Clive Grimgrits Reviews: The Wizard of Oz

Finding myself in lockdown and having fuck all to do, I thought I’d go through some of my old film collection and see what I had there.

As the world’s most eminent movie critic, it’s all too easy to focus on the new releases. But as they’ve all dried up, it always worth going through some of the old classic and and assessing them as if they were new.

The Wizard of Oz needs no introduction but I’m going to give you one anyway. It’s about a girl called Dorothy Gale who lives on a farm with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. She’s got a little prick of a dog called Toto who goes and bites one of Dorothy’s neighbours. Quite rightly, her neighbour tries to get the shitbag of a dog put down but Dorothy runs away and so begins one of the most weirdest movies you’ll ever see. Whoever wrote this shit must have been smacked up to the tits.

First, Dorothy meets this guy called Professor Marvel, who tells Dorothy that her Aunt Em is sick. As she goes back to the house, this tornado comes along and lifts both Dorothy and the farmhouse up into the air. The house then lands in this wacko fucking place called Munchkinland where she meets a rather gorgeous good witch (never knew that such a thing existed but for the sake of the story, she’s there). She informs Dorothy that she’s a murderer, having killed some bad witch.

Then this other bad witch turns up and says she’s going to fuck Dorothy up.

Then Dorothy is told to follow the Yellowbrick Road and find the Wizard of Oz (hence the name), where she comes across a scarecrow, a tin man (what the fuck’s that?) and a lion. Obviously.

Man. That’s some serious hardcore drug problem this writer’s got.

They start singing some songs.

They find the wizard, only to find that he’s not really a wizard.

Then there’s a balloon or something.

Then some clicking of some slippers.

And she’s back home before we know what the fuck just went on.

This film is the sort of film you think you’ve dreamt after eating a shitload of cheese. There’s some shit-scary monkeys flying around at one point and the whole thing smacks of a bad acid tablet experience.

There are some pretty nifty special effects, especially considering the movie was made way back in 1939. The movie flits between black and white and colour and I’m sure there’s some moral in the tale somewhere but I can’t be arsed to work it all out. The underlying symbolism of the populism featured throughout the film is something I just cut and pasted off the internet to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about.

Rating 2/5