His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz

There are times when the rather unrefined nature of this Oz fantasy feature stands out, but any rough edges are smoothed out by the enjoyable and creative nature of the story and the characters. It's one of an unfortunately small number of Oz features made by L. Frank Baum's own production company, and it is easy to see his influence, in the way that the story and characters are brought to life with such energy and imagination.

The story of "His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz" includes several of the characters who are familiar from the much better known "The Wizard of Oz", plus some added characters, but it is a much different story, and pretty interesting in its own right. The cast all do a solid job with the characters, and the cast includes several performers who were regulars in the short-lived series. Fred Woodward also performs several of his costume animal characters.

The old-fashioned style would probably keep this and the other movies in the series from enjoying a wide popularity now, but it's of good quality for its era. The special effects are sometimes rough, but imaginative, and several of them come off pretty well. There are times when the editing seems pretty odd, but that could well be a result of physical defects that have occurred over time. The movie has its occasional flaws, but it was obviously made with care, good humor, and enthusiasm, and it is certainly worth seeing for silent movie fans.

AKA: His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz

In this dip into the Oz universe, is Princess Gloria, stuck in one of those classic situations, where the King wants her to marry the rich old guy, but she is in love with someone else. Meanwhile, another girl, named Dorothy, is captured and made a prisoner in the castle. Also, a scarecrow is put up in one of the local fields. To thwart the Princess' love for Pon, the King has the wicked witches (in really bad costumes), freeze her heart. The scarecrow comes to life and falls in love with Gloria. Since her heart is frozen, Gloria now wanders around like a unemotional zombie not caring at all. The evil witch Mombi beats all the hay out of the Scarecrow and he needs to be rescued by Dorothy and Pon.

The actor portraying the Scarecrow looks like he is a clown performer, in fact, the Scarecrow looks more like a clown than a scarecrow. Probably another reason why early audiences didn't like these films, bad costumes and make-up. After Gloria wanders off, the rest of the crew runs into the tin woodsman, who is in a much better costume then anyone else, even though parts of him look like they are about to fall off. Then he cuts off Mombi's head. Next up is the Cowardly Lion. Who actually looks kind of cool, but still a guy in a lion costume. They do attempt some effects in this film, such as the Scarecrow underwater. Not bad attempts for 1914.

As the film rolls along in its totally unorganized fashion, we also see another reason why audiences didn't react well to this film. They shot these films in the forests, streams and lakes that can be found just about anywhere. All they were giving the audience was people in bad costumes running around in someone's back yard, not visiting an enchanted world. This dizzying story, fraught with strange little dancing skits, doesn't give the audience of the day what they were looking for. This film was re-released after its initial run a second time as the New Wizard of Oz and it actually did better just because of a title change, because the Scarecrow is not a very exciting character in this film and that part gets lost by the time you get to the end. No wonder it did better. This kind of storytelling needed some more time for the artform of filmmaking to grow some more. It needed to wait until 1939.

4.4 (E- MyGrade) = 5 IMDB.

This is the third and final film in Baum's personally produced Oz trilogy of 1914. The three pictures are all essentially the same childishness--with magic, a journey and animal costumes. The camera-work and pacing are static and primitive even by 1914 standards, while the performers are quite the opposite--both of which can get annoying and boring. We get poor framing, from a generally stationary position, and the shots linger on much longer than they should, while the performers, except for the literally cold-hearted princess, are in constant motion, mostly broadly gesticulating and doing some knockabout nonsense. Most of it has nothing to do with anything imaginative or with adventure, and I don't see how it could be humorous to anyone but a child. There is some trick photography, but nothing new; in fact, these tricks (superimpositions, stop substitutions, a fish tank between characters and the camera to represent being under the sea, a tilted camera to make them appear to be going up and down stream) had been in use for near a decade or more even by then. At least, the makers of this Oz trilogy put some care and energy, albeit a nauseating excess of it, in front of the camera although not behind it.

I wonder how popular these films were, although, apparently, they weren't popular enough, because Baum's production company was short lived. There doesn't seem to have been many movies back then which were so specifically targeted at children. The industry at the time, which was even before "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), was still struggling even to attract middle and upper class women to theatres. Times have certainly changed.

This was, of course, one of the early movies, and special effects were not an issue, for which we may be thankful in this day and age when many movies look more like video arcade games.

The plot is bizarre, to say the least. It borders between dream state and LSD trip. It would be interesting to know what early twentieth century audiences thought when they viewed this.

There a motley group of characters, and really, no one takes center stage all the time. People traipse aimlessly, meeting strange characters, and unique situations. Indeed, the wall of water would be a fresh idea as of the day of this critique.

There is a strange sexuality to this one. Super sexy witches dance around very sensually, and would be the envy of the scantily clad girls in today's movies. They are quite beautiful and striking. Again, audiences in this day must have been affected some way. It is too bad that the sexuality seems to be equated with witches, though. Sort of false advertising.

The music is probably too lame for today, and you may want to play your own while watching. Viewable mostly from an artistic perspective or in a social situation, and not as a sit down and watch movie.

When you think of the land of Oz, you probably think of Toto, a tornado, ruby slippers, a yellow brick road and flying monkeys. But if you look back before the 1939 movie, you find something more eye-popping. There was a movie made in 1925 starring Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man; it was the sort of movie that makes you think "What in the name of anything holy were they smoking when they came up with this?". In fact, it contained no Munchkins or yellow brick road.

Go back even further and you find "His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz". This is an equally bizarre one. Although we have the Munchkins, Dorothy is a supporting character. The emphasis is on Princess Gloria of the Emerald City, whose autocratic father wants to marry her off to a buffoon while she has her eye on someone else. The wizard, scarecrow, tin man and lion have their roles in the story, while there are multiple witches. Yeah, this is some weird stuff. The movie will probably be of interest more as a historical reference, but it's impressive what they were able to pull off. Worth seeing.

One interesting piece of trivia is that Button-Bright is played by Mildred Harris, who later married Charlie Chaplin; Milla Jovovich played her in Richard Attenborough's "Chaplin".