Let's Watch This: "Journey Back to Oz" (1972)

The Wizard of Oz is without a doubt one of THE most iconic films of all time. So it should come as no surprise that a lot of people have wondered what occurred after the events of the film. To my knowledge, the filmmakers never considered doing a sequel, but that hasn't stopped others from trying their hand at a follow-up to the film, usually taking inspiration from the original L. Frank Baum books. For example, 1985 saw the release of Disney's Return to Oz...

And 2014 saw the release of the animated Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return.

Both of these films fared poorly at the box office and received negative reviews from critics. Makes you wonder if maybe doing sequels to such an iconic film like The Wizard of Oz is a bad idea.

Well, before either of those films we had the film we'll be looking at today - 1972's Journey Back to Oz.

Loosely based on the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, this film was released on December 14th... in the U.K., at least, for whatever reason it wasn't released in the U.S. until 1974... whipped up by the folks at Filmation. It didn't do very well in theaters, but found its audience when it aired on television. The film boasts quite an impressive voice cast, including the daughter of the original Dorothy herself, Judy Garland. Is the film any good? Well, why don't we find out?

The film begins with a storm a-brewin' over the Gale farm in Kansas. Uncle Henry (voiced by Paul Ford) is giving Dorothy (Liza Minelli) a hard time because she's not doing anything to help get ready for it. Aunt Em thinks Dorothy might be sick. So, yeah, so far not much out of the ordinary.

Interesting fact, the voice of Aunt Em in this movie is Margaret Hamilton. Yes, the original performer of the Wicked Witch of the West, now playing Dorothy's kindly aunt. Very nice way of working one of the film's original cast members into the film.

Forgive the crummy quality of the screencaps, please.

Dorothy has a major case of Deja Vu to the day that she was swept away by a tornado to the marvelous land of Oz. Aunt Em doesn't believe there is such a place. If anything, she probably believes that Dorothy's going crazy. But hey, at least they haven't tried to subject her to shock therapy like in Return to Oz (I'm not kidding, they were going to do that to Dorothy!).

As the background suddenly turns sepia-toned, Dorothy begins to sing about what a great place Oz is. Well, aside from the crazy witch and her army of flying monkeys. And the creepy easily-offended talking trees.

"Now if only I could find that magician's hat they used to bring Frosty to life..."

She wishes that she could go back to Oz. Of course, one should always be careful what they wish for, because life has a way of granting wishes in a way that you likely didn't want them to be granted. Case in point...

"AUNTIE EM! AUNTIE EM! THE MOVIE IS REHASHING THE FIRST FILM!"

Are tornados really the only way to get to Oz? Dorothy can't just hail a taxi there or something?

A gust of wind causes a gate to knock Dorothy to the ground, resulting her going unconscious (because Dorothy is apparently very fragile). When she comes to, she and Toto aren't in Kansas anymore - they're back in Oz!

And this time, there aren't any creepy Munchkins!

They run off down the Yellow Brick Road to pay their old pal the Scarecrow a visit. Problem is, the talking signpost (Jack E. Leonard) is pointing in three different directions, each one claiming that it's the way one arrives at the Emerald City. He doesn't even know which way is the correct way, since he's never even been to the Emerald City himself.

I think he just likes trolling people.

So Dorothy and Toto just have to head down one path in the hopes that it's the right one. But Dorothy gets distracted by some bluebirds and winds up falling off a cliff into a spooky forest. It's here that she meets Pumpkinhead, voiced by Paul Lynde.

Here's a joke for you: how do you mend a jack-o-lantern? With a pumpkin patch.
Ba-dum-kssssh.

Pumpkinhead explains that he's hiding from Mombi, the very wickedest witch in all of Oz. She stole him from the field where he was raised from a seed, carved a face on him, gave him arms and legs, and enslaved him. "And I hate my job! I hate being a witch's helper!" he laments. "I don't mind stirring the magic potions or saddling her broomstick, but when it comes to feeding the spiders... and dusting the toads..." And she's whipping up an especially evil potion for an especially evil deed. If she finds Pumpkinhead, she'll do terrible things to him!

