The Wonderful Land Of Oz (1969) Parents secretly despise their kids. I've become increasingly convinced of this
each time I see one of these movies where the parents have forced their kid to
star in their ultra-cheap exploitation movie. I suspect that it has something
to do with the fact that kids are living embodiments of that one night spent
with a case of Pabst and the easiest broad at the honky tonk. Who needs that
moment of weakness shoved in your face for eighteen years?
Some parents delight in making sure the little rat bastards pay either by
dressing them up like tarts in those underage beauty contests that only stage
mothers and pedophiles love. Some push their physically deficient kids to
become the next Tris Speaker (was there a better player in the 1910s besides Ty
Cobb?) when the best they can hope for is that someday they'll be a bench
warmer in one of those adult slow pitch softball leagues where the only thing
anyone can consistently hit is the keg located in the dugout. Then you've got the parents who take all this combination
self-absorption/sadism to an entirely different level. These parents have
somehow figured out that while it would be great if they could humiliate their
kid to let him know his place, it would be simply exquisite if a worldwide
audience could view the car wreck-like results. This is where you get your
father-son filmmaking teams. For some reason this activity is generally
confined to the father-director trying to market the actor-son as the next
Mickey Rooney (and his thirty-eight ex-wives can tell you how that turned out).
There may have been incidents involving mothers and daughters which I am
unfamiliar with and there was that bizarre incident with Teenage Devil Dolls where the son actually involved the family in his horrific film, but mostly it
seems to be a father-son deal.  The father we are indicting this time is one Barry Mahon. Barry was a prolific
filmmaker, oddly vacillating his directing chores between cheap sex movies like Fanny Hill Meets The Red Baron, Run Swinger Run!, and International Smorgas-Board and cheap kiddie flicks like Jack And The Beanstalk (also on this DVD from Something Weird), Thumbelina, and Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny. This two pronged approach Barry took to his career puts us in the unfortunate
position of not knowing exactly what his movie The Girl With The Magic Box is about.
This time out though, Barry is clearly aiming at the cut-rate kiddie matinee
market and manages only to hit poor Chan Mahon. Chan? Before you get all over
Barry for naming his kid after an Oriental detective's surname, you should know
that Chan is credited in this movie as Channy. See, that's good parenting.
When you saddle a kid with a stupid first name that will lead him to get
sodomized by broomsticks in the locker room at the hands of the cool kids on
the football team, you should at least give him a cute, endearing nickname.
And also put them in a movie that requires them to wear a velvet suit made up
of a jacket and short pants. I think we all remember what happened to that kid
that starred in Song Of The South and was forced to wear that same get up. At least little Channy didn't have
to wear one of those hats with a wispy ribbon on it. Of course, little Channy
was forced to utter lines like "but I don't want to be a princess!" so he may
as well bust out the KY. Channy stars in what looks to be a sequel of sorts to The Wizard Of Oz since the Scarecrow is now the king of Oz, the wizard having been deposed by a
gal in a pair of ruby slippers, blue gingham dress and taped down breasts
(trust me - you don't want to get the Munchkins worked up if you can help it).
Apparently L. Frank Baum wrote fourteen books about Oz and since no one ever
bothers to read them, movie makers like Mahon are free to make their own
versions while the audience wonders idly, "is Barry Mahon just a really rotten
writer-director or is there a reason that L. Frank never had another one of his
books made into a movie that I've ever heard of?" The back of the box claims this was filmed at an old amusement park down in
Florida, but I could have sworn that it was filmed on the stage of my junior
high auditorium. Watching poor Channy utilize an acting style that alternately
wobbled between whiny and surly, but never veered from a delivery that was
entirely robotic, I couldn't help but be transported back in time to 1983 to
the Walsh Junior High presentation of Bye Bye Birdie whenever Channy attempted to sing.  While the movie wisely uses a lip synch technique that allows for a
studio-bound version of the song to be used complete with accompanying
instruments, the movie unwisely retains the actors from the movie as the
singers. While no one can really be described as having a voice that would
make Kate Smith push herself away from the buffet at the Ponderosa to have a
sing-off with any of them, it is Channy himself who is far and away the worst
of any of these singers as he is prone to a unique singing style that sees him
choking on the last word of each line he sings. That's not to say that he
could carry a tune the rest of the time, it's just that at least he got all
those words out before he ran out of breath.
