The Wonderful Land of Oz

I have seen better high school productions. No artistic value. Do not watch this. Ever.

What can I say? This "movie" makes Robot Monster look like Citizen Kane. In Robot Monster, the acting was better, it had special effects (stock footage of dinosaurs and atomic explosions) and a memorable character, and more importantly, a coherent storyline. The Wonderful Land of Oz had NONE of these. Watch the Rifftrax version, frealin' hilarious.

Viewing this film left me utterly dumbfounded. I was truly shocked that anybody, at any strata of the movie business, could have produced it and managed to have it released. The plot is described hilariously in meticulous detail in the "External Reviews" section here, so I won't recount it all. Suffice it to say that I've never seen so brazen a display of non-talented "talent" as that on display in this alleged entertainment. It was a joy! Definitely bad in the good way, if you're inclined to watch cinematic dreck for its camp appeal.

The juvenile hero of the piece was Channy Mahon, the son of its producer/director, Barry Mahon. On hearing his first line delivery, my jaw dropped in disbelief. Imagine the sort of monotonous, comatose recitation any average schoolchild will deliver when forced to read aloud in class. Now administer half a bottle of Nyquil to that same child, wait an hour, demand another reading, and you'll get some idea of what young Channy Mahon's line delivery was like. Priceless. He did look cute in that Eddie Munster outfit, though.

The adult cast ranged from merely competent to embarrassingly awful. The sets were apparently made of painted cardboard and plywood. The costumes were, on the whole, surprisingly decent. The songs – oh the songs! You'll want to travel back in time, in "Back to the Future" fashion, just to prevent their conception – and Channy's as well (sorry Channy, I know it wasn't really your fault).

This is an epicurean treat for afficionados of bad cinema. To those looking for actual entertainment in the conventional sense, steer well clear!

OK, This might actually qualify as one of the worst filsm I have ever seen - and I was SO looking forward to it, too, being as huge a fan of the thirties' Oz and also Return to Oz...

God no. Leave it alone. Awful sets, awful acting, a papier-mache cow (believe it or not - not a reason to watch it!!!) and unlistenable sound add up to something less than the sum of it's parts.

The only remotely interesting part is General Jinjur and her army of short-skirted chicks. But even those aren't worth the admission price. Even if the admission price is free.

Water your plants instead.

OK, so this has its moments of "so bad, it's good", but they are much too few and far between. Try sitting through even the short version without fast-forwarding only if you are in need of sleep or seriously enjoy self-inflicted pain. Otherwise, fans of even the worst cinematic dreck should simply watch the 1st five or six minutes of this to capture the flavor of the fiasco, and then scan forward to scenes where new characters are introduced. Or better yet, look for the sampler reel currently available on youtube. "Highlights" of the film include the unbelievably horrible line readings of the lead child actor (the son of director Barry Mahon), the first poorly-timed "moo" of the paper-mache cow (actually just the head of a cow), the "why am I even here" lethargy of poorly-recorded "The Pumpkinhead", and - I suppose - the flying, talking reindeer and the "The Wogglebug". And, oh yes, the mini-skirted army of Gen. Jinjur, actresses that were likely borrowed from the cast of the two adult features Mahon was making (FANNY HILL MEETS THE RED BARON and FANNY HILL MEETS DR. EROTICO) around the very same time that this film was in production.