Eighteen Film Buffs Talk About The Scariest Movies They’ve Ever Seen
Even film critics watch these movies with the lights on.
Return to Oz
Karina Libbey, The Festivalists
I love horror films. I grew up watching them, from the classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street to weirder stuff like Puppet Master, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff I shouldn’t have been allowed to see. None of it ever really scared me too much. Strangely enough, the one that really stuck with me, and still kind of gives me the heebie jeebies, is Return to Oz.
Picking up after Dorothy’s return to the farm at the end of The Wizard of Oz, we find Aunty Em shipping her off to have electroshock treatment to (of course!) help cure her of her obsession with Oz. During a freak storm, Dorothy is swept back to Oz, which is now under the power of the evil Nome King and Princess Mombi.
Not only is the whole thing pretty dark (Mombi has a hall full of heads, which she switches with her own as the mood takes her, and did I mention the electroshock treatment?), perhaps the most terrifying is the Wheelers that patrol the city – they have WHEELS INSTEAD OF HANDS AND FEET. My dreams will be forever haunted by the Wheelers.