Monday 21 June 2021

i have always valued my lifelessness

Along with many other anniversaries of great pith and circumstance, this day also shares its anniversary—according to our faithful chronicler, with the 1985 general release in US cinemas of Return to Oz, starring Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale on her continuing adventures over the rainbow, a loose amalgam of L. Frank Baum’s other books and not intended to be a sequel to the 1939 production. Committed as delusion by Aunt Em for her talk of Oz and confined in an institution about to undergo shock treatment, a mysterious inmate helps Dorothy escape by jumping from an embankment to a rushing, flooded river, washed away towards the Deadly Desert with her now talking chicken Bilina. Finding the Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City in ruins and all its people petrified (turned to stone), Dorothy is menaced by marauding packs of creatures with wheels for hands and feet. Cornered, escapes again and winds-up a mechanical sentry called Tik-Tok who relates to her how the kingdom has been overrun by the minions of the Nome King and Mombi, the Wicked Witch of the North. Though initially panned by American critics for its dark nature and twisted portrayals, it was quite popular outside of domestic markets and has since gained cult status.