the horror

Last month I chronicled the top five (and a half) nightmare-inducing characters from my childhood. I heard from a number of people that lived blessed and sheltered childhoods and were never subjected to the parental torture device known as "Return to Oz." I tried to overcome the PTSD and explain it, but I'm fairly certain I never succeeded in conveying the horror. Thankfully, there are other brilliant websites to do it for me. From one of my favorites, Television Without Pity:

The movie that traumatized a million children, Return to Oz followed Dorothy Gale after she returned home to Kansas immediately following the events of the Wizard of Oz. Rife with post-traumatic stress and pesky fond memories of her friends from Oz, Auntie Em tried to cure Dorothy by subjecting her to fricking electro-shock therapy, but luckily Dorothy was busted out of the torture clinic by an adorable child (who of course was killed in the process, because literally every single second of this movie is horrifying), and woke up in Oz to find the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion turned to stone and the Scarecrow MIA. Not that there's time to worry about them when she's being chased by homicidal maniac cops called Wheelers, who are like clown hobos with gargoyle masks and rusty wheels for hands and feet, imprisoned by a witch with 31 detachable heads, and her only friends are a talking chicken and something called a Jack Pumpkinhead, whom something else called a Nome King tries to eat. Suffice it to say the guys who made Shock Treatment wish they had the Return to Oz people's dealer.
(That's from their Worst Cult Sequels Ever photo gallery)

And, in case you haven't been traumatized by the video in a while, here's a clip of those Wheelers: