shows it to Aunt Em (Piper Laurie) who tells her it is actually the key to their old house before the tornado blew it away. Aunt Em has had enough and takes her to see a psychiatrist called doctor Worley (Nicol Williamson) who specializes in electro-shock therapy. Toto tries to tag along but is told to go home.While at the clinic waiting for the procedure to be done, a severe storm brews outside. Dorothy then meets a mysterious patient who helps her escape when the storm knocks out the center's electricity. Dorothy manages to escape but the head nurse (Jean Marsh) chases after them. Dorothy loses the nurse, as well as her new friend, and boards a crate floating down a flooding river. From there Dorothy floats away.Dorothy later awakens in the crate to find herself back in Oz and sitting in the Deadly Desert, which has the ability to turn anyone to sand upon touch. Dorothy also discovers that she is being accompanied by her favorite chicken from her farm, Billina (Denise Bryer's voice), who now has the ability to talk.They then set out to the Emerald City to see her old friends, which includes the recently crowned King of Oz, the Scarecrow. They carefully exit the crate and cross the desert while walking on stones, and makes their way inland. The rocks have faces, but they don't say anything to her. After eating a lunch from one the country's famous lunchpale trees, they come upon Munckinland and the remains of her old house that she rode to Oz the first time via the tornado. She looks into her old house to see everything as it was when it landed, and the remains of the Wicked Witch of the East, whom she of course killed by her house landing on her during the first trip, now decomposed. However, she cannot find the munchkins or Glinda, and then she discovers a grisly site: the yellow brick road torn up in pieces.After frantically running the full length of the road, she finds the Emerald City now in ruins and all of the residents there turned to stone, including her old friends the Tin-Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion. The Scarecrow (Justin Case), who took over as King of Oz from The Wizard at the end of her first trip, is nowhere to be found. She then gets chased by a band of thugs known as the "wheelers," in reference the creatures having wheels for hands and feet. The wheelers chase Dorothy into a dead-end hallway and she appears trapped like rat until she discovers a key hole in the door. Using the key she discovered in her yard earlier, she unlocks the hidden door and shuts it behind her keeping her safe from the wheelers. While in the room she discovers a machine in the form of a soldier. She discovers from reading the instructions on his back that he is a guard and needs to be wound up to work. After doing so the machine, now known as Tik-Tock (Sean Barrett's voice), joins Dorothy as a guardian in the quest to find out what happened to Oz.After leaving the room the two walk out into the ruined city where the wheelers meet up with them. Tik Tock instructs Dorothy to run as he starts knocking out the wheelers as they attack. He grabs one of them and Dorothy questions him about the fate of Oz where he reveals that an evil king known as the Nome King conquered the Emerald City and all of Oz and took all of the city's emeralds back to his castle. When asked about the fate of the Scarecrow he tells her that only Princess Mombi (Jean Marsh) would know. Dorothy and Tick-Tock are then led to Mombi's quarters in a preserved part of the city. While there she discovers that Mombi has a collection of heads she uses that she got from various Emerald City residents when the Nome King conquered the city. She also learns from Mombi that the Nome King took the Scarecrow with him back to his mountain with the emeralds. Mombi then threatens to take Dorothy's head after she is grown up and locks her in the attic.While locked in the attic, Dorothy peers out of the locked window and is able to see the Nome King's mountain in the distance. She also sees a portrait of her old friends, including the King Scarecrow, which saddens her. She is then interrupted by a man with a pumpkin for a head who was locked in the attic earlier by Mombi when he was used by a Princess to scare her. Turns out the man, known as Jack Pumpkinhead (Brian Henson & Stewart Larange) was brought to life by a formula called the "Powder of Life," which Mombi now possesses. Dorothy then comes up with an idea to escape Mombi using the powder to create a flying animal out of chairs, a plant, and the mounted head of a gump (Lyle Conway & Stephen Norrington) found in the attic, but she first has to get the powder of life which is locked in with Mombi's original head.Jack helps her unlock the attic door by using his large height and long arms to reach over the door and unlock it from the outside. Dorothy heads downstairs and first notices a girl's image in the mirror who looks a lot like the girl from the clinic whom she had met before the storm carried her to Oz. The image vanishes and she sneaks down into Mombi's head chamber and manages to grab the powder, but not before she accidentally knocks down another object sitting by Mombi's head which awakens her. Mombi's body, which is sleeping in a nearby bed, awakens and comes for her head while Dorothy runs back up to the room where Jack is building the Gump. Dorothy then pours the powder on the gump, who doesn't awaken right away, and she discovers there are magic words on the bottle which must be said to work. Mombi tears into the room just as the powder works its magic on the gump. The pair, including Billina, hops onto the gump's back and manages to escape.While the clan is escaping, Mombi summons the wheelers to go after them. While the clan flies away into the night, the wheelers chase them on foot, but not before coming upon the Deadly Desert, which several of them fall in and die, leaving the others to retreat back to Mombi. Mombi is furious at their inability to catch the clan and orders them to take her directly to the Nome King. While flying away, Dorothy and Billina fall asleep while the others stand guard.Later Dorothy awakens to find the gump coming apart due to not originally being tied tight enough. They all fall out, landing on a snow covered mountain. The Nome King (Nicol Williamson) is then alerted of their arrival and he goes to the side of the mountain to confront them. The Nome King laughs at Dorothy's demand to free the Scarecrow and restore Oz and opens up the mountain causing her to fall in. While falling to the king's lair she is told that the emeralds from the Emerald City originally belonged to him and the Scarecrow was the thief who took them. She lands on the Scarecrow who is then zapped away. The Nome King tells her