Unfortunately, Toto winds up chasing after a cat that Pumpkinhead identifies as Mombi's. Dorothy follows him into Mombi's cottage, where she meets her talking Mel Blanc-voiced crow. The crow urges her to take a peek inside the bubbling cauldron on the fireplace. Don't do it, Dorothy! It's a trick!

Shouldn't this guy be bothering the Scarecrow, not hanging out with a witch? I mean, what with
him being a crow and all...

Yep, it's a trick. When Dorothy lifts the lid off the cauldron, trunks come spewing out of it and try to grab Toto. Unfortunately, before Dorothy can get out of there, guess who shows up?

"Hand over your shoes and nobody gets hurt. Except you. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaa!"

This is Mombi, voiced by a nearly unrecognizable Ethel Merman. She's heard of Dorothy, and she's thrilled when she discovers that she's the girl wandering around her cottage. "I've been wanting to meet you ever since your last visit to Oz!" she says. "When you destroyed my cousin, the Witch of the West! And helped the miserable Scarecrow, to the throne of Oz!" Oy, it's one of those "relative of the villain from the first film who wants to avenge them" sequel villains. And predictably, she doesn't care that Dorothy melting the Witch was an accident.

And what is her evil deed that Pumpkinhead brought up? Well, it involves creating a pack of giant green elephants. Flying monkeys are SOOOOOOOOOOOO 1939...

"I was originally going to go with PINK elephants, but I thought having GREEN elephants help me
take over the EMERALD City would've been kind of ironic."

She plans on using the elephants to bring down the walls of the Emerald City and scatter the troops of Oz. Then she'll take over Oz and lay waste to the Scarecrow. And then that pesky crow suggests throwing Toto into the cauldron, as if things weren't bad enough for Dorothy already. Fortunately, once Mombi and the crow head out to get more firewood, Pumpkinhead shows up to save Dorothy and Toto. Unfortunately, Mombi returns just as they're getting out of there and hops aboard her broomstick in hot pursuit.

When they finally get away from Mombi, Dorothy decides to... sing. Uh, shouldn't you be getting to the Emerald City to warn the Scarecrow? Time is of the essence and all that? After the song, they come across a talking horse stuck on a pole. Say hello to Woodenhead Pinto Stallion III, voiced by Herschel Bernardi (who you might recall as the original voice of Charlie the Tuna).

"I'll tell ya, bein' a horse in Oz is no picnic, but it beats working at Hasbro."

Woodenhead explains that he can't hold a job. He wasn't fast enough to be a racehorse, too lazy to be a farmhorse, and didn't have the figure to be a clotheshorse. Desperate, he got a job as a merry-go-round horse. And yes, he's going to sing about it.

Dorothy invites Woodenhead to come with them to the Emerald City. Maybe the Scarecrow can give him a job. And conveniently, the Emerald City isn't too far away, so it isn't long before Dorothy is reunited with her old pal the Scarecrow, voiced by Mickey Rooney.

Is it just me, or does the Scarecrow have a bit of a Chuck Jones vibe to his design?
I think it's mainly the face...

The Scarecrow sings about how he has a brain now... and how it's not as great having one as he thought it would be. It's not even a very good brain, seeing as he thinks "brain" is spelled "B-R-A-N-E". After the song, Dorothy, Pumpkinhead, and Woodenhead fill the Scarecrow in about Mombi and her plan to use green elephants to take over Oz. Speaking of which...

"Hup! Two! Three! Four! Keep it up! Two! Three! Four!"

And as Mombi and her army of Heffalumps approaches the Emerald City, the witch launches into a musical number. Come on, we just HAD a musical number. Put a little distance in between your songs!

Into the Emerald City the elephants charge. Dorothy, Pumpkinhead, and Woodenhead manage to escape with their lives, but Toto and the Scarecrow are captured. And now that Mombi is in control of the castle, it starts to turn brown. "Under Mombi's rule, it's becoming mean and ugly, just like her!" Dorothy exclaims. They'll need backup if they are to save the Scarecrow and Toto - and Oz, of course - so Dorothy tells Woodenhead to take them to Tinland.

