The story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.
– L. Frank Baum in his Introduction to The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (1900)
It’s strange to think that this was the sentiment behind the story that became the film that gave me nightmares as a child. The Wicked Witch of the West, the flying monkeys and the initial “floating head” version of the Wizard shown in the 1939 MGM motion picture each worked effectively as nightmare batter for my young mind, and as a young boy with bad eyes from the start, very familiar with lengthy and painful eye examinations, Dorothy’s question to the estheticians in the Emerald City “…Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown?” resonated with me in a way I’m certain was not the intent of the original author.
So In Hack/Slash #14: Over the Rainbow, Cassie and Vlad are attempting to track down a Slasher who is plaguing the film set of a remake of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
Now I’ll admit that at first glance perhaps no one immediately thinks that a horror-based story is going to inevitably crossover with either the classic 1900 L. Frank Baum novel The Wonderful Wizard of OZ or the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of OZ. But to be fair, the story, and especially the MGM film have become so influential in popular culture that I’ve seen it prequelled, deconstructed and even had that deconstruction turned into a musical. It has also been referred to in everything from the popularity of the quote, to reimaginings, and even a reference in the horror film Saw II.
Also the 1985 film Return to OZ may have one of the most terrifying sequences I ever saw in a film as a child.
So adding a Slasher-twist to the story is, in my mind, nothing short of genius. The story follows both two women on the set running from the Slasher (who has possessed the productions Tin Man and speaks only in lyrics from the classic “If I Only Had a Heart”) and Cassie and Vlad as they race to the set to put an end to the Slasher himself.
IMAGE USED
Hack/Slash of Oz Alternate Cover. Retrieved online from http://www.newkadia.com/?HackSlash_The_Series_Comic-Book-Covers=1111127128
No comments:
Post a Comment