Thousands of Letterboxd added The Wizard of Oz to their diaries this week for the 85th anniversary of the film’s 1939 premiere. Some rewatched it at home—on HBO Max, specifically, for David: “Well, it is the 85th anniversary of this film, so I had to revisit it once again.” Others, including Scott, in theaters: “Good lord, seeing this in IMAX and remastered in 3D for the 85th anniversary, what a trip. Pure Hollywood magic, still.” 

Yes, some of you synced up Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, because everyone has to do that once in their lifetime. For others, this was a debut viewing of a complex masterpiece. “In celebration of its 85th anniversary I decided to give this film a watch for the first time,” writes Kezhaun. “After doing research and reading about all the production and health issues that went on behind the scenes it did unfortunately cast somewhat of a black cloud over the film BUT I can’t ignore how this is a feat in cinema.” 

That the film transcends its dark history is a common theme. “85 years old today, The Wizard of Oz is more than deserving of the title of the greatest movie ever made,” reports Courtney-Rey. “There’s truly no place like home.” It’s a classic movie for beginners, a film with a good heart. Also, visually insane. A nightmare movie that belongs to “hysterical in a floral dress” cinema. A favorite of David “my dog is always with me” Lynch, John Waters, and the Arctic Monkeys’s Alex Turner, it is on most major “best of” lists and one of the most-watched movies of all time (it’s in the 500 most-watched films on Letterboxd). 

“The most enduring film from Hollywood’s Golden Age is about a small town musical theater girl who realizes her life’s dream is gallivanting with a gaggle of gay guys,” writes Cinema LBeuf, a nod to the “friend of Dorothy” euphemism that was often used by closeted of the queer community. Letterboxd member Noelle Leigh touches on one of many scholarly readings of L. Frank Baum’s original children’s story as a parable about populism in America: “Glinda gave major ‘I’m here to manipulate the political situation to my own ends’ vibes, and Dorothy is effectively weaponized against her political enemies. Feels almost Machiavellian in a fascinating way.” 

Published in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was just the first of many books, screen and stage productions that Baum—a newspaperman, writer and actor—set in and around the land of Oz, setting off a river of Oz reversionings that has kept flowing ever since. The eighties brought Return to Oz, which Elliot rewatched this week. “I love the original Wizard of Oz movie, too, but this is its differently enjoyable, darker sibling… It’s got that magical ’80s feel to all the special effects.” The less said about 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful origin effort the better, though it has its defenders (“I don’t care who knows it,” says Gibbs, proudly). 

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things does a far finer job of portraying a kind of Dorothy (Bella Baxter) venturing into the world and returning with a found family of oddballs, while the second film in Ti West’s X trilogy plays into the horror aspects of The Wizard of Oz, as Mia Goth’s farmgirl Pearl dreams of hooking up with a scarecrow and going to someplace better—the city, to star in the pictures. (Thirsting over Ray Bolger’s original Scarecrow is an obsession many Letterboxd share: “What I’m learning from these reviews is that we all had a crush on the scarecrow, and I think that’s special,” writes Olivia; “Why was the scarecrow kinda doing something for me?” Allison agrees. Even Dorothy says she’ll miss him the most of all.) 

In a few months’ time, the first of a two-part screen version of the Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz stage musical Wicked—a prequel focused on the witches—lands in cinemas. “I can’t think of a movie that has had more of an impact on pop culture than this one,” writes Jesse in their 85th anniversary review. 

Superfan Jim Henson nodded to the film in various Muppets productions, but it wasn’t until after his death that the Henson company made an ill-advised, “extremely horny” adaptation starring Ashanti as Dorothy and Pepé the King Prawn as Toto. As Will reports in a two-star review: “This movie has 2 on screen deaths, slavery, a horny chicken, a guy wanting to be spanked, an opium den, and Quentin Tarantino wanting a fight scene with a ‘busty vampire vixen’. This is a very very bad movie but is so ironically funny it’s genuinely incredible.” 