Apparently Mombi's rule also influences the sky, seeing as it's now orange.

Little do they know that Mombi is watching them via a crystal ball, and she has plans to send the elephants after them and reduce Tinland to a junkyard. Uh-oh...

Our heroes arrive in Tinland, where everything is made out of tin, there's no rust allowed, and the toll gate speaks with the voice of a chipmunk. The Tin Man (Danny Thomas) is the emperor of Tinland. Don't recall there being any mention of that in the first film, but eh...

Did you know that the Tin Man makes a cameo appearance in Robots?
(Mental note: do a review of Robots at some point)

The Tin Man is obviously happy to see Dorothy again as well. She fills him in as to what's going on with Mombi and her holding the Scarecrow prisoner. He wants to help, but he's terrified by the idea of giant magical green elephants. Shouldn't it be the LION who's being cowardly?

Mechanical green elephants are a tin man's natural predator. It's just common knowledge.

The Tin Man sings about the drawbacks of having a heart. But he still wants to help, so he gives Dorothy some advice - enlist the help of the Lion (Milton Berle). 

I want to know the Lion's hair stylist (or should that be MANE stylist?).

So then we cut to them talking to the Lion, and he agrees to help... until he finds out the elephants are big, green, and created via witchcraft. So the Scarecrow has a brain, but he's still scatterbrained... and the Lion has nerve, but he's still a coward... if I were them, I'd sue the Wizard for screwing them over like this.

I mean, to be fair, I'D be frightened too if I were asked to go up against a pack of big green elephants
with an attitude problem, but still...

The Lion claims that he can't go because, uh, he's got a movie job he has to do, but he suggests Dorothy fight magic with magic and go see Glinda. Immediately after he says that, Glinda appears with her "Glindabird", who shows them what's going on at the Emerald Palace...

Couldn't Glinda just defeat Mombi without Dorothy's help? Then again, this is the same witch
who could've told Dorothy that she had the power to go home all along but didn't because
"she needed to figure it out for herself" or whatever...

Unfortunately, Glinda's not going to be much help either, since Mombi's apparently more powerful than her. She'll do what she can, but Dorothy's gonna have to do most of the work herself. We get another song, and Dorothy realizes that having faith in yourself is the greatest magic of all. Well, that and a small box of Glinda's "countermagic" that they can only open in the Emerald City (and only in case of a dire emergency) if they want it to work. Also, the box mustn't be seen by anyone before they actually use it, so they hide it inside Woodenhead, who compares himself to the Trojan Horse. By making jokes like that, he's basically doing my job for me.

Let me guess, the box contains a mouse as a reference to that whole "elephants are afraid of mice"
myth.

Alas, Mombi is watching them in her crystal ball and decides to stop them before they get to the Emerald City. To do this, she'll need the help of - you guessed it - creepy living trees!

On the bright side, at least they don't have apples to throw at them...

Fortunately, Glinda sends them a golden hatchet they can use... NOT to go all Paul Bunyan on the trees, but to turn them into NICE trees with yellow bark and flowers growing on their leaves.

So after that, they make it back to the Emerald City, only to be ambushed by those pesky green elephants.

"What'll I do? What'll I do?! What an unusual view!"

The elephants have them surrounded, but fortunately they have the box. And what turns out to be inside the box? Why, Pinky from Pinky and the Brain, of course!

Called it.

Actually, there are MULTIPLE Pinkys inside that box, and upon seeing the mice the elephants get the heck out of there. Now our heroes just have to take down Mombi and save Toto and the Scarecrow. How fortunate it is for them that Mombi has waited until now to destroy them. At the moment, she's taunting the Scarecrow with threats of plucking all the straw out of his body until he's nothing but a pile of dirty rags that she'll set aflame. I guess witches in Oz aren't very creative when it comes to torturing scarecrows. And she'll also shrink Toto down to mouse size and feed the dog to her cat, who I'm just now noticing looks a lot like Azarel from The Smurfs.