I suppose that the benefit of the studio recording is that the memory-impaired
Channy could sing the song until he got all the lines right, unlike in the
movie where he seems to momentarily forget his lines and muffs them slightly,
though the worst offender of this has to be Glinda the Good who manages to
stumble over a few lines in her big speech after the interlopers are run out of
Oz. Her speech serves to explain everything that's going on with Tip (Chan) and
his evil step mother, the witch named Mombi, but between Glinda's botching of
her big speech, her silly poofy pink dress, Toys R Us tiara, and her noxious
singing voice, I never could figure out why she was called "the Good". Glinda
the Good Riddance I get. Glinda the Good is a mystery to me though. I was also reminded of my junior high play (other than because I still believe
that it should have been me in the spotlight, essaying the role of chick-magnet
rock and roller Conrad Birdie, though I did play an equally important role as
one of the ushers in my burgundy velour Braggin' Dragon sweater from Sears)
because of Barry Mahon's idea of set design. His sets looked like painted
cardboard and wood and he didn't even bother with backgrounds. When the movie
you're watching opens up with a purple papier mache cow and has all the
articulation of a homecoming float, you know that the guy who played
Pumpkinhead and the gal who played Glinda the Good most likely had the tool
belt strapped on and the paint brushes in their hands between takes. With all the elements in place for a kiddie flick of historically abominable
proportions all we needed was a story to go with it. Barry doesn't disappoint
us there either. His kid plays Tip who is living with his evil stepmother
Mombi who also happens to be a real witch (really - she uses magic powder and
everything!). Showing us that he's mentally challenged right out of the
starting gate, Tip decides that he should play a prank on Mombi. I don't know
about you, but I can think of better people to play a prank on that somebody
that hates me and also practices the black arts, but I guess that's how I got
to where I am today and why Tip ended up pleading not to be turned into a girl. Tip's prank involves making a pumpkinheaded guy that he christens Jack
Pumpkinhead. I wasn't too sure of the point of the prank, but the next thing I
know, Mombi has dumped magic powder on Jack and brought him to life. She also
told Tip that his prank was going to get his dumb ass turned into a statue in
the morning. Showing that he's not fall down stupid, Tip promptly runs away,
enlisting Jack (who annoyingly calls Tip "father" the entire movie), and they
make their way to Oz to get some help from the Scarecrow.  Along the way, they meet up with various people such as General Jinjur
(pronounced "Ginger") a gal in a drum majorette uniform who is leading an army
of similarly clad chicks in an effort to overthrow the Scarecrow for some
reason. Tip also meets the Tin Woodsman who now has a heart bolted to his
chest, and a pointless dude named Wogglebug. He is distinguished by the fact
that he wears the worst make-up in the film (and remember - he's competing
against a guy with a funnel on his head!).
None of this is very interesting as they basically stand around yattering at
each other in their absurd voices (the Scarecrow and the Pumpkinhead are the
worst offenders) trying to remember their lines while the sets try to remember
not to fall on them. You can't help but laugh when its finally revealed that
Tip is really a girl in disguise and is in fact Ozma, the rightful heir to the
throne of Oz. The ultimate in parental humiliation is visited upon Chan as he
is forced to admit that maybe it won't be so bad being turned back into the
girl he always was deep down inside! Something Weird has loaded the DVD with extras including another movie (Jack And The Beanstalk) and a featurette made by H.G. Lewis (which we look at with Jack and the Beanstalk) as well as some cartoons, but the best extras have to be the numerous
trailers for other kiddie movies from some of the same people. While I'm sure
that they stink just like this butt-rot does, how can I watch a guy in a skunk
costume named Stinky the Skunk, mucking around with Little Red Riding Hood, a
wolf, a vampire, a Frankenstein monster, and Siamese twins in the classic Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters and not desperately want to see it? How do I sleep at night when I know
there's a movie called Snow White And Rose Red that involves a guy being turned into a bear thus making scenes of Snow White
and friends dancing around their house with a guy in a bear suit a reality? The feature here is really hideous and reeks of something that I think would be
quite enjoyable if you were fairly inebriated. Unfortunately I was stone cold
sober when I watched it, but even that didn't interfere with my enjoyment of
coming attractions from not one, but two versions of Puss In Boots! Guys in cat suits wearing boots hanging around a castle with their pal in a
chicken outfit? Why didn't we ever put that play on in junior high?
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