BOOTLEG FILES 886: “The Wonderful Land of Oz” (1969 kiddie matinee feature).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: On public domain-friendly platforms.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A lapsed copyright.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: This is just what The Criterion Collection needs!
On this particular day – November 22, 2024, to be precise – most moviegoers are fixated on the release of the big-budget musical “Wicked.” But since I prefer the rat-a-tat-tat from a different drum, I am venturing to a lower rent corner of the Yellow Brick Road to celebrate the no-budget 1969 feature “The Wonderful Land of Oz.”
I admit that I approached “The Wonderful Land of Oz” fully expecting to hate the film. After all, the film has a dismal reputation – it turned up on both the Something Weird video label and the RiffTrax snark barbecue. But to my happy surprise, I found this little film to be an offbeat and charming production – it is far from perfect, but if you consider it within the context of its creation, it is a delightfully eccentric work.
Before approaching this film, a bit of background information is needed. “The Wonderful Land of Oz” was not designed for a wide commercial release. Instead, it was strictly aimed at the so-called “kiddie matinee” audiences – these were screenings on Saturdays and Sundays designed specifically for the youngest moviegoers; contemporary grown-ups are not the audience for this type of a work. Back in the day, parents often dropped their kids off at cinemas with kiddie matinee presentations and take care of their weekend shopping chores, returning to retrieve the youngsters when the show was over.
The film is adapted from the 1904 novel “The Marvelous Land of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, and it maintains a surprising level of fidelity to the original work. But due to the film’s too-tight $50,000 budget and a compact 71-minute running time, it could not cram in every aspect of the Baum text. Still, it manages to pack in a great deal of Baum’s vision – including the very surprising twist ending regarding the central character’s backstory.
What emerges is a fun little adventure about the boy Tip, who escapes from his witch guardian Mombi after she threatens to turn him into a stone statue. Tip is accompanied by Jack Pumpkinhead, an anthropomorphic figure that he created from straw, wood and a carved pumpkin. Together, they help the Scarecrow – now the monarch of the Emerald City – overcome the conquering onslaught of General Jingur and her all-female army.
In regard to the costuming and hair-styling aspects, “The Wonderful Land of Oz” is very much a product of 1969. All of the female characters except Mombi and Glinda wear mini-skirts, while Glinda has an elaborate fall in her hairdo. Tip sports the long hair that boys in the late 1960s favored. In terms of the film’s musical numbers – and there are several of them – the songs feel like they were churned out early 1950s-era television shows. Indeed, the soundtrack is closer in style to “Your Hit Parade” than the Woodstock song line-up.
“The Wonderful Land of Oz” was the brainchild of Florida-based Barry Mahon, who specialized in exploitation works such as “Cuban Rebel Girls” (1959) starring Errol Flynn in his last film, along with the wonderfully titled “Prostitutes Protective Society” (1966), “Fanny Hill Meets Dr. Erotico” (1967) and “Prowl Girls” (1968). This film marked Mahon’s debut into family-friendly films, not to mention family filmmaking – he recruited his son Channy to play Tip, but the poor lad lacked the charisma and spunk that one often associates with child actors. Still, the younger Mahon comes across as an average boy, and one can imagine the little boys in 1969 could see themselves in his shoes and would not be judging his thespian skills.
More emotional performances could be found in Zisca Baum (no relation to the creator of Oz) as Mombi – she really isn’t a wicked witch, but she is a bit dyspeptic when it comes to dealing with the less-than-vigorous Tip. Caroline Berner’s General Jingur acts like a drum majorette on steroids and Hilary Lee Gaess’ plastic-pretty Glinda could have easily occupied a float in the Orange Bowl Parade. But these offbeat women add to the fun of this romp. Filmmaker Mahon claimed in an interview that he wanted to get Judy Garland to narrate the film, but that seems fairly unlikely.
By contemporary standards, “The Wonderful Land of Oz” might seem hopelessly silly. The production looks like a filmed record of a children’ theater show – complete with cardboard sets, papier mâché animals and cheapjack costumes. But anyone expecting an MGM-level production equivalent to that certain 1939 classic is ridiculously mistaken. What the film lacks in sophistication, it compensates with sincerity and a sense of harmless fun that is mostly absent in today’s family-friendly fare. It certainly isn’t so dreadful that it warrants the nasty wisecracks of the obnoxious RiffTrax presentation.
If you’re not planning to see “Wicked” this weekend, check out “The Wonderful Land of Oz.” Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying its naïve likability. Now, if only The Criterion Collection can rescue this from public domain purgatory and give it the 4K restoration treatment!
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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