.png){kind=link}
Return to Oz Read Along & Record book
In 1985, Disneyland Records released a 7" 33 1/3 book and record read-along from the movie Return to Oz.
About It[]
Return To Oz is a 13-minute 7-inch full-length long-playing storyteller record adaptation of the movie of the same name, which is loosely based on second and third novels of L. Frank Baum's fourteen Oz books, and much more faithful to them. The record also comes packaged with a 24-page read-along picture storybook with pages that are condensed versions using many wonderful rare full-color promotional photograph stills from the original motion picture that are all based on W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill's original spectacular Victorian-era in-book illustrations
It retells an actually decent, good, and nice short adaptation of the story of the film in a radio theater-style format, but with subtle changes, since it loses some vital key details with some minor bad guys and gives Tik-Tok slightly more of a role. It contains none of the audio from the film, but instead uses new voice actors, who are a small cast of British-sounding sound-alikes, to record dialogue. One of the cast members is a little girl named Dana Howerton, who sounds a bit like Fairuza Balk, performing the role of Dorothy.
Changes from the film[]
The changes are:
- Billina is described as Dorothy's pet
- Aunt Em does mention taking Dorothy to see a doctor, but Doctor Worley is not mentioned by name or even actually acknowledged, but he is in a photo.
- It is Nurse Wilson who gets the attention, and straps Dorothy to a table and the electric shock therapy machine, and the lightning allows the blonde girl at the hospital to suddenly free Dorothy and escape with her into the storm.
- No mention of finding a lunch-pail tree, just the broken yellow brick road which leads to the ruined emerald city - there Dorothy encounters the wheelers, the head wheeler saying how the nome king rules now and that they should take Dorothy to Mombi because she knows of the scarecrow, then Dorothy escapes them.
- Tik-Tok is still under his majesty the scarecrow's instructions to wait for Dorothy, he somehow knows of princess Mombi and takes Dorothy to her, without fighting the wheelers. Tik-Tok also knows that the nome king hates chickens and hides Billina in Jack's head when they arrive on the mountain later.
- While it is established that the nome king has the ruby slippers, there is nothing about his transformation, he apparently only offers the game for Dorothy to play, but if she guesses wrong then she and her friends will be turned into ornaments just like the scarecrow. Naturally, Dorothy makes a lucky guess: "The pincushion! It's green - like the emerald city!"
- Oddly, despite the image of a giant mountainous nome king, he bursts angrily through the door, and there is no mention of Mombi following Dorothy to warn him, being caged or any of her demise/punishment being mentioned. Only the king's demise is retained and Dorothy reclaiming the ruby slippers to make her wishes, which is returning to the Emerald City and all life to be returned to this land, separately.
- Scarecrow suggests Dorothy to be queen, which she wants to but can't and wishes, allowing the blonde girl to step out from the lass as Ozma, long lost queen of Oz, again, Tik-Tok knows!
- Ozma is on the throne wearing the ruby slippers, and that allows Dorothy to say good-bye promising to never forget her friends, as a mist carries her back to Aunt Em, worried that Dorothy had drowned but is glad to be safe and welcomes her back, saying she will never worry about Dorothy's dreams again!