With a 2.8-out-of-five star average, The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz is outrated on Letterboxd by 1978’s The Wiz, starring Diana Ross as Dorothy. Currently sporting a 3.3 average, The Wiz was the first and only musical directed by Sidney Lumet, who was brought in to get the job done off the back of dramas including Network and Dog Day Afternoon. Many critics panned The Wiz, which at that time was the most costly movie musical to date. It may have failed to make its production budget back, and Michael Jackson’s wonky prosthetics might have prompted nightmares, but the Afrofuturist fantasy has gained devoted fans over the decades. 

The Wiz is in Brian’s four favorites: “I love the history of it and I love the legacy that all these artists left for so many years. It’s good and it leaves such an important mark on my life and the Black community.” And as The Wiz fan and Black Film Archive founder Maya Cade told us, “It’s a film that is both a longing for home in New York City—that’s where the film is set, Dorothy’s home is New York City—but it’s also a film that celebrates Black abundance and Black being in a way that hasn’t been done in this particular way again.” 

Rated higher than both the Muppets version and The Wiz, with a 3.7-out-of-five, the 1976 cult gem Twentieth Century Oz is a low-budget, extremely bogan and wildly Australian take featuring several actors who went on to another famous seventies Aussie road movie: 1979’s Mad Max. As Isy reports, “I just can’t get over the fact that a couple of Aussies woke up in the morning and came up with this—a Dorothy who punches first and asks questions later, a Scarecrow that’s a dumb directionless surfie, a Tin Man that drinks beer and sabotages engines, a Lion who rides a rainbow rimmed bike, and a Wizard who’s pretty much just a discount David Bowie.” 

Pudemup, Wizard of Oz fans, ’cos there’s more. As Libby Tseng articulates: “I am a hater to my core, and I hate this movie. I know it is iconic, and I would never ever refute that, but this movie is painful to watch. Knowing what happened to Judy Garland on set is too sad. She delivers an amazing performance despite all the manipulation and abuse. Separating the movie from its historical impact renders it boring and creepy (for me at least). Of course, incredible respect to Judy Garland forever (this review is not at all based on her performance).”

Beyond the abuse of Judy and Terry, the points against The Wizard of Oz continue to rack up: snow made of asbestos, toxic face-paint, second-degree burns for Margaret Hamilton, electrocuted crew , a missing Busby Berkeley song-and-dance number… “If I rated this as a kid it’d be like a 9 but since I know this movie ruined countless lives it’s getting a half star,” Bean declares. 

Even the on-screen magic eludes many. In a recent viewing, the movie’s “unintentionally sinister” small-town charms were lost on Square Ostrich: “It’s extremely dated and very specifically American; the film is simply virtually unknown in , which affords me a less chauvinistic and nostalgic perspective than its usual audience. The very old-fashioned look is as much a strength as it is a burden: what was whimsical and mischievous when it first came out is occasionally a little creepy here.” 

Adrián, a first-time viewer for this 85th anniversary, also found himself underwhelmed by the lively characters. “The gathering of Dorothy’s companions feels drawn-out and repetitive. It’s not clear how these friends will enhance Dorothy’s journey or what they contribute to the team. They just tag along to get some help from the Wizard of Oz, but the coherence between their needs and personalities is arbitrary. The scarecrow, who is missing a brain, literally says at one point ‘I got an idea’ (and it’s a good one!). Moreover, Dorothy isn’t much of a heroine, the Witch even yells frustrated at one point ‘someone’s always helping that girl!’”

In spite of Baum’s foreword that “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written solely to pleasure children of today… in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out,” the 1939 film managed to terrify many kids. Letterboxd member Janet was seven when she first saw it in 1950 and re being “more scared than delighted… Those red shoes and the striped socks sticking out from the house destroyed in the hurricane… haunted me all these years.” Likewise, Jim “was taken to see this in a theater sometime in the early fifties, or late forties in Kalamazoo, Mi. There was a scene where the witch’s green face filled the screen and it really scared me.” 