that he had turned him into an ornament for his collection.Dorothy then walks up to where the king sits and starts crying and tells him of the fact that the emeralds were there before the Scarecrow and her came to the city. The Nome King comforts her and then brings in her friends from the mountain. He then tells them that they will play a game to find the scarecrow which they will be allowed to leave with him if they guess the right ornament. The Gump is the first one allowed in to guess as the others are offered refreshment.While sitting down to refreshment the remaining pair get knocked down by a sudden flash. They then learn that the gump was just turned into an ornament since he failed to guess correctly on three tries. They also learn that their fate will be the same for not guessing correctly. Jack, with Billina hiding inside his head, is the next to go in. He guesses incorrectly and they join the Scarecrow and gump in the king's ornament collection.After Tick-Tock goes in for his try, the Nome King reveals to Dorothy that he now owns her Ruby Slippers, which he got when they fell out of the sky after she left Oz the first time. He then tells her how he used them to conquer Oz and without them he was powerless. In the meantime Tick-Tock devises a scheme to get Dorothy into the chamber while he guesses, to see what kind of object they are turning into when guessing incorrectly. He stands in the middle of the room and acts like his action ability has gone down to get the king's attention, who then sends Dorothy in to wind him up unaware of the scheme.Dorothy learns upon finding Tick-Tock that it was all a scheme to get her in there and watches as he makes his final guess. The guess turns out to be incorrect and Tick-Tock is transformed with Dorothy being unable to tell what he is turned into. Now it is Dorothy's turn, and she is now the last hope of her friends being freed and restoring the Land of Oz from the Nome King's enchantment.Meanwhile Mombi has made her way into the king's mountain(how she and the wheelers got safely across the Deadly Desert on foot I do not know). She then learns of the scheme the king had devised to finally get rid of Dorothy and her friends. Mombi not satisfied warns the king of what would happen if Dorothy guesses correctly and then learns about Ozma, whom she had imprisoned into a mirror back in the city. The king makes sure that she had not been allowed to escape as well.Back in the ornament room, Dorothy is down to her last two guesses. She guesses incorrectly on the second one but decides to play eeny miney moe on the last guess which would seal her fate. She comes across a green ornament and guesses on it revealing the Scarecrow. She then realizes that the green ornaments were the ones containing her friends. As Dorothy and the Scarecrow sets out to find the remaining three, the king becomes furious with Mombi for allowing Dorothy to escape her and come upon his secrets. He imprisons Mombi and starts to shake the building scaring Dorothy and her friends.After Dorothy finds another green ornament and guesses Jack Pumpkinhead back to life, with Billina still hiding inside his head, the King begins his fury with sending his nomes after them. They chase Dorothy into a seperate room where the Nome King enters in the form of a giant gruesome head with fire all around him. At that moment Dorothy guesses one more green ornament which reveals the gump. The king then demands them to stop and then picks up Pumpkinhead to eat unaware of Billina inside. As the king begins to put Jack into his mouth he then hears Billina laying an egg, which is poisonous to nomes. The egg falls out of Jack's head and into the king's mouth. He then lays Jack and Billina down as he begins to crumble.After the king and his nomes are completely crumbled away, her Ruby Slippers shines through the rubble. Dorothy then runs over to grab them and put them on as the whole mountain begins to crumble away. Dorothy wishes her and her friends back to Oz and the whole land to be restored, and it is granted.Dorothy and her friends then find themselves back in Oz with the Emerald City and it's people being restored in the distance. The caged Mombi also appears with them. Dorothy then discovers they didn't find Tick-Tock but Scarecrow sees a green ornament on gump's antlers. Dorothy guesses correctly and Tick-Tock is restored.The next scene shows the whole gang in a parade celebrating Dorothy's triumph and the restoration of Oz. Along with the new friends she had made, the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion has now rejoined Dorothy. A few munchkins walk in front of them with Glinda following behind. Also in the parade is the Patchwork Girl and Mombi, who is now a prisoner of Oz.At the end of the parade Dorothy joins the Scarecrow on his throne and the crowd encourages her to be the Queen of Oz, but she reveals that she has to go back home. The crowd is dissappointed at this announcement. Just then Dorothy sees the image of the girl in the mirror again. She walks up to the mirror and pulls her out. The girl is revealed to be Ozma, the real Queen of Oz before the Wizard came. She also reveals that Mombi had imprisoned her in the mirror when she tried to scare her out of the city. Dorothy then puts the ruby slippers on Ozma's feet and asks her to wish her back to Kansas. Ozma agrees on the condition that she will look in on Dorothy from time to time and if she ever wishes to come back to Oz it will be granted. Dorothy agrees and Ozma taps the slippers three times while Dorothy says goodbye to her friends. Billina tells Dorothy that she had decided to stay in Oz instead of going back with her.The next scene shows Dorothy awakening back in Kansas. She hears Toto in the distance and she calls after him. Uncle Henry (Matt Clark) and a search party comes running up behind him and swoops Dorothy up in his arms after frantically searching for her for days. Aunt Em hugs Dorothy as a police buggy drives by with the head nurse from the clinic inside. Aunt Em tells her that the clinic had been struck by lightning during the storm and burnt to the ground with everyone inside being rescued except for the doctorThe final scene shows Dorothy in her newly finished bedroom with Toto. While in there Dorothy walks up to the mirror and calls for Oz and an image of Ozma, with Billina in her arms, appears. Dorothy calls for Aunt Em but Ozma puts a finger up to her mouth encouraging her not to. They continue smiling at each other and then Aunt Em appears in the doorway prompting them to dissappear and Dorothy to pull the mirror up. Aunt Em smiles at Dorothy and encourages her and Toto to go outside and play on that sunny day. The movie ends as they do just that.
cult, fantasy