Return to Oz and The Peanut Butter Solution: 1985's Two Weirdest Kids Movies

Return to Oz and The Peanut Butter Solution both came out in 1985; both were sold as children's movies, and both are genuinely upsetting. Meaghan and Arthur team up with Annie and Caroline from the Drawn to Darkness podcast for a Childhood Trauma double bill made entirely of films that were technically made for kids.RETURN TO OZ: THE DISNEY SEQUEL THAT STARTS IN AN ASYLUMThe first thirty minutes are a straight horror film. Dorothy has insomnia, Aunt Em hands her to Dr. Worley, and we get a silent nurse, a dark corridor, restraints, and screaming from other rooms.The electroshock therapy is a Disney invention. It appears nowhere in L. Frank Baum's Oz books.Fairuza Balk was actually the right age for the character in her feature debut, which makes the stakes land harder than the 1939 version ever did.The lightning cuts the power right before the machine fires. Everyone on this episode thinks it worked anyway.THE OZ BOOKS, MGM'S COPYRIGHT, AND WHAT DISNEY COULD NOT USEThe film combines The Land of Oz (1904) and Ozma of Oz (1907). Baum wrote fourteen Oz novels before he died in 1919.MGM owned the 1939 designs, so Disney paid for the ruby slippers (silver shoes in the book) and left the gingham dress alone.Book two is a girls' revolt fought with knitting needles, and the messaging has not aged into anything coherent.The Gump's reward for saving Ozma is asking to be taken apart. That is in the novel.PRINCESS MOMBI, THE WHEELERS, AND THE NOME KINGJean Marsh plays Nurse Wilson and Princess Mombi, the same doubling trick the 1939 film used. She also played Bavmorda in Willow.Mombi's hall of heads is Elizabeth Bathory logic in a Disney film. Trophies, kept young, screaming.The Wheelers sit between Freddy Krueger's stretched silhouette and Biff's gang in Back to the Future Part II. The book defuses them. The film does not.Nicol Williamson plays Dr. Worley and the Nome King, so Dorothy's real trauma follows her into Oz wearing a different face.THE PEANUT BUTTER SOLUTION AND QUEBEC'S TALES FOR ALL SERIESThe second Tales for All entry, directed by Michael Rubbo and produced by Rock Demers. The series now runs to twenty-seven films and markets itself as family-friendly.Michael gets a fright, loses his hair, ignores the ghosts' measurements, and everything after that is consequences.The art teacher kidnaps a neighbourhood of kids for a paintbrush sweatshop and wears Michael's hair as a jacket. His dog gets a matching vest.Celine Dion recorded her first English-language songs for this soundtrack at seventeen.MONTREAL ON SCREEN AND TRAUMA THAT ACTUALLY STICKSThree characters are brothers with three different accents, none French Canadian, which contradicts a claim made on the How Did This Get Made episode.Return to Oz earns real credit for admitting the first film broke its protagonist, then tells her to keep quiet or go back to the asylum. Follow us & Subscribe:SpotifyApple PodcastTikTokInstagramThreadsGrave Tone Horror Podcast Website Background music by: Steve Swisher from the Producer's Chair Podcast Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.