We continue our look at villains of Oz adaptions. What’s funny is that these two movies have a thirty-nine year gap between them. It’d be easy to write The Wiz of as The Wizard of Oz with all Black cast but that feels disingenuous. Now it is important to note the Broadway production was one of the first with a majority African-American creative team.. The Wiz is such an important piece of musical theater history considering how it gave so many jobs to African-American performers and creatives. It also as historic in the number of Tonys it won that year including best musical.
Four years after the original Broadway show debuted, a movie adaption debuted starring Diana Ross as Dorothy. She fought for this role and this is an aspect that has been criticized as many believe she was too old for the role. Much like the original book and the Garland adaption, Dorothy in The Wiz is a child or at best a teen. Here in the movie, she is I want to say a kindergarten or preschool teacher and her timid nature is less endearing here.
The movie also takes the characters out of Kansas and places them in Harlem. When I first saw this movie, this was a change that bugged me as I thought Kansas was essential to the story but home doesn’t have to mean Kansas. Home means family and home means where you are welcome. Yes, the stage version takes place in Kansas and that makes sense but yet in a way, I believe moving the setting to Harlem allows The Wiz to have more of it’s own identity. Before everything was sanitized, New York had a grungy feel and it was built on the back of minorities and I believe using Harlem and New York to a greater extent reflects the contributions of said community.
It also allows this movie’s Oz to stand out more as it’s not so beholden to what came before. As much as I love Wicked, its version of Oz pulls heavily from the 39 movie. Whereas using the aesthetics of New York for Oz in this movie allows this Oz to have more flavor.
I know this movie used to be hated on but I believe over time, I feel that this movie has been reevaluated. Heck, it’s getting a Criterion release this June. I’d like to think people are coming around to this movie and appreciating it for doing something different that isn’t so beholden to what came before. Also, we’ve had many and I mean many bad Oz movies since this film was released. While acknowledging the changes made, there are still changes made that do not sit right with me. For example, Aunt Em singing the opening, “The Feeling that We Once Had” at a Thanksgiving setting robs it of the intimate emotion between her and Dorothy.
Look at this version and compare to the version form the decades later NBC live telecast, this song is meant to be a moment between Aunt Em and Dorothy.
First Appearance/Personality/Villain Song
It takes a good while before we meet Evilleene in the movie and when we do it’s through song. With the number. “Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News”
She is loud, angry and boisterous. It is interesting to consider how her lair has been transferred from a castle to a sweatshop which imo reflects the time this was released in and how the people under her can never escape. It honestly makes the sweatshop setting much more intimidating in my opinion. We even hear one of the Winkies mention it had been six months since their last lunch break. Evillene doesn’t care and this shows how tyrannical she is.
Grand Desire
Much like her 1939 counterpart, Evillene wants the silver slippers to control Oz and also take revenge against Dorothy for the death of her sister, Evermean. Though whereas with the 1939 Witch, that felt minor, Evillene’s anger about the death of her sister feels palpable.
Lackeys
The design choices made in this movie truly let you know this is the ‘70s and screams nightmare fuel. The Winkies are a prefect example of this.
Winkies
The Winkies have a creepy design yet I can’t help but feel bad for them considering how badly Evillene treats them and get a sense of revelation when you see them as beautiful people shedding the skin they were in during Brand New Day.
Flying Monkeys
The Flying Monkeys almost give me centaur vibes with their top being monkeys and their bottom half being motorcycles. The idea of the monkeys being a biker gang is cool and adds another unique flair that the Muppets would ape for their Wizard of Oz adaption. (No, I am not covering that horrible movie)
Demise
Okay, Evillene’s demise has always kinda bugged me. She knows water melts her so why does she have sprinklers in her sweatshop. Yes, The Wicked Witch in the 1939 movie had a bucket of water in her castle but I find that excusable whereas this has always bugged me and then the fact that she’s flushed down her throne like it’s a toilet has to be one of the least dignified deaths I’ve seen in a movie.
Is Evillene A Good Villain?
She’s fine if inconsequential. In many ways, I feel like you could take her out of the movie and not lose anything. The Wiz is a fine movie and this is a good take on Baum’s world but I wouldn’t not count her amongst the greats of villains. Of course, it’d be silly to compare her to The Wicked Witch from the 1939 movie who even by the time this movie was an icon.
Join me next time as I close this miniseries out by looking at The Wizard
About Author
Evillene is all right as a villain, and has a good Villain Song, but yes, we don’t see as much of her as we did her 1939 counterpart. To be fair, in Baum’s original book, we didn’t see the Wicked Witch of the West until Dorothy and friends are sent after her by the Wizard.
As for the sprinklers, I assume they were there when Evillene moved in to the place, but that only raises the question of why she never had them removed or disabled. I think using them as the means for her demise is what made it hard for some people to take this movie seriously (that and the earlier sequence in the subway where pillar monsters and such were attacking Dorothy and company – it looked like something out of a Muppet Show sketch, such as ‘Furniture Monsters’).
I really do love this movie but yes, there are elements that make it hard to take serious
I think she would have been a better villain if she was more involved with the movie. (Funny enough, I just watched The Wiz a couple days ago.)
Absolutely agreed
Some trivia I’d like to share about Evillene is that she’s one of only two characters from The Wiz to have the same actor in both the original Broadway production and the movie, Mabel King. The other such character is the Cowardly Lion, played by Ted Ross.
Oh neat, thanks for that piece of trivia.