Trailer Of The Week : Dorothy And The Witches Of Oz

This past week saw the debut of a whole bunch of new trailers, several of which look pretty damn interesting. In addition to disturbing looking films such as The Snowtown Murders & Kid In The Box coming to my attention last week, the long awaited first look at Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter also hit the net. It's pretty damn epic, as epic as you'd expect Honest Abe swinging his trusty axe at vampire's throats to be. But I can be pretty damn certain that most everyone reading this right now has already watched that trailer at least once, so I wanted to instead spotlight something that caught my eye last week that's a bit more under the radar.

There have been a multitude of different Wizard Of Oz film adaptations over the years, several of which put a dark twist on the subject matter. It's certainly nothing new. But this latest attempt at making the scary monkeys from the original film even scarier really looks like a whole lot of fun to me, so I wanted to give it some lovin'.

Check out the trailer for Dorothy And The Witches Of Oz, my favorite trailer from last week!



Now the interesting thing about this one is that it actually hit DVD over in the UK last summer, in the form of an extended mini-series, under the title Witches Of Oz. For its US release, under the longer title Dorothy And The Witches Of Oz, the mini-series has been cut down to a shorter length and given a bit of a visual makeover, with a whole butt load of new effects added to the mix. This new 164 minute version of the film was released into limited theaters this past weekend, with a DVD & Blu-ray release coming on April 10th. Get it? Got it? Good.

I have a serious childhood love for The Wizard Of Oz, as many of you probably also do, but my road to truly loving the material was a bit of a strange one. For whatever reason when I was a little kid, my grandma thought I was a big time fan of the movie, which I really never was. Nevertheless, she'd always buy me toys and coloring books and all different kinds of Oz swag, to the point that I just kinda eventually gave in at some point and embraced it. Now that she's no longer with us, my love for the film has only grown stronger, due to the memories of her that watching it or thinking about it bring up. Though I did end up in my later years selling a lot of the Oz memorabilia she had gotten me, including a Glinda doll with real removable clothes that I hope the eBay buyer never realized I had painted black nipples onto when I was younger, I still to this day treasure a musical snow globe she got me way back when. I'll be damned if that thing doesn't make me tear up everytime I hear it playing.

Anyways, enough of that sappy rambling.

So ya, is it just me or does this film look like a nice hunk of cheesy family fun? It's clearly not taking itself too seriously and with a whacky ensemble cast including Lance Henriksen, Christopher Lloyd, Jeffrey Combs, a couple of Hobbits and former wrestler Al Snow, it's kinda hard not to love it. This thing just might be crazy enough to work!