by Chris Vegvary
You guys have seen The Wizard of Oz,
haven’t you? It’s a classic. How about the more recent Oz The Great and Powerful? Powerful, powerful stuff (not really).
While it was a newer take on the classic, albeit a prequel, it was more of the
same old nonsense that we were used to in the past. Not in all ways, but it
didn’t feel all that different. I submit to you that we take Todd McFarlane’s
(creator of Spawn) line of action
figure series titled The Twisted Land of
Oz and make us a horror film or even a horror video game based on the
mythology we’ve been given with the original stories.
Let’s pretend for a little while that you’re Dorothy and
you’re wandering through the land of Oz, maybe following some kind of
gold-painted street. Can you imagine the horror you might feel if you saw some
terrifying, poorly put-together, scythe-wielding, zombie-like Scarecrow
shambling out of the cornstalks toward you? Does he want help? Does he want to
help you? Or is he there to take you apart and use pieces of your body to make
up for what he doesn’t have? There’s just no telling with this guy. Remember
how cheerful and light-hearted the Scarecrow from the original was? Not here.
Not anymore.
You, as Dorothy, have managed to talk down the zombified
brute known as the Scarecrow and promised that if he helps you find this
so-called “Wizard of Oz,” he can give the Scarecrow a brain with which to think
instead of mindlessly attacking. So you and the Scarecrow skip on your merry
way down the road, only to run into a half-man, half-machine monster called the
Tin Woodsman, who is frozen in place. He needs oil in order to function,
and there just so happens to be some nearby, so you use it on him. He springs
back to life and immediately starts chopping. You manage to talk him down,
coming to some sort of agreement regarding the need to meet up with this
so-called “Wizard of Oz,” and the Tin Woodsman has sworn not to rip you to
shreds until he gets the special human heart he needs to sacrifice in order to
keep on living.
So the three of you keep right on skipping down that road.
What, oh what, could you possibly come across next? Why, it’s a lion viciously
eviscerating the carcass of a Munchkin that couldn’t take it anymore and hung
himself. Upon seeing you, the lion turns rears back in fear (Munchkin entrails
still hanging from his mouth), and you realize you’ve come across a Cowardly Lion
of some sort. Perhaps he can be of use to you in your quest to murder the
Wicked Witch of the West and find the Wizard before it’s too late. Too late for
what? I don’t know, but it’d be something drastic.
The possibilities for this sort of thing are endless. While
I want to just keep going on with this, I’ve given away enough good ideas for
the time being. Still, it would be really awesome to see something like this
one day, and while I’m not really a fan of any movie in the Oz series, perhaps this could get me
interested in it.
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