Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

jacobjohntaylor1 This a great movie. It is better then The Wizard of Oz (1939) It is a great movie. A girl from Kansas find a magical land. The 1939 remake is good. But this is better. This is a great movie. 5 is underrating it. It is no 5. It a lot better. This is one of the best fantasy movies of all time. This movie is a must see. It one of the best version of The Wizard of Oz that I have seen. See this movie. It is a great movie. It is a must. Violet MacMilian was great actress. This a great movie. Frank Moore was a great actor. Pierre Couderc was a great actor. Fred Woodward was a great actor. Mai Wells was great actor. This a great movie. Great movie great movie great movie. See it.

Cineanalyst This is the third and final film in Baum's personally produced Oz trilogy of 1914. The three pictures are all essentially the same childishness--with magic, a journey and animal costumes. The camera-work and pacing are static and primitive even by 1914 standards, while the performers are quite the opposite--both of which can get annoying and boring. We get poor framing, from a generally stationary position, and the shots linger on much longer than they should, while the performers, except for the literally cold-hearted princess, are in constant motion, mostly broadly gesticulating and doing some knockabout nonsense. Most of it has nothing to do with anything imaginative or with adventure, and I don't see how it could be humorous to anyone but a child. There is some trick photography, but nothing new; in fact, these tricks (superimpositions, stop substitutions, a fish tank between characters and the camera to represent being under the sea, a tilted camera to make them appear to be going up and down stream) had been in use for near a decade or more even by then. At least, the makers of this Oz trilogy put some care and energy, albeit a nauseating excess of it, in front of the camera although not behind it.I wonder how popular these films were, although, apparently, they weren't popular enough, because Baum's production company was short lived. There doesn't seem to have been many movies back then which were so specifically targeted at children. The industry at the time, which was even before "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), was still struggling even to attract middle and upper class women to theatres. Times have certainly changed.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre As his books about Oz became increasingly popular, L. Frank Baum tried to branch out into other media. His novel "Tik-Tok in Oz" was originally a grandiose stage musical. Eventually, Baum (never a good businessman) used the profits from his novels to finance a low-budget film studio which turned out several silent films, nearly all of them fantasies. "His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz" is the best of Baum's films. His Oz book "The Scarecrow of Oz" (still in print) is actually a novelisation of this silent fantasy film, which was produced before the novel was written.Although crudely staged, with some low-budget special effects that were laughably obvious even for 1914, "His Majesty" is an action-filled and imaginative movie that should still appeal to viewers (including children) even today. There are some flaws: the actress playing "little girl" Dorothy is clearly an adult woman; worse luck, the "little boy" Button-Bright is obviously played by a teenage girl (who became Mrs Charlie Chaplin!).The plot of this film is almost identical to the main plot of the novel (which contains several subplots not found here ... including one about creatures named Orks, long before Tolkien invented Orcs). Princess Gloria is in love with Pon, a lowly gardener's boy, and he loves her. Because Pon is far beneath Gloria's station, King Krewl and Googly-Goo decide to break up the romance by engaging Mombi the witch to freeze Pon's heart. There are some interesting Georges Melies-type special effects here: crudely done yet imaginative. Mombi holds her hands in front of Pon's chest. In a slow dissolve, his (valentine-shaped) heart appears in her hands. In another slow dissolve, icicles appear on his heart. Then another dissolve as the heart (now frozen) is replaced within his chest.There is one bizarre scene in which the Tin Woodman uses his axe to chop off a witch's head ... but fear not, parents! Your kiddies will probably laugh when they see how it's done. The special-effects trickery in the decapitation sequence is blatantly obvious to even the most unsophisticated viewer.SPOILERS COMING. Eventually the Wizard of Oz arrives. (Looking a great deal like the Wizard in the Oz books ... which is more than I can say of Frank Morgan in that overrated MGM movie.) The Wizard takes out a tin can with a misspelt label reading "CANNED SANDWITCHES". A wave of his hands, and the can grows giant-sized. Another wave of his hand, and Mombi the witch is trapped inside the tin can, which the Wizard then shrinks back to its original size. He takes a paintbrush and carefully paints out certain letters on the label, so that it now reads "CANNED WITCH". This sort of humour is actually quite effective here.An amazing performance (or group of performances) is given by Fred Woodward, who plays a large number of animals in this movie ... including a human-sized jackdaw. For most of his roles, Woodward walks on all fours, holding short stilts in his hands to lengthen his arms so that they become forelegs.AMAZING TRIVIA NOTE: L. Frank Baum had been involved in amateur theatricals ever since his adolescence, and he owned a large number of costumes. After his death, his widow sold these to a Los Angeles costume jobber. One particular item -- a shabby frock coat which had seen better days -- was later worn by Frank Morgan in his role as Professor Marvel in "The Wizard of Oz". Supposedly, the coat was chosen utterly at random because it fit Morgan and its shabbiness suited the character ... and it wasn't recognised as Baum's coat until his widow saw the film in a preview. True story!I thoroughly enjoyed "His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz", and I continue to enjoy it after repeated viewings. I wish that a certain overrated MGM musical (starring Judy Whatsername) were less popular, and that L. Frank Baum's short films were better-known.

WeepingGodFilms Baum's inept adaptation of a couple of his Oz books is a sad sight indeed. Shots are poorly framed, often excluding some of the actor's faces from view. The plot is moronic and the acting stale. The cast is much too large and he seems to throw in characters just to throw them in. The special effects are cheesy, especially when the Tin Woodsman chops off the Witch's head.However, this silent film does feature an excellent performance by the man playing the Wizard and the young woman playing the Princess Ozma. There's a good, melodramatic concept, this young woman walking around with everyone left and right falling in love with her, and she being incapable of loving them back-- it makes for a good visual. But the rest of the film is just so incompetent that's it obscures its good points.