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Nightmare Fuel / The Wizard of Oz

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I'll get you my pretty, And Your Little Dog, Too!
For the original books, see here.


  • It may not be a horror film, but Margaret Hamilton's performance as the Wicked Witch still runs on full-blown, unfiltered Nightmare Fuel. Everything about her is insanely terrifying if you're a kid, and still thoroughly unsettling if you're an adult. The acid green skin, the eerie shrill voice, the not-quite-human face... and admit it, the creepy laugh has made everyone shiver at least once. And with all the scenes of her flying through the sky on a broomstick, teleporting instantly in a ball of fire, and watching the heroes through her crystal ball, there's the implication that she can find you and hunt you down wherever you are! If anything, the fact that it's a family film makes her scarier: she's obviously a sadist with vast magical powers, but we never see her doing anything that violent...our imaginations get to fill in the details.
    • The scene when she appeared in the Crystal Ball and said, "I'll give you Auntie Em, my pretty!" That doesn't sound like much on paper, but she said it in a very threatening voice.
    • In addition to the performance, Hamilton's makeup job is really an awesome achievement for the movie's production staff; there are so many overtly horrific elements to the Witch's design that you might not notice some of the subtler details that just make her seem slightly..."off". Like, while you're focused on the bright green skin and the shrieky voice, you might not notice that her nose and chin are far sharper and more pointed than anything on a real human face. Or that her nails are so long and pointed that they practically look like claws. Or that her face paint is visibly lighter around her eyes—which makes her eyes pop, and gives you the unsettling feeling that she's staring right into your soul.
    • Baum’s interpretation of the Witch from the original book crosses the Moral Event Horizon at least a few times; e.g. her flying monkeys successfully killing the Scarecrow and the Tin Man by tearing them apart, threatening to feast on the Cowardly Lion and make Dorothy her eternal slave.
    • Can you imagine what would have happened if the Witch actually got the Ruby Slippers? Her terror would be even worse....
    • Perhaps the most chilling thing about the Wicked Witch is that the filmmakers supposedly had to cut several minutes' worth of Margaret Hamilton's performance because her scenes were deemed too frightening for young viewers—and even with those cuts, it still went down in history as one of the scariest performances of all time. If you think the Wicked Witch is scary in the finished film, just imagine how bad her scenes that got cut must have been.
  • In the same way that hiding behind the sofa when the Daleks appear is a time-honored coming-of-age ritual for British children, every American child has hidden from the Flying Monkeys at least once. Whenever discussions of the movie come up, it's inevitable that someone will mention being terrified of the monkeys as a kid. It's easy to see why — they look a lot more sinister than real monkeys, they have big crow-like wings, they tear the Scarecrow apart, and they make piercing cries.
  • And then there's the Wizard in his floating, bulbous head form with red smoke and fire belching from behind him as his voice roars past those sharp teeth. He wanted to scare Dorothy's party away, and there's a reason he succeeded. He scared the Cowardly Lion to the point where the Lion fled the room and jumped out a window.
  • When the Wicked Witch has our heroes cornered, she's positively gleeful about how Dorothy is going to watch each of her friends die before her. And then, with evil cheer, she says, "How about a little fire, scarecrow?" as she sets the terrified Scarecrow alight and he's screaming in fear. Thankfully Dorothy's able to put him out, but that is harrowing; if that bucket of water hadn't happened to be there, she would have had to watch her new friend burn to ashes.
  • The scene where the Witch locks Dorothy in a tower, with an hourglass marking the time she has left to live—"and it isn't long, my dear, it isn't long!" The fact that it's never explained exactly what will happen to Dorothy when the sands run out makes it particularly terrifying.
    • Even worse, in the same scene, Dorothy sees an image of Aunt Em in the crystal ball, hopelessly looking for her. No sooner does Dorothy fail to communicate with her than Aunt Em's image is replaced by the Wicked Witch who mocks Dorothy and threatens her, "I'll give you Auntie Em, my pretty!" And if THAT isn't frightening enough, the Witch then turns to cackle directly at the audience as if to tell us "I'm coming for YOU next!"