But first, she's going to sing about the other witches in her family. I gotta say, Dorothy and her pals are sure taking their sweet time getting to the palace to defeat her. Then one of the Pinkys scurries into the palace, and as it turns out Mombi is afraid of mice too, and she's so startled that she accidentally splashes the crow with the potion she was going to use to shrink Toto with.

Is nobody going to point out that mice don't eat crows? Then again, mice are omnivorous,
so I suppose one COULD eat a shrunken crow if they ever got the chance to...

Dorothy, Pumpkinhead, and Woodenhead show up and free the Scarecrow and Toto. But once Toto's freed, he can't help chasing after Mombi, despite the fact that she's already running out of the palace because of the mice. I still can't get past the fact that this big, bad witch is afraid of MICE. It's like if Voldemort turned out to be afraid of kinkajous or something...

To hide from the oh-so-scary mice, she disguises herself as a rose. I guess she's hoping no one will notice the rose with an obvious green, warty face.

Why don't you just start singing "All in the Golden Afternoon" and shed what little threatening nature
you have left?

Then the green elephants, the ones that haven't been scared off by the mice yet, come her way and trample her, ridding the land of Oz of the evil known as Mombi. Words can not describe how amusing it is having a wicked witch be killed by her own elephants because she has a fear of mice. Especially when they're disguised as a rose.

I love Dorothy's expression here. It's like she can't get past the fact that she's
talking to a rose.

Seriously, I can't get past how ridiculous this climax is. The diabolical, all-powerful witch died because she was trampled by a pack of green elephants while she was disguised as a flower to hide from a teeny, tiny mouse. I can't be the only one who finds this the funniest way to take out a villain EVER.

When a witch dies, all of her magic dies with her, so the Emerald City instantly turns back into its old self. The Scarecrow is king again! Dorothy is so happy that she launches into another musical number. Unfortunately, since Pumpkinhead was brought to life by Mombi, now that she's gone he's turned back into a normal, non-sentient pumpkin. And Glinda continues to suck as a witch because she's not powerful enough to resurrect him. Fortunately, there IS a way to bring Pumpkinhead back to life - through the power of faith and love. So he comes back to life. Kind of a Deus Ex Machina, but I don't care, I'm happy he's alive.

I love Woodenhead's expression here too.

The Scarecrow gives a big speech about how he owes his life and crown to Dorothy, Pumpkinhead, and... Charlie. Which was apparently Woodenhead's real name. So I guess Herschel Bernardi voiced TWO characters named Charlie.

So, Woodenhead... I mean, Charlie is appointed "Royal Steed". Pumpkinhead is knighted and dubbed the Scarecrow's Minister of Agriculture. But how will they get Dorothy back to Kansas? After another song, the Scarecrow reads in the Constitution of Oz that a visitor to Oz can return home the way they came if transportation is available, so Glinda creates a cyclone to whisk Dorothy and Toto back home.

Dorothy arrives back in Kansas. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

The end.

What's the Verdict?

I personally liked Journey Back to Oz. The animation is quite good (especially for a studio known for less than stellar animation like Filmation), the cast is great, and I really liked the new characters (especially Woodenhead... uh, I mean, Charlie). I do have some complaints, though... there are way too many songs. At least two of them could've been taken out and it wouldn't have made a difference. And why did the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion have so little screentime? You couldn't have at least had them helping out in the final battle? Still, I thought Journey Back to Oz was a splendid follow-up to the original 1939 classic. If you're a Wizard of Oz fan, I recommend seeking it out and giving it a watch.

Here's one more interesting fact to close out the review - apparently, there was originally supposed to be a character called the "Woggle-Bug" appearing and performing a song at one point in the movie. The character and song were cut, however, this was apparently very, very early into production as the song wound up being used in Hanna-Barbera's 1967 adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk, where it was renamed "The Woggle-Bird Song" and performed by a pair of Woggle-Birds. Here is the sequence and song from that special. Be warned, it's incredibly catchy...