Alas, my eight-year-old was more bored than freaked out. Flying monkeys aside, The Wizard of Oz struggled to hold his attention. To be fair, he’s a digital native and a literal child of Letterboxd, dragged willingly along to cinema screenings of wondrous new films like Robot Dreams and The Boy and the Heron. When it comes to campy hijinks and children in peril, he’s more of a Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Labyrinth kind of kid. 

It’s because of those production values that, even with the knowledge of its cursed production, influential filmmakers still declare themselves endlessly inspired by The Wizard of Oz. In her Barbie watchlist interview, Greta Gerwig told us, “It does something that I wanted to emulate, which is these incredible sound stages and these painted skies, and the sense of, I say, ‘authentically artificial’, which I think is very beautiful and emotional.”

For billion-dollar blockbuster king of the world James Cameron, it’s the movie on whose shoulders every other film stands. “The Wizard of Oz is still my favorite because every time I go back to it I enjoy it just as much,” he told Letterboxd earlier this year. “It’s timeless. In my mind it exists outside of time, and I think in a thousand years from now it’ll still have that same charm.” Cameron put a direct reference in the mouth of Avatar’s Colonel Miles Quaritch: “You’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re on Pandora, ladies and gentlemen. Respect that fact every second of every day.” 

Audiences of 2009 who encountered the glow-in-the-dark textures of Pandora for the first time on the big screen must have felt a little of what folks 70 years earlier experienced when Dorothy opened that door and her sepia-toned world burst into florid color. (The effect was achieved with a Dorothy double: clad in a monotone dress in a similarly hued room, she is filmed from behind as she opens the door and steps back; while we take in the wonder of Oz, the real Dorothy and Toto step through the door.) 

Filmmakers are constantly in search of their own “Wizard of Oz moment”, which is exactly how Bookworm director (and Fantasia this year. After washed-up illusionist Strawn Wise (Elijah Wood) meets his daughter Mildred (Nell Fisher) for the first time, she convinces him to go on a hunt for the mythical Canterbury Panther, prompting a stunning aspect-ratio change when the oddball father-daughter duo step off a bus and into the great New Zealand outdoors. 

The appropriately named Oz Perkins performs a similar trick early in Longlegs, jumping from 4:3 to wide (and back again, several times). But “the aspect ratio to end all aspect ratios,” as Letterboxd member James writes, is surely the widescreen reveal that Francis Lawrence pulls off halfway through Hunger Games: Catching Fire, when Katniss Everdeen enters the arena. 

Aspect ratio changes aside there are, as Felonious Tongue documents, other examples of Wizard of Oz shots that signal a change in the reality or perception of the lead character. Tag your own Wizard of Oz moment: is it bullet time in The Matrix? Evelyn Wang’s first verse-jump in Everything Everywhere All at Once? The “wolf vision” reveal in Wolfwalkers? Interstellar’s tidal wave? Or the freakish trippiness of the Nazgul trying to sniff out an invisible Frodo? These are the moments filmmakers chase and cinema was made for.  

How many times have we taken ourselves off to the cinema to zone out of real life for a while? To step out of our time and our town, imagine ourselves part of the story, projecting onto whichever character suits our state of mind: the one who needs courage, the one who needs wisdom, the one who needs heart. And then to be delivered back safe and whole with a renewed appreciation for what we have, and maybe a bit more tolerance and understanding of those who are different from us. 

“‘There is no place like home’? That is not the message of that movie,” James Cameron agrees of Dorothy’s odyssey. “The movie is about the journey of life. You will meet people, and some of them will be against you and some of them will be your friends. Those friends are super, super important. You have to help them and they have to help you and you get through life together. The Tin Man and the Lion and [everyone], they all aggregate around Dorothy, but she also gives back to them and helps them solve their life problems as well. That’s a powerful message for everybody.”