    • The implication made by the set-up of the escape scene (where the very last of the sand running out is intercut with the Woodsman trying to chop the door open and get her out) is that she will die if she is in the same room with the hourglass when the sand runs out. If this is the case, it's not really any less terrifying than not knowing.
  • The scene where Miss Gulch is seen riding on her bicycle. There's something unsettling about the way her entire body remains erect and motionless, save for her legs. The big frown on her face also makes her creepy.
    • Especially later when Dorothy sees Miss Gulch cycling past her window and transforming into the Wicked Witch of the West. Especially that laugh!
  • While we're at it, the scene with the twister is quite scary, given that the special effects look really damn good for such an old film, and —at least before Dorothy is knocked unconscious and the fantastical stuff kicks in— the tornado's behavior is more accurate to real life than in many movies that came out over half a century later. This is even more unsettling if you don't live somewhere where tornadoes are common, since then, the scene is alien to you.
    "It's a twister! It's a twister!"
  • Who here wasn't a little freaked out by the chant of the Winkies? (they monotonously chant, "Oh-ee-oh! We-oh-oh!" over and over). That Metallica saw fit to sample the chanting for a song about someone losing their mind says a lot.
    • In the trippiest and most disturbing scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers have the freaking KLAN chanting it as they march and dance in formation.
    • Pro wrestling manager Father James Mitchell used a slowed down version as part of the entrance theme to his stable The New Church. For those unaware, in the Kayfabe mythology of Impact Wrestling, James Mitchell is literally the Devil's representative on Earth (basically, the Anti-Pope).
    • The moment in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring where Gollum leads Sam and Frodo to the rocky cliff overlooking the Black Gate and witness the Easterlings marching from stage left through the gigantic iron doors into the castle, unintelligible chant and all, was confirmed by Jackson to be a deliberate Shout-Out.
  • Though it normally goes overlooked since the person in question is one of the Wicked Witches, Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead is, as its name even suggests, a song gleefully celebrating someone's death.
  • The death of both Wicked Witches.
    • Once the ruby slippers disappear from East's feet, what little we see of her corpse FLATTENS AND ROLLS UP. Bones, muscles, flesh, just rolled up like a carpet. We never do find out if she left anything at all under the house, or if even her rolled up body mysteriously vanished.
    • The water Dorothy throws on West causes her body to hiss and produce steam, implying that the wicked witch's skin is not simply turning to goo, but burning (if not outright boiling into liquid). Even worse? When she's almost gone, she makes whimpering, moaning sounds which sit somewhere between her being in extreme pain and being scared to die.
  • The scene where Dorothy attempts to pick an apple...and the gets promptly smacked by a living, talking, tree.
  • Auntie Em running around the farm, calling for Dorothy. Her niece has vanished, just before a great storm is about to hit. She and Uncle Henry are forced to retreat to the cellar and lock it up. It's possible that they heard Dorothy outside trying to pull the door open before she has to hide inside the house.
  • Dorothy running away with Toto, fearing that Miss Gulch will take him back, a few hours before the storm hits. She only has a basket, her dog, and the clothes on her back. The kindly carnival owner convinces her to go back because Auntie Em will be worried sick about her (though she ends up misinterpreting that as him saying she's literally sick with a terminal illness).
  • This film basically invented Mood Whiplash, at least cinematically. First, "Over the Rainbow" cuts sharply to Ms. Gulch riding her bike with that frightening music. Next, the silly sights inside the twister are interrupted AGAIN by Ms. Gulch and her horrid leitmotif. Then the Crowd Song in Munchkinland is stopped dead in its tracks by the Wicked Witch making her debut... Really, it just goes on like this with the Wicked Witch.
    • Imagine being a child, and seeing this in theatres for the first time in theatres in the 30s. First your mind is blown seeing sepia turn to over the top Technicolor before your eyes, followed by a fun musical sequence, only to have it all come crashing down when there's a freaking fireball and a woman with green skin steps out of it...

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