2. Return To Oz (1985)
As The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved family films ever made, it would only follow that its sequel would come cut from a similar cloth. Though it was indeed made by Disney, Return to Oz is genuinely the stuff of nightmares from start to finish. It’s still billed as a family fantasy film, but it’s so far from a pleasant ride through the fantastically colorful world of Oz that it belongs firmly on this list.
Return to Oz‘s main characters (other than Dorothy Gale) include a clockwork soldier who regularly stops working, a sentient flying moose-furniture hybrid creature, and a walking stick-man with a pumpkin for a head. Its villains include Mombi, a witch who cuts off women’s heads, keeps them in cabinets, and wears a different one each day, the Wheelers (imagine A Clockwork Orange‘s Droobs on wheels and you’re basically there), and the Nome King, a giant stone monster who lives inside a mountain and imprisons people in the form of inanimate objects.
As though that wasn’t distressing enough for a young audience, Dorothy only heads to Oz in order to escape electroshock therapy. This comes shortly after she is committed to an old-school mental institution for talking about her previous adventures in Oz. Basically, from start to finish, Return to Oz is a genuine horror story, but it’s wrapped in family-friendly colorful packaging, so apparently it doesn’t qualify as such.