Wizard of Oz: The Ultimate Horror Movie

August 2010 marks the 71st anniversary of The Wizard of Oz, one of the most horrifying movies of all time. (Historians, however, will bitch slap you for calling August 25th the film’s debut, when actually it opened at the Strand Theater in the easily-pronounced Oconomowoc, Wisconsin on August 12, 1939. I was in a bar around the corner and didn’t even notice.)

Due to its enormous budget ($2,777,000.00, which in 1939 was, like, half a billion dollars), Wizard barely made a profit. But as soon as the word got out about the movie’s flying monkeys, it was as if someone turned on the money spigot. Today, the Library of Congress named The Wizard of Oz as the most-watched film in history, and has since made over eleven trillion dollars and 37 cents.

But what of the sub-text of this so-called “ultimate family film”? Drugs, hallucinations, mutants, wiccans, bestiality, demonic conjuring, airborne primates, singing… Only thing missing is the Necronomicon.

The plot follows thrill-seeking bitch Dorothy, who runs away from her Kansas farm looking for adventure and a tattoo/piercing shop. She doesn’t get far before an F-5 tornado/drugs whisks her away to an enchanted land with talking trees and hookers floating around in bubbles. This is getting to be too much of a head rush, so Dorothy decides she wants to go back to the farm and shovel pig crap. The floating hooker tells her the Wizard of Oz is the only guy who can give her a “lift” back home. (The “wizard” is an old man with a penchant for school girls.)

Along the way to Oz she hooks up with three pimps and off they go in search of mushrooms. But it isn’t until they piss off the west side’s gang leader, a green-faced witch who huffs paint fumes and lives in a sweet condo filled with crap-throwing monkeys with wings, that this magical journey goes off the yellow brick runway. Turns out Dorothy jacked some property of the witch and the little ho won’t give it up. It’s on now.

Flying monkeys, with a taste for human flesh, are dispatched to jack the girl. Her pimps give chase and there’s a serious street rumble, ending in the witch being whacked and the posse heading back to the magic kingdom. What follows next is a finale filled with lies, deceit, and green smoke, to say nothing of the symbolism of five leering guys all standing around Dorothy’s bed when she comes down off the ’shrooms.

Happy anniversary, Wizard of Oz. Thanks for being the gateway drug for generations. Are you happy with yourself?