The Worst Witch

Maybe I spoke too soon on the whole cult movie thing.

Cause there are cult movies and then there are CULT movies, and I don't think it gets cultier than this. I'm sure I discovered this movie existed along with several other individuals through the magic of YouTube with Tim Curry's smash hit Anything Can Happen On Halloween and I decided sod it, let's see the movie. It's...humble. That's the best way I could describe it, it's a TV movie on a shoestring budget in the mid 80s, concerning a young but clumsy witch by the name of Mildred Hubble as she desperately tries to learn magic at a prodigious school. That's the basic gist and for a movie at a whopping 80 minutes, actually has a pretty decent pace and doesn't get super involved. It's really some Halloween fluff for young kids but has a bit of charm to it. I'm almost certain I would treasure this movie if I saw it around the age of 5, like I did with stuff like Halloweentown, and I know it is far far from everyone's taste but I actually quite liked it. I think the reason it worked so well for me is due to the cast, Fairuza Balk is great in this movie! She has so much heart and makes it all seem believable, she really did come into this with the best attitude and now I can say I've seen her in 2 witchy films. Diana Rigg is in the movie too, it's kinda wild how we got a quantum of star power into this, and likewise she plays it incredibly straight taking on a very genderbent Severus Snape role which I didn't quite know I needed in life but she's a treasure. It's actually kinda funny knowing Tim who plays The Grand Wizard is the best known part of the movie but he's maybe in it for a bit over 5 minutes, and it's even more hilarious cause every girl at this school, student or teacher, goes absolutely gaga for him! It was a different time, you could be like 9 years old and crush hardcore on a guy three times your age there was nothing weird about it back then. He is pretty majestic and God knows if I had the time and materials he would be my Halloween costume without question or doubt, and the song is magnificently bizzare in a way only the 80s could deliver. It's a extremely rudimentary film but if you like that sort of underground, buried, long forgotten sort of mood to productions where you can just get in the mindset and have fun with it, even if you see it just once you might like it a fair bit. The movie produced one of the most boisterously evil laughs of my life, and it was indeed unironically funny at times but for that alone it gets a gold sticky star from me. You can find the whole flippin' film on the YouTubes so if you need an hour to burn might as well see green screen witches flying about. 3 stars, 7.5/10, and tomorrow we get to a film that once again I could have sworn I reviewed years ago. Old age, it's not fun kids.

Return To Oz

How in the hell did this movie not only take about 45 years to get around but also combine horror, fantasy, while still retaining a family film feeling brought to you by Disney?

Return To Oz, a dark, deranged, and yet very entertaining and good film. It kinda takes a semi-sequel approach to the 1939 classic, but Dorothy is a small girl like in the book. So it's been a few months since the tornado hit Kansas and Dorothy has been telling people and constantly talking about Oz, to the point where her aunt and uncle send her to a psychiatric hospital. This is where the dark and gloomy setting begins. It's a dark house, with thunder and rain, and even the sounds of screams faintly heard. Jesus. But it gets worse! Dorothy gets One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest treatment, with a intimidating nurse, and the poor girl gets electroshock treatment. After a bad storm she arrives in Oz, but the creepy mood does not end there. The yellow brick road is torn asunder, the Emerald City is in ruins, and the citizens have been turned to stone. After that, it's really one creepy threat after another. I mean seriously, in the last movie the only real threat beyond the Wicked Witch of course, was those jerk trees that threw apples at Dorothy and her friends. Here, mother of mercy we got the Wheelers these odd cackling almost gang members with wheels for hands and feet, Mombi the ruler of Oz who has a chamber full of different decapitated heads, and The Nome King who has been destroying the beauty of Oz and making it a dark and dreary place. Ever since Dorothy got to the mental hospital, you get this unnerving, quiet discomfort and it only builds once we get to Oz. The film does such good stuff with this creepy and scary material, to the point where I was horrified and my body was recoiling from the screen (yes, it was THAT scene)! The film does such good work, the sets and designs of the new characters are great with my personal favorite being Jack Pumpkinhead. Oh yeah, they bring up Halloween so it does kinda fit that time of the year. The acting especially from Fairuza Balk holds the movie together and even parents could not dismiss this movie as just another kids movie. They probably just freak out as much as the kids do. But the film does not go overboard and will not traumatize your kid, it hits with the creepy and sometimes downright horrifying imagery done with fantastic stop motion animation, but I believe kids can look beyond that and be brave to get through those brief scenes and enjoy the movie. As I think parents can enjoy the movie, whether you are nostalgic about it or not. You know what, I just realized something. The film has this Something Wicked This Way Comes atmosphere and mood for a good portion of the film, from the hospital to the first couple of scenes in Oz, to Mombi's chambers, to The Nome King's palace. Oh, it really gets under your skin! I'm so happy to have seen this movie, and I urge people to find these sort of cult sequels to popular films, you can find true gems! Not every sequel is bad, you merely must be brave enough to explore.