Big Worlds On Small Screens & “Fantasy Films From the Eighties That Weren’t That Bad”—Rebecca Fisher Discusses “Return To Oz”

~ by Rebecca Fisher

Children’s films of the Eighties and early Nineties are notorious for being completely and utterly terrifying. True story: my second cousin was so traumatized by the filmic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches that her parents had to take her to a therapist. In re-watching Return to Oz to refresh my memory for the sake of this review, I was astounded to think it was ever considered appropriate for children at all!

Maybe we were a lot tougher back when I was a kid; maybe...